hayfield

Insomniacs!! Bits of everything, 0-16.5 tram loco, hint of a GEM L1 chassis, Bits of a Springside 2251 & Manning Wardle and k's GWR tender parts and a McGowan Football class, bits everywhere !! all mixed up V Well I thought there was one 7mm 52/72xx but there were 2 plus an unknown 4mm 2-8-2t chassis, plus what's on top of the box. Dean Goods and an Ivatt There were 23 photos, but most gave no idea what was for sale, and I am still finding bits

The main issue is getting the correct parts into their own boxes. The Springside Collet goods had only a few if any of the larger parts are in its box, the main issue is finding what of the smaller parts belong to it and not other locos, The easy bit is where the wrong scale is in the box or glaringly incorrect parts. Its just a simple case of just keeping on sorting out each box and box up the locos without a box I now have found I have 2 x 52/72xx 7mm etched kits. Most of the body parts for a second 7mm Manning Wardle 0-4-0T and an incomplete set of body etches for a 7mm LMS 2-6-4T loco and a incomplete 7mm etched Midland tender body. I also have a K's Ivatt 2-6-4t body

I think I get more fun out of both finding items and sorting things out than perhaps modelling, anyway I won a mixed lot last Friday of loco kits, which are highly likely to be incomplete. certainly mixed up These two boxes arrived this morning weighing quite a lot This was the main photo with another 22 most of which looks very untidy I have actually made a start on this and the photo below This is what really interested me, but from what I can see there are up to 6 x 7mm locos, on 0-16.5 and possible 8 4mm scale locos all in various states of completeness In this box I have found parts for 2 7mm 0-16.5 Langley L&B coaches and one wagon plus a decent set of 4 32mm gauge track gauges, I could see one etched coach side but had no idea what it was. As it happens I am a member of the Lynton & Barnstaple railway and actively involved with the East Anglican support group which builds the carriages for the L&B I will be busy for certainly the next month if not more

I am eagerly awaiting my latest punt to arrive. I brought a mixed lot of loco kits where the parts seemed to be mixed up a bit like buying several jigsaws all mixed together. I must admit I actually enjoy sorting these type of lots out as much as either building a kit or forming a saleable lot. Time will tell whether I have brought an expensive pile of scrap, or unearthed a couple of gems, but that for me is all part of the enjoyment is. As for the Wills SR G6, I have listed a Wills G6 with a Hornby Dublo R1 chassis on Sunday, certainly my new 1 in one out rule. But I must reduce the size of my collection so I am planning to sell on 60 locos this year, so I must be a bit more proactive in deciding what I don't want to keep. On the other hand I am still very much wanting to improve the collection I want to keep. Lets hope I can release a few good buys for others, whilst at the same time enjoy the hobby

I had no offer of 80% reduction of fees last Friday (it was 2 weeks from the previous offer) and on Saturday I started to think eBay may have changed their minds about how often these offers were being offered. Sunday morning I received an email offering 80% off fees for 2 days only. I jumped at the offer and quickly found 3 new items and some which remained un sold from the previous offer I have no idea if eBay have more or less items for sale, but it does seem to be fewer items (loco kits) I am interested in being offered for sale.

Michael I look on in envy at your very tidy storage facilities, of locos in various stages of assembly. I am sad to say mine are scattered around the room. I assume off stage their boxes are equally stored as neatly off camera ? and I guess its a case of a clean and tidy work bench with one loco and box of parts at a time ? What's the secret please

Jason Whilst the Southeastern Finecast 94xx is listed under the revised section, I assume its only the body that has been revised or rather it now has cab detail, the chassis used is the FC200 which is a replacement chassis the Hornby Jinty (7'9" x 8'3"). Granted the chassis is both etched and has brake gear, but I doubt if the chassis is a replica of a GWR 94xx, it should be 7'3" x 8'3" plus a few mm longer. The High Level example is designed to fit various RTR and kit models if its to scale then the SEF footplate will need altering. Both chassis are excellent chassis and as for me the SEF/Wills kits are fine with the FC200 chassis Built by someone else I have a Wills kit built example built to P4 standards with Gibson mainframes. In short I am a great fan of these kits and happy to accept the odd compromises. As for costs, if brought new you will not get much change out of between £150 to £200 depending on what wheelsets, motor and gears chosen The benefits of whitemetal kits are their weight, plus the chassis will be more robust and certainly easier to repair (if needed) than their RTR counterparts A plug for eBay, these kits are very cheap and easy to pick up on eBay. Recently I paid £40 for a SR G6 with an etched chassis, Markit wheels and DS10 motor. The only downside was a poor quality/built motor mount. I have a spare High level chassis which I will fit (its a Wills G6 with a FC201 (R1 chassis) which is good enough for me

