ColinK

Really suits the BR green.

The colour light signals on my layout don’t work because nobody can see them.

I’ve also been today, glad I had a few £ in my pocket so I could get in. Train fare was £55 so not much left to spend in the show, but the main reason I went was to meet Tim Horn and order baseboards for my next OO layout (must get rid of the old one to make room). Shirebrook was outstanding.

Can admission be paid by card?

Interesting starting post, I hadn’t thought of that when I got all my sound cine films digitised. It did cost a lot but they are all on Vimeo (not youtube) for anyone to watch. Most surprising was that a TV company got in touch and asked to use a clip from one of them.

Thanks Guy, yes I used my free ticket, first time I had been.

Excellent to have the guide available on the DEMU website. Day off work and train tickets booked. But I can’t find my DEMU membership card.

Brilliant magazine.

My Loch Eil arrived today. Came in huge cardboard box with loads of packaging - great for protecting it in transit, and I need a box that size for a item I need to post. The actual loco box is very big, going to be hard to store, but again great for protecting the loco. Intetesting leaflet about the loco and a driver’s story. Yes, the 37 looks great, the nice surprise is just how heavy the loco is, should have lots of pulling power. One query, in the box there was a card saying which way the switches in the loco should be set for an ESU decoder, other make of decoder …. as my loco is sound fitted I’m assuming I don’t have to do anything?

Not tried it , but a fair chance some grass will get caught up in the mechanism.

Many thanks John, that is really helpful , especially the data security attachment. I’m thinking of not using iCloud photos, particulary because I also have many hours of video, in finished projects as well as the individual clips, the latest being in 4K, so massive files that may slow down editing if they are stored in iCloud. I’m going to adopt your recommended approch with two time machine backups. Once I’ve finished scanning my slides I’ll do an extra copy on give it too a friend for safe keeping. Your comments about disconnecting discs are so true. Very recently I couldn’t get my iMac to start; it would start up then say there was a problem and shut down. By using ‘safe mode’ I tracked down the problem, an external disc had been knocked and was no longer connected to a USB hub. The accident has damaged the external disc, while I can read and extract data off it, new data cannot be written to it. The disc is the backup of my scanned slides. Perhaps I should only attach external discs to the computer when I’m using them (except of course Time Machine).

This caught me by surprise too. I use photo stream to see recent photos on my mac, ipad and iphone but do not use iCloud photos. I do synchronise all my devices regularly and keep all photos on my iMac along with a back up disc. I’ve got 28,000 digital photos (99% are my own pics) and the number increases all the time So what do people recommend? I’m not opposed to using iCloud photos, but I also want all my photos in a photo library on my iMac.

Every now and then a handfull of youths will sit at the back of the bus and play music on their phones with the older folk at the front scowling. Last night a group of middle aged ladies were first on my bus and sat down at the back, so the youths had to sit at the front. Once we were moving the ladies started playing Abba songs, singing and dancing at the back of the bus, many of the other passengers were singing along too - the youths at the front were scowling.

I emailed them recently, but got no reply.

Yes, pm sent.

Great work as usual. Nice variety of coaches.

Resturant tramcar - brilliant.

And there is still a road closed near where I live, with the diversion signs taking all vehicles down a road with a 8’ 6” low bridge.

Looking good and hopefully running good too.

Before lockdown 5 of us booked the Corris Railway for a day. Fantastic experience. We all drove everything, steam diesel and battery locos. Worked out at about £100 each. Highly recommended, indeed we have booked it for a day later this year.

There is a big preserved bus event in Morecambe tomorrow (21st May).

I found that it is vital to clean the inside of the rail top, perhaps because of the tight curves. Before exhibiting my layout I spent over an hour making sure the loco wheels were spotlessly clean (used IPA) and the rail head and inside top were equally spotless. It then ran perfectly for a 6 hour show with no further cleaning until I got home. One way of finding the dirty spots it to set the loco running and seeing where it stops; dirt on track, a trace of glue on railhead, a bit of ballast in the way etc, solve that then run it until it stops again and investigate why. l’m looking forward to seeing more updates.

I hate ballasting so on my temporary OO layout I used the Peco underlay, carefully blended into the scenery. 12 years and many exhibitions later nobody has commented adversly on the ‘ballast’ so it must look OK, neither has the foam underlay disintergrated. The layout is about to be disposed of, either sold or scrapped. If its scrapped I can remove the trackpins and reuse all the track.

Nice. If its not too late I would carefully solder electrical feeds to each piece of track. After 18 months or so the fishplates on my feldbahn stopped conducting power, possibly due to expansion and contraction of the rails combined with tiny fishplates. It was impossible for me to add droppers so I ended up soldering wires to bridge each rail joint, a real pain of a job which resulted in some damage to scenery, but the layout does run far better now.