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Yep. Last week I sorted out my contract to the end of the year and today the car passed its MoT. This release couldn't have come at a better (or worse) time, I cannot possibly run it at home but it will fit on the club layout. - Richard.

Some ivy on the viewing side of the tank steelwork could soften the appearance, and also possibly block up more of the view. - Richard.

Looks good to me, and also suitable for light railways and secondary lines where the track seems to be on top of the ballast rather than restrained by it. - Richard.

I am thumbing through the "Railway Magazine Illustrated" for 1975 (volume 121) ... Jan page 2 has the APT-E beside the motorway at Mill Hill, undated but implied in 1974 Jan page 3 has some details of the P train Feb page 104 has tilt testing using APT non-articulated trailer bogies under a former Hasting line demu Mar page 153 has the APT-E passing St Albans City May page 236 has a P train trailer body shell undergoing strength and stiffness tests at Derby Nov page 528 has the E train and the prototype HST at Swindon. Hope this is of interest and sorry if this is a repeat of an earlier posting. There may be others but "APT" doesn't appear in the index for the year! - Richard.

I agree with this, but the Locomotion web site does state, "Limited Edition - produced strictly to order". The claim on the web site may well be true, but if it includes unlimited extra orders placed by Locomotion themselves, it rings pretty empty to me. On the bright side, it didn't influence my decision to buy at all - I am really looking forward to these models. - Richard.

I was trying to inspire some discussion but tapping it all out on a smartphone became too much and I probably didn't write enough. 1. To my mind, the APT-E model is a speculative venture by Rapido Trains. At the beginning of the project they ran a risk of insufficient interest, and having decided to go ahead there was a risk of under-supply or over-supply. 2. Investment by punters before the deadline was a speculative investment. You might have got a train, or your money back, or perhaps even a partial refund or no refund if something went badly wrong. 3. The removal of the deadline makes under-supply seem unlikely. 4. The prior limit of two pre-orders per customer stopped unscrupulous dealers/investors making bulk pre-orders and not fulfilling them, leaving a huge oversupply - good. But, the new limit of four per customer seems to be tailored exactly to small, if not unofficial, dealers. 5. In the event of over supply, the dealers may end up selling off the surplus stock at a discount. So this makes a new risk to the original punters (my item 2) - they may find themselves having paid over the odds by paying early. None of this says anything bad about Rapido trains, but I do think Locomotion Models have muddied the waters by changing the rules part way through the game. A simple statement from Locomotion Models would help a lot. - Richard.

Perhaps Locomotion Models will post an update here.- Richard.

It wasn't really a deadline at all! I suspect, the NRM are wanting to use unfulfilled preorders to build up their own retail stock.

The extension of the deadline sounds like bad news to me. It is as though the production run has been decided but not, as yet, fulfilled by orders. New buyers who are keen for a model can place new orders and choose to pay the full amount. The suppliers are free to say, "we will honour paid-up orders as our top priority, and we will refund the £50 deposit paid on orders we cannot fulfil". I don't like this at all. - Richard.

Locomotion Models are now showing a maximum of four per customer on their Web site. - Richard.

Yes I am showing my age and it is a long time since I had a keyboard in pieces. My current thinking is I do want some tactile feedback through mechanical lever switches, so I ought to use the freebie Android app for testing, and the H&M lever frame / Arduino, as a project in its own right, as the goal to aim for. Right now, the track is wired but relies on Croc clip leads to set the frog polarity. Usability will take a leap forward when I can install the point motors and wire up the frogs properly. I could start this right now if I wasn't sidetracked into arranging a narrow gauge feeder. Then again, it is a hobby! - Richard.

My understanding is the limit of two per customer is for orders with the £50 deposit. No limit if you pay outright now. Richard.

The Heljan socket is too long and it is in the wrong place too! The socket should be short enough to let the 'fingers' on the coupler emerge and lock around the back of the socket. The specification for the size and location of the sockets is NEM 362, "Aufnahme für austauschbare Kupplungsköpfe" - German text only as far as I know, but at least it's easy to understand the illustrations. - Richard. nem362-d.pdf

My model has Kadee #20 couplers fitted (I use Kadees on all my trains now), these are long enough to put the rear of the knuckle in front of the buffers. So (and I know this is far from ideal for your situation), if you could attach a wagon with a similar Kadee on one end and a tension lock on the other, this would work. - Richard.

