steve W

Ah, that would have been in the days of Eddie Beaton's? reign as electrical supremo I guess. Used to have a windowed office on a plinth at the end of the workshop to keep an eye on things as I recall. I got to know him some years later when I supplied 6 little indicator lamps with a peculiar cap for a Russian ship. He had never bought from us until then, despite our best efforts. As luck would have it we had just delivered some to Holman's at Penzance, so I drove 30 miles there and brought back with the six lamps. Delighted, he then said the C/E had changed his mind and wanted twelve. I made aother round trip to Penzance and borrowed the rest of their order and then again a couple of days later to replace Holman's order. Total value was about £10, but we got a lot of business from the yard thereafter.

Depending the load in the section you are feeding, but assume a double headed train with lights it would still be hard pressed to exceed 4A in 00. Therefore in a 2m length of 16/0.2mm with 4A load will give a volt drop of about 0.3Volts or, if it's an out and back circuit, 0.6V. Not enough under DCC to make any real impact and certainly not enough to get the wire hot. As for connecting to the rail, the advice to use solid conductors is good and makes them inconspicuous. I use this on '0' scale trackwork, but usually put two droppers per yard length of track, close to either end of the length.

Contact A&H is best bet. One of the most helpful shops you counld encounter - Just saying as a happy past customer.

I have previously used a #11 blade in a scalpel handle as the angle is good, but heated it up first with a hot soldering iron or more recently a hot air blower to help it melt through rather than cut. Too much cutting pressure risks damage to the tracks

Heres mine: So much fun with some Evergreen plastic and a #11 scalpel.

The proposals are not at all surprising - it's how they go about it that causes some concern. It is stated in the above link article that the cut off idea would only apply to thise customers that had agreed to it. Being cynical I can see this as being "your electricity cost is x pence -minus a tiny morsel of temptation per unit, but if you want to retain full supply it will be x pence + significant supply retention fee" The Spanish system has traditionally worked on a similar principle, the customer decides which of several bands of maximum simultaneous kW usage they want to have available and then pay a fixed monthly fee plus the metered kWh usage. If the max usage is exceeded at any time the smart meter shuts the supply down. Switch off e.g the aircon or washing machine and It will reset. On old traditional meters this was done with a current monitoring circuit breaker that could easily be exchanged for a standard one of higher rating thus defeating the system (illegal, but in the village I'm familiar with, common). This whole system was born out of neccessity due to the historicaly very poor infrastruture, the main fuse in my friends house was only 20A with supply cables to match. Once the smart meter was installed he couldn't keep the swimming pool pump on! His tarrif (and wires) were changed and the meter set to a new limit.

A couple of holiday snaps from Falmouth yesterday. The Opaline RoRo (Cobelfret) in the Queen Elizabeth dry dock displaying her stern. Detached rudder in the dock on the port side. Next to the workshops on the left is one of the few remmnants of the internal railway system, most of it has now disappeared. The Eastern side of the yard has changed significantly with the covering in of the adjacent dry dock and the huge construction halls of Pendennis super yachts for the super rich. The patrol vessel 'Tamar' being fussed over by a couple of tugs on the way into Falmouth, passing St Mawes Castle with the town in the background

Weller guns and look alike copies: Beware. They are great for the odd electrical joint but not suitable for electronics (The tips are to big and blunt ) or for sustained operation because they have a limited operational cycle of typically a maximum of 1minute operation and four minutes off. from the Weller instruction book. The penalty for disregarding this useful advice is the smell of hot varnish, leading to smoke from the overheated transformer.

Having a 'side interest' in 0 scale and and on occaisons wondered whether I should join the Guild I have followed this thread with interest. That said, it has (like most threads) deviated wildy from the OP's original question and probably has provided all the information he could have hoped for. Perhaps's it's time to put this one to bed.

Looks rather like one of the 'rare' items periodically offered by the more rogue-ish ebay sellers..

Yes and No. Yes, it is an EU mandate which lays down some energy efficiency goals, but how and much in terms of scope and deployment is very much down to individual countries. so No we are not just rubber stamping the EU rules which provide a lot of flexibility in this case:- Quote "The overall successful roll-out of smart meters across the EU is dependent on criteria largely decided by Member States however. This includes regulatory arrangements, and the extent to which the systems to be deployed will be technically and commercial interoperable, as well as guarantee data privacy and security. There is also no EU-wide consensus yet on the minimum range of operations required by smart meters.) https://ses.jrc.ec.europa.eu/smart-metering-deployment-european-union The original Europe wide studies, concluded there was no particular technical justification for a full national rollout programme (including in the UK) in most countries. I think it was only Spain that was identified as an exception, having good technical and economic reasons and they went for a country wide meter replacement project (no choice, you had to have one fitted. In fact they didn't ask, they told you, then came and did it) My mate up in the southern mountains didn't realise he had had one fitted for several months. Despite the technical evidence to the contrary, good old Blighty decided to go with the nationwide concept and added bells and whistles to the original idea, deciding also that a centralised government computer was required. Unlike all the other countries we are unique, I think, in getting the energy retailers to roll out the system rather than the companies actually responsible for the distribution i.e. energy shopkeepers rather than those with the technical knowledge. Therefore, it is not surprising that being landed with the job (and penalties for not doing it in a limited time frame) and with seemingly no clearly mandated national technical specification, the retailers rushed to buy meters from the various makers without regard to the technicalities. It was also not surprising that they would not talk to each other, let alone, at that time, the non-existent Gov computer that was meant to be the central anchor. These companies were good at 'selling' though, hence all the mostly false initial 'save you money' advertising which has probably done this entire project more harm than anything else. The central computer is not in itself a bad idea. Meter data to computer, relayed to supplier for billing, block usage data to the generators and distributors and statisitical data for government analysis and green credential trumpeting. It's a pity the whole thing wasn't fully detailed before they started the introduction. A bright spark somewhere saw that these things could identify the bits of our distribution system that were running close to the red line at times and it didn't take a genius to invent variable pricing tarrifs as a cheap way to defer/avoid costly infrastructure investment. With the onset of electric vehicle charging, variable tarrifs could even be beneficial. See, there is a bright(ish) light to this project, a very small and expensive bright light admittedly. Yes, it will be costing us a fortune and continue to do so.

