Michael Hodgson

The vessels involved were trying to use the locks to enter the canal.

That's a nicety I wasn't aware of. So it's not just the price of sound decoders that is putting me off them now.

Oi! My mum was a little old lady who lived near Chepstow and my parents used to walk across the bridge up to Tutshill regularly until Dad's hip got too bad. Mum didn't use the trains, but she did park by the line at Tescos to do her shopping. ...by the way whenever a guard was found dead having fallen off his brake van, it wasn't unusual to find his fly was open

Probably less than the power lost in driving the old ones, and probably less the acceptable error range in meter accuracy.

It wasn't so much a bridge bash as a collision between two vessels which then got out of control as a result and in the confusion and the fog the bridge was also clobbered. I've got most of the railway accident reports since WW2, including this one. It wasn't the usual sort done by HMRI and nowhere near as interesting. It was a Court of Inquiry by judges under the Merchant Shipping Act in which their Lordships merely sought answers to a series of questions such was the master of this vessel or that one negligent. I well remember the piers still standing many years after the bridge spans had been removed, used to see it as I drove down the A48 regularly to visit my parents near Chepstow (avoiding the tolls on that motorway bridge). Given what had happened and that the decision not to repair the bridge you would think the piers would have been removed as a hazard to shipping. There obviously wasn't the money for that either, at least until many years later.

Yes it's to stop a sudden inrush, so you do need to limit the current, so you need one in there, The higher the value the longer it will take to charge when you first switch on, but you probably aren't worried about that (within reason).

All very well for a vehicle maintenance run, but for a routine empty trip to collect a load even if the security staff travel one way by road, doesn't it mean they need an extra working just to get the support coach there for the loaded journey the other way?

Isn't there a risk that this stuff will not be secured 100% and some will get into mechanisms, damage commutators etc?

The bridge carrying the ECML over the A505 here has had so many accidents it is well known to Mr Plod as there was a bridge strike every few weeks. I used to walk under it twice a day as part of my commute. Clearly signposted 13'3" /4m. All three approach roads had a massive grey sign 6' square that turned bright yellow with the legend "Overheight Vehicle Divert" with 4 yellow flashing lights when a height detector is tripped. Those signs have since been replaced with something similar but smaller. The lorry detour to avoid this bridge is about 12 miles. Once I saw a lorry in trouble there as I went for my morning train and another one when I came home the same day. Another time I saw a lorry stacked high with brand new wheelbarrows and the driver had realised just in time that his load was too high. He was blocking traffic in that direction to unload a good many barrows which he then proceeded to wheel through to the far side and reload once he'd got the height down enough! The best incident was when a police driver realised the traffic jam ahead of him meant that yet another lorry was stuck, overtook the queue on his blue lights but without using his sirens just as the driver was walking back to his cab, having spoken to the driver of the following car which had stopped well clear so that he could back out and turn round. The police car pulled in right behind the lorry in his blind spot and the lorry promptly backed into it .... then there were sirens going for the next half hour as every copper in the district came to have a good laugh. I bet that sounded good in court ... you are charged that you hit a railway bridge which was stationary at the time then you backed into a police car with a flashing blue light on its roof. I decided it was prudent to clear off in case I got arrested as a witness! It wasn't just the clearance that caused problems. The road dips under it to form a sump which often didn't drain properly after heavy rain (they do seem to have fixed that at last) and several times I have seen it flooded to about 2' deep. It was quite common for cars to come to grief trying their luck without realising the depth, though single deck buses didn't have trouble. I once saw a a motor cyclist try it, his engine stopped and he fell off into to the water. After he picked himself up and pushed the bike out, he noticed he had lost his number plate. So went back and scrabbled about for 10 minutes in the dirty water till he recovered it. The abutments have been heavily reinforced and capped with a stout girder either side of the line to protect the railway. Given the prominent active signage, I don't know why it used to happen so often, nor why the incidence has dropped as the new signs seem a lot less conspicuous..

