whart57

In the past the Rugby World Championship has been contested by New Zealand, South Africa and which of Australia, England and France can get their act together. Argentina last time and Ireland are recent additions to that club of maybes. The rest, Pacific Islanders, other six nations teams have always been there to make up the numbers. As have Japan and the North Americans, though the latter have been real disappointments lately. The problem comes when you match those who are just along for the ride against real contenders. Rugby is a very cruel game when sides - and particularly packs - are ill matched. Watching a top level pack push their lesser opponents around the pitch for eighty minutes is not particularly edifying. In the round ball game lesser sides can park the bus, but in rugby that bus gets shoved out of the way.

If some group games are "essentially irrelevant" then that means the competition has been expanded too far.

On 05/03/2023 at 07:48, Johann Marsbar said:

 

 

 

 

Ah yes the Arnhem trolleybus. The number 3 route went past the top of the road where my grandad lived. The zoo and Openlucht Museum were at one end of the route and the NS station at the other. 

Arnhem had a tramway network. It last ran on the morning the First Airborne arrived. 

Dirty Old Town - Ewan McColl

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

It's not a hard game to understand; run, tackle, run, tackle, run, tackle, run, tackle, kick. There are no lineouts, no loose ball play, no meaningful scrums (set or loose). Blatant fouls are largely disregarded and there doesn't appear to be any offside rule. 

 

Blatant fouls in union are instead endless discussed by officials both on and off the pitch while the players get their wind back before giving one side the chance to kick the ball a long way.

My scratchbuilding experience is in 3mm scale so I did bring some of that up into my 4mm scale light railway modeliing. I like the idea of these Simpson springs though, once the exhibition is out of the way I'll try that. Shame Eileens is no more though, getting hold of enough phospor bronze wire might be tricky.

Scraper pick-ups on small non-driven wheels? I'd rather not. To tell the truth I try to avoid wire pick-ups, they are like running with the brakes applied. Drivers and coupled wheels get enough push from the motor to overcome the friction but carrying wheels need such a light spring that they don't make a good connection anyway. The exception is if the wire presses on the axle, in which case it's more or less like the bearing anyway.

13 hours ago, rockershovel said:

"Development" happens organically. Argentina pulled themselves up by their own boot-straps, after their RWC performance against NZ they couldn't be denied any longer. 

 

Japan are also a case of self-starting. They have a strong local league with plenty of funds and don't like to lose at what they do.

 

Fiji have been the front-runners among the South Seas sides for some time, quite where they go next remains to be seen. 

 

Italy were a commercial venture. The sale of a share in the old 5N produced a commercially motivated decision to change the structure and have 3 games in each round. The words cart, horse come to mind; the backers are now stuck with the problem of replacing Italy from a pool of candidates of even less value.

Italy had the misfortune to join the 6N at the start of the professional era. Had they joined ten years earlier the gap between top and bottom would have been less stark, and more bridgeable with the sort of packs around then.

Development doesn't happen "organically". Development is a combination of local growth and outside encouragement. Argentina's development has a lot to do with their players coming to play professionally in Europe, the South Pacific nations have their players polished up in New Zealand. Perhaps what Italy did wrong was to try and develop through having their own clubs play in the Celtic league - whatever its called this week.

If we switch codes for a moment, there was a "development" success story in rugby league this week. London Broncos fielded a side in the RL Championship against Bradford with not a single northern born or antipodean player in it or on the bench. Mostly Londoners with a few from just beyond the M25 and the odd Midlander. When it comes to developing RL in the capital Broncos have tried everything. It would appear that the combination of commitment to an academy developing young players and a professional side of a good standard for them to aspire to is what works.

OK, a goodly load of lead shot onto the floors of the railcars and slow running is much improved. The chassis are compensated but as the power is picked up via uninsulated wheels on one side of each vehicle, I suspect it may need to run for a bit to polish where the axles pass through the bearings. I also upped CV2 (start voltage) to 2 and changed CV3 to 8 to increase the acceleration. It now behaves as if the driver has heavy feet. I can live with that for now.

Well changing the value of CV66 doesn't make the problem go away and turning BEMF off entirely - CV61=0 - removes all slow speed control, the railcar goes into bat out of hell mode.

More experimenting needed but at the moment the chassis is more sensitive to pick up issues than it ever was under DC. Probably needs a bit more weight.

