Michael Hodgson

Don't forget most of the GWR was once 7' 1/4" gauge. Its structures presumably had to have greater clearance from the centre line than other companies. Most signals would post-date gauge conversion though.

... quickly followed by the Lancaster By-pass. They were great as you could overtake anywhere, but once you got back onto the A6, you were still looking to find a long enough gap to overtake a lorry struggling to maintain 20 up Shap or Beattock, and had to drive through the middle of towns like Carlisle. During the first lockdown I had to drive down the A1(M) to hospital a few times, and the traffic levels reminded me of what motorway traffic was like in the 1950s when my dad was driving on those stretches. It did indeed seem like over-provision, but Hitler had built similar autobahns before the war. No 70 mph limit then, but that was about all you could get from the average private car. Still as safety problem though as there were no seat belts, few crash barriers and vehicles weren't very crash-resistant.

Oh yes, manure was produced in great quantity in the good old days, and I'm not taking about the "night-soil man" who emptied early Victorian outhouses. Sweeping from cattle wagons, and posh horsey places like Newmarket, Lambourn and Cheltenham might be able to recycle to local agriculture. But big goods terminals in cities had a lot of horse drawn delivery carts and you had to get rid of the stuff. Good job we don't model smells.

This mazak rot is a peculiar phenomenon, I have known coarse scale O gauge wheels that have been in frequent use for decades just crumble into fragments, very much like that Merchant Navy bogie referred to above. It seems to be a sort of metal fatigue. I seem to have been lucky in that I don't recall any of my own stock suffering from this, but I don't think much of my stuff contains that type of alloy. On the other hand, I have had some plastics warp and distort over time.

I've had a few negative tests, but I'm still waiting to be certified. Oh dear. That's no good, even if I win the lottery - I was hoping to get out of Birmingham 20 minutes faster.

So we will be able to travel on it when Covid is over?

Are these various replacements made of the same unsuitable material - and only going to suffer Mazak rot again?

SIgnal 1.18 on this page https://www.railsigns.uk/sect1page2/sect1page2.html

A double blade would be a vast improvement over the peco single blade traps. Another thing you can't get from Peco is the wide-to-gauge trap. Granted, they've never been that common on the prototype either, For those who've not come across them, see this example at Moor Street, see the exit from the track on the right. It's essentially a Y point but with point blades which move in opposing directions - ie not connected by a simple tie bar! Or you can think of it as two single-blade catch points opposite one another. https://warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms1710.htm Also Ely Station, at each end of the Front Road, this protects adjacent running lines on either side. No 47 points at Station South, the ones at the far end were controlled by Ely Dock Junction as his 33 points. These are on Owen Stratford's excellent website of East Anglian signal box diagrams. Not to be left out, Ely Station North 18/19 points could drop you in the dirt. One blade is moved by 18 lever or the other by 19 to allow a movement.

Powerline adapters are best plugged in directly to a spare socket on the same ring main as the router. They don't work as effectively via an extension lead, via a different ring main, or worse still with an RCD device between them, which might be an issue if for any reason you have multiple consumer units. Typically not much use for a railway in an outbuilding like a shed or garage at the bottom of the garden. If you have problems with wifi, run an ethernet cable as suggested by Jonboy above.

... and stayed that way for the rest of its service life.

Do you fill them with helium?

'scuse my ignorance but what is wrong with thick sleepers that can't be concealed by laying a slightly deeper layer of ballast?

A wise consideration. Much of the difficulty of modelling OHLE is connecting the wires to the masts in such a way that they hold their geometry under pressure and don't cause dewirements with the various pantograph types available, especially with model railway curves. So it might be an idea to define some standards on mast spacing for different radius curves as well as needing to settle on the method of realistically representing the catenary/contact wires. Do you envisage that being sectional - separate pieces between successive masts, like the Vollmer and Tri-ang products, or do you think it can be done continuously like the prototype? I imagine the secondary catenary as used in the early WCML scheme would be particularly difficult to do accurately. I suppose this year's survey of what we want the RTR trade to produce will be electrification trains!

The reason you're losing pounds is all these lovely new models the trade is bringing out!

It doesn't have a box board, so it presumably wasn't operational. No point rodding or signal wires issuing from the base just cable ducting so it didn't control any semaphores. No chimney or stove pipe, so modern electric heating ?

There are always chancers listing stuff for more than it's worth. You have to look at what people actually pay.

Those lattice portals pretty impressive and I've always liked the WCML locos in their original electric blue livery, none of the later colour schemes are anywhere as near as attractive. However I'm not keen on having a load of fragile knitting above my tracks, so it's not something I will be tackling. Even if I were I would probably prefer to have some of the older 1500DC stock -Hadfield/Woodhead. One advantage of OHLE is that you use it exclusively for your traction feed, you can detect trains easily from the running rails without needing the cost of going DCC

The box seems to be worth about twenty quid.

A more useful way of presenting the info in this thread would be as a consolidated listing, tabulating them by scale and manufacturer rather than a long series of postings in random sequence. The reason for wanting the information is presumably that certain controllers tend to damage these motors. It would be useful to include details of this where known, and also what controllers are safe to use, and also whether there are any issues with any types of DCC decoder. As far as I am aware the only things I have with coreless motors are a couple of kit built locos with Portescaps. I can test this by pushing one of them with another on the same piece of track and the back EMF from one is enough to move the other one. But I suppose that test wouldn't work if the one I push had worm gears.

The second is true. The first is something I think you can still specify if you want to, but it definitely isn't standard. One of the problems with ebay is they keep changing the way it works.

That observation was made by Nicholas Ridley, speaking of Tam Dalyell - not a cabinet collague, but from the other side of the house. His next remark was "I should have beaten him more". Gordon Brown said that when Nick Ridley was a Minister his idea of the perfect office was an empty in-try, an empty out-tray and a full ashtray.

Rogue governments? In the USA? In this country we have an unwritten constitution, which gives us a different sort of safeguard. It wouldn't need a coup d'état with tanks in Westminster. The Queen is head of state and technically the armed forces report to her. Supposing a PM were to refuse to move out of No 10 having lost the election, she can get ride down the Mall and Whitehall in the Irish State Coach escorted by the Household Cavalry, take her seat in the House of Lords and bang some Right Honourable heads together.

I usually have only one of what I'm selling anyway, so that's rarely a problem. However I don't think they rumble if you list another similar item which is described differently (eg called a carriage rather than a coach)

They're probably still aggrieved at having to live on a reservation