Platform 1

An accumulation of ...

All righty, I'll bite... A Battery of battery locos? 😄 I'll get me coat...

Looks like that train at Williton just had loco run round and went back to BL.

Ooh er! 😟

Indeed! Bit more info here.

Big thanks from me for shooting, editing and uploading the result on YT. Despite forward planning, a variety of other things prevented my attendance this year. Have been a staunch supported of Taunton Railex for many years, so disappointed to miss this one. But your video nearly made up for it! Some brilliant and unusual shots too. Thanks again Callum.

Quick - look for the pot of gold... 😎

Probably better than crawling up the Portbury Hundreds... 😮😉

Great news indeed. But at the current rate of inflation, by the time Secretary of State for Transport approves the DCO (current deadline February 2023), the project may be ~5% short again! 🙁

In case it helps Cap'n, here's a direct link to Series 2, Episode 1: https://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/shows/secrets-of-the-london-underground/watch-online/6305331210112 Otherwise, knowing UKTV programming, there'll be many repeats...

There are useful seating diagrams and a summary table here: https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2022/05/where-to-sit-on-crossrail-train.html And to answer earlier questions about Cross-Liz-Purp interchange times, DG has a comprehensive set of lists. DG also highlights missing validators at certain stations, meaning higher fares unless you're careful! (No connection with DG, just a blog reader)

Enjoying Series 2 very much. But I'm finding the speech/music levels difficult during voice-overs - filmed dialogue is fine. Is it our telly (2.0 speakers) or is anyone else noticing?

Tfl giveth with one hand... and taketh away with the other (albeit temporarily)... Planned track closures (as at 19 May 2022) And again the TfL Journey Planner doesn't seem to know about this (yet). It suggests the fastest route from Farringdon to Paddington on 11 June is the Cross/Liz/Purp line. Travellers will need to be wary because the H&C is also shown as closed that weekend. Mind you, I don't envy the team that writes the software to handle all these exceptions...

Hmm, I smell a rat! I wonder who doesn't want this to happen? Can't help but compare Portishead with Okehampton: 9 miles for £116m vs. 15 miles for £40m. Double standards?

Over a year without posting anything! Disgraceful - dunce's cap firmly on. Despite the pandemic, lock-downs and other distractions, things haven't developed very much recently. The first lock-down was taken up with long summer walks and home-based IT work for a local charity. By mid-summer it was much too hot to work for long in the loft - 30degC plus some days. Then suddenly it was cold again! Work restarted before Christmas (2020!) looking at the design of servo point motors. Having previously successfully used solenoid motors, they didn't look or sound very realistic. Small servos are (were?) inexpensive so how to make a compact but adaptable assembly to put under the layout? It needed to be cheap, easy to make with limited tools and easily repeatable - thirteen are required. Various scribblings and mock-ups were tried, eventually producing this not-very-original design. The servo is a tight fit into the aluminium U-channel, and butts up against a short piece of balsa or similar softwood, on which the frog polarity micro-switch is mounted. My baseboard is just 3mm thick ply, so the pivot is mounted a few mm away in order to provide enough throw at the point blades. The bracket can also be mounted on its side if needed. There are screw mounting holes in the U-channel, but I found that double-sided black sticky pads normally used for affixing car number plates worked really well. A thin coat of PVA or paint on bare wood assists the grab of the pad. The material used in this U-channel is tough and quite difficult to cut, so I also made a bracket using PVC U-channel. It isn't quite as rigid, but seems firm enough to resist side-movement from the servo. Here is one such: The wire pivot bracket (out of focus at the back) still needs to be placed and glued onto this version. These servos will be controlled by an Arduino and two LED/servo driver boards connected via an I2C bus. This has the advantage of few wires as mentioned in an earlier post - two data wires and two power wires in a screened cable. So happy times were spent during Christmas restrictions programming an Arduino Nano to move the servo by about 90 degrees - enough to move the point blades and reliably operate the micro-switch. The prototype mock-up works, so things a re looking hopeful. Wiring track has also been proceeding as a background task, one board at a time. The corner board is now being worked on, with only a few droppers to fit. This is what it looks like so far: So once the track power feeds are all soldered in, it will be time to re-assemble everything and do some test running - I can't wait! The next few stages will include: make more servo brackets fit servos to baseboards fit the control electronics complete I2C wiring. Watch this space!