ejstubbs

Telford never made it into the Victorian era - he died in 1834. That's probably also why there are no photos of him: when he died the Daguerreotype was still in its infancy and more modern processes allowing faster exposures and more portable equipment were still years away. That's also probably one reason why there are no photographs of Stephenson(G). Although he lived until 1848, photography was still fairly primitive and experimental during his lifetime. There are contemporary portraits of both men, though. It rather annoys me that so many people seem to think that the Industrial Revolution was a purely Victorian thing, ignoring at least 50 years of technological innovation and engineering development prior to 1837. The achievements of Georgians like Arkwright, Strutt, Brindley, Outram, Boulton & Watt and yes even Telford* don't seem to register with far too many people. As for identification with a particular monarch: both the Stockton & Darlington and the Liverpool & Manchester railways were up and running before Victoria ascended to the throne (and having lived half my childhood in Derbyshire I take a tiny bit of pride in the fact that the Cromford & High Peak was completed during the reign of William IV). To paraphrase Monty Python: "Apart from railways, canals and mills - what did the Georgians ever do for us?" * Although there's a new town named after him, most people probably don't know where the name comes from.

Morley controllers have a separate transformer for each controller - at least, their product descriptions say that they do. They do have centre off positions with a detent but I'm not sure whether the controller is completely isolated at this position.

I am awaiting delivery of a 2" x 2" lazy susan bearing (they are readily available on eBay without cannibalising kitchen equipment - this is the one I've ordered). This is compact enough to fit under the table of the Dapol turntable. I am planning to experiment to determine whether it could effectively remove the need for support at the outer ends of the table. If so then I can arrange for the table to be installed so that the supplied wheels are actually a fraction above the circle of rail, and thus eliminate any risk of wear to either component. If it doesn't work then the bearing has only cost £2.43 - and will almost certainly come in useful for something else at some point in the future. Credit to RMWebber DavidCBroad for helpful advice and suggestions in the use of the Dapol turntable.

In engineering terms possibly true. But given the hoo-ha that kicked off when the Beauly-Denny power line upgrade was proposed, I wouldn't bank on electrification of the line over Drumochter being allowed to go ahead without meeting some fairly vocal objections. But then we're basically in the realms of fantasy here. No-one is going to pay to electrify 175 miles of railway for one or two trains a day from London. Add to the cost issue the problems ScotRail seem to be having with trains for EGIP at the moment and it all goes to make the introduction of electric services to Inverness highly unlikely in the readily foreseeable future. IMO.

Or start a new thread?

Hmm. I tried this technique on a sacrificial Hornby RailRoad LMS coach this evening and I have to say I'm not completely satisfied with the result: There does seem to be a definite 'shadow' where the Sharpie was used (ignore the scar in the paintwork - that was a previous experiment to remove a single number using a wooden toothpick). And if you look at it in a oblique light you can still see the 'ghosts' of the numbers. I think I need to practise a bit more before taking a risk on a model I care about. (Apologies for the rubbish picture, by the way.)

Under the new MOT rules coming in in May this year: "It is not permitted to convert existing halogen headlamp units for use with HID bulbs. If it is clear that such a conversion has been carried out, rather than replacing the entire unit with one designed and approved for use with HID bulbs, the headlamp should be rejected." (Reference page 7 of this document.) This will be a major fail. That might help cut down on the number of "cowboy" HID users who undoubtedly contribute to giving all HID-fitted vehicles a bad name. Another change that should spoil the fun of some car owners who seem to like to take their enjoyment at the expense of the wider population is that diesel vehicles that are supposed to be fitted with a DPF (ie that were sold with one when new) will fail if there is any sign of tampering to the DPF enclosure (at the moment it's only a fail if the DPF has been completely removed).

Well, Mercedes themselves said they'd made a mistake. I think the point was that they told Hamilton how fast he needed to go under the VSC to be safe from Vettel gaining an advantage by pitting, and they over-estimated how long a pit stop would take under the VSC. Hamilton could have driven faster and still been within the VSC speed limit, but the team's calculations indicated that he didn't need to so they opted to reduce the risk of unnecessary stress on the car instead.