... unless you're Johnny Foreigner

If 900mm is just the hotel, how big is the station ?! This layout is going to need an awfully big attic or garden shed to accommodate even 2/3 of York!! I hope by buildings you mean former signal boxes rather than the ROC - though it must be said the latter would take you rather less time. A good few decades ago I was a member of the Peterborough MRC, and somebody approached us to model the station there in OO. They rather lost interest when we told them just how big that would be. We did have a reasonable representation of Crescent Bridge though. Good luck - and yes, you're going to need it.

We already have. Even the buses have "Train Station" on the destination blind.

If you put 16v AC (but some DCC systems are a few volts higher) into a bridge rectifier you'll lose a couple of volts over that and get about 13v DC out of it. You haven't said and I think you implied it, but I hope you do mean LED lighting, not incandescent bulbs. A couple of dozen coaches using old fashioned bulbs would be quite a current draw. If you are using capacitor flicker-free system such as Art suggests, definitely not 12v and I wouldn't trust 16v capacitor either on DCC, go for the 25v as he suggest. Flicker is perfectly reasonable if you're modelling a oil fired tail lamp. The 220R isn't critical and is there to limit recharging rate. Purpose of the 3K3 is to limit current through the LED, and you might need a different value if you use other LEDs. You shouldn't have trouble getting either as they are standard values, but I would go higher rather than lower in both cases in case of difficulty.

Andyman is right .,.. it can be a lot of work getting ebay listings right, especially if you have a lot of different items types of item. Hayfield is also right - somebody making a bid converts it auction only. And if you make an offer, others can still bid until you have accepted the offer. Starting with a low starting price can invite an emotional "bidding war", commonly seen at auctions, where two parties both bid higher than they would go if they had calmly considered their absolute top price for the item in advance. I once watched an item worth perhaps £100-£200 fetch £2000 at a railwayana auction because they were both determined to outbid the other fellow.

If you wire your layout as conventional DC with sectioning you would be able to plug in DCC instead as and when, but it REALLY IS A BAD IDEA because sooner or later you will accidentally try running it on the wrong supply, which can do a lot of damage. As Dungrange has said, yes, you CAN do it, indeed some clubs do so as some members have one system, some the other. You can even wire it with a change-over switch, but be careful not to knock that switch mid-session! You have been warned! As for older locos you don't feel up to converting I would suggest you sell them and use the proceeds to replace with DCC. You won't get as much for them as for current models though. Some older locos are quite easy to convert, some are difficult because you can't get at the wiring, some smaller locos have nowhere reasonable to put the decoder. If there a very large number of those , you might want to remain DC on cost grounds. It might be a worthwhile exercise to analyse your fleet to see how many are in the "too difficult" category, and which you can convert. If you are building a new layout you intend to run it under DCC, it's not worth the bother of providing all the additional section switches and associated wiring for DC.

They'd be Bassett Lowke actually and they are pretty solidly built. They have conventional gearboxes rather than nylon worm drives. I rather think you're right about plastic gears and cardan shafts in modern rolling stock. But would the principle work as well in smaller scales, using say old "steamroller-wheel" Triang or Hornby OO? Perhaps rather than putting chemicals or abrasives on the track, one might design a track cleaning car which has a pair of steel or nickel silver driving wheels motored in reverse? I wasn't thinking of trying this by the way, I have too many other jobs to do!

The whole principle of DCC controllers such as Z21 only works by supplying AC to the track. The locos have DC motors and have to be fitted with a decoder "chip" which converts the power to DC as well as acting on instructions sent as data to them from the DCC command station. LEDs run at only about 10% of your 12v supply. They will burn out if too much current is passed through them. To prevent this from happening, you have to include a resistor in series with each one to limit the current they draw. You could run them at say 16v, but then you would need a higher value resistance. LEDs (and standard diodes) only conduct electricity in one direction, and AC conducts in that direction only half the time. As they break down if power is applied the wrong way across them you would also block this reversed voltage by adding a diode connected the other way round if you want to run them off AC. This converts the AC to "half-wave" DC. Lamps would be supplied with a resistor suited to the voltage specified, 12v being the most usual as it is a commonly available DC voltage. If it was specified that they can run at up to 18v, they should therefore be supplied with such higher resistance, but you would be safer running them at this lower voltage, and they would not be quite as bright.

