AndrueC

You mean the trivial fairy stuff that modern civilisation depends on? I was a computer programmer before I retired so I have an obligation to make disparaging remarks about IT but referring to it as 'fairy dust' shows an astonishing lack of knowledge and respect on your part. IT has issues with standards and quality control (as a programmer I'm painfully aware of how particularly poor our industry is at it) but IT is most definitely not 'trivial' and should not be dismissed as such.

There was a simplicity to the old UI and it was well thought out with respect to buttons on remotes. The Sky Q UI is mostly okay but suffers from usability issues that Sky are unwilling or unable to address. For instance they way it handles button focusing is poor and non-standard and at times hard to even distinguish. Actually one new feature they added which was very welcome is 'Skip 30 seconds'. I seem to remember that old Sky+ boxes only had FF/RW.

And I think this directly pokes fun at the subject whilst being sadly true: https://xkcd.com/927/

Ah yes I'd forgotten that. Also we have lost the ability to manually tune so now can't watch a channel unless it's listed on the Sky EPG.

They do look good ;)

The South Yard! The parts for my south yard arrived from York Models. It's not a very complicated structure (it is after all basically just a fancy dust cover). Unlike the North Yard cover this is intended to look modern - a steel and glass structure. It consists of multiple double arches with side panels. Here is the first unit constructed: And here are three units in position over the yard itself: A collection of units as the cover starts to take shape: The main section of the yard, spray painted with aluminium colour: A slight complication is that unlike the North Yard the South Yard has a ladder arrangement. It also has a mainline hugging the side of it. This means that the yard cover can't just be a single 'tube'. There has to be an angled section at one end. Eventually I will be constructing an office area and putting it on the flat roof. Below is the completed yard with the angled section at left: Well it's not actually complete in that image. It still needs acetate sheets adding to make a roof and external beams in line with the arches but it's pretty much done. To celebrate completion I've been stocking the yard with my remaining rolling stock. First to go in was Big Bertha and her Bullet Train. You can admire the yard cover as she drives past it a few times:

I think that can only be the case if you have the throw set too long. I've not had that issue on N scale. I also use the SPDT on the controller for LED signals and having that available out of the box is very handy. Issues I have had: Adjusting the motors can be frustrating. They need to be correctly aligned both horizontally and vertically. With Peco N scale turnouts there is already a hole and cutting the nipple off won't expose another. I think sometimes (not sure) the nipple can jam the lever against the side of the motor. It really doesn't take much to jam things. A single errant piece of ballast can do so. But once you've gone through the pain of adjusting them (and with experience you can site them correctly first time) they appear to be reliable. They are fairly quiet. They make the most noise when they've reached the end of travel and are slipping on their screw. If you get the throw correct they won't do that. My conclusion: They are less hassle to fit than under board motors (I gave up on my IPDigital motors) if you have to get underneath your board. However if you can easily put your board on its side and even better have someone to assist you then their IP Digital motors would be best. They are a lot stronger so are less fiddly.

I've had Sky Q almost since it came out. There are a couple of advantages to the box over the Sky+ units and a couple of disadvantages. For me the biggest gain was the ability to record up to six programmes at the same time. I never watch live TV and most of my viewing is in the 9pm to 11pm slot so I often need all six options. The On Demand side of things is pretty slick and integration with Netflix et al is nice and pretty cost effective. Things you lose: Slow motion replay. Bookmarks. Reminders I don't miss any of those. The fact it's more graphical is nice but there are a couple of disadvantages: You can't switch off the small picture in the Guide (at times it will go away but when there is space for it it will be there). I leave my box permanently tuned to channel 401 because I don't have the sports package and at least then the small screen is either just showing a silent 'You must subscribe...' message or whatever I'm currently playing back. The page up/down key only works on the programme guide. There are plenty of other times when it would be nice to have it. A classic example is if you want to find the latest episode of a long running series. Lord help you if you ever want to find the latest episode of Wheeler Dealers for instance. My biggest bugbear. when exiting playback you are unlikely to be returned to the recording selection page (sometimes you will but not often). Most likely you will end up at the main menu which forces you to then navigate back through your recordings to find what you've just been watching so that you can delete it. This has been a bug since day one and Sky are just that useless at fixing bugs. But the UI does the job and despite the age of my box (must be over six, maybe seven years by now) rarely crashes. If it ever does fail then it won't cost me anything. Sky Q boxes remain the property of Sky so they will get you back up and running without you have to pay a penny. On the other hand that will mean you lose all your recordings which is a bit annoying. I don't archive anything (I'm a strictly, record, watch, delete person) but because I don't watch live TV it would be very frustrating having an empty box.

..as the actress said to the bishop.

Isn't that basically the history of the Coronation Class?

Thank you, lol. I bought it with the intention of it performing that loop in the background while the other trains took turns to strut their stuff. I'm hoping that after a few more daysweeksmonths running it might quieten down. The instructions did say to lubricate it first and I did that. There's enough oil on the gears for it to very slightly stain a tissue.

Hi, I have a class 121 dummy in Chiltern green. Unfortunately the lights show as white which is a bit unrealistic since it's always being towed. Is there an easy way to switch them to red without the expense of buying a decoder for it? On a very related note: Does the powered 121 whine ever fade? It's far and away the noisiest loco I have and the only advantage is that it drowns out the sound of turnout motors operating.