Haas was described in one article I read in the run-up to the race as "The Ferrari B Team". There is, of course, nothing at all suspicious about the fact that Magnusson stopped in a place from where his car could safely be recovered, whereas Grosjean abandoned his two laps later in a place which forced the deployment of the VSC, shortly after Ferrari had decided to leave Vettel out in the hope of gaining an advantage later from an incident which required the safety car... You can't help thinking that something a bit funny might have been going on, if you remember Singapore 2008. The main problem (for F1) is that it made the racing on the actual track seem more or less pointless. But then that's been the case far too often in recent years. EDIT: In the interests of clarity, I'd like to state that I am not a Ferrari-hater. For example, IMO Verstappen's penalty for the "leaving the track" overtake on Raikkonen at Austin last year was entirely justifiable. I'm just suggesting that someone of a suspicious mind might be tempted to wonder whether there might have been some collusion between Ferrari and Haas in this particular instance.

The article is a bit garbled. Under a red flag, there is a minimum time you are allowed for each sector (a different one for each sector). Minimum time = maximum average speed. If you complete the sector in under the minimum time allowed then it means you've exceeded the maximum average speed → stewards get involved. They didn't give him the maximum possible penalty for the offence because they recognised that he had slowed significantly. Just not quite enough.

A week ago today I was skiing in the valley in the southern slopes of Monte Rosa (that's northern Italy for those of you unfamiliar with the area). It was a beautiful blue sky day, though it had snowed for 24 hours straight the day before. The untracked snow amongst the trees was at least two feet deep in places, and the trees themselves were still decorated with snow from the previous day. On two separate occasions, as I was riding a chairlift up, I saw a butterfly flitting across in front of me. Gawd knows where they'd come from or where they were going, but good luck to them I say. (Slightly OT but I noticed yesterday that we have eight clumps of frogspawn in our garden pond. This is a body of water no more than 8ft x 2ft in surface area! I do encounter a frog from time to time when pottering in the garden, but I wouldn't have guessed there were enough around here to produce all that. Just goes to show, I guess.)

Ah, OK - not that different to my original thoughts. I don't have much room in the FY to turn light engines, unfortunately. Interesting idea. I might look in to doing something like that but maybe with 1mm plastikard rather than ply.

Thanks for that: you prompted me to pop in to my local Maplin on the way home this evening and eyeball the product in question, as a result of which I am much more confident about its ability to do the job. The information on the small card attached to the placcy bag it comes in was vastly more relevant and useful than the data sheet that they posted on their web site. So I came away with one, as well as a knob for it, and - since I was there, and stuff was going cheap - I also picked up a set of spare bits for my soldering iron. I might even pop back later in the week to pick up another one of the switches (as a just-in-case) and some heat shrink tubing.

Ah, the old "look, a squirrel!" technique. Unfortunately, as I will usually be the only observer, I am unlikely to be amazed. Nice idea, though. No room for a triangular junction I'm afraid.

I did say "including" Maplin. I have been looking elsewhere, including RS and Rapid. I'll take a look at Farnell. DC (hence why I posted in the non-DCC forum). The ones I have found so far that seem to meet my requirements seem to cost in the region of £10 a pop. I'll pay that if that's what it takes - but not the ~£40 that one I found was priced at!!! (To be fair, I think it was rather over-specced for what I want.) Oh for the heady days when I could pop in to RF Potts on Babington Lane! I would if they're still there? I guess I'll have to do a bit more searching...

I am planning to use a rotary switch to control routes and power feeds from my double track main line into my three track fiddle yard. I've looked around online (including Maplins closing down sale!) and although four pole three way rotary switches are easily found, the contact ratings on most of them seem to be quite low - 0.25-0.5A@125VAC, compared to 3A or more for the toggle switches I am using for the rest of the layout. Is this likely to be a problem? The contacts will be switching track power, and powering slow action point motors which draw 150mA according to the spec sheet. I also want the switch to be break before make aka non-shorting (vs shorting). I am surprised how many vendors don't seem to bother stating which type the switches they are selling are! Can anyone recommend a rotary switch that would meet my requirements, at a reasonable price?

Can people please stop calling conventional artillery mounted on a rail-based carriage "railguns"! A railgun is an experimental weapon which uses electromagnetic force to launch projectiles at significantly higher muzzle velocities than can be achieved using explosive propellents. Like this: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun If they could ever be developed in to a practical weapon, it might be possible to mount one on a rail-based carriage in which case I suppose it would be a railway railgun...