In my opinion/observation in many ways yes. The price of more common models has come off the highs they once reached, however the amounts on offer this year seem rather low. The better quality and rarer kits still fetch good prices. Like all things well produced listing asking for reasonable start prices do sell. I did have trouble selling 1 common kit built loco, I split it into 3 lots ( body & chassis, wheels and motor) and they sold the first week for more than I was asking for the RTR listings which never sold after 3 listings As far as 0-16.5 whitemetal kits and kit built locos are selling very well, far more than I want to pay As for 7mm scale locos, I have found they are far harder to find owing to changes in the eBay search criteria. They are there but sometimes you have to get lucky if they are listed in the wrong category or badly listed. Over the past 2/3 years I have found a Springside 14xx and 44xx in different lots, both being part built and missing items, I had to spend around £100 each on missing parts, given they cost £366 & £447 respectively both ended up costing me well under half price each, but I took an informed gamble, I have also brought over the past 4/5 years several whitemetal and etched locos

Either yesterday or Saturday I had the same thing on my computer after leaving my computer on with RMweb running, I do have McAfee software since buying a new laptop and brought an annual subscription earlier this month. Clearly it was a malware, whether it came from RMweb or was just a phishing exercise I have no idea, certainly was not picked up by my McAfee or produced by them

You will find individually the chairs are quite weak, but in numbers the strength increases, however you must use the correct settings (size) for the rail you are using, plus with plug version the smaller the size the more fiddley construction is

Jim Two different things and of course you must deal with every email with the respect they deserve. Having said this you must sift out both junk mail and emails designed to infect your computer To confirm most important emails were dealt with promptly, especially those which could lead to a sale, I was referring to the plethora of needless memos/emails with no real purpose from internal sources

Jim When I was in a sales environment I was bombarded with initially memos, then emails from employees (admin) which after a time I came to the conclusion were in the main employees trying to justify their existence. I quickly came up with the following procedure, after skimming the content it soon became apparent its importance. Important request were replied to, the rest (bulk) ignored, if I received a second request/reminder I gave it a bit more thought and answered if I felt necessary, if they bothered to send a second reminder it became obvious they wanted a reply. My rational was, I was paid to sell not reply to un-necessary memos/emails, the number I actually replied to was a fraction of what I received I to some extent consider both Junk files and unanswered phone calls where I do not recognize the number, I don't follow up. I recon if something is important they will try again

The maths are simple do you pay less by using your generated power than you pay your supplier at night. The other thing is by being on the standard rate with Octopus I get 15p per kwh export rather than 7.5p per kwh

I have just received this months bill and I was very surprised to see I exceeded my projection by £14 (£11 of Octopus) Firstly over Christmas we increased the thermostats temperature as my wife's elderly parents were staying, secondly my son in law gave us one electronic radiator valve to try, and as they were half price (£44 each )we brought another 5 We now have all the main rooms on their own programs, the unused spare bedroom is only on low, our bedroom is only on when we get up and go to bed. Each room has its only settings and only on when we use the area, though these can easily be changed if rooms are being used out of the sequence we have set. As I said we have spent 2 to 3 weeks refining the system which included that very cold spell. Rather than thinking what temperature we could live with, we are now nice and warm in the rooms we use which in itself is worth the extra Well I expected a large bill owing to increasing the houses temperature, as it turns out had it been set up as we now have it the usage would have been much nearer our projections, which is far from what I expected Now it will be interesting to see if we actually save money, as the valves cost me £220

You have hit a problem I decided was not worth it, going too big !!. I wanted value for money, when I ordered my system I was buying electricity at 16p per kwh and the companies were paying 3p per kwh for exporting Owing to the design of our house on the south face we could only fit 4 panels, the single story extension would take 8 panels. A small battery system would cost in excess of £5000 I quickly decided at the rates being charged at that time it would take at least 20 years to pay for the batteries and when I needed the batteries the amount (winter) my production will not charge the batteries fully that often As for how many panels to buy initially I thought to buy as many as I could, the main problem cost wise was the extra cost of fitting spread over 2 days and an extra visit from the scaffolders, so using both roofs was out of the question. During the buying process there was a facility to analyze cost and production according to how many panels you buy. For me and my requirements 7 panels came out as the best value I have looked (and will do this year) at the cost of adding a battery, the quote reduced last year but mainly due to a smaller battery being quoted for. When we brought our system we were able to obtain a 40% discount using Solar Together bulk buying arrangement, at the moment there seems no reason for giving away large discounts. My search for a good return on my investment has proved very beneficial to date, for both years power generation has been more than expected, fees have gone up by 300% for exports and value of energy saved has nearly doubled A second thing which has occurred is the effect on the value/desirability on our property. When we ordered it we were told it would only affect the houses energy rating, but it would be highly unlikely to increase the value of the property, well now according to one comparison I use 60% less than my neighbor's on electricity and that is not including my export fees Edit I have just seen that yesterday I used 2kwh of my own production for the first time this year, despite it being January the value (usage and export) was worth 81p, quite a difference from Tuesday's 6p. The past 6 days even in the month of Jan I have benefited to the value of £2.56, may even reach £3 which is 3 times the value of the first week

All of a sudden my spam/junk folder started working a couple of months ago, first time for over 4 years !!!

