ejstubbs

Not really, largely because there is no standard for OO tension locks. See this recent thread. You can standardise on a single manufacturer's TLC eg the Bachmann one, which is fairly readily available. This can often mean taking a knife to other manufacturers' stock, though, which some folks don't like doing. Or you can just fettle the couplings on each item of stock until they work well with the other stock they'll be coupled up to. Droopy couplings can often be fixed with a shim of plasticard (see my post #415 above regarding a similar issue that sometimes arises with NEM Kadees). Or you can throw the blasted things away and fit something better.

Nah, that's what choc blocks are for!

I bought one of those last time they were in store. Unfortunately it failed the second time I tried to use it, so it had to go back for a refund. That's one of the slight gotchas with buying stuff like that from Lidl: they only have limited stocks so there's a fair chance that they won't be able to provide a replacement if the item does fail after more than about a month or so. That said, I've had perfectly acceptable service from other bits of DIY kit bought from both Lidl and Aldi - you'd have to prise my Workzone Li-ion multi-tool out of my cold, dead hands! I ended up buying an iron from Maplin that was recommended on RMWeb (possibly on the old Bargain Hunters thread) that goes down to 150º. Significantly more expensive but it does have that extra capability. Update: it was this one.

I've not got any of those particular wagons but I have found that NEM Kadees can sometimes droop a little due to being a trifle loose in the NEM pocket. Whether that's because rolling stock manufacturers don't follow the NEM pocket standard closely enough, or because Kadee's swallowtails are a fraction too thin, or an evil combination of both, I don't know. I've found that a shim of 10thou plasticard* under the swallowtail usually does the trick, although you may find that you need to tweak the trip pin slightly as well, per tomparryharry's advice. * For some unfathomable reason Slater's don't seem to do 10thou plasticard in black, which is a pain. I ended up having to pay rather more to get the Evergreen 10thou sheets in black if I wanted to be able to cut and fit shims without also having to wield the paintbrush

My understanding is that Johnster is fully committed elsewhere for the foreseeable future. In an idle half hour yesterday evening I knocked up this version of Minories in Hornby Setrack using AnyRail on my Mac: The grid lines are on 12" spacings, so this version is 6ft 6in by 1ft 6in. The longest platform will take three coaches plus a loco, the other platform roads rather less (they could be extended to end in line with the longest platform by the judicious use of cut track). If there was more length available then the platform roads can easily be extended. There's no fiddle yard detail: again, space constraints are likely to dictate what can be done there. Can I suggest this Peco booklet as a basic starting point for layout design? For only £1.37, it seems daft not to have it to hand...

I think the crossover is a hangover from the prototype Clarence Road, which had a double track approach (see earlier discussion on this thread on the subject eg my post #251). The crossover was needed so that arriving trains could access the single platform on the up side. With a single track approach it makes no sense still having it there. You do need a crossover at the buffers end for running round, though. All a bit odd, really - especially with more points in the rather bizarre fiddle yard than on the scenic area! I think that would be a bit of a challenge TBH: if the "classic" Minories as I referenced above is 7ft long that only leaves 3ft for the fiddle yard. Three 57ft coaches and a 2-6-4T will just fit in 3ft. Roughly 6" more could be won back for the fiddle yard by using only short radius points and putting the buffers hard against the end of the baseboard, but 3ft 6in still isn't really a lot. There would be no room for pointwork in the fiddle yard so cassettes/loco lifts etc would be pretty much obligatory. Mind you, if Ed is happy to use Setrack (as seems to be the case going by the plans he's drafted in Trax) then that probably shaves a bit more off the station length and could give a bit more back to the fiddle yard. I'd agree that, if Ed has 4ft width to play with then an 8ft x 4ft roundy-roundy with a central operating could be worth considering. That could be made out of two 4ft x 1ft or 2ft boards, and two 6ft or 4ft x 1ft boards, giving a 2ft wide operating well. That would have plenty of room for three coach trains.

