Wright writes.....

[landscapes]

19 hours ago, Bucoops said:

 

 

Fair play, Fox, fair play.

 

Hi

Fox Transferes have always provided an excellent service and product every time I have used them which has been many times.

 

Please issue resolved.

 

Regards

 

David

[Bucoops]

1 hour ago, landscapes said:

Hi

Fox Transferes have always provided an excellent service and product every time I have used them which has been many times.

 

Please issue resolved.

 

Regards

 

David

 

Agreed. I've used them twice in the last couple of years - curiously both orders have had issues - the previous one the picture and text said the pack included something that wasn't previously (Coach letters for the Silver Jubilee I think) - it turned up without them, but a quick email and they arrived very quickly.

 

In the past I have used Modelmaster, but I think Fox will be my first port of call from now on.

[Erichill16]

While there is a bit of chat regarding point motors does anyone use servos and if so any comments?

[robertcwp]

Has anyone had any experience with the new (red) Peco point motors and 2-pole switches you can attach to them?

[johndon]

25 minutes ago, Erichill16 said:

While there is a bit of chat regarding point motors does anyone use servos and if so any comments?

 

I use servos controlled by MERG electronics on both my own layout and another large exhibition layout I'm involved with.  I've had a couple of servos that were dead on arrival but, once installed, I've not had a single servo fail.

[Chuffer Davies]

1 hour ago, Erichill16 said:

While there is a bit of chat regarding point motors does anyone use servos and if so any comments?

At the time we were planning Clayton there was still considerable debate about problems with the radio interference of passing locomotives causing servos to chatter with the associated risk of the blades moving under the wheels of the train. We therefore stuck with Tortoise  point motors which had proven their reliability on Hungerford’s fiddle yard.
Since then, however, we have chosen to use servos to control pins to hold a train of loose wagons on the 1:100 gradient of the marshalling sidings on Clayton.  We are using Megapoint servo controllers to control these pins and they have proven to be chatter free. We will definitely extend the use of servos to signal control in due course and could equally have used them for point control. If using servos for point control there is the need to provide a means of switching the polarity of the point’s frog.  Megapoints can supply a plug-in relay board for this purpose.  I’m sure there are several other commercial solutions available.  I’m not sure about the cost savings of using relays unless you build your own servo drivers as, although you can use relatively cheap servos, the cost of the driver boards soon adds up to much the same as using Cobalt or Tortoise motors.

Regards,

Frank

[Barry Ten]

I used the Peco servo set on my level crossing, but I've had a high failure rate with the supplied servos; they start jittering and then not responding. Someone told me it was due to arcing on a contact in the servo. I noticed that they are more prone to jittering when locos are running on DC, rather than DCC. Replacing each servo is a real pain so I'd like to find a permanent fix - either by using better servos and/or replacing the Peco control board. 

 

I think I was told that digital servos are less prone to jitter - can anyone confirm, and will they work with an existing control board such as the Peco one?

 

I've used Megapoints control boards with Tower Hobbies servos for my signals, and these have been fine.

 

I also fly R/C planes where servos really have to work with 100% reliability or you're stuffed!

[Chuffer Davies]

2 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

I think I was told that digital servos are less prone to jitter - can anyone confirm, and will they work with an existing control board such as the Peco one?

The Megapoints controllers are not compatible with digital servos.  Sadly I bought our servos first (digital of course) and had to swap them out for analogue servos having bought the Megapoints controllers before realising the compatibility issue.  Poor planning on my part, but at least others can learn from my mistakes.

Frank

Edited June 11, 2022 by Chuffer Davies
Poor grammar

[rowanj]

Just been catching up on this thread, starting with the posts on Tony's new Brit, and following the discussion on Simon's book - which I thoroughly enjoyed. He did a very interesting interview-both objective and subjective- on Youtube on the subject. Amazing how actions nearly 70 years ago on a sublect like steam engins can still stir such passion.

 

On the subject of Brit's on ER service trains, there are photos of 70041 at Darlington and Newcastle on Saturday 30/08/58 on a KingsX-Edinburgh service, so that might be an option. It has an early crest emblem, and the deflectors still have handrails.