This was last week. We sat on the bank of the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation with our picnic (this was on a landing stage near Heybridge Basin), throwing bits of bread at the ducks, and seeing none of them would take a scrap of interest. After a while, it dawned on us we had duck sandwiches. - Richard.

There was something special about the APT-E. I ordered a 6-car analogue set some months ago, fair enough I suppose but having seen the "cybermen" video I've now ordered a 4-car DCC+sound set too. Neither train is remotely suitable for my own layout. I am telling myself, I shall run the analogue set on the club layout, and I shall run the DCC set on the new club layout, and when both me and the club settle on DCC I shall sell on the analogue set. But the vibes I am getting tell me I shall assemble a seven-car set, for whatever layout is next, and keep all of both trains as a heirloom. I have declared a personal moratorium on motive power purchases for the rest of 2015. - Richard.

I pursued the career and soon discovered the opinions of the politicians and the bean counters do override ideas like good design. But having enjoyed reading the accounts in the last two posts, I am now asking myself, "to follow apt-e, why not build one, four or five car, 25kV set, to refine the technologies?". It seems like the p-train was rather a shot in the dark, as though someone was desperate to see a train in commercial service. Perhaps someone in Government was wanting to wrap up the R&D activity and jump straight into a finished product? Going from one experimental set to five prototypes seems a bit of a leap of faith. - Richard.

Yes I'd like an official view too. The gas turbine might have been expensive to run, but it would allow operation on a wider range of tracks. The apt-p has always struck me as a peculiar beast; a set of three prototypes tested using customers, which doesn't fit easily into the idea of design experimentation, or design development, or a revenue earning train. - Richard.

I remember being quite shocked when the train was withdrawn from service. As a teenager heading towards a career in engineering, I imagined the train would be a platform for continuous development and trials. So why was it withdrawn and preserved, instead of being retained as a test bed? - Richard.

It's a box for providing "health and safety" for loading and unloading equipment which is designed to be lethal. There is a UK specification in JSP 403 but to be honest, it's a box full of sand. - Richard.

If this is a gunpowder store it should be fine as it is. If it is a store for munitions, there might be a weapon loading/unloading bay nearby. This can be a three-sided box full of sand. If present, it would emphasise the purpose of the store. - Richard.

I don't know Cornwall at all but this model seems to ooze character. A lot of model in a small space too. - Richard.

This seems a shame, those wheels would be superb if they could be moving. No chance of making a new wall for the winding house with a window in a better location? - Richard.

Communications with the relay module are very much one-way (no feedback) so I wouldn't want to attempt a mimic diagram with LEDs. Also with a small layout you can usually see how the points are set. I picked up a bank of H&M section switches as used on their Powermaster controllers - brand new, still in its tissue paper and box, with the customary guarantee slip of the period - 1960s I suppose. Such a thing mounted onto a wooden cigar box would have a nice tactile feel and fairly ooze nostalgia. Some AA batteries inside the box to run the Arduino. The H&M switches are rather "handed" i.e. you really want the 'off' position away from you. Perhaps the solution is a discrete toggle switch on or inside the box which tells the micro controller how to 'read' the switch bank. So you always hold the box the same way up, and the left-most switch always operates the left-most points, whether you are in front of the layout or behind it. It would be easy to print out two track diagrams to go with the two sets of lever numbers. In the meantime, I have got as far as fixing the relay module onto the baseboard. There is a USB socket at the left, which I'll only use if I need to debug Bluetooth problems. The DC power jack is at the other end. - Richard. (Edited for a typo)

The handles on the smokebox door are pointing the same way in both photos. Inside the curve, there are two small boxes on posts and an object which looks like a gradient post. The gradient post is closer to box on the post in the photo with the two men on the seats. There are some weeds on the end of the platform ramp in the photo with the men on the train. So I think, the line had a reverse curve and the photos are of opposite ends of the station. Still, the builder did a lot of work to create symmetry right down to the posters inside the shelter. - Richard.