If you mean this one: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/28198-bradfield-gloucester-square-br-1962-ish/ then you need to be aware that that layout was constructed using hand-built track. You can basically forget replicating that using ready-to-run track. Just look at the single slip/scissors/double slips combination in the station throat: If you try to create the same combination of route options using rtr track it'll end up a lot longer than the 15ft that TheLaird used for his layout. I'd suggest that Minories, or something close to it, is still a better bet if that's the sort of thing you fancy ie a compact urban terminus with a fair amount of operational flexibility and interest. I'd also suggest that going from a single platform with a run-round (ie your Cardiff Clarence Road idea) to three platforms is quite a jump, and might indicate that you still aren't clear in your own mind what you really want. No worries, though: that just gives you more opportunity to do more research! How much length do you actually have to work with? As stated earlier in this thread, the original Minories occupies about 12ft by 1ft in OO. There's a plan of Minories using Streamline track in this post on the 00 Minories track plan wanted thread. It only shows the station as far as the scenic break, but that only occupies 7ft so if you had 12ft that's a fair amount of room left for a fiddle yard (especially if you use cassettes, or a Denny-style fiddle yard, rather than pointwork). (Note that the rather awkward "wiggle" around the hinge at the bottom edge of that plan can be designed out if you are building a fixed layout ie you don't need it to fold.)

From that article: Gasly says he does not mind which scenario ends up happening as he sees benefits in both. "The two options are exciting for me. If I go to Super Formula, fight for the title and come back to Mexico and finish the season with Toro Rosso that would be great, because a title is a title. But if I can go to Austin and race with Toro Rosso and end the season with them I will not complain because it is a fantastic opportunity." The young man seems to have a sensible attitude. (He'll never get far in F1, then...)

Ah, the Brownie 127...I used two during my youth: the black second model with the shutter release on the top, and the grey third model with the shutter release on the front. I do have some railway photos taken with them somewhere, I'll maybe try to dig them out. There was a third model Brownie 127 on display in the 1960s exhibit in York's Castle Museum, when I went there a few years ago. I nearly had a fit when I saw that they'd 'completed' the display with a cassette of 35mm film! (Edited to add that I like your photos, and would like to see more!)

And illegal, don't forget that. Overtaking on a pedestrian crossing (PC20 - 3 points), plus passing at least two pedestrian refuges (islands) marked with "keep left" signs* (TS50 - 3 points each). Plus a minimum of 3 points for driving without due care and attention (CD10) and you're off the road sonny. Oh, hang on, if they lose their licence they can't work so they can plead hardship and carry on driving... B*ll*x to that, I say. If you need your licence to work then you should have thought about that before choosing the break the law so egregiously. * OK, someone appeared to have demolished one of them. I don't know whether that's an adequate defence. OTOH, it could easily have been the bus that demolished it.

Not that I don't believe the official report in this case, but your comment does remind me of the days when Alfa Romeo were running their own cars in F1 (1970s and 1980s) and their engines had an unconquerable tendency to blow up. At one race Andrea de Cesaris (or "de Crasheris" as he was sometimes known - or simply "the mobile chicane" to James Hunt) retired and the official reason given was an oil leak. Autosport reported one pit lane wag as remarking: "Yes, you can see it leaking - out of that big hole in the engine block."

That Pareto principle gets everywhere. When I used to do programming for a living I used to estimate that 20% of the code I wrote handled 80% of operating conditions - ie basically normal operations - and the other 80% of the code was there to handle the remaining 20% of conditions, the exceptions to normal processing. I note that the Wiki article references Pareto in the context of bug fixing. It comes down to the same thing: 20% of the code is traversed 80% of the time, so getting the bugs out of that 20% of the code will eliminate 80% of crashes simply because that's where the bugs are most likely to be encountered, not because that's where most of them actually are. However, by taking that approach you potentially risk failing to debug the exception conditions, which is not a good idea. It's precisely when things aren't behaving the way they're supposed to that you need the system to work. See British Airways and their IT meltdown over Easter: their disaster recovery plan was inadequate. You need to test this stuff to make sure it works.

From the camera on Vettel's car it looks very much as it Vettel moved in towards the apex and cut up the driver he'd just passed. https://youtu.be/Zo13jKbGmXc?t=75 (These YouTube links usually don't stay up for long, once the F1 rights team have got to work.) Odd how the two sequences look very different. Perhaps something to do perspective being distorted due to the use of wide angle lenses on the car cameras?

If you finish the baseboards, you could follow Siberian snooper's suggestion in posts #216 and #223 and use the Peco point templates to experiment with laying out different track formations at full size (assuming that you're going to be using Streamline track).