 

My own Brit is a bit anachronistic north of York, Here it is on a fitted freight. Tony may be interested to note that I built it using one of his BRM articles as a guide- it is a tender-drive Hornby, on a Comet chassis, with most of the tender drive gubbins removed.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by rowanj

[New Haven Neil]

8 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

While there is a bit of chat regarding point motors does anyone use servos and if so any comments?

 

I use the Peco system (well, they were on the shelf at work....therefore cheap to me!) and provided you use a separate power supply, they do not chatter.  I use them for Peco O gauge points with no issues, and DCC80's to switch polarity as a DCC user.

[Jol Wilkinson]

7 hours ago, Chuffer Davies said:

At the time we were planning Clayton there was still considerable debate about problems with the radio interference of passing locomotives causing servos to chatter with the associated risk of the blades moving under the wheels of the train. We therefore stuck with Tortoise  point motors which had proven their reliability on Hungerford’s fiddle yard.
Since then, however, we have chosen to use servos to control pins to hold a train of loose wagons on the 1:100 gradient of the marshalling sidings on Clayton.  We are using Megapoint servo controllers to control these pins and they have proven to be chatter free. We will definitely extend the use of servos to signal control in due course and could equally have used them for point control. If using servos for point control there is the need to provide a means of switching the polarity of the point’s frog.  Megapoints can supply a plug-in relay board for this purpose.  I’m sure there are several other commercial solutions available.  I’m not sure about the cost savings of using relays unless you build your own servo drivers as, although you can use relatively cheap servos, the cost of the driver boards soon adds up to much the same as using Cobalt or Tortoise motors.

Regards,

Frank

The Megapoints supplied 4 relay board is, according to a friend, is a standard product available from a variety of sources.  Visually identical ones are available on eBay for as little as £4. Search for "4 Relay Board".

[Tony Wright]

On 11/06/2022 at 17:43, New Haven Neil said:

 

I use the Peco system (well, they were on the shelf at work....therefore cheap to me!) and provided you use a separate power supply, they do not chatter.  I use them for Peco O gauge points with no issues, and DCC80's to switch polarity as a DCC user.

I know so little about servos and certainly nothing about the ideas/products of MERG (I believe they're very good) that I'm not sure about even commenting about them; other than to state that when Tony Gee completed the MR lower-quadrant signals and fitted them on the MR/M&GNR section of Little Bytham, he installed servos to operate them. On first testing, as a loco went past, the signals twitched like mad; until we supplied the feed from a separate supply to that controlling the track (an ancient, but totally-reliable, H&M 'Clipper'). Henceforth, powered by an independent transformer, they've operated without fuss or failure - superbly; thanks Tony. 

 

One other experience (as an observer) regarding servo-operated signals, is that they're incredibly powerful. Powerful enough to wreck an upper-quadrant when the servo's travel was too great. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Edited June 12, 2022 by Tony Wright
to add something

[Jol Wilkinson]

I had similar problems with the servo operated signals I built for London Road,  which were resolved by a number of electrical suppression measures. Part of the problem is that it seems to happen with DC control and kit built locos that rarely, if ever, have suppressors fitted. It is claimed that this problem doesn't arise with DCC.

 

These servos were developed for radio control models where the sort of interference that we get with model railway locos, collecting current through wheels and pickups doesn't arise to any noticeable degree. As Tony points out, they are extremely powerful for their size (owing to the gearing in the servo) and hence need a reliable control unit that can be accurately set and is also not prone to interference.

[Guest Simon A.C. Martin]

On 10/06/2022 at 18:01, lanchester said:

 

But as others have already commented, 'the sources' as in any other branch of history need to be treated with caution. Of course we have the 'problem' of old men consciously or unconsciously 'massaging' their anecdotes - like any oral history you adapt the delivery to the audience, their needs and expectations: that is true of the tradition that led to Homer, or the Icelandic sagas: it applies equally to folks like Norman McKillop (recalling events on the North British forty years before he was writing). You polish the delivery, you elide several incidents into one (for dramatic effect, as the film industry would say). Distressing though it may be, Nock, Tuplin, even Rogers, Cox et al, had books to sell. (And Nock had been dependent for his earnings on a company which in turn needed the good opinion/orders of railway engineers. It is not outrageous to suggest that this may have coloured his perceptions a bit; also, his first book was 'Locomotives of Sir Nigel Gresley' (1945) which was a considerable success - unlikely he would naturally big up Gresley's heretical successor).