I'm still finalising the track plan for my classic L-shaped terminus-to-fiddle-yard layout, and I find myself struggling somewhat with a facility to turn tender locos. Handily, the space inside the curve to the fiddle yard would accommodate a moderate-sized turntable, but for various reasons I'm not in a position to start cutting a big round hole in my baseboard. As far as I can see that rather limits the choice of products, to one of the above baseboard RTR offerings such the relatively large and rather toy-like Hornby one, or the Dapol (ex-Airfix) kit. Even the Dapol one would need some "civil engineering" to get the height of the connecting tracks correct. There's also the issue of providing electrical connectivity to the rails on the table, and some worrying doubts about the longevity of the wheels under the table and the circular track they are supposed to run on, which are both plastic and don't seem very hard wearing. I'm beginning to think that it might be easier to introduce some kind of scenic break for locos to disappear behind, and turn them manually using eg a Peco loco lift. I've roughed out a track plan that might accommodate this but to be honest it looks more than a little contrived - including the use of a Streamline curved point, which seems difficult to justify in a loco yard. Anyone else faced this kind of dilemma, and come up with a satisfactory solution? Even some reassurance - if such is possible - about the use and longevity of the Dapol turntable would be very welcome!

Where do you think the money comes from to buy the company? They don't put their *own* cash at risk!

Talk about first world problems. However did you cope with that punishing workload? What you get from this thread, or any other thread on RMWeb if you use the feature, is notifications of new postings. Sometimes those won't actually be bargains. That's the nature of online forums. It's been discussed to death on here before, and led to the locking of the original thread. To avoid that kind of thing happening again I'd suggest that some people need to grow up a bit, deal with some of the admittedly occasionally annoying vagaries of human behaviour, and stop expecting a *free* forum to provide *exactly* what they want all the time (shades of the recent "why don't people answer my questions?" thread).

With all due respect, you have no idea what proportion of the models sold have been defective. You can't realistically point to the number of purchasers who have reported issues on here and use that as a basis for pro rata calculations, since you have no idea how many purchasers are completely happy with what they bought. It's generally accepted that people are overwhelmingly more likely to go online to complain than they are to post "I've got one and it's fine". Some may be prompted to report a positive result as a response to other people's complaints, but you'd still generally be looking at a heavy skew towards the bad news posters. The old rule of thumb in marketing used to be that, if one person had a problem with your product then they'd tell ten people about it, whereas if one person had a good experience then they might tell one other person. IMO the ease of access to online forums, Twitter etc has only increased the proportion of complaints that become visible, and to larger audiences, with no real compensating driver to redress the balance back towards positive outcomes. But I suppose there's nothing like a few dodgy 'statistics' to justify a bit of outrage from behind the keyboard, for those who feel inclined that way.

The DCC Train Automation web site is showing the MP1 as back in stock. Unfortunately the price has gone up by £1 to £13.50. Still cheaper the German retailers on eBay, once postage is taken in to account, unless you're buying in bulk. I'm pretty much committed to using these for my fiddle yard, but that only needs three of them. (I have a double track main line and a three-track fiddle yard, so there are three possible route combinations. I plan to use a 4-pole three-way rotary switch to work the point motors and switch the power on the middle FY road according to the route settings.)

Last night's episode featured an edition of Jeux Sans Frontières set in Oxford, and being recorded for broadcast by Southern Television (I think one of the vehicles even carried the name Southern Independent Television, which would have been correct for 1968 when the episode was set). So on the one hand, plus points to the Endeavour production team for getting the name of the independent television company right - but minus several million for ignoring the fact that JSF in the 1960s and 70s was only ever televised and broadcast in the UK by the BBC I'd have to give them a few points back for the giant hurdling race, though: that was eerily reminiscent of the sort of silly stuff that inexplicably enthusiastic townsfolk across the continent and the British isles used to submit themselves to for the privilege of "being on the telly". Minus a few points, though, for the "thousands of spectators" which were referred to at one point, despite the rather meagre collection of extras actually looking more like the sort of turnout that you might get for a minor local celebrity opening a new branch of Iceland somewhere in rural Lincolnshire...

In which case the drivers of such vehicles should take extra care in observing what's going on around them. SMIDSY is no justification when it all too often means "I didn't bother looking". That said, an awareness of obvious blind spots eg on HGVs is a something all road users should cultivate.

Whatever you do, don't remove the spring from the points: it's required to keep the point blade in position once the solenoid has fired - the solenoid doesn't have any way to perform that function (you can just push the solenoid bar back and forth using light finger pressure when it's not powered).