After saying this today my system generated 3.5 kwh, still chasing the previous 2 years production of 44 & 47 kwh, to date its up tp 35kwh this month with 5 days to go

I have had a chance of looking back at the inverters records (graphs) of daily production, it looks like I have another 2 or perhaps 3 weeks of reducing shading, where as there is evidence of shading in the last week of October. In the main it seems November, December and January are the main months where shading affects production (better than I expected I have also noticed even bad days in Jan are much better than December. Over the past 2 years my daily production average has been in the region of 1.5 kwh a day, todays been cloudy but we still generated 1.1kwh, Not had a 3 kwh day this year though !!

Tom s Very impressive

One issue with 3D printing the timbers is one of the the bed curling as there is more material on one side than the other, this may not be an issue in the smaller gauges but is in 4mm scale and over Another when using the cheaper machines is the size of print bed. My resin printer is 130 x 80mm where as my FDM printer is 180mm square, if you have not got a FDM printer it might be a option whilst considering the options to obtain the odd FDM timber print to compare with resin print

Join the Templot club, trials are going on in 2mm finescale and TT gauge, the smaller gauges seem to favor resin printing, as for TT its worth experimenting with both systems (all resin/FDM and resin)

Ian Mainly trees but one house for about a month or so, I take your point but thankfully these are mostly old trees or some lower growing species like a plum One large conifer is more or less stopped shading, the largest is very old and probably reached its maximum and again having less of an effect. The third group is now the main issue and within a month to 6 weeks will have no affect Its very difficult to see when the shading starts and stops, dur to weather conditions and its at a time when generation is at its lowest and affects a period of time where we produce about 10% of our total generated production. (220 kwh out of 2400kwh) At worst I guess we loose less than 100kwh over 4 months. Not a reason not to have the system !!! As I have always said we were warned about the shading and the shallower than normal rake of the roof, Though this must help when the sun is high in the sky ? As far as the returns from the system so much better than we ever expected.

The two items arrived and both were as described, the binoculars look unused. The loco is better than expected. The paint work needs repainting to the era I model, but I need to alter both chassis fixings. The rear fixing is a slot in the bunker bottom, the front is a screw through the footplate between the smokebox and buffers. But temporarily its OK as its to EM gauge. Also it would benefit from a new set of steps. As for the chassis itself, it does not pickup from the wheels as neither wiper touches a wheel, the motor is a DS10 and runs fine, the chassis is a Southeastern Finecast etched FS201, the gears are Romfords in a SEF motor mount the wheels are newer Markits, plus a pair of Gibson 4'8" EM gauge drivers Excluding the Gibson wheels If I brought the chassis, wheels motor and gears from SEF they would cost £124 and the body another £45. Its defiantly worth looking out for these little gems. In the short term I just need to clean up the chassis and bend the pickups I can now sell an old one with a HD R1 chassis someone else can restore and may get at least half of what I paid for this one

Its difficult to say exactly how we are affected by the shading as its directly affected by the weather conditions, and my wife said a few months back that the afternoon can be cloudier than the mornings. The morning shade now is much less now than at the start of the month, the midday shade is getting better but still affects the for a much longer time, I guess the shading in the afternoon will last a few more weeks But sunnier days do produce much more power, now 2.5 kwh are produced on the better days, the first week was nearly half that. On the other hand last year was a bit sunnier and producing a bit more

According to the BBC Cornwall Insight are forecasting energy bills will be coming down in April by around £300 pa I think its worth looking back and compare prices of a kwh and standing charges Electric gas April 23 32.26p + 40p 9.71p + 26p Jan 24 29.22p + 42p 7.31p + 27p April 24 23.66 + 58p 5.73 + 30p The standing charges have been frozen for the past 2 quarters, but CI are still projecting increases in the standing charge way above what I think would be acceptable given the profits energy companies have enjoyed ( suppliers less so) In April, May & June I have averaged using 123kwh of electricity, the new rates reduces my electric bill by £8.84 pm, using last May's gas usage as next quarters monthly saving, the reduction against this quarters charges per month is likely to be £10.67, equates jointly for the quarter to a saving of £59. I guess we have to accept the savings for the year given prices alter every quarter. But it must be good news with those struggling with their bills The savings against the crisis highs are quite staggering, but that's another story