ejstubbs

I'm pretty sure that I've seen responses to negative TripAdvisor reviews for a number of hotels and restaurants I've been considering visiting. It doesn't seem to be something that many businesses do all that often, though, if at all. And I get the impression that some start off by responding to negative reviews, but eventually either get bored with it, or decide it's not worth the effort because: (a) once they've built up a reasonable amount of feedback, most people can tell the difference between isolated less-than-totally-brilliant experiences (which is all that many of them are, despite the language that is sometimes used which can make not having your bed turned down in the evening seem like the end of civilisation as we know it) and a generally positive outcome for the majority of reviewers, and (b) it can actually start to look a bit "needy" and/or combative, neither of which are likely to encourage new custom. There's also the old (i.e. pre-Internet) 1:10 rule of feedback: if one customer has a bad experience, they'll tell ten other people about it. If they have a good experience, they might tell one other person. In these days of social media, requests for feedback popping up in your inbox* and so forth, the ratio has probably only got worse. * Which I suspect all too often triggers the "You want feedback? I'll b**dy give you bl**dy feedback!" response from unhappy curtomers. As opposed to the "Yeah, it was good, I'll get round to it..." response from basically satisfied customers.

I had the same person call me three times on my mobile the other day. The first time I didn't manage to answer it in time, so they would have got my voicemail greeting in which I clearly state my name (assuming that they listened/paid attention to it). They rang again a minute two later and seemed surprised that Wayne wasn't available (that not being my name). When I told them they had called the wrong number they just hung up. They then called again a few minutes later, which I didn't bother answering. After that they did seem to give up but such behaviour does make me wonder exactly how thick some people can be at times. When we first moved in to our current house we had a spate of calls for one of the local livery stables. IIRC the cause in that case was that one of the umpteen "local directory" type web sites* had published an incorrect number for the business. It was surprising how many people (a) refused to believe that the number on the web site was wrong, and (b) seemed to think that it was my responsibility to get it put right. The calls did dry up in the end. AFAIK if you find yourself continually pestered by wrong numbers - which I can imagine would be annoyingly frequent in the case of a single digit confusion with a GP surgery - then you can ask your telephone service provider to get involved to try to find a solution. This would most likely involve one or other party getting a new number, which even for a residential user could be more than a little inconvenient (although I believe the telco should be able to put an automatic redirection from your old number in place for a transitional period). * I have never understood the reason for these sites existing in these days of Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo, especially since most of them seem to be little more than a minimal 'scrape' of Yellow Pages or the like, with most of the entries having a "if this is your business please get in touch" flag. For those of a more mid-twentieth-century mindset, BT still maintains the actual telephone directory, and makes it available online (and I believe it has a statutory duty to do so).

I never cease to be impressed at your patience with some of the more, er... 'demanding' patrons of these forums. And although I didn't notice any significant impact to the way I personally use the site as a result of the incident, I think this is nonetheless an appropriate time to reiterate my appreciation for the time and effort you and your colleagues put in to keeping this excellent resource both available, and a pleasant virtual place to waste spend time.

Michael Schumacher was disqualified from the entire 1997 Drivers' Championship as a result of more-or-less deliberately* colliding with Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez. Admittedly it was a championship-deciding race so the stakes were higher - but arguably that makes Verstappen's action even more petty and stupid, given that the only thing he had to gain at that point was a bit more polish for his ego by beating Hamilton through one corner. * The FIA described it as "...an instinctive reaction and although deliberate not made with malice or premeditation". (On the other hand, they took no action following the Prost-Senna coming together at turn one at Suzuka in 1990, despite Senna having made some pretty reckless statements before that race which could have been taken as evidence of intent.)

What Karun said mirrored my own reading of the incident, having watched the replay on YouTube. It reminded me rather of the Hamilton/Verstappen incident at Silverstone last year, in fact, although with turn 2 at São Paolo being a lot slower than Copse the consequences were less brutal. And of course in that race Hamilton was judged at fault and got a 10s penalty.

FYI, Audacity runs on Mac as well: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/

Supply problems from an EU-based manufacturer? Whoever would have imagined such a thing could happen?

