Squirrel

Spotted elsewhere is this news from the A1A website:

“We have unfortunately received notice to leave Nene Valley Railway with 31271 following the April Diesel event 2019. This comes as a huge shock as we have been based there with one of our locos for 19 years, and largely organised 14 extremely successful diesel galas. The railway are citing lack of interest from the public regards diesel running resulting in financial losses being incurred. The A1A board will be discussing this soon, and more information will be shared once we have some.”

Sorry to see this happen. There is a lot of support for A1A, though at lower than management level. This seems to be an unforunate trait in all orginisations. It was not only you that was shocked, or disappointed. Best wishes.

 

Presumably heritage lines will continue to be allowed to **** on the tracks in the name of authenticity, though four or five trains each way, on a forty minute journey every weekend, can't generate too much of a problem surely.

Yes it can. You need only one carefully placed deposit. We had exactly that. A dump just where the train had stopped, and where a loco had to be coupled up, and I had to do it. This was about 50 yards from the station toilet too. What an inconsiderate a**e.

Sorry, Railtrack has not existed for getting on for at least a decade now and as such there is no way Network rail can use that excuse anymore*

 

However on the other hand NR is somewhat hampered by current environmental legislation - which demands that all weedkillers are completely biodegradable and have no toxic effects when mixed with water (designed to prevent the pollution of rivers by groundwater run off during heavy rain) and which therefore demands you let the plants grow to a decent size first before spraying them on a nice dry day so the actual active ingredient has time to soak into the leaves / stems.

 

<SNIP>.............

I wonder what the weedkiller is. My suspicion is that it is glyphosate (Roundup and others). This a water soluble organo-phosphate, a nasty substance, though it has been dressed up over the past decades as a "safe" chemical. Maybe the chemical used is not glyphosate.

But what method was used to build a cess that had a good walking surface?

Often referred to, but from my limited experience rarely seen nowadays. I have read it was a cared-for route railway workers could transport their tools, materials, or cycle to and from work. Today it's difficult to find a surface that would fit that description.

http://www.deathbyhealthandsafety.co.uk/jungleron/definitions.html Is an interesting article, and has a couple of telling pictures.

So if I want to reinstate a working cess, please can anyone point me to some reference documents, or otherwise provide an answer?

RAIB statement

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dangerous-occurrence-on-the-south-devon-railway

Thanks for the link, I am now signed up for all the RAIB reports as they arise.

Bloody hell, sorry, but someone wants to be prosecuted for that, idiiots that do things like that give the rest of the preservation scene a bad name. That is ludicrous and should never have happened

Unfortunately that type of response is not helpful. The RAIB are interested in the facts of the incident and to work out recommendations for improved working methods. Nobody wants to be prosecuted, and we don't know all the circumstances. There are many things that happen which shouldn't, and there will be more in future. A scapegoat hunting culture scares most people away, what's needed is an openness and honesty culture.

It seems reasonable to delete a post that does not help the conversation when another post which explains the situation turns up while I was typing mine. I am quite happy to accept that others here can provide information which makes mine redundant.

 

Your point being?

Deleted

Does anyone know the details of yesterday's signals problems on the line out of Paddington to the southwest? Supposedly something to do with temperaturers, but why didn't it happen last week?

Thanks for that, though the 21" is no problem, it's the first application and normal braking pressures I am after

Does anyone know of a reference document that covers vacuum brake operating pressures on diesel locomotives?

Error, duplicate post

There were only a few of these built, but does anyone know which drive belts were used for the comressor? Were they standard belts or specially manufactured?

Was or is there a requirement for all rolling stock, including trolleys, to have working brakes?

I haven't visited rmweb for some time, but Switcher102 if you are still looking for a solution, http://diyrc.com/picaxe-slowdown.htm may help. The picture shows something quite large, but if you have the experience of surface mount components then the size could be a lot smaller using these. Connectors would be thrown out and the wires soldered directly to the board.

And if you run out of solder there's a bit of DIY if you have some spare jewellery https://youtu.be/HhvLAA3KEjg. Just not the same melting temperature control though.

The Ford Thames seems a bit elusive, unless you are prepared to pay a small fortune (and it's Chinese made even then). I'll keep searching though.

The servo speed is determined by the servo and by the rate of change of pulse width, so you can change its speed by slowly moving the transmitter control. There is no adjustment in the receiver, that just follows the transmitted command. There are other breeds of the servo slow, and I have one of the others. These are usually bought from "Hobbyking". These devices modify the pulse train so it takes more time than normal to shift from one position to the other. If I remember correctly the stop to stop time can be extended to about 3 seconds. They can be used in series with speed controllers so slamming in a fast forward command stil gives a gentle start.

 

Thanks to this tremendous topic, I am now poorer but some Morris trucks are on their way, as are the motor/gearboxes

Giles - thinking of the jacks I think you deal with the people who supply these, you've mentioned Microns:-

http://www.micronradiocontrol.co.uk/servo.html#hxt500

I've got one of the Replacement Servos thinking of using it to work the steering on my Fiat but the trouble is making them move slowly enough, especially for a jack. Could they not be made to move slower with a low enough voltage? I've tried 1.5V and it still moves too fast for a jack. I did try resistors but that didn't work either unless I wasn't doing it right.

 

Rich

You could use something like this to slow the servo movement.

The ebay link in post 11 (page 1) now shows nil stock, but http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=311577682012&globalID=EBAY-GB is near the same price and has a double ended shaft, so could take a flywheel if needed.

UKsteam Info is a good starting point:

http://www.uksteam.info/tours/trs16.htm#twk

Almost nothing is available about the future times for many steam hauled trains in the south, west or east. One mention is sbout steam hauled north of Newark only, because of half-witted numpties who think it's ok to wander onto the trackside. These brainless wonders have ruined it for everyone. If any of you are reading this, I hope you feel ashamed at the result of your selfish antics.

Considering this was an east coast line loco, it spends a lot of it's time in the west.