Mid-Cornwall Lines - 1950s Western Region in 00

[31A]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

I have just cancelled my subscription to the print edition of Model Rail magazine, which I have held for many years, because the best price quoted over the subscription phone line or on the Great Magazines website was more than 50% higher than what I paid last year. A strange way to do business.

 

I cancelled mine about a year ago, mainly because I was finding that there was very little of interest in it for me.  I thought the best bits were the product reviews, but obviously they weren't always of items that I would buy!

 

[figworthy]

7 hours ago, 31A said:

 

I cancelled mine about a year ago, mainly because I was finding that there was very little of interest in it for me.  I thought the best bits were the product reviews, but obviously they weren't always of items that I would buy!

 

 

I cancelled mine a few years back when the publishers started spamming me with offers for mattresses and cases of wine, and ignored their own unsubscribe system.

 

Adrian

[St Enodoc]

Early start this Australia Day morning to join in the Leeds MRS Zoom chat. Very enjoyable as always and good to see and hear what people are up to with their projects.

 

The china-clay wagons should get finished today. They've taken a bit longer than planned as I decided to add some extra transfers ("Return to St Blazey", etc. and the little "L" for longitudinal planking). Those needed a patch of gloss varnish to make them stick, which in turn meant a coat of matt varnish afterwards. After that, I decided to increase the level of weathering, which I finished while listening to the cricket yesterday evening. Just a bit of lead to fix underneath and couplings to fit now.

[Coach bogie]

Second week back in Brisbane and a Bank Holiday. What's not to like. I am finishing off a M13 started earlier this week, that may be familiar to you. Just need a little less humidity to paint it.

 

Mike Wiltshire

[St Enodoc]

50 minutes ago, Coach bogie said:

Second week back in Brisbane and a Bank Holiday. What's not to like. I am finishing off a M13 started earlier this week, that may be familiar to you. Just need a little less humidity to paint it.

 

Mike Wiltshire

Looks good Mike. What radius curves do you think it will go round?

[St Enodoc]

Here are the china-clay wagons. After all the messing around with transfers, now that the wagons are weathered you can hardly see them:

 

I now need to build one more unfitted Kirk kit and four Parkside kits modified to represent the BR-built fitted examples. I plan to build those four on the BRMA demo stand at the Forestville exhibition in March:

 

https://www.nsrma.com.au/exhibitions/

[Coach bogie]

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Looks good Mike. What radius curves do you think it will go round?

It will go around large radius set track....just. I allow side play on the middle and out axles. I have large radii curves back in the UK so it should run fine.

 

Mike Wiltshire

[St Enodoc]

21 minutes ago, Coach bogie said:

It will go around large radius set track....just. I allow side play on the middle and out axles. I have large radii curves back in the UK so it should run fine.

 

Mike Wiltshire

That's good. My M15, which I bought ready-made from eBay, is scratchbuilt and won't go round anything sharper than about 3ft radius, due to the wheels fouling the inside of the solebars. Consequently I can only run it in one direction but it does make a nice-looking change.

Edited January 26 by St Enodoc
than not then

[St Enodoc]

While listening to the day/night Gabba Test (no spoilers), I've prepared all the parts for the final Kirk unfitted china-clay wagon. Apart from fitting ABS self-contained buffers in place of the skinny little plastic things provided, I'll make it up as per the instructions. This kit is so old it predates the inclusion of wheels but I've found a suitable set - no idea what make they are though (possibly Hornby).

 

If I find, or have found for me, nothing better to do I"ll probably stick it together tomorrow.

[St Enodoc]

I did indeed stick the china-clay together yesterday, except for the brake pivot rod and the door hinge rod, which I left until this morning after everything else had set.

 

Here you can see the coupler blocks, made from the Plastruct rectangular section. These are ABS so I used Plastic Weld to fix them. For everything else, I used MEK except for the buffers, for which I used slow-curing cyano, and the lead weight (cut from roof flashing), for which I used Multigrip (same as UHU).

 

It's too windy for spraying today so I'll just listen to what will, barring any weather interruptions, be the final day (and night) of Test cricket in Australia this summer while I brush some etching primer on the buffers.

[St Enodoc]

A nail-biting finish to the cricket last night, with three results possible until the last ball was bowled.