Thanks, I will try that

I'm installing a Zen V12 decoder into a Colonel Stephens railbus (scratchbuilt). The motor is a small Chinese can type - 8mm diameter - and the chassis has run well on a DC test track. However running on DCC the chassis surges forward before settling back to speed step one. After that it accelerates and decelerates fine and steps ups smoothly through the speed steps.

What can I do about that surge though? I've tried changing the start voltage CV, giving it values of 4, 2 and 1, but that doesn't fix the issue. It's almost as if there is a setting to wallop full power to overcome "stiction" which I don't need.

Any ideas?

We now have just the one long Wednesday left, and we need to set priorities.

However the station building is finished and partly bedded in.

21 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My "North Greenwich" branch was to be a TOPS-transition era branch with freight serving the former gas works - that's the one on the East side of the line - and the small container terminal on the river which was at about the Westernmost point on the peninsula.  You can visualise a rundown station (perhaps just one platform surviving from an original three) like much of the North London line was until the late 80s, with peak-hours-only and sparsely-patronised 2/4-EPB shuttle from London Bridge.

My thinking was along similar lines, after a century in which small SER tanks gave way to SECR railcars and then autocoaches either side of a P class. Probably push-pull trains in the Southern steam era until the North Kent line was electrified and Blackwall Point given the third rail.

Everything running down with closure seeming imminent until some cheesy grin in Downing Street decides to build a national cultural venue next to Blackwall Point station. Saved by the O2!

1 minute ago, Northmoor said:

I'd imagined something very similar on the North Greenwich peninsula when based at an office there up to a few years ago.

 

My "North Greenwich" branch was to be a TOPS-transition era branch with freight serving the former gas works - that's the one on the East side of the line - and the small container terminal on the river which was at about the Westernmost point on the peninsula.  You can visualise a rundown station (perhaps just one platform surviving from an original three) like much of the North London line was until the late 80s, with peak-hours-only and sparsely-patronised 2/4-EPB shuttle from London Bridge.

What I would really liked to have done is build some Cudworth well tanks, outside framed, open cabs, and have them pulling ancient four wheelers, the thirds with tiny windows and outside framing, the firsts with curved quarterlights like the old stage coaches, and of course birdcage brakes. I've always liked the 0-4-2Ts built by Slaughter-Gruning (lovely name for a loco builder) and the version - built at Ashford - with smaller 5' diameter drivers was used in the mid 1800s for local goods work in the London area. I think it would need to be done in 7mm scale to give that Victorian rolling stock justice.

The Blackwall Point backstory was applied to a small 50 inch by 50cm layout I started building for the 3mm Society's 50th Anniversary in 2015. Family difficulties meant I never finished it, but I include the trackplan here.

Very much a minimum space "bitsa station" design. The points were B6 geometry as at the time we were experimenting with etched brass and laser cut ply point kits and one of the purposes of this layout was to be a test bed for that. (Wayne Kinney's point kits have come along to rescue us all from that clunky kit method). However the resulting points did look good - 3mm Society cosmetic chairs needed too - and were very smooth running. I did take a picture or two

I also made a small 1:5 scale mock up, which I photographed.

Operation would have been a bit nightmarish, these micro-layouts always are, but the challenge was to have a complete layout within the confines of 50" by 50cm - the 50 being important given it was a 50th anniversary. Unusually the gauge was 13.5mm, again this was to be a test bed for suitability of that gauge. I re-gauged an SECR O class I'd built to 12mm gauge with new wheelsets and intended to do the same with an SECR railcar. I'd also widened the wheelsets on half a dozen wagons from 12mm gauge. This is not the place to go into the merits or not of 13.5mm gauge over 14.2mm gauge, just accept, dear reader, that it seemed a good idea at the time.

When regauging the O class I did build a new tender chassis, one with split frame electrical pickup. It made the loco a much better slow runner for shunting purposes.

For a bit of relief from things Western I offer another imaginary railway, a short one in London's Docklands. In the nineteenth century London's docks spread along the Thames, mostly on the Essex side. Development on the Kent side was restrained a bit by the presence of Greenwich Observatory. However by the 1860s businesses were springing up along the Thames along the peninsula of Blackwall Point. These were the upcoming "new industries" of chemicals and telegraphy. So I imagine the SER, which had run its North Kent Line around Greenwich to avoid Admiralty opposition, to have built a branch out to Blackwall Point where a ferry connected it with the GER's Blackwall terminus on the London and Blackwall Railway. The map, based on an 1870s map from that well known Scottish source, shows what I mean.

