ejstubbs

B&Q also do rolls of 2mm underlay.  How does that differ (aside from 1mm)?  Do you know?  I cannot tell from their website.  Would that be an alternative?

The 2mm foam appears to be supplied in rolls rather than concertina folds.  No idea what else, if anything, might be different apart from the thickness.

I chose the 3mm because that's near enough ⅛", which I understand to be the best thickness for 00 gauge in terms of the shoulder height you end up with after ballasting.  2mm might give you a slightly mean-looking ballast bed.

I suppose 3mm should, all other things being equal, be better for sound deadening than 2mm.  And it might keep the track a bit warmer... 

Have a look at ordinary 3mm laminate/wood flooring underlay eg from B&Q - at £2.40 per sq m, cheaper than the Plastazote suggested above but you do have a buy 10 sq m in one go.  Possible downside is that it comes in concertina packs rather than rolls, so it has fold lines.  Not a problem if you're only going to lay it under track and put ballast on top, but could be unsightly if you plan to cover the entire baseboard surface.

Wolmar was simply a broadsheet journo and bandwagon railway-basher in the past

Christian Wolmar is the Labour candidate in the Richmond Park by-election (1st December)

So a journalist/media 'pundit' with political ambitions and slightly odd hair.  Remind you of anyone else? 

I would, however, agree with those who've pointed out that on this occasion his reported comments were measured and sensible.

Would data from 31st October still be available on the onboard log of which tram was involved?  Given that the Facebook post is timed at 05:26 and services on that route start I think around 45 minutes earlier, presumably that would narrow down the search for the tram which might have been involved.

I find the way the BBC habitually turn to Christian Wolmar for comment regarding anything involving rail-borne transportation quite scary.  Has he got compromising photos of the Director General or something?

I think they should add a disclaimer: other rail experts are available.

Many trams have a block that drops onto the top of the rail.

 

I dont know what the Croydon trams have though.

The braking systems on the Croydon trams was described quite well in post #24 in this thread.

Latest news from BBC Radio Kent is 7 dead as confiming previous statements on here, and the arrested driver has been charged with manslaughter.

The latest BTP update at this point states:

A 42-year-old man from Beckenham has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and is currently in police custody.

Note that they do not identify the arrested person as the driver of the tram.  Note also that "arrested on suspicion of" does not mean "charged with".

Sincere condolences to all those who have lost loved ones in this incident.

Arrest is usually only on suspicion of an offence having been committed and doesn't mean guilt

In law the only thing that means guilt is a verdict in court.  Remember: innocent until proven...

Arresting drivers seems to have become the norm at road accidents where injury or death has occured as well in recent times . Has there been a change in either the law or its application that has brought this about?

Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

(Not wishing to plagiarise someone else's concise and informative posting on another forum, I shall simply post a link to it.)

back then I doubt if projects were managed by spreadsheet

No project should ever be managed by spreadsheet.  When that happens it usually means one of two things (or both):

• Senior management don't understand what their PMs are supposed to do, and insist on dumbed-down reporting;
• The so-called project managers don't understand how to use the best tools for the job (which, in addition to IT tools, include: communicating effectively and with the right people, treating all promises of delivery and claims of progress with justifiable skepticism until incontrovertible evidence is forthcoming, and good old-fashioned management-by-walking-around).

I've worked in one large organisation where project planning was done using PowerPoint 

the same task has to be carried out several times over on a stretch of railway a few miles long.

Rework kills projects; it should never be tolerated.  Tools like RAID logs exist precisely to manage this kind of thing.

On the flat, wagon side doors were often propped, despite it being forbidden, and used as a working platform for filling and weighing coal sacks, which were then heaved direct onto a lorry.

There's a good photo of that practice on page 49 on Bob Essery's Freight Train Operation for the Railway Modeller.  Model that, then keep the book handy for when someone tells you that it would never have happen because it wasn't allowed...

It was also "Railway of the Month" in the Modeller way back when.....

October 1968 (already discussed in posts 16-23 of this thread).

Yes, the aircraft carrier, adding to global warming, black smoke is conducive to burning heavy crude.

I think you mean indicative of burning what's called bunker fuel.

I've read elsewhere that the North Sea and the English Channel is an Emission Control zone which means that they should use low sulphur fuel or pay a fine. I'm sure Putin won't mind if we invoice him directly...

Blimey, I've heard of being off course but that required them to be seriously lost!