Thanks. An interesting build and motor. In use, what's it like for getting track alignment? do you have an automatic system or just eyeball it? Steve W

What? reduced to showing off in cattle sheds? Actually, it's a lovely site with good access and parking, though the floors are a bit uneven.

With the greatest of repect to the prev post, the last sentence of the OP's entry is relevant. NigelCliffes post preceding that one gives a complete and text book answer to the question. If dimming is required it can be dealt with as a seperate query. Use of most domestic lighting dimmers to dim a mains powered transformer is potentially dangerous on several levels and should be avoided.

Thanks for the compliment it's appreciated. After something like 120 shows we were getting tired of the layout although it operated like a dream throughout. The matter came to head when the club was evicted from the college in Richmond with three weeks notice and we had nowhere to store it long term. We tried selling in the UK (ultimately offered at £50 ex-stock) but it was rather specialist with the 14mm gauge - people who want that usually build their own, so we honoured the last show committment in Bremen with an optomistic 'for sale' sign on it and it was sold before the show opened for an exceedingly good bag of Euros. You would be amazed how much 'duty free' you can get in an otherwise empty Transit van on the return trip!

Might have to modify the baseboard material, can you still get sheet Asbestos?

I know the GOG mentions 7mm narrow gauge, but based on my experience at Telford with a very well recieved NG layout, it is highly unlikely to generate significant activity in that area. A couple walked towards the layout during the afternoon, the gentleman's wife was seemingly much taken with our display. He, on the other hand, took one quick glance, grabbed her by the arm and in a loud voice pronounced "Come along dear, it's only narrow gauge". Sorry, probably doesn't help the core purpose of this thread though.

No! I'm a

Something completely different?

I had passing aquaintance with two 2ft lines in Cornwall, both propelled one way and pushed the other, as for stop blocks, maybe, it was a long time ago. Both South Crofty Mine surface tramway and Penlee Quarry line to Newlyn harbour operated this way, pulling loads and pushing empties. Both lines were reasonably level and, at least in later days, track was not exactly prisitine. Trains on the mine line were typically half a dozen skips, at Penlee 10 or eleven fairly big ones. Small and forgiving coarse scale wheels and exceedingly short wheelbases go a long way to keeping everything on the rails, or grooves in the mud. Run round facilities in the case of the mine were not provided as far as I know. At Penlee, time was money when a ship needed to be loaded and this line was mostly double track, the entire train changing tracks at the harbour end for the return trip. Multiple trains were in use simultaneously on the line. Empty rakes arriving at the quarry would be disconnected and loaded using other locos, enabling a 'train' loco to pick up an already loaded rake and set off for the quay without delay. As noted above , time is money; why have the expense of pointwork and the delay of running round when it's not required? From a modellers perspective, as an adjunct to a standard gauge railway or other significant industrial modelling, these tramways are great but, as an accurate model of a protoype, most would be very boring from the train operating perspective.

(that's a 'coven')

Ah well, as one Cornishman to another, here's a bonus of my Micro 'Petroc Quarries'. This one is 20 x20 inches and has continuous run (14mm gauge) and was built as a 'test track' for Tidmeric stock in a Japanese hotel room... and then the madness set in ... The 4" radius curve in the first picture was inspired by the loading hoppers at S Crofty's Robinson shaft which was the tightest curve I've ever seen. Used to spend my college lunches there in the day.

Tidmeric Minerals was a 14mm layout of the Twickenham club. It was one of the earlier 14mm builds, 15ft long with a continuous run with f-yd at the rear. With most 'industrial lines' tending to have one purpose and as simple as possible it was decided to incorporate three scenes of typical 2ft gauge line use to engage visitors. It successfully did over 120 shows in the UK and Europe. At the right end was a stone crusher and grader, with animated conveyors and rotatary grader (shaver foils), central was a fine model by Brandon Evans of wooden ore loading hoppers from a cornish tin mine photo with a small workshop area at the left end with a water filled slate quarry behind, disguisng the return curve. Along the way a Festiniog rotating signal became incorporated. Eventually sold to a private museuem in Bremen we came home with an empty van. The crusher end, built from photos, typical rather than precisely modelled. Taken from photos The trestle, again based on a prototype, though I forget which. Works train and stone train in the passing loop. Track design was such that we could operate in either a two of three board format, or all three. The left end with part of the small works area and the flooded slate quarry to the rear. At the first exhibition we had to open the windows as the resin 'water' was still drying and one of our team had to get lots of nice goodies for his wife as the resin ran out of some holes onto the dining room carpet the night before. All good things come to and end and sfter selling the layout (We were moving up to 1:20.3 scale) we found a final picture of the line waiting for the auction: Cheers Steve W.

cavorting in the

Ouch!, that hurt