The junction with the North Kent line actually existed as part of the Angerstein's Wharf goods only branch. I've given the line an intermediate station of Greenwich North as well as indicating potential private sidings.

Ah, MW cabs. The Selsey Tramway had three Manning Wardles, Is and Ks admittedly, and the cabs were all different. They weren't even all MW designs. If Rapido were committing to provide every cab variant then that really would be a rod for their own backs

39 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

While you wait there’s always the Dorset Kits option

 

I already have a cupboard full of unbuilt and partbuilt kits .........

2 hours ago, rapidoandy said:

I have to disagree - no tricks have been missed.

 

The smaller size of the I / K would have increased the design issues. The L is small enough but a few extra mm here and here are useful.

 

The I / K has already been done in kit form. Anyone who really wanted one will have built or had the kit built for them. The L has never been made in 00 in kit for RTR form and that will increase the sales potential.

 

Preserved locos - particularly operational ones help sales - the L wins in this regard.

 

The I / K had a huge amount of variations within it. The L also does but to a slightly lesser extent.

 

Maybe we should just do a SECR version for the hell of it…

 

 

I had hoped my smiley would have defused things. To tell the truth, I thought the SECR MW was a class L, it was only when I consulted Bradley before posting that I found out different. So you could get away with giving the Rapido loco an SECR paintjob and numbering it 752. The other interesting thing is that it doesn't seem to have suffered the slate grey  livery. A photo in Bradley from 1921 shows it still in the Wainwright livery. Presumably it wasn't thought worthwhile to get it back into the paintshop.

One point I don't think has been made is that locos like this were popular with contractors engaged on railway works. That means you can have them on what is otherwise a mainline layout, sitting in a siding with a couple of wagons until they were given temporary permission to go and do a bit of ballasting or shore up a cutting wall.

Despite my gripes, I want one though, so when I have figured out how to place a pre-order, I will. Now about that W&L Earl/Countess in On16.5 .......

"-h" is the display when you come out of programming and into what they call Default/Save mode, in other words normal operation. The alternative is "-n" which is push button operation.

Just come across another trick Rapido have missed through choosing the 'L' over the 'I/K'     😁

In 1904 the SE&CR bought a Manning Wardle K class off the contractor doing works at Folkestone Harbour. It went off to Ashford for refurbishment and a paint job and then spent most of the next twenty years shunting at Folkestone Harbour. So If they'd chosen the K they could have done one in the full SE&CR Wainwright livery

Some good attendances in the Step 3 and 4 leagues. Over a thousand at Horsham and over 1500 at Chatham in the Isthmian Premier, several plus three hundred gates in the Isthmian SE division too. Be interesting what the bank holiday games, usually local derbies will bring. Bognor Regis against Lewes should be a four figure gate, and well-supported Sheppey crossing the Kingsferry Bridge to Sittingbourne should boost that and the long-running East Kent rivalry between Herne Bay and Ramsgate should fill the terraces at Winch's Field.

Minerva Models are 7mm scale though aren't they? I have a Slaters kit I need to finish in that scale.

26 minutes ago, PaulRhB said:

Thing is how many are going to model those railways as opposed to use them on freelance lines where the difference is largely immaterial? 😉  Industrial layouts similarly are rarely based on exact prototypes so probably over 95% of the market won’t be bothered at all and anyone modelling the exact line is probably better off with a kit to get the detail exactly right and the gauge closer to reality too.

Well there's always the old Triang "Nellie" if you want freelance ..........

OK, I probably know more about standard gauge light railways and Manning Wardles than is good for me, but I am a little disappointed with Rapido's choice. The I/K class (MW themselves were a little inconsistent in their naming here) were a little smaller than the L, and were a bit earlier too. Rapido may have missed a trick as they could have offered both the rounded off saddle tank and the older flat sided one with the I/K, as well as different safety valves - the oldest Is were in fact George England locos from before MW taking the company over. The unusual wheelbase with the rear pair being closer together than the front pair is also pleasing to my eyes.

I don't want to moan really, Rapido have made their choice, it's just that it wouldn't have been my choice. But then I'm not running their company.