 

There's a lot to unpack here, so it's probably best to go author by author (of the ones who matter, significantly, to the history we are trying to correct/reveal/explain/etc).

 

Nock

 

Plethora of books, worked for the L.N.E.R. albeit at arm's length and was involved undoubtedly with discussing many of aspects of the CME with Gresley and Thompson, having interviewed the latter post retirement. It is only around twenty years later that Nock's views start to change in his books. One of the aspects of my research was timelining around when "views changed" in terms of secondary sources, with an eye on maybe doing an historiography at a later date. Nock's views on Thompson changed as other books around him were published citing more and more loudly how bad Thompson was, or had been. It is truly astonishing that Nock, throughout the course of his writing, managed to forget that he had interviewed Thompson whilst he was alive, recorded his views, and then proceeded to decry him despite having that resource available to him. Made even more astonishing by the contemporary writing he himself undertook for the LNER which spelled out many of the issues Thompson and his team faced in WW2. 

 

Rogers

 

It is really difficult for me to write objectively on Rogers. Some of what he has written is angering, when you have the whole picture in front of you. His book, Thompson & Peppercorn, is full of absolute nonsense including some outright untruths that we can evidence as such quite easily by basic checks of records. His book has likely done the most damage to Thompson's reputation. He continuously states throughout the book that J.F. Harrison said this and that, but he never directly cites anything Harrison actually said, and most of it is vague, sometimes remarkably interpretable stuff. As a secondary source, it has clear bias, subjectivity, absolutely no primary evidence cited in any form, and yet has been held up by the enthusiast fraternity for some years as gospel. I have said this in public before; never having been in favour of book burning, this one came closest to the fire for me. It's obscene that it was published at all, and the only way Rogers really got away with some of the things he wrote is because Thompson was not around able to defend himself. Much of what is written would have been libellous and if enough people had been brave enough to say so on publication, it is unlikely he would have been taken as seriously as a writer as he has been.

 

Some will say of course, that I am only being so critical as to highlight my own book, but - to be frank - it's not about that for me. There's a sense of injustice that a decent man's reputation has been trashed, and that of his team around him and the workers below them on a fairly grand scale. Example and case in point - please refer back to my comments on the P2s and their rebuilds a few pages back. The drawing office, major works and more who did their work in the worst of circumstances have been slighted and undermined by the unfair and unsubstantiated, or at times overplayed criticisms made of Thompson's Pacifics. 

 

Cox

 

Cox was very careful in his words and he relied on the fact that his report, shared with Stanier, was unlikely to have been made public, given that it was under orders to only be presented to the LNER. To date, only two books have published a transcript of the Cox Report - one is in a biography of William Stanier from Oakwood Press, the other (taken from an original copy of the report) is in my book.

 

His report on the conjugated gear undoubtedly changed the LNER board's thoughts on the engineering; as well it should have, given the mechanical difficulties across the conjugated fleet that the LNER was suffering with during the second world war. What most commentators miss is that Thompson actually carried out all of Cox's suggestions to the letter. Cox perhaps, seeing the backlash from some other LNER enthusiast writers, played down his role significantly in his books. Logical, if not unfair on Thompson and his team. 

 

The missing bit of information that most commentators ignore is that Thompson was only seeking to change the direction of the engineering going forward and actually wanted to retain all of Gresley's best classes for the foreseeable future. The claims that Thompson "set to rid the LNER of Gresley" is hyperbolic nonsense and should thusly always be described as such.

 

Tuplin, Lund & other secondary sources

 

Tuplin doesn't get a mention in my book, nor many others who have written on the same or related subject. His is a secondary source and I have had to think carefully about what I include in the book. Ultimately in a need to focus on the primary and contemporary evidence, authors do need to make difficult decisions on what gets into print.