The crossover will be formed from two points. The track you choose to use (Setrack, Streamline, other) will largely dictate the crossover's length, and the spacing between the two parallel tracks. The bit on the platform road between the crossover and the bufferstop will need to be long enough to accommodate your longest loco, otherwise it won't be able to run round the train in the platform road. The distance between the crossover in the station itself and the one in the station throat needs to be long enough to accommodate the longest set of coaches you hope to be able to run. Plus a bit, because there will be overlap at the crossover. I usually allow at least 5cm extra at each end where coaches are going to be sat on one of the diverging roads. This stuff is massively easier for you to do if you get yourself a track planning tool, and there is no good reason why one of XtrkCAD, Railmodeller or TRAX won't work on your Mac.

Looking at the description of the app on Bluerailways' web site, it looks as if it effectively gives inertia control, with configurable acceleration and deceleration (and an emergency stop) rather than 'pure' analogue control. If that's the case then I'm quite tempted to drop £40 on the 522 just to have a play with that.

That would seem to settle it, then: the layout needs to be on the right hand side of Harlequin's diagram. It would be very helpful if the precise dimensions of that space could be determined. It looks to me as if there would be more space for a fiddle yard at the bottom of the diagram - the top seems to have less room available due to the need to keep access to the Juliet balcony free. Still doesn't look like a whole lot of room for fiddling. A fiddle yard behind a scenic area might work. Rough diagram below (layout in green, fiddle yard in blue):

The platform, singular, is on the left at the end of the double tracks ie the side where it says "Station" on the map. It is often difficult to make out exactly where station platforms begin and end on those large scale OS maps - they were often indicated fairly sketchily. Arriving trains would need to cross over from the down line using the crossover before the kickback siding. (If the platform had been on the other side then the crossovers would have been the other way around.) The platform is actually marked on the 1954 OS 1:1,250 plan: Interestingly, there's also an engine shed marked: at the north end of that screenshot, beyond the blocks of factories. Those large factory blocks aren't on the 1920 map, and nor is the engine shed, but the latter is shown on the 1941 map as "Engine House" - I had assumed that was referring to a stationary engine but it appears not. I suspect that the engine shed was more for locos working in the extensive factory sidings, rather than for the passenger service. But it provides an "excuse" for loco handling facilities if one were needed.

In that case I can see no reason why XtrakCAD, Railmodeller or TRAX shouldn't run on your Mac. (I think you may need the X11 libraries to run XtrkCAD - you can download them from here. This is the method recommend by Apple to get X11 on MacOS.) Does that mean there's no chance of a bridge/removable section across the french window giving access to the Juliet balcony? If so then the layout will have to be one side of it or the other. I'd favour the right hand side (looking at Harlequin's diagram) since that's furthest from the cooking area. Which window are you referring to here - the one giving access to the Juliet balcony, or the smaller one next to the cooking area? There's quite a lengthy thread about Cardiff Clarence Road station on RMWeb here. You can see the track plan if you search for Cardiff Clarence Road on the old-maps.co.uk web site, and pick the 1:2,500 scale maps. Here's a starter for ten: That's the 1941 edition of the OS map, which is the earliest edition to show the kickback siding Johnster mentioned. The 1954 1:2,500 plans are actually a little bit clearer - you can access them via the link I posted above. The old-maps.co.uk web site can be very useful for researching the layouts of old stations, or stations which still exist but which have been "rationalised" ie downsized for nothing more than EMU/DMU services. The Disused Stations web site is also quite good for researching station layouts, and station histories.

Are you referring to the track planning tools? I would find it a bit odd if none of them are working for you. XtrkCAD is available in a MacOS specific download, Railmodeller Express and Pro are on the Mac App Store, and TRAX should run on anything that's got a reasonably modern browser (I think it needs HTML5, but any currently supported browser should be compliant with that these days). How old is your Mac, and what version of MacOS is it running?

You seem to have completely overlooked the fact that I was not talking about product innovation, but about providing the impetus for a "wide-ranging behavioural and infrastructural revolution" (my exact words). And I said he had no track record of doing that - please provide evidence to the contrary if you have any - while the automotive manufacturers arguably do, based on what they've done in the past that was very little to do with the physical product and a lot to do with changing the way that people bought them. They have shown in the past that they can think beyond the product itself. I haven't seen that from Dyson to date. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/29/dyson-electric-car-project-industry-experts-2020-engineering-manufacturing-regulatory-hurdles And I didn't say that the automotive engineers are the only ones innovating, which is what you seem to be trying to imply. I said they have a stronger track record for innovating in areas beyond just the product. You mention Elon Musk and I would actually agree that, although a lot of people focus purely on the physical hardware his company sells (still without making a profit to date, BTW), he does seem to have a broader vision for what the world could be like several years in the future. I don't believe that he's in the game just to sell cars with batteries and electric motors instead of tanks of liquid hydrocarbon fuel and ICE engines. He's got other things in mind. I'm not convinced from what I've seen and heard from Dyson so far that he is aiming to do anything more than create a better electric car - and it seems to me that in doing that he may find himself fighting battles that no longer need to be fought, against competitors who are already planning to move the battlefield completely elsewhere.

