Collectable?

[locomad2]

3 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

I will add no comment to this beyond, "Sticking an 8F body on a chopped up Castle(?) chassis doth not a Black 5 make!" (It's not a Standard 5 of course!):

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk

 

The return crank is the wrong way round. Still if Tri-ang/Hornby* don't know any better!

* How does one descibe them to avoid confusion? Here we're talking nearly eighty years.

 

 

 

 

 

It looks bloody awful, clearly the front is far to high won't even give £20 for it, only fit for parts 

 

Hence why I nearly always buy at toy fair, swap meets, charity shops, car boots, you can examine the product.

 

What I really enjoy watching on utube are fellow modelers filming inside large swap meets at venues too far for us to travel, large volumes of stuff at reasonable prices.

 

I've seen some good class 5 conversions at HRCA meeting there are some excellent photos film on utube, this one is a joke

[Il Grifone]

I did think £450 was a trifle OTT. Perhaps less the final zero, but even then....

[Wolseley]

I like the way the vendor went to the trouble to make a special box for it, presumably to mislead some gullible person into believing that it was cobbled together by someone who knew what they were doing.

[Il Grifone]

For 450 quid I'd expect a box. Also that the creation looked a bit more like a Black 5 (or do I expect too much? At least a level footplate!)

[roythebus1]

I find it odd that most of Europe seems to manage with 2-pin plugs and no earth or PAT testing. A Finnish friend though it amusing that we have this fetish for fusing everything, the plug on the appliance, the trailing socket on the extension lead, the plug on the extension lead, then the fuse or trip in the cupboard under the stairs, and the RCD. Not forgetting sometimes the internal fuse. Why?

 

I've only ever had one unit fail a PAT test, and that was an elderly H&M power supply unit with the early type sloping front, it just provides 15v ac for point motors and the like.

[melmerby]

 

3 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

I find it odd that most of Europe seems to manage with 2-pin plugs and no earth or PAT testing

Maybe compare the figures for electrocutions.

The EU has an average of about 200 per million per year.

The UK had a total of 40 over the 20 year period, 2001 - 2020

https://www.hsa.ie/eng/topics/electricity/dangers_of_electricity/electrical_fatality_statistics/

 

Good enough reason?

 

 

[Ruffnut Thorston]

That and the variations in voltage of the mains electricity in other regions...😉🙂

 

🐉🙋🏼‍♀️

[kevinlms]

For comparison, here is the Australia/NZ statistics.

 

https://www.erac.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/ERAC_Electrical_fatality_benchmarking_2018-2019.pdf

 

So worse than the UK, but not hugely so and improving. We have never had fuses in plugs, for our 230 Volt earthed system. Nor do we have Ring Mains.

 

It should be noted that although the same standards are used in Australia and NZ, the key difference is that in Australia, only licensed electricians are allowed to do work, such as installations and repairs.

However in NZ, you are allowed to work ON YOUR OWN HOME unqualified, but you must follow the standards.

[melmerby]

24 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

 

So worse than the UK, but not hugely so and improving. We have never had fuses in plugs, for our 230 Volt earthed system. Nor do we have Ring Mains.

 

 

The fuses are not particularly to protect from electric shock, but more to prevent fires. The fuse should blow before the power lead overheats in the case of equipment faults.

Ring mains aren't compulsory, it's just a way of balancing the loading, so requiring a thinner wire gauge. You can wire in radial mode if you want.

 

It's the earthing which is the biggest safety factor in preventing electrocution.

 

As to working on electrical installations, it is (AFAIK) still not a requirement that it should be done by licensed professionals, just "qualified people" (my quotes) unlike gas fitting where it is only by Gas Safe registered engineers.

I can buy all the kit to completely rewire a house (and have done more than once*) but it is illegal for a seller to provide me with gas fittings.

 

*Note  I was considered by my employer (BT) to by qualified for electrical installation work but didn't have any "tickets" to say I was!