This prompted an idea ... a friend of mine with a course scale 3-rail O gauge layout, has an unorthodox way of cleaning his track with his analogue electrical system. This may seem crude but it is effective. As with DCC, 3-rail DC control means that when locos face the opposite way round they run in opposite directions. So he couples 3 similar heavy 0-6-0 locos, 2 chimney first the other tender first. The two going forward are powerful enough to drag the third one with its wheels spinning which polishes muck off the rails. This isn't exactly quiet! To clean the stud contacts in the centre, he does use a special wagon, this has a file bent upwards at its ends mounted like a pick-up skate under the wagon which contains a great of of lead for adhesion. Any thoughts on whether his approach would be an effective method to adopt in OO/HO under DCC consisting, obviating the need for a special track cleaning wagon? Locos with traction tyres would be inappropriate.

It's not at all fishy. It's tactics. All it means is that somebody thinks your opening/current bid is less than the price he is prepared to pay, and he is hoping to lock in what he thinks is a fair price before somebody else bids it higher. If you run an auction with the offer option and get an offer higher than current bid, you can either decline/ignore it, thinking that you'll get an even higher bid in due course, or you can accept it thinking that's better than you would get if you let the auction run its course. As the auction may then be ending earlier, you might even get paid earlier. If you do let it run its course, it's quite possible that nobody else would bid so your potential buyer could make a successful last-minute bid which is lower than his offer. He may well be a trader hoping to make a quick buck out of somebody who doesn't know what it's really worth, but as a seller you really don't care what the buyer does with his purchase. A seller will only get what somebody is prepared to pay for it, and an auction will determine that. If you are worried you won't get enough, set a higher start price or put a reserve on. I

Ebay used to own Paypal and sellers used to be required to offer Paypal as a means of payment. Although Ebay sold off Paypal about 5 years ago, not many people noticed, so there is still a widely held belief that you have to offer it. Most buyers use Paypal because of its convenience and speed, and there's a good chance that fewer potential customers will bid if they notice you don't accept it. That is more likely to be an issue for business sellers than for private sales of 1-off model railway items. A lot of people no longer even have cheque books, and cheques are a lot slower than online payment because of postal and clearing delays. Ebay now has an agreement to use a company called AYden instead which is supposed to be phased in gradually starting this year. Seller fees on funds transfer will apparently be lower than Paypal. There could be pressure on regulators to investigate potential competition issues with the new service.

You mean they didn't get furloughed and are worried about wearing a face mask to avoid Covid?

It was Good Queen Bess who supposedly had a bath every month, whether she needed it or not. I wonder they kept a specially fitted out coach for her in the royal mews.

He also has a listing for a Mainline 45. Looks like he has copied the details and edited it incorrectly. Afraid I've done that myself from time to time when listing a lot if items. Looks to me like an honest mistake. My guess is that he has both a 45 and a 40 for sale. I'm not after either myself, but if I were I would send him a message on ebay and ask.

It will be interesting to see how well accepted the generic character is accepted. The manufacturers are now producing variants of very minor details on locos - this particular one had these lamps or whatever, but only after a certain date which meant this livery etc. And yet the layouts we run them on are almost all fictitious. So how willing are we to accept generic coaching stock? 4- and 6-wheelers are a good choice for experimenting with this concept since the only experience we have of what the railways were like before grouping is what the preserved railways have reconstructed, with varying degrees of accuracy, and their research is also restricted to what details still exist. If you want to model the late Victorian/Edwardian era there are some excellent locos available, so I wonder whether the availability of these coaches will prompt more people to choose that era now that they can more easily have trains that look the part with early locos. If this idea comes off, what next - generic wagons, early Victorian locos & stock, even broad gauge GWR ?

Why not? A modern signal box does, though the Baby Bellings are looking a bit clapped.