Hey, that looks good! An indication of the approximate scale would be helpful, eg the real life distance that the sides of the small squares represent. Which of the windows is the Juliet balcony?

XtrkCAD/XTrackCad runs natively on MacOS, and is free. That said, I find it difficult to use. In fact the last time I decided to give it a try (last week) I coldn't even work out how to place a turnout - it seemed to need me to set a configuration setting which I could not for the life of me work out how to do, despite much poring over online help and the like. OTOH, many RMWebbers seem to like it so it's probably just me. There's also an app in the Mac store called Railmodeller - available as a free download with limited functionality, and the paid Pro version (see http://www.railmodeller.com/express-edition-en.html for more info). I have tried it but it was a while back. As I recall it seemed OK, but not enough to wean me away from my favourite layout planning tool which is... ...AnyRail. I even paid for the full version. Yes, it's only available for Windows I run it on a Windows virtual machine running under VirtualBox (you need some way to install Windows in the virtual machine if you take this route - I used the VMWare P2V tool to create a Windows VM from a laptop running Windows). Other RMWebbers report running it successfully using WINE (not a solution I'm not fond of, TBH). Either of those techniques can reportedly also be used to run SCARM on a Mac. If the technical jargon baffles you, you probably don't want to go down this road... There is another, somewhat left-field option which is (theoretically) platform agnostic because its basically a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering: TRAX. All you need to run this is a web browser. I did have a wee play with it once. It seemed...OK. Well, it didn't crash, anyway. The page design is a bit "pre-school" IMO. One way or another you should be able to find something that will run on your Mac that you can use for designing layouts.

Old school thinking. What you really need are some of those clever interlocking plastic barriers that disconnect themselves and fall over at the slightest breath of wind, blocking the entire lane. When I were a lad they'd put a little tent over the hole and mark the hazard with the road mender's equivalent of flaming torches. Aye, them were the days...

That's actually a long-term aim of the companies working on autonomous vehicles: you won't own a car any more, you'll just hail an autonomous vehicle using a smartphone app and it'll take you where you want to go. Basically it's a switch from private cars to private hire cars. Which is probably why Uber is so desperate to get it working (I say "desperate" because they once again seem to have taken Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" mantra rather too seriously - and what they broke was the law). That also helps with the issue of your electric car not being charged when you need it unexpectedly: your autonomous vehicle provider manages it all. And if your ride does unexpectedly run out of juice in the middle of the job, they can just send another one to pick you up and carry on. A bit inconvenient but not a show-stopper. It also helps with another issue, that people tend to buy and run the biggest car they will regularly need - so Dad drives to work on his own every day in a car capable of carrying him, the missus, three kids and all their gubbins to Centre Parcs for the weekend. His autonomous minicab provider can send him a compact vehicle for this daily commute, and a minivan for the weekend trip. But to bring this back to Dyson: again, a number of organisations are already working on it, and IMO it's even more doubtful whether he can bring anything useful to such a wide-ranging behavioural and infrastructural revolution than he can to the technology that makes cars move. I say that purely because AFAIK he has no track record of doing anything with the stuff that he makes other than sticking it in a box and selling it. It may strike some people as odd, but it's arguably the automotive manufacturers who have a strong record for innovation in that area, with their history of innovative finance schemes (was it GM that was described as "a loan company which happens to make cars as well"?), approved used car schemes (to overcome the market for lemons effect) and so forth. They're working on electric vehicles. They're working on autonomy: all those 'driver aids' that are turning up in new cars are steps along the way, and arguably more to do with getting people used to the idea than being technical stepping stones (it's quite likely that the technology they could deploy is way ahead of what regular car buyers would be happy with right now). It's extremely likely that they're also working on how these things are going to be bought and used in the future as well.