Very late to the party here but good to see that Dapol are consistent at least. My N scale 121 also has a high pitched whine. That's a bit annoying because it's a unit I intent to have continuously circling on a branch loop. On the plus side it does drown out the sound of turnout motors operating 🙂

And I'd wager that: a) It didn't affect their sales in the slightest. b) 95% of people who looked at the stand had no idea and/or wouldn't have cared 😉

Yes that's what I meant when I mentioned radio controlled. It seems unlikely the car uses that because those systems all include local DST information. I'll grant that as a software engineer I treat hardware manufacturers (eg;Toyota) with disdain but the chips for such systems come ready to plug in so it defies logic that a car would have such a system yet fail to correctly switch to/from DST. Actually I did miss out another possibility - DAB. However I used to have a DAB clock radio and: It could be wrong by up to two minutes (I believe this is actually part of the DAB spec) and I got so annoyed by it that I got rid of it. It often didn't switch to/from DST until 8 or 9am (see above for the annoyance factor). Update: From some web searches it shows that this might be down to the receiver implementation rather than DAB itself. Still - if it gets the time from DAB it ought to automatically update. Oh and I've never used the radio so have no idea if it's tuned into anything at the moment. 🙂

Technical rant alert! So my current car - a Corolla - maintains an accurate clock. I just checked again and it agrees to the second with my watch which is a Casio G-Shock that syncs to the national time signal every night. As I see it there are three possibilities here: The car gets the time from GPS. My model has sat nav but even those that don't will have GPS as part of the eCall system. The car gets the time from the traffic information that Toyota helps fund. The car gets the time from a Bluetooth device when it connects and it will always connect to my phone when I drive it. (I discount inherent accuracy because digital clocks always drift even if it's only half a second a day). I have to manually enable/disable DST so I think we can rule out Bluetooth since that includes that information. For a similar reason I think we can exclude the traffic information plus I'm guessing that might only be received when I use the satnav and these days I use Google Maps and Android Auto rather than pay Toyota's outrageous map update fee. So it probably gets the time from GPS and that will be UTC without time zone information so meh. It's annoying but can't be helped. But then we get to my previous car a Honda Jazz. That's much the same situation (except no eCall and my model didn't have satnav). But when configuring the clock you had to specify the time zone. I selected WET (Western European Time) because that's what we use. Did it help? Did it heck as like. I still had to manually enable/disable DST. Now that is stupid. Meanwhile my three watches, all my clocks and even my central heating thermostat sort themselves out via radio control. All I have to change indoors are the microwave and some timers I have controlling power sockets.

I was there helping run the LWMRS club's 30 year old layout, Meacham. Despite a few incidents in the fiddle yard(*) it went well and seemed to be popular with the visitors. I had a wander round the show and saw several other great layouts. Unlike a lot of shows it never felt crowded but there were plenty of people there. You also get access to the motor museum so that's another reason to go. Tomorrow is the last day folks! (*)Tail chasing is all great fun until it goes wrong :)

It's enough to make you weep..or climb up a pole :) I've redone my willow using a technique I found on YouTube. The result (my third attempt using different techniques) finally meets my standards. I used this technique to make the branches. As a diversion I've also installed some telegraph poles on the Western Cutting. In case anyone's wondering they are a scale 15m apart.

I'm not keen on Royal Mail anyway. I prefer to use a shell company.

Gives a whole new meaning to 'snail mail'. 🙂

That would be an ecumenical matter.

I don't think any Cobalt model consumes much when idle. The IP versions apparently consume around 4mA depending on the voltage but that will include power for the integral controller electronics on their digital versions at least. The -SS variant (the ones I use) are separate motors/controller and the motor is a stepper so presumably consumes nothing when idle. -SS controllers by their nature (a couple of small indicator LEDs and DCC decoder) will be consuming some power all the time. All models have built in CDU so shouldn't cause any spiking.

On my layout I used suitcase connectors to attach droppers to the bus. They are pretty easy to use but do require a little care. In particular making sure that the dropper is fully home before pushing the cutter down and then ensuring that the cutter is all the way down (the flap won't clip shut unless it is). Unfortunately their ease of use is also their downside. It encourages you to just slap 'em on where you want leading to a bit of an untidy mess. You also can't just unclip them because they cut the insulation of the through wire (the bus in this case). I have a couple of empty ones under my layout where the dropper wasn't fully home and fell out. I can't remove them or at least if I did I'd then have to wrap insulation around the bus wire so no point. That's actually an issue with DCC Concepts kit which I've used heavily. Not requiring soldering or wire prep is great but it means you're relying on standard wire lengths and a lot of the time that leaves slack wires hanging around. It also means you tend not to care about routing - you just want the wire to go from socket A to socket B so stuff it in whichever way achieves that.

Static grass ahoy (and the last of the army sand). Just a short update. Once I had more space between the inner track and the interchange I was able to create some proper scenery. No more naff card painted orange. This is the result: It needs a little more work around the turnout motor cover but it's a big improvement. I now have to decide what I'm going to put on that empty section of board. It's supposed to be a lift-out section (currently duck-under) so I could just remove it to reduce weight but that seems like a wasted opportunity. Having completed the above track work I could also add in some scenery to the right of the above image. Wallarium tries to be consistent in its track laying. Grey ballast sat on a sand base. This was the last section of track to be made good. It means that I have finally reached the point where I no longer have a need for army sand. This has been a running personal joke for a while. For some reason I over ordered it and several times while digging through my scenery for something else I'd find yet another container of army sand. Consequently whenever I needed some I'd joke to myself about being careful with it so as not to waste it. Naturally I've been left with quite a lot of army sand and no longer any use for it. I can't believe it's not...army sand.

I bought mine three years ago but it couldn't handle the 2nd radius curves on my previous layout and wasn't happy with one of the ones on my current layout which I know to be no worse than 3rd radius. Then one of the wires and the tender coupling broke. I repaired them but my other 4-6-2 (Graham Farish Queen Elizabeth) has never had any issues and has been handled a lot more often. So my Hall is in its box at the bottom of a drawer and will likely never be allowed to see daylight again.