Suzie

Looks like someone did the sums and found that even with the eastern leg and the increased 33 minute Leeds Manchester time the fastest route south from Leeds to Birmingham was still via Manchester and the western leg, rather makes the full eastern leg seem a bit pointless. All the proposed work would need to be done anyway at some point, so best to get it done first, and finish off the high speed Yorkshire section when the capacity improvement is required - when passenger numbers pick up sufficiently to fill 12-car EMUs. What is currently upsetting passengers is overcrowding on very short 2-car and 4-car diesel trains, all a bit unnecessary when perfectly good EMUs are going for scrap because electrification has not been done.

It is Deja vu like the Blair years - lets cancel all infrastructure investment and waste more money in a big hole like the NHS etc. Stupid thing is there has never been a cheaper time to borrow money, which makes the investment payback so much quicker. I guess it would have helped if Covid had not destroyed ridership on the trains reducing the urgency of capacity improvements which is what they are really canning.

Look at post 2 of this thread which has a link to some diagrams of how to make BM1 style braking modules on stripboard. I would recommend that you use UF4001 diodes (suitable for trains drawing up to 2A) or UF5400 (bigger and suitable for up to 6A), but any fast diode will do. 1N4001 diodes are often mentioned but they are not really suitable because they are not fast enough and they mess up the DCC waveform possibly creating some poor response and reliability issues. These BM1 modules just connect in line to the feed of an isolated section of track. Convention is to connect it in line with the left rail, but you can use the right rail just by connecting it the other way round.

Surely if both the Southport and Kirkby lines can justify being double track they must be able to justify electrification, it is not like they are small single track branch lines...

Perhaps reinstate the 3rd rail to Moels Cop and charge up from DC on the way in and out...

Could Merseyrail not be cajoled in to extending their 3rd rail to Upholland, then Wigan to Upholland would be an easy 25KV shoe-in with no need for a substation for such a short distance. Upholland could then become Skelmersdale Parkway! It would be a much better place to run the busses to rather than Wigan and Ormskirk. It is not like Kirkby is a meaningful destination from either Manchester or Liverpool - it just happens to be at some municipal boundary I guess. I would guess that Preston to Ormskirk would not need a substation either for 25KV. At Wigan moving the Wallgate platforms to be adjacent to Northwestern would offer some scope for lowering the track under the bridge at the same time and make a much more sensible interchange station out of the sorry mess. Making the Wallgate lines accessible by simple cross-platform interchange at Wigan, a bus connection to Skelmersdale from Upholland, and extending the Merseyrail to Upholland would significantly increase the ridership all round by providing facilities that are actually useable. Walking half way round Wigan, changing trains at Kirkby, and the mile or so walk from Upholland station to anywhere (including Upholland!) are all the sort of things that put people off. I suspect that the Southport line will be able to justify electrification if destinations other than just Manchester Victoria can be found, and EMUs with smarter acceleration can reduce the journey time a bit on all-stopping services.

Just Remember that you need to connect the negative to the 'T' terminal and the positive to both the 'U' and 'V' terminals otherwise you will overload the bridge rectifier.

Now, to try and add something. DCC concepts are trying to market their PSU offerings by casting doubt in people's minds that what they currently have is inadequate. I think it is only Lenz that currently market a transformer with a DCC system, and therefore only Lenz that would benefit from a PSU upgrade (note special wiring of the PSU required with Lenz - don't just wire DC to the U and V terminals!). All the rest will come with a perfectly good regulated switchmode PSU, the only upgrade needed might be to get a bigger PSU to get full benefit from the capability of the built in booster. I would never use a transformer nowadays for several reasons (weight, poor regulation, inefficiency and cost), but I would have no problem using the switchmode PSU supplied with most DCC systems. Transformers are transformers, they don't really come in smooth and not smooth varieties. There is such a thing as an unsmoothed DC power supply, but you are unlikely to have seen one of these in the last twenty years! I don't think any have ever been supplied with DCC systems. In reality there is very little to worry about.

Melvin's question is all in bold, a little bit shouty to start with. Melvin has asked for comment, and implies that he is welcoming comment, so there should be no surprise that people have commented. This is a very clear invitation.

Hi The technique that I have used is to both bury the IRDOT LEDs deep, and position them apart at an angle so that they collect light reflected off the bottom of stock better. As I see it there are two conflicting problems to deal with on the standard set up of the diodes together in a single hole:- Trying to get light reflected at 90 degrees with the diodes parallel means that you don't get much reflected IR so you can't limit the sensitivity of the receiver with a long tube - you need all the reflected light you can get to make it work. The receiver is pointing directly at interfering light sources on the ceiling etc. Positioning the diodes in two angled holes means that you get a lot more reflected light, and you can therefore bury the receiver down a long tube to minimise the stray light pickup. Last time I played with IRDOTs and had a problem it was with fluorescent tubes which have all sorts of flickering modes that can be too subtle to notice. Regardless of what Heathcote says pointing the receiver at a very bright light source will cause problems with false triggering. The IRDOT is able to filter out the steady light and responds well to very low levels of flickering at the right frequency!

This reminds me of a holiday in the west country when my aunty pointed out of the car window and exclaimed. "Oh look, a steamer!" We looked and saw a class 33 blowing out the most amazing clag with a rake of Mk2s behind.

I can only think that there is a problem with the left juicer connecting to the 'yellow' frog rail. As soon as the gap between the 'yellow' frog rail and what is to the left of it is bridged the juicer should provide the red power, the other rail being permanently connected to black.

Sounds like scope for a digester in the next compartment to make a bit of methane, mix that with the hydrogen, and we are running on town gas...

A special compartment in the front coach labelled "MPs only"

Since with hydrogen holding about 40KWh per kg it takes about 200Kg of hydrogen to produce the same energy as a tonne of coal it should not be too hard to power a steam locomotive with hydrogen even if the hydrogen tanks are a bit heavy and new emissions law requires you to carry around a tank of oxygen too. Perhaps it will be the advent of the 'Techno-Tender' consisting of hydrogen tank, oxygen tank, condenser to make water from the exhaust steam, and perhaps a 25KV electrolysis plant to fill the tanks overnight by raising the pantograph discreetly in the shed...