 

This morning is bright and calm so I've sprayed the china-clay wagon underframe black, after masking the body and the axle bearings. I'll brush-paint the grey body later. With luck, a single coat will be enough.

[drduncan]

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

A nail-biting finish to the cricket last night, with three results possible until the last ball 

Let me guess:

cyclone stopped play 

venomous spider stopped play

convict stopped play…

 

[5BarVT]

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

A nail-biting finish to the cricket last night, with three results possible until the last ball was bowled.

Only 3 of the 4?  Presumably plenty of time available so Draw was discounted.

Paul.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

1 minute ago, 5BarVT said:

Only 3 of the 4?  Presumably plenty of time available so Draw was discounted.

Paul.

 

Raise you to 5, or maybe even 6?   The three referred to were - host team win, visiting team win, or tie.

 

The fourth is a draw, but a fifth could be abandonment.  Would a game being voided at the last minute for some nefarious reason be a sixth?

 

Yes, I am putting off this evening’s chores.  Keith.

 

 

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Only 3 of the 4?  Presumably plenty of time available so Draw was discounted.

Paul.

There were still almost five full sessions available and the weather forecast wasn't bad, so yes I discounted the possibility of a draw.

 

2 hours ago, Keith Addenbrooke said:

 

Raise you to 5, or maybe even 6?   The three referred to were - host team win, visiting team win, or tie.

 

The fourth is a draw, but a fifth could be abandonment.  Would a game being voided at the last minute for some nefarious reason be a sixth?

 

Yes, I am putting off this evening’s chores.  Keith.

 

 

@Barry O knows far more about this sort of thing than I, but based on Headingley 1975 I'd say that your 5 and 6 are all subsets of 4.

[St Enodoc]

On 23/01/2024 at 21:48, St Enodoc said:

I have just cancelled my subscription to the print edition of Model Rail magazine, which I have held for many years, because the best price quoted over the subscription phone line or on the Great Magazines website was more than 50% higher than what I paid last year. A strange way to do business.

Great Magazines' customer service people (Sarah, specifically) came back to me on this with a new promotion code and a price very close to last year's, which I used last night. I'm very happy that my subscription has now been renewed.

[1466]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Great Magazines' customer service people (Sarah, specifically) came back to me on this with a new promotion code and a price very close to last year's, which I used last night. I'm very happy that my subscription has now been renewed.

Although all credit to Sarah , I can’t understand why firms risk alienating a loyal customer base in the first place . Why inflate a  renewal and then , when pressed , offer a substantial discount ? Does it engender loyalty or diminish it ?

 The practice is widespread , I have experienced it with the AA ,  British Gas ( Homecare ) , Insurers etc . I don’t feel that I’ve negotiated a great deal but devalued . If I accept the higher price and find out afterwards that I should have got it cheaper, I’m going to look for a competitor .

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, 1466 said:

Although all credit to Sarah , I can’t understand why firms risk alienating a loyal customer base in the first place . Why inflate a  renewal and then , when pressed , offer a substantial discount ? Does it engender loyalty or diminish it ?

 The practice is widespread , I have experienced it with the AA ,  British Gas ( Homecare ) , Insurers etc . I don’t feel that I’ve negotiated a great deal but devalued . If I accept the higher price and find out afterwards that I should have got it cheaper, I’m going to look for a competitor .

I suspect that, in this case, Great Magazines have been let down by their (offshore) contact centrein general and specifically by an agent who was not as competent as she should have been. The price I have now paid is what I expected to pay. The price quoted last week was not. Now that it's resolved, I'm happy and will regard it as a one-off.

[BWsTrains]

It's happening everywhere, my auto insurance this year was an epic example, huge premium increase while imposing ever more more constraints each year. Went and found a better deal.

 

 

Colin

[Tallpaul69]

14 hours ago, drduncan said:

Let me guess:

cyclone stopped play 

venomous spider stopped play

convict stopped play…

 

These were what India were wishing for as England put them to the sword!

[The Fatadder]

15 hours ago, drduncan said:

Let me guess:

cyclone stopped play 

venomous spider stopped play

convict stopped play…

 

Discovery of sandpaper leading to forfeit?

