JJGraphics

We also saw a really significant saving the we updated our boiler. John

You must have been using a lot of energy as your savings are considerably more than our total annual bill! John

My wife and I are at home much of the time. We have a four bedroom house which has good insulation and double glazing. When its cold we are careful about closing windows and doors. We have gas fired central heating with a modern condensing boiler, good controls and radiator thermostats and we heat the house to a comfortable level when necessary as we both feel the cold. We have a gas-fired "log-burning" stove in the lounge which we use on chilly evenings when the central heating would be overkill. We shower and bath when we feel the need as do our family and friends when they stay. We have air conditioning which we don't hesitate to use when needed and cook with electricity. My wife is careful about not using the washing machine to wash only a small number of items and we cram the dishwasher full before it is run. We have fitted LED bulbs everywhere. Our combined energy bill for the twelve months until the end of August was £827 which is very low compared to the result I get when I do the calculation online to predict my bill which reckons it should be £1195. It is very unlikely that we could save more than a very few pounds on energy and that would most likely be negated by the running cost of a smart meter. Some people may make savings with a smart meter, in a few cases possibly appreciable ones, but in our discussions with a wide circle of friends and neighbours, the truth comes out that, once fitted, smart meters are quickly forgotten about as other things take precedence in the household and usage habits then just return to the status quo, if they ever changed in the first place. Once the batteries in the display device expire it often just gets dumped. I have noticed quite few of those in the "small electricals" bin at the local waste disposal site. Over the last couple of years I have had a number of discussions with smart meter pushers at two energy companies and they just spout the same nonsense. They are only marketing script-readers and know nothing of the real situation in your home or your usage. They try to tell me that I could save "Over £100" with a smart meter and are completely bemused when I tell them they are talking nonsense and go on to explain the usage in my home. They usually just fall silent and then say something like, "Ah . . OK, goodbye". John

Mandated by nodding Government donkeys following the EU as usual. The first two types of meters have had very mixed results and the reliability has varied from good to useless. Maybe they'll get it right with the SMETS 3, or maybe they won't. Whatever, it costing us a fortune like most Government cock-ups do! John

We don't have a smart meter and have not seen a meter reader for getting on for three years. We've changed supplier twice in that time and just submit our readings online. Having a smart meter would save us nothing as we only use what we need. John

I was wondering if anyone would be likely to take up production of the TT300 point motors and also the colour light signals and control boards which seemed to be rather good. I've had a number of TT300s on the go on my layout for quite a long time now and part from one odd DoA, they continue to perform well. John

It's nothing to do with the controller. You need to change the settings in CV29 on the decoder. VERY useful guide and calculator here: http://www.2mm.org.uk/articles/cv29 calculator.htm John

As part of my compositor's apprenticeship (many, many years ago) I was taught to proofread with great care. In those days it was the ultimate sin for anything to be printed containing an error, whether spelling or grammatical, but the sad reality is that now most magazines do not employ proofreaders and rely totally on the person doing the keying and AutoCorrect. I find some of the errors which appear highly amusing, some can be seriously misleading but most are just simply annoying like the erroneous use of apostrophes and the now almost universal "fed up of". John

Been getting some of these again, this morning's example: John

PowerLine adaptors should work in your situation. Only if two locations are fed from separate consumer units, that can sometimes be problem. My personal preference is for the ones manufactured by TP-Link, both the straight Ethernet to Ethernet adaptors and the type which have a WiFi hotspot at the delivery end. The type of adaptors that receive and relay the WiFi signal ("WiFi Extenders") can be more trouble than they are worth but do work in some situations. John

This is not the right place for this question. If you ask Andy nicely, he might move it for you.

Interesting, but not really what the thread was started for. Some lovely old block instruments in the film, though. The original subject of the thread was about signal box sounds to load on a decoder, which could be played as required using DCC F commands to activate the sounds using normal F numbers. I've been working on other aspects of the layout I am building but I am ready to pursue this idea at any time. John

They also work well with a servo. John

Two DUMB METERS apart! John

We refuse contactless cards as we had repeated problems with them being "skimmed" in airports and similar situations abroad. Our accounts are marked and we receive non-contactless cards when they are replaced. The amount of the individual skims was relatively small, typically only about US$20, but the time wasted in going through the process of reporting the problem, getting the transaction removed and getting replacement cards became annoying. Both my wife and I now use ApplePay via our Apple Watches for pretty much every translation we do with the exception of some countries which don't yet offer the service. It is quite some time since we actually took our cards out and used them. ApplePay has the advantage that the process inserts another layer of security between our Credit Cards and the payment system which prevents the merchant from collecting any information about us and is impossible to skim. Being of a certain age, we are often entertained by the surprise (and some degree of respect) shown by the young checkout operators and shop assistants when us old wrinklies double click our watches and hold them to the terminal to pay! John