 

Quote

And all that assumes the author/recounter is trying to be fair/honest - which ain't necessarily so. It does, for example, seem clear that there were quite a few people who had a 'down' on Edward Thompson, for a variety of different, valid or invalid, reasons, and that includes people who probably never met him. 'He vandalised 'Great Northern' therefore he and all his works are a Bad Thing'. But hey - Thompson was Vincent Raven's son-in-law, and since in my little universe Raven is up there with Eric Clapton as some sort of demi-god, obviously I have a bias in the other direction.

 

The problem is, most of what is described in the above paragraph is whimsical at best and at worst in the absence of evidence, accusatory. You're quite right to focus on how much of it is jumps and leaps in thinking. 

 

Quote

The points about the probity or otherwise of 'primary evidence' - contemporaneous documents, official reports and minutes, and the like - are well made. We know even in current affairs that an 'official, independent' report or investigation may be the truth, but is highly unlikely to be the whole truth. There are ways of writing things, not just findings but actual decisions, that can skew the reality. I spent much of my early career in part as a minute-taker, in organisations ranging from my students' union to various professional engineering associations. I didn't often have to agree with the Chairman beforehand what the minutes would say, but certainly one knew the expectations.

 

With the greatest of respect - having taken over 8000 photographs of the LNER board minutes, 1923-1948 - that might be true of many smaller organisations but it is not true of the LNER board, which recorded virtually everything including some fairly robust discussion between the engineering and financial side of things. If anything, the board minutes and associated reports to and from it, are far more likely to be representative of the truth, as they were required to be by law, and the LNER itself remained open for auditing.

 

Quote

The really interesting bit, I think, is not the possibly erroneous nature of reminiscences, nor the carefully crafted contemporary 'official ' version, but the mismatch between the 'objective' truth and what people really believed at the time or very shortly after: the rumour mill way before the Internet, for example. (Tonypandy, anyone?).

 

 

It may well be, for example, that many railwaymen believed a certain class of locomotive was useless, because that was what the scuttlebutt said, and nobody is really that bothered to correct it. Doesn't mean it was true, but it does mean that the belief may have affected what people did at the time (there are ways of 'failing a loco' because you don't have confidence in it/have heard bad things, without it necessarily being a wrong'un - but of course that 'failure' will stack up in the statistics).
 

 

 

Very fair points, and the more you delve into the Thompson story the more of a rabbit hole of the "mandela effect" that emerges. But where, for example, the P2s were concerned, there's been a clear and very unpleasant aim by some writers to have us believe Thompson rebuilt them and made them worse - the complete opposite is true. Why they would do this? Well, maybe (in a very loose sense) the idea that Gresley built a few lemons and Thompson made reasonable lemonade from them, is unpalatable.

 

Which objectively, if the aim is to run a working railway, is a ridiculous thing to get hung up on. Gresley and Thompson were not so bothered about their designs as to feel indignant at people modifying them. Gresley actively rebuilt many locomotive types in a quest for performance, Thompson the same and Peppercorn carried on with the standard designs drawn from these two men's experiences.

 

Quote

Similarly, did say Thompson really have particularly poor man management skills (which for the day and in wartime would have to have been fairly extreme to be noticed - sort of thing that ends you up in court these days for bullying/harrassment), or was he the man in position at a rotten time for everyone, and remembered unfavourably against the rather happier circumstances that Peppercorn inherited, or the Golden Age of Gresley?

 

I think management in Britain within the period from the start of the industrial revolution right up until the 1990s probably has a lot to answer for, but Thompson himself has been given a bad reputation by a few loudest voices. The research garnered first by Peter Grafton, and then Tim Hillier-Graves, and then myself leads to the conclusion that he was probably no worse as a manager than Gresley, but he was better than virtually everyone else in similar roles on the specific topic of women's right to work and their rights in the workplace; something which is made very clear in Tim's tome but (alas for me) I was not aware of the full details until the final few months of my book going through printing. 

 

Thompson's reputation has suffered from a few loud voices telling an alternate version of history. What Tim Hillier-Graves, and in a different way, I have done, is correct the record to what it should always have been.

 

There's a very sinister undertone to much of the secondary sources that sit uncomfortably with me, and that there are people in the wider enthusiast circles who would prefer to call the secondary sources gospel but dismiss the primary, historical records and sources out of hand is tantamount to flat earthists being taking into outer space and refusing to believe the Earth is a sphere on the grounds that they can't see the whole thing from one angle. Utterly nonsensical at times.