The point was that Ferrari built the whole car, in particular the engine, in-house (obviously some smaller/specialist components would have been sourced from external suppliers, such as electrics from Magneti Marelli). Il Commendatore felt that his team's approach was more 'pure' than that of Cooper, Lotus, McLaren, Williams and their ilk, who bought major components like engines and gearboxes 'off the shelf' (though often with a lot of collaboration on the design) from third party suppliers, particularly Coventry Climax, Cosworth and Hewland in the early years when La Scuderia first started to be embarrassed by being beaten by the "garagisti". Arguably BRM was the only British "costruttore" of the early years of F1. Unfortunately their more radical engine designs, like the 1,500cc supercharged V16 and the 3-litre H16, largely ended up being interesting failures in competition terms.

It was FISA. Alfa Romeo was also a member. FOCA was the Formula One Constructor's Association i.e. the 'union' for the non-factory teams which Enzo Ferrari dismissed as "garagisti" rather than proper "costruttori". The two organisations were continually at each other's throats until the first Concorde Agreement was signed in January 1981. That didn't stop the nonsense completely, though, by any means. I remember at the 1981 British GP - for which Lotus had had to cobble together two 'legal' cars to run instead of the banned twin-chassis cars, or else face expulsion from the championship - someone had draped a banner reading "FISA + FOCA = FIASCO" over one of the trackside advertising hoardings. The friction between FISA and FOCA (now both operating under different names I believe) has rumbled on for years, with the Concorde Agreement currently in its eight iteration to the best of my knowledge.

IME of fitting Kadees across my fleet, I reckon your options are: 1) Fit Kadee 'whisker' couplings (the #14x series). The trouble is, it's difficult to know which ones will be the right length and height (underset, centreset or overset) - there are nine options altogether, (product numbers #141-149). So you might have to buy a selection - unless someone has already done the mod and can advise. The length will be partly determined by the minimum radius of the curves on your layout - they need to be long enough to avoid buffer lock on your tightest curves. You may also find that the standard whisker coupling pocket (#242) is too long or wide, which would mean experimenting with the narrow (#262) or short (#252) pockets. All in all, it could end up costing you a fair bit to get the right couplings fitted to just one loco, and thus would be difficult to justify unless you are expecting to modify a lot more non-NEM fitted stock in future. Bear in mind also that this solution will likely involve drilling and/or otherwise modifying the chassis to fit the whisker coupling pocket, which could affect the second-hand value of the model (see also option 5 below). 2) Fit NEM pockets using either the Parkside NEM pocket mounts (which will then require some fishtail NEM pockets, most easily obtained by buying a pack of Bachmann NEM TLCs), or the Dapol NEM pockets. Again, this will likely mean glueing or screwing to the loco, and very possibly other 'surgery'. 3) Have a look at the Hornby service sheets for later versions of the same model to see if there are spare parts available (e.g. tender chassis bottom, front pony truck) for a version that does have NEM pockets. You may still have to source the actual NEM pockets separately, the likelihood being that the Hornby spare parts will only have the socket for the Hornby/Bachmann NEM pocket's fishtail to plug in to, not the pocket itself. 4) Some other solution of your own or some someone else's devising, possibly involving screwing a #5 Kadee coupling directly to the chassis (which I wouldn't actually recommend because you lose the lateral swing in the coupling, although it can work OK). 5) Sell the model you've got and buy a newer version which does have NEM pockets. In all cases, remember that getting the height of the Kadee coupling is critical for correct operation, for which the Kadee height gauge (#206) is invaluable. Also, have a good read through the various existing threads on RMWeb about Kadee couplings. There's lots of good information and experience in there.

When I saw the title of this thread I initially thought that the OP was looking for something akin to the products of Boddery Household Noises Inc: (From a paper by Paul Jennings* in the March 1970 edition of the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, no less.) I'm rather disappointed to discover that the enquiry was only about lighting a model. * This Paul Jennings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jennings_(British_author), not that Paul Jennings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jennings_(Australian_author).

