Trevellan

I might be barred from this thread for suggesting it, but on the topic of era creep I rather like the idea of seeing a full length HST running through PN. I always thought David Jenkinson's "funny trains" added a bit of fun on his various layouts. And with that piece of sacrilege, I will withdraw quietly.

Given the payload, it was obviously an atmospheric railway...

Perhaps my photograph of 401 at Waterloo in March 1986 might help the debate?

Could be one reason why there is not currently a South Hampshire Area Group; just a random invention from my fevered imagination. Still, who wouldn't want to be part of SWAG, with such a wonderful collection of celebrities? Meanwhile, back at the planning...

I'm actually part of the South Hampshire Area Group, but the system is offended by our acronym However, as an honorary member of SWAG, I'd be happy to continue supporting the modular group in any way I can.

The Premier Inn at Massingham Park is the fourth hotel I've stayed in for the Taunton event and it proved to be the best yet by a country mile. Two important considerations for me were: 1. It was possible to park the car within sight of my room, and 2. They start serving breakfast at 7am. As Penlan says, the room rates are relatively good value. I can't speak for the evening dinner service, because I was in the Cross Keys waiting room

I've attended on four occasions now, one as a visitor and three as an exhibitor. I'm certainly not local, but have been happy to support the event because the format works so well. This year, I paid around £175 just to attend (with ferry crossings, meals and an overnight stay), and then was daft enough to bid on a DMU I already owned. (And yes, the auction win will be retained and renumbered!). I can understand that some folk would view the modular layout as an extravagant use of space, but we had no less than three new modules there this year, all admittedly unfinished, representing three completely different approaches. Arthur's steelworks module has also been a deservedly popular exhibit, but perhaps the time has come to review the module spec. For example, my canal module was deliberately designed to make a virtue out of the shortage of tables, with a dropped centre section. Technically, this is outside the spec, but it works. We've also had informal discussions about other changes and improvements we could make. Certainly, in my three years as a moduleer we have tried to be inclusive and have had several guest operators. As Godfrey says, we also welcome visiting locos and stock and anyone who wants to test new purchases need only ask. I think the layout mix in the main hall has always seemed rather eclectic. Again, I know of a few owners who have invited visitors to "have a go". How many other model railway events offer this sort of friendly inclusion? I've also been given a lot of good advice to improve my modelling. Overall, it's a fantastic event and I hope it continues for some time to come. Yes, it may need a few new twists along the way, but the basics are there and sound foundations to build upon.

Yesterday we had the RMweb Members' Day at Taunton and Andy Y very kindly let us loose with his APT-E on the modular layout. What became clear is that there were at least three of us who had yet to try assembling our own versions, even after reading the excellent instruction manual. (The latter, incidentally, deserves an award in its own right - every user manual for every product should be produced in this style from now on.) Andy demonstrated the technique required to join and separate the individual vehicles and I certainly came away more confident about the process. Thanks Andy! The image below captures the moment when APT-E made a loo stop at Chard, en route to a special meeting of the Time Lords

Thanks for the sound demo Andy. I particularly like the start sequence, where someone can be heard giving the gas turbine a good thump with a hammer

My personal preference for the visible edges of baseboards has long been to prime and then paint matt black. It's rather like a black surround to a colour photograph, seeming to add impact to the presentation. Varnish is okay if you want the layout to look like a piece of furniture.

Yes, 64 bit. As you say, it is worthwhile disabling all of the non-essential features to improve performance.

CPU is an AMD Athlon 2.80GHz with 4Gb of RAM. The performance has been much better today because I have shut down the Compatibility Telemetry feature. Part of the problem is that my current PC is an all-in-one type, which cannot be easily upgraded. It also tends to run hotter because of the slim design and the fan noise is intrusive, especially when trying to work on creative writing. Next time I'll go for one with a system box capable of various upgrades.

As mentioned above, my PC is on most days for work purposes, so a backlog is highly unlikely. Monitoring of Task Manager shows regular culprits causing high CPU and HDD usage,incuding: Windows Host Process (rundll32) Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry Microsoft Windows Search Filter Host Microsoft Windows Search Protocol Host plus others such as Runtime Broker. You may be fortunate with your experience of W10. Googling the various processes mentioned above shows that many people are experiencing similar problems, some of which clearly date back to W7 and possibly earlier.