 

Quote

My point is, even if we do know from contemporaneous sources what people believed at the time, it still ain't necessarily so.

 

I agree. That's why it is for historians to be fair and balanced in their appraisals and to focus on doing things in accepted, academic ways that stand scrutiny when analysed further.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Simon A.C. Martin

[Tony Teague]

2 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

I know so little about servos and certainly nothing about the ideas/products of MERG (I believe they're very good) that I'm not sure about even commenting about them; other than to state that when Tony Gee completed the MR lower-quadrant signals and fitted them on the MR/M&GNR section of Little Bytham, he installed servos to operate them. On first testing, as a loco went past, the signals twitched like mad; until we supplied the feed from a separate supply to that controlling the track (an ancient, but totally-reliable, H&M 'Clipper'). Henceforth, powered by an independent transformer, they've operated without fuss or failure - superbly; thank Tony. 

 

One other experience (as an observer) regarding servo-operated signals, is that they're incredibly powerful. Powerful enough to wreck an upper-quadrant when the servo's travel was too great. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

I have a number of semaphore signals on my DC layout which were hand built for me by @Steve Hewitt (and several more which I have yet to install!); these are all servo operated, whilst some are electrically interlocked via relays with solenoid controlled point operations.

 

 

The power supply to the servos is, like Tony's completely separate from that to the track and I can certainly confirm that I have never had any issues with interference or 'servo chatter'.

 

Tony

[robertcwp]

2 hours ago, Simon A.C. Martin said:

 

There's a lot to unpack here, so it's probably best to go author by author (of the ones who matter, significantly, to the history we are trying to correct/reveal/explain/etc).

 

Nock

 

Plethora of books, worked for the L.N.E.R. albeit at arm's length and was involved undoubtedly with discussing many of aspects of the CME with Gresley and Thompson, having interviewed the latter post retirement. It is only around twenty years later that Nock's views start to change in his books. One of the aspects of my research was timelining around when "views changed" in terms of secondary sources, with an eye on maybe doing an historiography at a later date. Nock's views on Thompson changed as other books around him were published citing more and more loudly how bad Thompson was, or had been. It is truly astonishing that Nock, throughout the course of his writing, managed to forget that he had interviewed Thompson whilst he was alive, recorded his views, and then proceeded to decry him despite having that resource available to him. Made even more astonishing by the contemporary writing he himself undertook for the LNER which spelled out many of the issues Thompson and his team faced in WW2. 

 

Rogers

 

It is really difficult for me to write objectively on Rogers. Some of what he has written is angering, when you have the whole picture in front of you. His book, Thompson & Peppercorn, is full of absolute nonsense including some outright untruths that we can evidence as such quite easily by basic checks of records. His book has likely done the most damage to Thompson's reputation. He continuously states throughout the book that J.F. Harrison said this and that, but he never directly cites anything Harrison actually said, and most of it is vague, sometimes remarkably interpretable stuff. As a secondary source, it has clear bias, subjectivity, absolutely no primary evidence cited in any form, and yet has been held up by the enthusiast fraternity for some years as gospel. I have said this in public before; never having been in favour of book burning, this one came closest to the fire for me. It's obscene that it was published at all, and the only way Rogers really got away with some of the things he wrote is because Thompson was not around able to defend himself. Much of what is written would have been libellous and if enough people had been brave enough to say so on publication, it is unlikely he would have been taken as seriously as a writer as he has been.

 

Some will say of course, that I am only being so critical as to highlight my own book, but - to be frank - it's not about that for me. There's a sense of injustice that a decent man's reputation has been trashed, and that of his team around him and the workers below them on a fairly grand scale. Example and case in point - please refer back to my comments on the P2s and their rebuilds a few pages back. The drawing office, major works and more who did their work in the worst of circumstances have been slighted and undermined by the unfair and unsubstantiated, or at times overplayed criticisms made of Thompson's Pacifics. 