They weren't lost: it was the Russian Baltic Fleet setting off for Japan during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.  They knew they were in the North Sea but they feared that the Japanese might have surreptitiously sent a force round from the other side of the world to intercept them.  Three British fisherman were killed, and two Russians died as a result of "friendly" fire.  (Not too bad a result for the Brits, really, considering they were completely unarmed, against an imperial navy battle fleet.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank_incident

As Judge Dread pointed out, when the Russians eventually reached the Far East (having had to go the long way around Africa, having been refused passage through the Suez canal on account of having attacked British shipping en route) they got their @rses handed to them on a plate by the Japanese.  The Japanese did have the sneaky advantage of having practised fighting naval battles against real warships beforehand - as well as having faster ships, more big guns, better rangefinding equipment, and playing at home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima

​​On a farcebook thread someone has posted that it isn't allowed out to play unless its accompanied by an ocean going tug.

That would be the Nikolay Chiker, according to the information I've seen. You can look her up on https://www.vesselfinder.com/ - she seems to be hanging around off the north coast of Morocco at the moment.

Fastest Railroad in the World

Is the chequerplate in the foreground in a tram-only part of the road? If so, maintenance would be easier, not having to close the trafficked road that crosses over. Also avoids heavy vehicle impacts to the cover and the ends of the switch rails.

Yes it is.  All the concrete surfaces are tram-only.  That said, there appears to be sufficient space on the other side of the road crossing for the switch rails and their subterranean operating mechanism.  I suspect it's the presence of the pedestrian crossing just beyond the road crossing that rules out a more conventional turnout configuration.  By pedestrian crossing I don't mean a zebra crossing or a signal controlled crossing: IIRC it was just dropped kerbs and tactile paving.  (I admit that my memory of the layout should be rather better because of course I crossed the tram tracks using the facilities provided and of course I didn't stand in the middle of the tram track to take the photo, what could possibly make you think that, officer?  Which sparks another question: which force has jurisdiction on the trams - is it Greater Manchester Police or the BTP?)

The whole setup seems relatively new.  Google Streetview's photos from April 2016 show it still in the process of construction/commissioning, and there's no turnout visible on the Google Maps satellite view.

Spotted this during a wander round Manchester yesterday:

It's where Windmill Street crosses the tram tracks coming down off the bridge over Great Bridgwater Street, outside the front of the ex-Manchester Central Station, now a convention centre.

It's basically an oddly stretched turnout, with the switch rails on one side of the road crossing, the two routes then running in a sort of gauntlet arrangement through the road crossing before finally separating on the other side.  Anyone know why it was built like this?  I thought maybe it was to keep the switch moving switch rails away from the road crossing (and I think the pedestrian crossing beyond it).  Would that make sense?

I have started using the Roco/Hornby mix within a rake of Hornby Stanier corridor coaches.  At the ends of the rake I've use Kadees to match the loco (a Hornby Black Five).

I have found that it is possible to make the Kadees work the CCU mechanism more effectively by immobilising the rotation of the knuckle coupling head with a drop of superglue on the pivot between the coupling head and the body of the coupler ie the bit with the NEM 'fork' on it.  This makes the Kadee coupling that bit more rigid, and means that the CCU will operate so as to avoid buffer lock between the loco and coach when propelling the coach round second radius curves.  The coupling will still uncouple because the trip pin operates the "fingers" part of the knuckle so, provided that you are careful to keep the superglue off the coupler head itself, the coupling will still open when propelled over an uncoupling magnet.

I use a Kadee #19 on the end coaches, and a Kadee #5 screwed on the rear of the tender.  When screwed on to the tender, rather than fitted in to a gear box, the #5 coupler does not swing but is exactly the right height for the knuckle to open over a magnet.  This setup provides an adequately rigid coupling to the coach to make the CCU work properly while still uncoupling over a magnet.

I know that in theory you don't really need CCU operation between the loco and the first coach, as there's no corridor connection between the two vehicles.  Nonetheless, I still think it looks better not to have to leave a yawning gap between them if there's a way to avoid it.

That though is very wordy and not a common phrase.

How is "model speed" more 'wordy' than "scale speed"?

The point is that the common phrase ("scale speed") represents an illogical and flawed concept.

If faults are to be picked with the concept I'd say is should be called, fastest model train (scale speed)

Just "fastest model train" would be honest.  As I argued above, if you try to invoke "scale speed" in the comparison then you could take the same train and make it 'faster' by putting a smaller-scale bodyshell on it (of a bigger prototype vehicle if necessary, to accommodate the drive mechanism).  That's clearly a nonsense.