If you pay with ApplePay (contactless on an iPhone or AppleWatch) with your Credit Card as the payment card, the limit in most places** is the available credit limit on your Credit Card. I do contactless payments with my AppleWatch for quite large sums at garages and in shops, etc., without a problem. The lower limit which has just been raised is for contactless Debit Cards. ** Tesco have an idiotic £30 limit on ApplePay transactions regardless of the payment source which is extremely unhelpful at the moment. We shop with four other supermarket brands and know that Tesco are the only supermarket brand doing this. John

Most, but not all, banks' card readers will work interchangeably, so it may be possible to use someone else's card reader to solve the problem. We were on holiday abroad a couple of weeks back and another guest at the place I was staying had broken her card reader and was in a panic because she could not access her account. My card reader, from a different UK bank worked for her. I appreciate that it may be difficult to borrow another card reader at the moment. John

I think we got way past the the point where sensible decisions were made on resources for the NHS which might have relieved doctors of the need for life or death decisions due to the current crisis quite a few years ago. Years of Austerity under the idiot chancellor anyone?

Yes, if you don't mind GooGoo or Amazon knowing everything about you. Much better to use a good quality Bluetooth speaker with a phone or tablet. John

The Collectors Club Lounge at the larger shows is also very good as you can get very close-up views of new products and a chance to chat and ask questions of the staff. There is usually a welcome free bottle of water, too. John

Railway-related auction sites are another place to look for photos of these.

One thing that is important to understand is that you cannot print white unless you are using the silkscreen printing process or have access to highly specialised commercial inks which do not work in normal inkjet printers. I've prepared artwork for several people on RMWeb to print their own decals and they have done so successfully, but results will vary considerably depending on both how you go about creating your artwork and the capabilities of your inkjet printer and it's working condition. As has been mentioned, fonts can be a problem but, if you look around online, there are many fonts available to download for free. Have a go and see what you can achieve! John

Interesting . . . I'm in a different location in South Africa now. Tried RMWeb on the guest Windows PC where I am staying and it seemed very slow and laggy. Logged in on the nine year old iPad I carry on my travels and on WiFi it absolutely flies. Make what you will of that! As is usually the case all the other sites I checked went really quickly on the PC and on my iPad. Interestingly, not that it is that important, the location data which the forum software collects is often completely wrong. My home iMac is shown in a number of different locations in the UK when it has never left my desk and my router has not rebooted to get a different IP address in months. My current location in South Africa as shown is about 700 miles wrong. It also thinks I am logged in on my old iPad when I am currently back using the guest PC. I know that location data collected in this manner is not especially reliable, but what the Invision software records is rather crazy. It seems that despite all the hours Andy is putting in to try give us the best possible experience on RMW, his efforts are being partially thwarted by a combination of different circumstances which are unpredictable and random in the way they affect browsing the forums. I hope he does not feel that people on here are ungrateful, it is just very frustrating when the forum runs well and then plays up completely at random. John

I'm down in darkest Africa at the moment on a very slow connection and the site is running much better than I would expect in the circumstances. Let's hope it stays that way!! John

CAD is a good option, but some of the programs are fairly expensive and take quite a lot of effort to learn to get good results unless, like chuffinghell, you come with that skill set from your working background. A bit like chuffinghell, I bring a specialised skill set to my railway modelling as I come from a printing and graphics background and also, many years ago, learned how to draw to scale accurately with paper and pencil and scale rule. I combine the two skill sets and use a graphics illustration package (used to be Adobe Illustrator but now I use Affinity Designer which does not lock you into monthly fees) which gives me excellent and precise results for layout planning and I can print out at whatever scale I need. I have spent some time playing with Rail Modeller Pro which I originally got into to help a friend who is also a Mac user. I think it is an excellent 39 quids-worth and if I did not do things the way I already do, I would use it. Rail Modeller Express is a cut-down free version of Rail Modeller Pro which is a good way to get the feel of the full package before you buy it. I can see both sides of the argument for paper and computer layout design. In the end you should do what is easiest for you. John