Says the man who has chosen to standardise on a single manufacturer's tension lock couplings because of the incompatibilities found between different manufacturers' RTR tension lock couplings. As you yourself have found, "RTR tension lock couplings," as in the ones that a model comes with, are by no means a universal panacea. If one intends to standardise on a specific supplier's couplings (which I think is a good idea, BTW) then other types of non-scale/non-prototypical couplings, e.g. Kadee, and the Hunt magnetic couplings, can be just as good in terms of reliable interoperability (within the chosen coupling range) and just as effective at avoiding buffer lock issues on small radius curves. And stock fitted with close coupling mechanisms really needs one of the rigid coupling types such as the Hunt or Hornby/Roco ones. Fortunately, on modern stock with (correctly located) NEM pockets it's generally a lot easier to standardise on one or two coupling types and equip your fleet accordingly. Retro-fitting more modern coupling types to older stock with couplings moulded or screwed to the chassis can be trickier. Either way, you're generally going to end up spending a bit extra to replace the as-supplied couplings, but for the sake of reliability it is IMO well worth it.

Cheap digital oscilloscopes like this one or this one are more than adequate for this kind of job. Maybe difficult to justify the cost for a one-off task but whoever turned down the opportunity excuse to have more toys tools? (And you might be surprised how useful one can be for other things. I recently used mine to find the "outside foil end" of a cylindrical foil guitar capacitor - and it definitely made a difference installing it with that side connected to ground.) That is how traditional feedback controllers work. I doubt the Compspeed is any different. A key factor is the significantly lower inductance of coreless motors cf cored motors. That means that, at the kind of PCM frequencies used by the type of feedback controller which uses pulses at around or about mains frequency, a coreless motor's impedance can be 20% or less than that of a cored motor. Low impedance means that the current that flows during the pulses is higher - and high current causes overheating. The lack of a heat sink in the form of an iron core just makes the problem worse. The impedance of an inductor is directly proportional to frequency, so at higher frequencies such as the 10-20kHz used by DCC decoders, the impedance of the coreless motor's coils is greater (100 times as much with e.g. 10kHz PCM vs 100Hz PCM) so the current flow - especially the initial peak current during each pulse - is significantly lower and the heating effect is much reduced.

With the contents counting towards this year's cost cap, obviously.

Which seems a bit odd, since "llama beans" are often touted as an excellent organic fertiliser/soil conditioner. They may not be a miracle panacea for all gardening ills (see also the nonsense spouted about "super foods" - aka "food") but they're a perfectly good source of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorous as well as organic material for soil conditioning. Apparently it is best to soak them for a while before adding them to the soil, to help speed up their breakdown. Camelids (which is what llamas are) are similar to ruminants (e.g. cows, sheep & deer) in that they ferment plant fibre in a foregut in order to extract the nutrients they need. They only have three "stomachs", or parts to the gut, unlike ruminants which have four, and they do not chew the cud like ruminants do. Basically, though, the stuff that comes out of a llama's exhaust isn't all that different to what comes out of a cow (on which subject, it seems that camelids aren't quite as bad a ruminants for methane emissions.)

I'm actually going to pick a hole in my own post here: SetTrack* isn't such an obviously straightforward solution if the rest of your layout is Code 75. Although tracks & rail joiners that allow code 76 and code 100 to connect do exist, the use of mixed rail codes might detract somewhat from the effect being sought after. * Thinking here about Peco & Hornby. I know nothing of fixed geometry trackage from other manufacturers e.g. Kato.

Still generally steel, though, aren't they? As Nearholmer said, brass bristles are preferable on good quality precision files, and a suede brush seems to do the job.

Isn't it easier just to buy some, er...2nd radius SetTrack curves? They are available in 45° (double curve), 22.5° (standard curve) & 11.25° (half curve) subtended angles and it's straightforward enough to cut them down to the angle that you need e.g. to fit with Streamline geometry. Probably easier than trying to coax flexi down to such a tight radius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_(fictional_character) I have read all the George Smiley novels and I can't recall Control ever being addressed or referred to in any other way.

