Roy Langridge

My 24009 is here but handed over to the wife unopened as it is my Christmas present. Looking forward to it :-) Roy

They are NOT production models as has been said many times....

I don’t disagree with that, but to accept pre-orders, Hattons will either have decided to run a repeat already or effectively ask for an expression of interest. If orders for, let’s say, the Biffa 66 have met the planned first run it will show as sold-out and no more orders may be taken. If another 20 people contact Hattons and ask for it, what does that say? At least 20 people *may* buy it - that may be the total of extra orders, unlikely, but possible. As a result, if Hattons are looking at a second batch of 66s, they will have to weigh up knowledge of these 20 people for a re-run of that particular livery against the unknown demand for an as yet unoffered livery. Who would want to be a manufacturer! Roy

Which may actually mean a lower chance of repeats. If Hattons have to judge the popularity of a repeat versus a new livery, the latter may prevail. Roy

Just stumbled across this thread. My under construction 009 layout has 15 points and I have chosen servos for point control. The costs have been: Servos £1.20 each Micoswitches for frog switching £0.80 each Servo mount £1.20 each Piano wire approx £0.30 per point PTFE tube approx £0.24 per point I am the using a Megapoints Controller at £60 to control 12 outputs (some have 2 servos) All in all about £8.75 per point. Roy

I can see it now, headline in the news, “Railway Modeller arrested on suspicion of murder after tampering with wife’s brakes.” Don’t do it Woodenhead! Well, not unless they let you take all your modelling kit inside for some quite time. Roy

I assume you could also attach the buffer to a piece of track isolated from the siding by insulated joints and just feed that piece from the accessory output? Roy

Any decoder will lose power if you have dirty track, you then need some means of providing power to bridge that loss, typically through the use of stay-alive capacitors. Some decoders are better suited to utilising stay-alives than others. Personally I use DCC Concepts Zen 218s, 6 functions, can be used in 8 or 21 pin locos and come with a small stay-alive, good enough for my needs. At the end if the day, keeping track clean is important, stay-alives used to overcome dirty track are just a sticky plaster covering the underlying problem. Roy

Indeed, the obsession with weight is missing a key factor which is a balance between weight and hauling power. Sure we could make the models even heavier, but that would require more of the power available from the motor just to overcome that weight. At some point the weight of the loco itself would limit the haulage capacity or adversely impact speed through gearing. Just because a loco is heavy, there is no guarantee as to its performance being better than a lighter loco (and yes I appreciate that a very light loco won’t work either) Roy

Not a new thread please, that just ends up confusing with information spread between the two. Roy

It is on the Collectors Club website. Roy

Quite right, however, Legend has picked upon something. The Deltic quotes "Die-cast Tungsten Alloy metal chassis" yes the Class 37 says "Heavy die-cast metal chassis". Roy

Got mine today after prompting Rails and what a gem it is. I like the instructions, even my grumpy teenage son laughed. Roy

Mount what you are scribing vertically (against an angle plate) and use a Vernier height gauge? They can be picked up cheaply. Roy

Got the spacing and weight of E W & S spot on - looks so wrong, but that was just how the prototype was. Roy