Edited July 4, 2022 by melmerby

[Il Grifone]

Italy had a rethink in the early ninties and insisted that RCDs* be fitted in every household - a real bonanza for electrians!**  An earthing spike is also required connected with 6mm² cable at least. Rather overkill as most houselds are limited to 3kw. You can have 4.5 or 6kw if you are prepared to pay for it (something like 200€ to change the contract and an even higher cost per unit). No 11kw instantaneous shower heaters and no 30A ring mains,

 

* Salvavita (lifesaver) in Italian. There is a technical term but no one ever uses it.

** The work had to be done by a qualified electrican, who then left a certificate that everything was to standard in return for a not inconsiderable number of lire (later converted at just under 2,000 to the euro)

 

The Americans (just to be different) have two live phases in their wiring. Most things operate on phase to neutral (nominally 117V though I believe it's actually bit higher - it probably depends how far out in the sticks you are!) Higher power devices run across both phases on a voltage similar to ours. This makes things a bit safer as the voltage is only about 120V above earth at most, but this is still quite enough to kill you....

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Il Grifone

[melmerby]

12 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

 

The Americans (just to be different) have two live phases in their wiring. Most things operate on phase to neutral (nominally 117V though I believe it's actually bit higher - it probably depends how far out in the sticks you are!) Higher power devices run across both phases on a voltage similar to ours. This makes things a bit safer as the voltage is anly about 120V above earth at most, but this is still quite enough to kill you....

 

One of the reasons why a lot of UK building site plant is via an isolating transformer providing 110v centre tapped to ground, meaning either connection is just 55v above ground.

110v equipment is extremely common in the UK for safety reasons, just look on somewhere like Screwfix.

[roythebus1]

I find it odd that most of Europe seems to manage with 2-pin plugs and no earth or PAT testing. A Finnish friend though it amusing that we have this fetish for fusing everything, the plug on the appliance, the trailing socket on the extension lead, the plug on the extension lead, then the fuse or trip in the cupboard under the stairs, and the RCD. Not forgetting sometimes the internal fuse. Why?

 

I've only ever had one unit fail a PAT test, and that was an elderly H&M power supply unit with the early type sloping front, it just provides 15v ac for point motors and the like.

[roythebus1]

This thread also reminds me of Keen house, home of the Model Railway Club. A couple of us had the job of doing a partial re-wire of the building in the 1980s to even out the use of the 3-phase system. Most of this was done on the incoming switchboard where i helped with someone who knew about electrics was in charge of it.

 

The lower hall has a series of 13 a sockets at high level which were originally for infra-red heaters which became obsolete when the club installed central heating. This was also about the time RCDs were becoming the norm, and we fitted all the trailing leads with them for added safety. It was also the time were were installing OHLE on the New Annington  00 layout. The layout had a bus bar for 12v supply to point motors, signal relays and the like, and the usual heavy duty common return wire, a bare copper cable. A couple of seemingly unrelated events happened.

 

On day we were working on the layout when all the RCDs along one side tripped at the same time, maybe a surge on that phase we thought. We reset everything and it never happened again. A few months later, someone was soldering some of the OHLE wires. The OHLE was dead, not built to carry 12 volts, not connected to the common return. As the soldering iron touched one of the catenary wires, several soldered joints at odd locations melted and wires fell down! Of course we had to investigate, it couldn't possibly happen but it did!!

 

Under the board when the chap had bee soldering, one of the OHLE masts, which were fitted through the board with M4 screws had touched the bare common return wire! Hence it was "live" to common return. But why did it liven with the soldering iron? A few RCDs had tripped with this incident as well. So we decided to investigate the high level sockets. As I unscrewed one I got a mains voltage belt from it! Switch everything off and check it all out. In the socket that had given me a shock we found that who ever had installed it all in the early 1960s had trapped the red wire between the metal case and the socket base, hence the odd tripping of the RCDs and the probable explanation for the OHLE melting!

 

Needless to say all the other sockets in Keen House were checked out for similar problems.

 

 

[Il Grifone]

Deleted post

Edited July 9, 2022 by Il Grifone

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Possibly a reason why it is good practice to isolate any electrical equipment, BEFORE working on it.

 

Isolate the supply Before removing the covers. 🤷🏼‍♀️

 

 

🐉🙋🏼‍♀️

Edited July 9, 2022 by Ruffnut Thorston
Images added.