 

Cox

 

Cox was very careful in his words and he relied on the fact that his report, shared with Stanier, was unlikely to have been made public, given that it was under orders to only be presented to the LNER. To date, only two books have published a transcript of the Cox Report - one is in a biography of William Stanier from Oakwood Press, the other (taken from an original copy of the report) is in my book.

 

His report on the conjugated gear undoubtedly changed the LNER board's thoughts on the engineering; as well it should have, given the mechanical difficulties across the conjugated fleet that the LNER was suffering with during the second world war. What most commentators miss is that Thompson actually carried out all of Cox's suggestions to the letter. Cox perhaps, seeing the backlash from some other LNER enthusiast writers, played down his role significantly in his books. Logical, if not unfair on Thompson and his team. 

 

The missing bit of information that most commentators ignore is that Thompson was only seeking to change the direction of the engineering going forward and actually wanted to retain all of Gresley's best classes for the foreseeable future. The claims that Thompson "set to rid the LNER of Gresley" is hyperbolic nonsense and should thusly always be described as such.

 

Tuplin, Lund & other secondary sources

 

Tuplin doesn't get a mention in my book, nor many others who have written on the same or related subject. His is a secondary source and I have had to think carefully about what I include in the book. Ultimately in a need to focus on the primary and contemporary evidence, authors do need to make difficult decisions on what gets into print.

 

 

The problem is, most of what is described in the above paragraph is whimsical at best and at worst in the absence of evidence, accusatory. You're quite right to focus on how much of it is jumps and leaps in thinking. 

 

 

With the greatest of respect - having taken over 8000 photographs of the LNER board minutes, 1923-1948 - that might be true of many smaller organisations but it is not true of the LNER board, which recorded virtually everything including some fairly robust discussion between the engineering and financial side of things. If anything, the board minutes and associated reports to and from it, are far more likely to be representative of the truth, as they were required to be by law, and the LNER itself remained open for auditing.

 

 

Very fair points, and the more you delve into the Thompson story the more of a rabbit hole of the "mandela effect" that emerges. But where, for example, the P2s were concerned, there's been a clear and very unpleasant aim by some writers to have us believe Thompson rebuilt them and made them worse - the complete opposite is true. Why they would do this? Well, maybe (in a very loose sense) the idea that Gresley built a few lemons and Thompson made reasonable lemonade from them, is unpalatable.

 

Which objectively, if the aim is to run a working railway, is a ridiculous thing to get hung up on. Gresley and Thompson were not so bothered about their designs as to feel indignant at people modifying them. Gresley actively rebuilt many locomotive types in a quest for performance, Thompson the same and Peppercorn carried on with the standard designs drawn from these two men's experiences.

 

 

I think management in Britain within the period from the start of the industrial revolution right up until the 1990s probably has a lot to answer for, but Thompson himself has been given a bad reputation by a few loudest voices. The research garnered first by Peter Grafton, and then Tim Hillier-Graves, and then myself leads to the conclusion that he was probably no worse as a manager than Gresley, but he was better than virtually everyone else in similar roles on the specific topic of women's right to work and their rights in the workplace; something which is made very clear in Tim's tome but (alas for me) I was not aware of the full details until the final few months of my book going through printing. 

 

Thompson's reputation has suffered from a few loud voices telling an alternate version of history. What Tim Hillier-Graves, and in a different way, I have done, is correct the record to what it should always have been.

 

There's a very sinister undertone to much of the secondary sources that sit uncomfortably with me, and that there are people in the wider enthusiast circles who would prefer to call the secondary sources gospel but dismiss the primary, historical records and sources out of hand is tantamount to flat earthists being taking into outer space and refusing to believe the Earth is a sphere on the grounds that they can't see the whole thing from one angle. Utterly nonsensical at times.

 

 

I agree. That's why it is for historians to be fair and balanced in their appraisals and to focus on doing things in accepted, academic ways that stand scrutiny when analysed further.

This is a really good summary that covers a lot of ground. 

 

Putting the Tim Hillier-Graves and Rogers books side by side, at times it's difficult to see how they can be talking about the same people.

 

One small correction - the Earth is not a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid. 😀

[robertcwp]

I believe that the signals on 'Retford' are all worked by servos. Most work well. Their workings are not my area, however. I'm the one who overhauls the stock.