ISTR mention of here of a company that will print up photos as backscenes but I'm afraid I cannot remember any details. You'd have to take the photos for them to work from, of course, but it would potentially - if you can find a suitable real-life scene, and get a good enough photo/photos of it - offer the opportunity to get an image as close as possible to what you're after. I like Matt's idea of a linear patch of essentially waste ground between the retaining wall and the backs of the flats. I'd be rather surprised if modern blocks of flats were allowed to be built immediately at the top of a cutting*, though I'm sure someone will be able to come up with at least one example. Buildings dating from the time that the railway was built might be a different matter. * That said, there was some serious piling driven in to the ground directly above the Haymarket tunnels for the new Haymarket development in Edinburgh. It's quite impressive what civil engineers can manage to do sometimes.

I take that to mean "there's no point changing supplier to get a better tariff because they're all on the cap". Switching supplier in the hope of getting better customer service would be another matter. I've read good things about Octopus and I am considering approaching them (though their web site seems to try to discourage people from switching to them, for some reason - looks like I'll have to call them up if I'm to make any kind of progress). Mind you, I was switched to Shell Energy when my previous supplier (Pure Planet) went bust and they've been pretty good to date, after an initial rather worrying lack of communication following the enforced switch. They e-mailed me the other day to remind me to take meter readings on 30th September, but assured me that I've got 30 days to submit them. (One might be tempted to defer taking the readings for 30 days...though I'm told that technically that would be fraud.) We had our usual plumbing & heating contractors round a few months back, just to get the pipe to the hob capped as we were switching to an induction hob. I asked the guy who did the job whether they'd had any interest in, or were looking at getting involved in, air source heat pumps. He said that they don't work very in Scotland (which I've heard said elsewhere) and followed up by saying that he expected hydrogen to replace natural gas "so no need to go changing your central heating system". Then I saw this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/27/hydrogen-is-unsuitable-for-home-heating-review-concludes last week... I'd be interested to know whether you, as a professional working in the field, have any views on this.

You're right, bad choice of words on my part. Perhaps "modern times" would be more appropriate. Mind you, given that the NFL was founded in 1922 (so is 100 years old this year 🎂🍾🥳) one might be able to justify saying "only in the last forty years". If one felt so inclined...

Never mind a pushbike, I suspect most electric scooter journeys are within straightforward walking range. (Personally, I don't think I'd much fancy using a scooter for any distance that I would regard as being better cycled.) Which requires decent, segregated cycle lanes which go where people want to go. Denmark generally has these, at least in Copenhagen. A lot of other countries unfortunately don't. Again, journeys that could easily be accomplished on foot by the vast majority of scooter users. (I'd suggest that anyone who is physically incapable of walking a mile is also likely to be unable to stand upright on an electric scooter - and control it safely - for such a distance.) We were on holiday in Portugal earlier this year, in Porto and Lisbon which both have what seemed to be a thriving electric scooter rental culture. Every single rental scooter has a large-ish sign on it stating that it is illegal to ride the scooter on the footway. Every single electric scooter user blithely ignored it. Some did so in a vaguely responsible fashion. Others much less so: slamoming at unsafe speeds between pedestrians, and giving no kind of warning when approaching pedestrians from behind more or less silently.

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/driving-licence-requirements-for-agricultural-vehicles/ EDIT: jcredfer beat me to it! Note that the above applies to driving on the public road. AFAIK you can drive what the heck you like on private land without any legal requirement to be licensed or insured (although on farmland other legislation such as HASAWA will apply). However - AIUI since IANAL - RTA (Road Traffic Act) legislation applies on private ground that the public have access to e.g. supermarket car parks, as well as to public roads. So licensing issues might become relevant in the event of an instance of suspected careless or dangerous driving on some parts of a farm to which the public have access e.g. if the tractor driver managed to collide with a walker or rider using a public right of way through the farmland. As well as potential fines/imprisonment, a driver in such a situation who doesn't hold a licence of any kind could end up with deferred points, or even a ban, to be enforced if and when they do eventually get a licence.