Pete the Elaner

Maybe you could consider an alternative to PVA? Many consider it the 'tried & tested' product for ballasting, but it is a resin wood glue. It is great for gluing wood together, but fixing ballast requires different properties, so why assume it is good for this too? A resin is a poor product for fixing ballast & PVA reacts with some ballast, leaving it slightly green.

I don't like the names very much. They are cryptic when they could have been more meaningful. Gospel oak to Barking Line has long been known as the Goblin & likely still will be by locals, so this seemed like an obvious choice. Some older lines have use names relating to where they run: Victoria serves Victoria Piccadilly serves Piccadilly Bakerloo serves Baker St & Waterloo Hammersmith & City I am sure something more meaningful could be though of for each. Here are a couple more: Havering Line - Romford to Upminster, both being in the borough of Havering. Cross Line - Crosses the river & runs to New Cross (I don't like that one so much, but it still means something a lot more obvious than Windrush).

I also think it is impolite to complain in public before giving the supplier a chance to resolve the issue. Most will be keen to sort any problem & be praised for it rather than be criticised.

It looks like this refers to fan sound only, but what we see as a command function is not necessarily an output function. A single command function can control more than 1 output function. A good example is the simply turning on the lights with F0 turns on white & red lights at front & rear. This is 4 output functions.

I live in an area built like that: A cul-de-sac of garages with houses behind them, but, aside from the corner spots, each garage has space for a car in front. Many households now have 2 cars (including mine) but also most of the residents use their garages for storage, so their second car is....? The area is becoming increasingly untidy & I occasionally find somebody has blocked me in, or parked in the space in front of my garage while I have been out shopping.

DCC users have had the ability to turn off tail lights on the latest D&E models for 4-5 years now, so the model world is getting there.

I believe that used to be the case, but it was mentioned several times last year that the current regulations (hybrid engines, DRS, bigger wheels, halo, strength to pass crash tests) had made the cars heavier & teams, including Red Bull, were a little overweight.

I made that observation at the club a while back when somebody brought it a model with a flashing tail lamp. Its flash was more reminiscent of the way a cursor flashes than the very quick 'on pulse' of a tail lamp. Making a circuit board small enough is beyond my capabilities & resources but I am sure a manufacturer will oblige before long.

I completely agree. I always consider junctions below the main carriageway to be upside down. I had not considered visibility but a loaded HGV benefits from a bit of gravity assistance. When you exit the road, you don't really want gravity trying to make you go faster either. Isn't it a lot easier to adjust your speed if you've built it up quickly then ease back if necessary rather than try to add some speed because you under-estimated how fast the traffic is flowing? I do try to give joining traffic a bit of space by pulling over but, as you pointed out, this is not always possible.

It is really not that difficult to adjust your speed when entering a dual carriageway either. I am surprised they were doing 70 though. Many seem to limit themselves to 50 then find they need to find an extra 10mph from somewhere. I would rather accelerate more sharply initially, which gives me time to adjust my speed (usually down) to merge safely. It is one of the few times that accelerating hard is a good thing.

A lot of parking is lazy, thoughtless & dangerous. Near where I used to live, there was a turning with a post office outside which people regularly parked. It is easier to explain with a picture: The post office is right on a corner. Vehicles parked directly outside make the view virtually non-existent, so there is a layby about 20m away. I was amazed there is a car actually using it in the photo, because most people cannot be bothered to walk for 10-20 seconds to use it. Most people park where the van is. I used to take a route about 1/2 mile longer instead of chancing my luck by sticking my bonnet out of this junction to see if it was safe to pull out. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thorrington,+Colchester/@51.8402937,1.0386447,84m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x47d911e1d16ccfb1:0xf7d5dae59eeb39e9!8m2!3d51.84049!4d1.026629!16zL20vMGJjZnEx?entry=ttu

I tried to make coping stones with styrene before. Even though I tried to be as accurate as possible, they come out very slightly different sizes, which looks very obvious when you try to line them up with each other & I was dissatisfied with the result. Laser cutting produces them in consistent sizes, but without any relief. When using acrylic, the cut is not perpendicular either. I thought this would make them look acceptable to depict the curved edge, but it did not look right.

I am pretty sure "3d prints" was a suggestion instead of a remark that 3d printed ones had been seen somewhere. It is certainly something I had considered because what I have seen commercially available just don't look right to me. It is exactly the type of thing I bought my 3d printer for.

No, but a lot of things happen which shouldn't. Avoiding an accident is much less hassle than allowing someone else to cause it, then going through the hassle of dealing with a repair.

My first bedroom was within line of sight of the Colchester-Clacton line. 309s appealed to me because they passed through the village non-stop. Very occasionally, I would get to see something which I now know to be a class 37 on what I expect was an engineers' train. So I really do view a line as being rather naked & incomplete if it does not have OLE. As I got into my teens, I had a few day trips to London, the class 86s hauled the InterCity services & I discovered there were lots more electric locos over in Euston. I was always interested to see what was on shed as I passed Stratford, Willesden & Old Oak Common. A trip to Harrow on the main line & return on the DC to see both sides of Willesden (with a walk to Old Oak) was not uncommon.

Cutting corners happens all the time, but for a driver to do it then claiming they were not at fault is rather outrageous.

Am I interpreting this correctly? The Skoda driver cut the corner but claimed it your van's fault for being too close to the give way line (but on their side of the road).

It is not only being delayed by the sound recording. There is something else which affects all models. Their existing BW pan on the class 92 operates, but you are nearly correct. I was told at Warley by a member of Accurascale's staff that they felt the 92 pantograph does not park low enough. They feel they can improve on this but the re-design has forced them to delay its release.

True. The price does not always go down when rooms are bulk booked. I used to be involved with snooker & players were encouraged to book through the organisation, which had blocked booked rooms. They discovered that it was cheaper to book their own rooms directly.

Wasn't Horner's hearing supposed to be today? I guess that if we don't hear anything, it was just another nonsense story from the media.

Peco have a much bigger range than Hornby too. Streamline is much better looking. Not just a better six foot but a choice of different radii points & they also do steel & concrete sleeper track. An HST or class 87 looks silly pulling a rake of Mk3s on a main line layout with nothing but wooden sleepers, but Hornby don't provide any other choice. Flexi track is a slightly different mind set, but I would not use anything else now & Hornby make this too. Electrofrog is another discussion. For those willing to do a bit of extra work wiring, these are much more reliable than Hornby or Setrack (which are both insulfrog).

There seems to be little chance of that with the current ToC. They do not seem interested in running trains on the line, with many current services being replaced by buses.

The banked train makes operating the line the most interesting of the 4 (& the hardest work).

It was my understanding that they want to make the line crossing free because it would increase safety & allow the line speed to be raised. They may well have backed out of that though. I don't think there is a route which is better than others. The original route has gone & did not allow trains to call at the main Bedford station anyway. Any of the new routes will be unpopular with a proportion of the locals who live near it. It seems to be a matter of any politician "fighting" against it is simply trying to lose the least votes.

A slimming group is good. It is meeting people wanting to achieve something similar which helps. 2500 miles cycling in a year is good. I think I managed about 1900 last year & I try to go out every weekend when weather & exhibitions let me. There are plenty of sportives available, although not as many as around 5-10 years ago. 50-70 milers are a challenge without being too painful if you are riding fairly regularly.