[Guest Simon A.C. Martin]

1 hour ago, robertcwp said:

One small correction - the Earth is not a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid. 😀

I stand happily corrected! However I think the thrust of my point comes across. 

[geoff west]

4 hours ago, robertcwp said:

This is a really good summary that covers a lot of ground. 

 

Putting the Tim Hillier-Graves and Rogers books side by side, at times it's difficult to see how they can be talking about the same people.

 

One small correction - the Earth is not a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid. 😀

Every day is a school day.

[Major Clanger]

6 hours ago, robertcwp said:

I believe that the signals on 'Retford' are all worked by servos. Most work well. Their workings are not my area, however. I'm the one who overhauls the stock.

All are worked by servos except for one, which is a relay with a bouncing mechanism, and looks quite odd in operation compared with all the others. Generally the servos perform well, but a few are overdue for travel adjustment, particularly Queen's boards. One or two on the GC gantry do exhibit "chatter" , despite having a dedicated power supply. Another thing to have a look at in due course.

[Bucoops]

6 hours ago, robertcwp said:

One small correction - the Earth is not a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid. 😀

 

After the lunch I had, me too.

 

Been picking bogies today. Or rather rummaging for the bits needed to put them together.

 

I have decided not to use the ones I previously completed for the Coronation set - for some reason, I would have to add quite a bit of packing to get them to be able to swivel at all. I'll have to use the 10ft ones but the rest will be MJT. Another order to Dart coming up!

 

 

[Tony Wright]

Today, Ian Wilson, Paul Bason and I recovered what we could from the late Michael Warner's Moreton in Marsh layout. What remains (the baseboards) will be broken up by the builders who are making a completely new roof for the property it was in. 

 

 

Here's a selection of the buildings/structures, most of which were made by Bob Dawson. Some of them are exquisite.

 

Inevitably, some minor damage has occurred, but nothing which cannot be easily repaired. Granted, most are site-specific to Moreton, but all are typical GWR structures. 

 

I'll be tidying them up, repairing what damage I can and then be offering them for sale. I'll photograph them individually and then indicate prices (which should be up to a maximum of £75.00). 

 

If anyone would like to express an interest beforehand, please PM me. 

[Tony Wright]

11 hours ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

I had similar problems with the servo operated signals I built for London Road,  which were resolved by a number of electrical suppression measures. Part of the problem is that it seems to happen with DC control and kit built locos that rarely, if ever, have suppressors fitted. It is claimed that this problem doesn't arise with DCC.

 

These servos were developed for radio control models where the sort of interference that we get with model railway locos, collecting current through wheels and pickups doesn't arise to any noticeable degree. As Tony points out, they are extremely powerful for their size (owing to the gearing in the servo) and hence need a reliable control unit that can be accurately set and is also not prone to interference.

Good evening Jol,

 

None of the locos I've built have suppressors, and, yes, it was those which caused the signals to twitch on one of Market Deeping's layouts (Amberdale, I think). RTR locos passed the signals (upper-quadrants) without any interference. Since there are so few RTR locos on either section of LB, Tony Gee's solution of a separate supply did the trick perfectly. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Jol Wilkinson]

21 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

Good evening Jol,

 

None of the locos I've built have suppressors, and, yes, it was those which caused the signals to twitch on one of Market Deeping's layouts (Amberdale, I think). RTR locos passed the signals (upper-quadrants) without any interference. Since there are so few RTR locos on either section of LB, Tony Gee's solution of a separate supply did the trick perfectly. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Hello Tony,

 

London Road had (in its last display version) five transformers in the power supply box, each with two independent a/c outputs. The MERG  servo controllers were supplied by transformer 3 through a 12volt regulator, the other output from this supplying the Cobalt point motors through an adjustable voltage regulator. In effect the servos had their own supply, as nothing else was connected two it. Despite that, we had to take extra measures to overcome the "twitching" problem (which is different to the servo "chatter" to which some people have referred).

 

The other fixes I tried finally resolved the issue.

 

Jol

[StephenB]

Was Michael Warner’s layout ever featured in these pages. From the look of the buildings you managed to salvage it would have been a fine layout.

 

Stephen