Michael Hodgson

30 minutes ago, Hroth said:

As we used to say about decimalised prices after 1971, "Whats that in real money?"

 

Some of us till do ... and convert today's prices back to real money.

I must have stamped thousands of savings account passbooks "converted to decimal 15th Feb 1971" .

I can manage without the farthing - 960 of them to £1, so worth marginally more than a tenth of a new penny, and I remember the old French Franc (which became the new French Centime 60 years ago) of similar trivial value.was made of a very light metal (aluminium/zinc?)

Isn't it nice and peaceful in here?  By the way, has anybody seen my hearing aid?  I must have put it down somewhere.

You may well be right, but I really don't want them to do away with the £1 fee offers - I only list items over a tenner when they limit their fees to £1.

I didn't really expect them to continue those offers as they make a lot more with their standard fees and they dont have any serious competition for sales of specialist things like model railways where the market size is only a tiny fraction of the population.

If ebay do drop those offers it's going to be Quorn swapmeets for all of my decluttering of bulky railwayana.

Beer doesn't have a "use by" date, only a "best before" date, so it's safe to drink old beer...it doesn't taste as good if it's gone flat though.

I believe kegs began to replace barrels just before WW2

What a hideous livery !

On 20/11/2020 at 13:19, kirtleypete said:

 

 

The new walls are complete, including period 1950's adverts for locally made chocolate. I imagine adverts for Cadbury's were a bit thin on the ground around York. 

 

Brilliant work, I hope I will be able to see this for real when all this Covid stuff is behind us.

As to chocolate advertising that's a very good question.  If I were one of the Cadbury family I might think it good business to push my own brand even more strongly in "enemy territory", and the railway company would no doubt be only too happy to receive more advertising revenue.  However Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry were all members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), so perhaps there was some sort of understanding?

It could be faulty wiring, or it could just be a conductive foreign body on the track.  I assume you've already done the obvious and searched to see whether you've left a screwdriver or a track pin across the rails.  I would look particularly carefully at the slip and three way points as they tend to be more troublesome.  And look at those rail gaps that you have got - make sure they are indeed still gaps.

But even the wiring is OK and it had all worked, you would have trouble with this layout from time to time locating faults such as short caused by say a small piece of metal dropped somewhere on the track anyway.  With that large a layout you need to be able to narrow down the problem, which is why people divide layouts into power districts. 

OK, so I wouldn't have have started from here, if it is indeed a wiring issue how to sort out the problem now?  Try setting your points to the main line.  So no routes into sidings, all loops set with both entry and exit to the same line, no crossovers between lines set.  If thats still a problem you've probably got a pair of feeds transposed on one or more of your main lines

I would consider inserting on-off switches (preferably double pole) into the feeds so that I could isolate them in future as well as now (like a DC layout, but the switches don't need to be centralised on a panel).  if they're all turned off, you should be able to turn  on one at a time till you find a pair of switches that cause a short when turned on.

2 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

 

Why don't you speak with PayPal

 

 

Have you ever tried to speak to paypal?

There's a web site called papyal.pissedconsumer.com - of course that might just be for Americans who order their bourbon online?

https://paypal.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html

Sorry to hear about your beagle.  We had to have Max put down several years ago and we've had to have our 20 year old tabby put down just before this second lockdown, and we now have other dogs and cats,  You will still miss him in years to come.  If you do get another dog, no matter how good he may be, he won't be the one you have lost.  The same as you can't replace a human member of the family.  

21 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

 

Whitewash doesn't tell you much more than the track is a bit bumpy - it cannot give you a scientific measurement which can then be used to determine the severity of the defect.

 

It can also tell you if somebody's been nicking coal from your fuel stockpile

21 minutes ago, gordon s said:

....but it begs the question how it gets into the UK in the first place if it doesn't meet legal requirements. I'm sure it came from a  UK address who has stock here.

 

It would have come in a shipping container.  HM Customs/ can't search more than the odd one and even then, they're more likely looking for drugs etc.  Trading Standards only look at things on their own patch.