[St Enodoc]

I applied the transfers to the china-clay wagon this morning - successfully, I think, which is no mean feat with Modelmaster products in my experience. As well as applying them over gloss varnish, I always treat them to a dab of Carr's Transfix. Once they've hardened, I'll give the whole wagon body a coat of matt varnish tonight.

 

Weathering and couplings tomorrow, then the wagon can join its mates in the long china-clay train making the train 10 wagons long, as before, but all unfitted for the time being. After I've built the four fitted wagons at the Forestville show in early March, it will be 14 wagons long, which with the loco and brake van is the maximum that will fit in the Polperran headshunt.

[St Enodoc]

Well, I've succumbed and ordered a circle of 3rd radius Hornby track from Hatton's closing-down sale.

 

Why?

 

Because it should simplify matters considerably when I get round, eventually, to setting up my locos so that the indicated speed step on the NCE throttle represents the actual scale speed in miles per hour. It should be a good deal easier, and more accurate, to time a loco going round a 3.6m circle of track than to count the revolutions of the driving wheels on the rolling road, which was my original idea. If I've done my sums right, one circuit in 10 seconds should be just about equivalent to 60 mph.

 

Further, once I've got one loco set up I should be able to speed-match the others without starting from scratch every time (although I haven't quite worked this bit through yet).

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Well, I've succumbed and ordered a circle of 3rd radius Hornby track from Hatton's closing-down sale.

 

Why?

 

Because it should simplify matters considerably when I get round, eventually, to setting up my locos so that the indicated speed step on the NCE throttle represents the actual scale speed in miles per hour. It should be a good deal easier, and more accurate, to time a loco going round a 3.6m circle of track than to count the revolutions of the driving wheels on the rolling road, which was my original idea. If I've done my sums right, one circuit in 10 seconds should be just about equivalent to 60 mph.

 

Further, once I've got one loco set up I should be able to speed-match the others without starting from scratch every time (although I haven't quite worked this bit through yet).

I've thought about this a bit more and I think that using DecoderPro on the circular programming track for each loco separately will work accurately enough for what I need without actually having to speed match locos to each other.

 

DecoderPro sets up the speed table using 28 speed steps but each decoder can be set by the throttle to use 128 speed steps. The mid point is speed step 14 (28 step), equivalent to speed step 64 (128 step).

 

Using the basic speed panel, which sets the minimum, maximum and mid-point speeds, I should therefore be able to:

 

1. Set Vstart (speed step 1) to the lowest value at which the loco will start to creep, as standard practice.

2. Set Vhigh (speed step 28/128) to the value at which the scale speed is 64mph.

3. The short cut - I think. Force Vmid (speed step 14/64) to the same value as Vhigh.

 

Using 128 speed steps should, therefore, mean that at speed step 1 the loco will just start to move and will increase speed linearly from 1mph (proxy for 0) at speed step 1 to 64mph at speed step 64 and then remains constant at 64mph up to speed step 128.

 

If this works for every loco then any consisted locos should automatically be speed matched (more or less) by virtue of the reference speed of 64mph at speed step 14/64.

 

If it doesn't work, I'll try a slightly more complicated but still fairly simple way using the full speed control table.

 

Anyone done this and/or spot any flaws here and/or know a simpler way?

Edited January 31 by St Enodoc
speling

[5BarVT]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

and/or know a simpler way?

Use Traincontroller as it matches the speeds internally and controls them separately.  (You didn’t specify “cheaply “ in your question!)

 

Being (a bit) more serious, although the normal ‘recommendation’ is to maximise the number of speed steps available to give ‘finer’ control, 1m.p.h. accuracy seems fine, particularly at higher speeds.  Some go for exponential speed curves to give closer control at lower speeds but your premise requires a straight line speed table.
Thinking out loud, might 1 mph steps be a bit coarse at shunting speeds?  Sadly, if the answer is Yes it blows the whole concept out of the water.  An early test might be appropriate.

Returning to consists, if the actual speeds of two locos are different at particular speeds below 64mph, then adjusting the speed table of the errant loco is the solution.  Deciding which is the errant loco might be the trickier part.  Again, testing with a wide range of locos will indicate if this is a systemic problem (not the desired answer) or limited to individual ‘problem’ locos.  Testing does not need to be limited to locos that are planned to be consisted.

Paul.