No, my PC is on daily, so there can't be a backlog. Even as I type this the CPU is running at 40-50% because W10 is fannying around with various processes. I have Task Manager permanently in the background these days in an attempt to monitor what W10 is doing.

A W10 update today, which took no less than 1 hour 45 minutes to install on my desktop PC, preventing me from working. I've been a regular Windows user since v3.1 and IMHO W10 is the worst iteration yet. It's making the CPU on my PC work harder than ever with no tangible benefits that I'm interested in. I have even been effectively locked out on several occasions while it is using system resources. My PC is not yet five years old and was a good spec when I got it in mid-2011. This whole W10 business is making me re-think my PC replacement plans for the summer and a Windows machine is no longer an automatic front runner. I may be an old curmudgeon, but I still think that 98SE was the best iteration of Windows I ever used.

Thanks for posting these Peter. Very interesting. Mind you, when I initially looked at the first image I thought you had stored some brushes in the completed lift tower! Very ornate storage

My former home patch was on the West Anglia route, so I grew up with what became classes 302, 305, 307 and 308. We even had a few 304s for a while too. It must be a sign of advancing years, but what used to be everyday and incredibly mundane now makes me feel quite nostalgic.

I'm sorry, but that's an unfair accusation to make when you don't know the full circumstances. Still, such broad generalisations and assumptions are common these days. Sadly, many of the motorists who make these assumptions do not appear to be qualified to do so, by virtue of no large vehicle experience. I shall be driving buses today and much of my effort will be down to anticipating the actions of car drivers, rather like trying to predict lottery numbers. EDIT to correct typo.

Just a few friendly words of advice. You are relatively new to RMweb and to date your posts have come across as unnecessarily negative, even combative in some cases. This forum is a fantastic resource and you'll get a lot more out of it if you can make some positive contributions yourself. I can understand your frustration in the case of the O2s, but I feel - as Phil says above - that some prespective is needed. I have to say that my experiences of Kernow Model Rail Centre have been 100% positive and I don't believe this is down to pure luck.

Well, my two island examples have arrived safely within the last hour and what little beauties they are. The slightly muted finish looks right to my eyes, although my various IoW albums show the cab surround and Westinghouse pump bands to be mostly dull and dirty. An easily solvable issue. I won't be able to run them until later, but for now I am one very happy bunny! I wonder how many O2s we can get on the modular layout at Taunton next April?

As someone with PCV and LGV entitlement, I would never condone tailgating. However, I have been in situations where I have set a truck's cruise control to 50mph and have had to keep lowering the figure because of over-cautious motorists (42mph in one notable case). Whenever I'm in my car in similar circumstances I often use lorries to check my speed, because I know their cruise control will be more accurate than mine.

This is certainly an interesting shot, not least for the 2BIL in the SR platform. What a great find.

Yes, I appreciate it's the lens rather than the camera in terms of picture quality (and film too), but in the case I was referring to (not the shot above), it was the composition that beat my efforts. The Rokkor on my Minolta wasn't that good, but my mate's Pentax had the Super Takumar IIRC. I don't recall what lens PDH was using.

Yet another shot from June 1974, scanned from a transparency and featuring an unidentified Western. My notes, albeit sketchy, suggest the location is somewhere near Grampound Road. Certainly, the next slide in the sequence was taken at St Austell. Perhaps one of our Cornish brethren could comment? This location was interesting, in that another photographer arrived after my mate and I had set up. The new arrival was using an elderly Pentax SLR, while I was shooting on a (then) new Minolta SRT303 and my mate had a nearly new Pentax Spotmatic ES2. Later, we saw the other photographer's images published and it turned out to be Philip D. Hawkins. His pictures were much better than ours too, proving that it's not what you've got, it's what you do with it .

Back in the mid-1970s, I attended a talk given by a former WR fireman to the North London Group and I recall one of his anecdotes concerned auto-train working. He claimed that the fireman would, in certain circumstances, remove the pin from the regulator and drive the loco himself by watching the linkage move and opening up or closing accordingly. The excuse for this was given as the relative crudity of the mechanical system, which sometimes meant locos working harder than they needed to and therefore making the fireman's job more difficult. It would be easy to dismiss this as fanciful, but I have read a number of locomen's reminiscences which suggest that rules were often bent if it made life easier. These days we seem to make a habit of being critical of things that happened many years ago, all from a comfortable vantage point. As has been said above, the physical demands of footplate work could be onerous, so it's hardly surprising that crews tried to mitigate this where it was safe to do so.