Magnetic rail gun, or rocket power, they're the ways to go fast. Either could be applied to a model railway.

 

But, what constitutes a "model railway speed record", by which I'm not asking what a speed record is, but what constitutes a "model railway"?

 

If I somehow contrived to connect a 0.303 bullet to a lump of lead, mounted on two 00 wheel sets, then fired it down a dead-straight track, would that be a model railway?

 

Or, simply generated a decent explosion inside a closed vessel, with a plug, tightly fitted to a hole, as the only outlet, with said plug being connected to 'vehicle' as above?

 

Kevin

 

(My ideas should not be tried in a garden shed, without deep forethought)

You have quite elegantly and eloquently captured there the core of the problem with the illogical concept of "scale speed".

Of course there's nothing to stop people having fun by trying to make something that looks vaguely like a prototype vehicle go ridiculously fast on 16.5mm gauge track, but it's nonsense to then multiply its actual speed by 76.2 and assert that the result of that arithmetic actually means anything.  By that logic you could put an HO bodyshell on the same chassis, multiply its speed by 87 instead and use that to claim that the HO model is going 14% faster!

Perhaps a different term could be adopted to express the idea that is currently so poorly described as "scale speed".  What the idea boils down to could be expressed as: the speed that the prototype would achieve if it travelled its own length in the same time that the model does.  So perhaps something like "model speed"?

That photo's quite badly pixellated isn't it, David?  Very different to the quality you usually provide.

Oh, hang on...

A couple of old gradient signs I spotted while cycling the route of the old Edinburgh, Loanhead and Roslin railway.  This first one near the start of the cyclepath where it crosses Lasswade Road:

Why the cycle path doesn't continue further east is a bit of a mystery - the embankment certainly continues further but is very overgrown.  Instead you get dumped out on to Gilmerton Station Road, a derestricted semi-rural unclassified road which isn't much fun on a pushbike

The second was a few hundred yards after crossing the Bilston Glen Viaduct (itself a notable railway relic, of course, but hardly "forgotten"):

(The direction I'd approached from was shown as "LEVEL".  I couldn't make out what the right-hand arm used to read, but I definitely needed to drop a couple of sprockets to maintain my usual pedalling cadence.) 

Many thanks for all the advice and guidance.  Especially useful was the photo, which made me much more confident about what I was likely to break encounter.

I happy to say that, by adopting cctransuk's cunning technique, I have now successfully de-roofed the GUV without causing any damage.  Hurrah!  From this point on the job should be straightforward (famous last words?)

I have acquired a Lima LMS 42ft GUV and I want to change the bogies & wheels - the Lima wheels are under-sized and have over-sized flanges.  I can't just swap in a Hornby wheel set because the Lima bogies are a fraction too narrow, so I plan to use a pair of the Bachmann LMS bogies.  The problem is that the bogie mounting points on the GUV are not compatible with the Bachmann bogies, so I will need to get inside the GUV in order to get them fitted using 5mm screws (as I have done with my Hornby LMS clerestory coaches).  Unfortunately I am having trouble getting the roof off the GUV.  I read somewhere that the roof and the windows are all one moulding, so you have to carefully push the windows in as you pry the roof off.  None of my attempts at this so far have been at all successful.

Am I going about this the right way, or is there another trick to it?

 

P1530573 by David Todd 2012, on Flickr

P1530554 by David Todd 2012, on Flickr

Good to see that they have a secure gun cabinet on site, in case they need to 'deal with' any pesky drones.

I gather that Buzz Aldrin would do rather more than go nuts. I any case there are now aerial photos of the lunar landing sites that show them in considerable detail.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wptn5RE2I-k

The action is at 1:35 but the build-up is worth it.  Sanctimonious (literally) twerp got exactly what he was looking for IMO.  Seems the Beverley Hills police came to a similar conclusion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2272321.stm

Am I the only one to be disappointed that, while Suffolk's Police and Crime Commissioner* described the Range Rover driver's behaviour as "appalling" as well as "dangerous, absolutely reckless and completely unacceptable", and Sergeant Thompson from the BTP said that they "take anything like that very seriously", there appears to be no mention of the fact that passing the flashing red lights was 100% illegal.  This seems to be so poorly understood by Joe Public that missing a golden opportunity like this to remind people of the law seems more than a tad regrettable.  If either of them did say it, and the journalist didn't bother to report it then that would be another black mark against them, to go with the "inside lane" nonsense.

* I wonder how much crime he gets to commission?  Just a monthly average would do.