PatB

And the winners tend to cook their battery banks, making the cost per km rather high .

I guess it depends on the availability of charging stations. I would imagine they're still harder to find than petrol stations and may not be conveniently located near where you want to do things to fill the charging time productively. However, I would also imagine that this is likely to be a diminishing problem, at least in the UK which appears to be taking a grown-up view of EVs. Here in the most backward state of a vehicularly conservative country, I can only think of one charging station that I've seen with my own eyes, and that's on private property (although it may be publicly available). I gather that there are others.....Ah, yes, I've just checked here and there are actually surprising numbers. I'm actually rather impressed that charging facilities are even available at one of the Nullabor roadhouses - possibly the least EV friendly environment I can think of .

I can generally get an easy 10% improvement in fuel economy by consciously driving economically vs. my usual driving style. 20% is well within reach with a bit more effort. I have to confess I'm something of a clogfoot normally, but that 10% can generally be had without any increase in journey times. The 20% usually comes at a cost of lower cruising speeds. That's normally aspirated petrol vehicles, both cars and bikes; I haven't really experimented with the turbo diesel Scudo that's our general runaround these days. I do find it rather amusing when folk who run flamin' great V8s or oversized 4x4s, or whose driving style involves alternately stamping on one or other of two pedals, whinge about increasing fuel costs. It's not hard to reduce your outgoings significantly if you really care about such things. Just to keep this post vaguely on topic, I would imagine that driving an EV for maximum range would require similar techniques, but the motivation might be a bit greater as having to recharge away from base will involve considerably more time and inconvenience than refilling an ICV's fuel tank.

And RHD at that.

All mine do this. Probably as a result of 30 years riding motorcycles. It disturbs me if the horizon doesn't tilt when cornering .

In general it's best to use the largest turnouts you can fit into your space but this may be modified by what proportions everything else has. I'd suggest that, if you can run to the full 20 feet, you can probably fit Peco large radius geometry in. OTOH, if you've only got 14 your station may end up looking like it's all turnout and no plain track so mediums would be better. Best plan might be to draw up your plan in something like SCARM or XtrkCAD (both free, I find SCARM the easier to use) to see how it all works. If you need to see it full size, you should be able to print turnout templates from either program (or I think you can download them from Peco's website these days) and have a play on the floor/tabletop/patio.

Given that a car designed for a contact racing formula is likely to be cheap and easy to repair following minor bingles, maybe not as much as you'd think .

Sorry for the really long delay in replying. I somehow managed to miss your post while the thread was current. I'll be checking out your other web presences shortly. However, as it's probably 40 years since I read any of the books I'm not sure if I've really got anything of value to contribute. I suspect that much of the social and political context completely passed me by. Well, what could be more interesting or important than model trains ?

You'd been using grease on the trunnions rather than EP90 hadn't you .

But have you received any of your purchases yet without having to ransom them from Australia Post?

Personally I'm a lot more wary of caustic soda than I am of, say, hydrochloric acid, at least in the concentrations it comes in for pool maintenance and brick cleaning.

Nobody seems to have been too bothered about all the eggs being in the petrol basket for several decades so I doubt if concentration on EVs is going to lead to insoluble difficulties.

That looks really good. To my eye it's a more convincing freelance industrial than Nellie in original form. Probably runs better too, t least at the all-important shunting speeds.

I'm of the understanding that a lot of Continental (and possibly US) H0 is overwidth, especially steam outline. How else do you maintain a correct scale/gauge ratio and still fit in overwidth wheels and overthick rods and motion that are inevitable if working to anything other than P87 standards?

I have to confess that the only CX I've ever ridden in was when I was hitching, back in 1987/88 or so. The car was a well worn example in, IIRC, a dark goldish metallic and had an interior that resembled a mobile ashtray. The driver, as far as I can recall, was wearing baggy grey flannels and an open necked whitish shirt displaying a big gold chain. Sort of Mediterranean peasant made good. Not saying he was likely typical though .

I'm fairly relaxed about inaccuracies in r-t-r. I guess that's what comes of having grown up with assorted early N gauge abominations and 0 gauge Lima 4Fs and Triang Hymeks hauling LMS liveried Lima Mk1s and PO liveried, vac-braked 16-tonners . I tend towards the "does it look sufficiently like the picture in my head?" school of thought. Given that I'm not sufficiently expert in any specific area of the prototype to make said mental picture a detailed and 100% accurate one, there's a fair bit of leeway. As an example, whilst the Dapol/Hornby Terrier is (quite properly) regarded by LBSC/Southern experts as a horrible amalgam of anachronistic features and dimensional compromises, to me it looks like a very small 0-6-0T with titchy wheels and a Stroudley cab. To me, that makes it a Terrier and I can exercise sufficient suspension of disbelief to make it so. Given what Hornby still seem to get away with charging and the daft money that even broken ones seem to achieve on Ebay I'd assume that quite a few others think similarly. Some r-t-r compromises do baffle me though. Why, for instance, did Mainline put the buffer beams on their Peak on the body? Not only is it rather obviously wrong, even to my eyes, but surely doing it right would actually be preferable in this case, bogie mounted buffer-beams being a time honoured way of easing the passage of big locos around train-set curves.

Of course tortoises are more prototypically carried on a lowmac, or a weltrol for larger specimens.

There was a thread on here 2-3 years ago about a shunting/photo plank with a scenified open sector plate. Unfortunately I can't remember enough specific information about it to conduct an effective search. Viewed from a scale eye level it looked really good.

Could preserved sleeping cars somehow be employed as a novelty static hotel? Again, I'm thinking of how a vehicle might provide a revenue stream when not actually operating a train service. Not that many preservation societies would necessarily want, or be able, to become hoteliers or restaurateurs, but there must surely be possible means of cooperation with people/organisations who do.

Sadly, an awful lot of Australia's most serious bushfires (as in the ones in populated areas that threaten numerous lives and homes) are a result of arson. It's telling that some areas burn year after year after year, suggesting that they're lit by the same person. A worrying number of arsonists caught turn out to be volunteer fireies, whether because of some misplaced hero delusion or because they like fire a bit too much I've no idea. Second only to arson seems to be people playing silly b¥$$€%s with angle grinders and the like. The various power companies have quite a bit to answer for too, with a number of serious blazes started by decrepit power poles/lines falling over. As a species, West Australians, at least, have a definite propensity for lighting things up. We spend the summer in mortal dread of fire, sensitive to the slightest whiff of smoke on the breeze. Then, as soon as the summer burning restrictions come off, everyone's out with the matches. Some are sensible and responsible, but enough aren't that the local brigades tend to be on high alert for the first few days of unrestricted burning. There's one block down the road from me which seems to require attendance pretty much every year when things get out of hand.

Whilst I can't say with certainty about railway crossing signs, I do remember many pre-Worboys road signs still in use in rural Somerset well into the 1980s at least. Some may even have survived into the 1990s, but by that time I was living in more technically advanced areas of the country .

It's not the condition so much as the moulded handrails that give it away as Lima's finest .

I suspect that the amount is AU$75000. If so it's not inequitable because, below that threshold, Australian businesses are not required to collect tax on behalf of the Federal government either. Edit:Beaten to it by monkeysarefun.

Australian governments at both State and Federal level have extensive form for implementing stuff without having the slightest clue how it's going to work in reality.

Two Triang Big-Big coaches and a Lima power bogie pretending to be a generic DMU. A Lima 4F chassis and some of its body, supplemented with some scrap plywood masquerading as something almost but not quite like a Midland Flatiron.