Even if you buy something in the UK, you can't be sure it will be legal.  Ebay don't look at things that get advertised or do any quality control.  Even if you do complain, nothing much will be change - perhaps a listing might get taken down, but another one will soon pop up under another name.

The rules I have seen about this subject tended to say it was only allowed where authorised (this would be where you couldn't really do it any other way) and then only by experienced men.  Quite how the men were supposed to gain this experience if they weren't allowed to do it was never explained.  I think of tow-roping as practice found more in the North of Scotland rather than being common in England.

I have done tow-roping in O gauge!  Its easier than trying to model horse shunting.

12 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Can we go round and take it for a test run?

from Kings Cross to Edinbirgh?

5 hours ago, sirwilliamfrs said:

If the 'Precedent' takes off, prepare yourselves for a 'Claughton' !

5 hours ago, sirwilliamfrs said:

If the 'Precedent' takes off, prepare yourselves for a 'Claughton' !

Oooh!   Yes please!

If you can get away with wallpapering a backscene onto the wall above it, can you get away with the same below it?  Low relief supporting piers standing on the radiator perhaps?

Just out curiosity if it isn't necessary as an entrance to the room, why is it there at all?

Have you anything in front of the wooden baseboards - if not, why does this bit of baseboard need be any different?

I think on balance I would go for a short wooden baseboard this side of it running parallel, scenicked with something like a road or canal or even just a few bushes, and perhaps a railway fence on top?

1 hour ago, jburgt said:

Simply spray a little bit black paint on it?

Are you talking about the model or the one in the NRM?

Got to have one ... but which one?  I like all the liveries - it's a toss-up between the LNW lined black and the LMS Crimson, probably the latter ... but I like the idea of double-heading with Hardwicke AND Lucknow!

On 10/11/2020 at 22:36, adb968008 said:

newspaper, red star, general parcels, motorail, mail.. thats what made it a 24 hour railway.

 

 

Yes, they were handy those trains - if I joined the lads for a few jars after work and missed the last train there was always a Mk. 1 on one of those services at 1, 2 or even 3 o'clock in the morning.

If you run it off AC you don't need worry about the polarity - it will only be on half of the time but the human doesn't notice that, it will just appear a bit dimmer than it does on the same voltage DC.  The resistor is important to limit the current.

19 minutes ago, Huw Griffiths said:

 

• Keeping with the low current theme, when you install the LEDs, I'd suggest going for a higher resistance than is sometimes suggested. If you're using a 12V supply, you might want to use a minimum of 1K (brown - black  - red colour bands, reading from the end of the resistor) 

 

Isn't that what the photo shows?

Yes, you want a separate resistor for each LED.

It will only light up if you have the correct polarity, so are you sure you connected the black lead to the -ve of your power supply?

Failing that, I agree with Pete's suggestion that it could have been wired with the colours the wrong way round.

If it wont work at all no m,atter which lead you connect as the negative, could you have inadvertently shorted out the resistor momentarily, thus applying 12v directly to the LED and burned it out?

When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was going to be about the statue of an old Bristolian ending up in the harbour.

10 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

I can think of two ways youve not yet thought of...

 

Bingo.

Lottery.

 

I think the lottery is whether certain other manufacturers ever get round to delivering products they've announced.

Credit where it's due - no gripes against Accurascale on that front. 

I'm always wary about payment in advance especially to sole traders/smaller companies, but crowd funding does have its place.

5 hours ago, slg said:

 

As a comparison in February 2013 Bachmann announced 37-560 45 Ton Class B TTA Conical End Wagon

nearly 8 years later it is still in the drawing office.

 

High time somebody called out the breakdown gang to remove it and then maybe the draughtsmen will go back to work!

I believe they were originally callled "Standard" or "Restriction C1" stock, although as the latter is a loading gauge it probably includes a few vehicles other than Mark I.  

I think Mk1 doesn't strictly include vehicles not built on the standard 63' or 57' chassis, even though things such as horse boxes, CCTs, the double deck car carriers etc are described in Parkin's book.