Titan

I think he means leading end - i.e. the end with the driver, rather than the drivers side. It does sound like he means only fitting details to the left of the drawhook and half a tension lock on the second mans side!! edit - pipped to the post!

If he was doing it properly he would not have enough time for twenty-a-day!!!

I am sure that it is some mans' field!

It has to be said, that I have noticed that hardly anyone who bids earlier than the last couple of minutes wins, unless they put an extremely high bid that the more experienced bidders recognize as too much - and often ends up highlighted on this thread as a result! The losing last minute bidder just rolls his eyes and wins the next one at half the price...

It has to be said that all the bags in the lot appear to be individually priced, so the original total might not be that far away from the buy-it-now price. Edit: In fact adding all the price tags I can see I get £19.95 + £31.95 + £9.95 + £2.25 = £64.10, add the other bits to that and it does not seem too unreasonable!

Oh, there is lots of fun using a sniping program!! my favourite game is to outbid someone by 1p, especially if it is a high value item. A lot of people like to bid in round numbers, and I am pretty good at guessing the value (and therefore the likely max bid) of the item in question, The end result is that when the bid goes in with two seconds to go, the current price is at say £75, but the current high bidders maximum is a nice round £100, then I win it for £100.01 (since my bid is higher than the bidders max and more than the next increment above the current £75 price) and the high bidder does not have enough time to up his bid by a pound or two to beat me! It avoids bidding wars too, one guy actually contacted the seller after the auction had ended and tried to bribe him to sell it to him instead. Luckily the seller had integrity and basically said to him tough luck, if you were prepared to pay that much then that's how much you should have bid!

Whilst the oil lamp holder might be the right answer, I think you might be chronologically inaccurate, as far as I am aware APT has not even run in the 21st century, let alone carrying a 21st century oil lamp! (unless of course it was a deliberate mistake!!!)

I think you are right, more specifically I think it is a pitot tube used for measuring airspeed, more usually found on aircraft.

??? Seems pretty clear to me, "sold as spares or repair wires need soldering back on motor" and as the ad has not been edited at this time, must have been written there when you looked at it....

Blimey, so she lives more than half a days round trip from the nearest shop?

On Wednesday Roy Hodgson faces the most significant strategic choice of the world cup so far.... Aisle or window seat?

I think I heard this four years ago, or maybe eight. Actually thinking about it it might have been 12, or possibly 16....

Blimey - I paid £55 for a brand new one within the last year!

Has it got to Manchester yet?

I'm not so sure about that, HST power cars are lightweight, have disc brakes all round, and if a 2 power car + 7 coach formation (i.e. 3.5 coaches per power car) can stop from 125mph in the same distance as a conventional loco hauled train takes from 100mph, the brakes are going to be a damn sight stronger on a HST powercar compared to any other loco.

I initially thought that might have been found on a FGW HST - stock taking before reaching Paddington?

The only lima motor I killed was my first, a lima Deltic. It was the first loco I saved up my pocket money for and bought new in 1979. That had commutator problems, although in this case it was due to extreme wear due to being my favourite high speed express loco. It took about ten years to achieve, the comutator had worn most at the gaps, spreading until it was effectively turning in to a mechanical PWM and eventually it just ran too slowly to be worthy of express use, so I suppose even then it was not completely dead!

These pictures pose an interesting question, did she have twin wipers at one end and single on the other, or was the conversion done in the time between the two photos?

And guess what someone else has done with theirs!! http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/scrapyard-00-GAUGE-Deltic-diesel-loco-heavily-rusted-and-weathered-/291146958821?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item43c9b607e5 The paintwork could well be considered an improvement in this case!!

And that's the thing, each arrangement in real life is designed to suit the specific location, taking account line speed, traffic direction, track geometry etc. So what might be suitable in one location might not work in another. The principle reason why wires cross at points is to avoid pantograph hookover, a cross contact bar ties the two contact wires together so that as the pantograph lifts one wire, the other is also lifted to match. This is more important at high speed where trains can run in either direction on each wire. At low speeds where the wire does not lift so much it is not so much of a problem, although it would still be normal practice to cross the wires if possible. As an aside, modern high speed crossovers don't cross the wires, but they usually have something like 'cross droppers' that connect the catenary of one wire to the contact of the other, so that when the catenary lifts it tends to lift the other contact wire also. Needs much more accurate setting up to get it to work, but the end result is a softer ride for the pan. That won't be applicable to a three way though!

One potential fault I have not seen mentioned, the bogie frames are handed. Mine has 3 of one and one of the other, assembled so that only one is the right way round! Besides that it seems to exhibit most if not all the previously mentioned issues as expected.

That is one option, although the red wire on 3 ought to be a push off on a right stagger if anything to help maintain the knuckle on 2 in tension.

A picture is worth a thousand words! Its a little crude due to being quickly done on paint, but a few points to note. It would be a single mast of the heavy duty double channel type, with two cantilevers attached - pretty much the same as you would expect on any other points. However one cantilever supports two equipments. You can see that one catenary is placed above the top tube, the other below. This is to ensure different heights where they cross in span so that they do not rub. In practice the wires would not all cross in the same place, usually because three way points are unlikely to be symmetrical, but even if they did then the designer may swap registrations around or alter staggers to ensure they did not. Its just the way my drawing turned out, which is far from scale anyway! The blue and green wires would be lifted 'Out Of Running' on the support to the left, that is usually 230mm above the 'In Running' wires, which would normally be the red wire. They would then go out to anchor, although if in a station area they may continue out of running throughout the station and be anchored beyond the platform as you would not allow an anchor wire to cross above the platform and there is rarely room for an anchor mast between platforms. The red wire is shown staggered to the right on the right hand side of the drawing, this is to ensure there is a load to keep the knuckle in tension, which otherwise might be at risk of collapse.

I really want a 309 for my railway, but I think I'll pass on this one... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275-Hornby-E-R-L-M-R-conversion-to-class-309-Clacton-unit-in-Blue-Grey-/351067242732?pt=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item51bd3d00ec

No easy answer on this - in real life it depends on track geometry and each location would be different. The most likely would be three parallel wires leading up to the toe of the points, then the left hand wire would cross over the other two to become the wire for the right hand diverging track, and vice versa for the right hand wire. This would help ensure the staggers are correct for the curves leading away from the points (left stagger for right hand curve, right stagger for left hand curve) Supporting it might be tricky, For a normal set of points you would have a twin cantilever, which of course only provides for supporting two wires. What would probably happen in this case is that one cantilever would support two catenaries, spaced between 230-380mm apart (in real life!) and there would be a knuckle between the two respective contact wires to keep the contact without a registration arm registered. You would usually find this type of points in a low speed area where the OLE is fixed equipment, so tying stuff together with knuckles and putting two catenaries on one cantilever does not cause problems with differential thermal expansion of different wires.