Regularity

In his book “Mid sized and manageable track plans”, Iain Rice has an interesting plan for a layout set in the Georgia/South Carolina border area, and includes a creamery as an on-line industry, with a comment to the effect that it was not just the North East that carried a lot of milk traffic, but no more is said than that! Does anyone have any info on this? Were there dedicated milk cars, was this in churns, or were there bespoke milk cars containing class-lined steel tanks for the bulk transport of milk?

There is an old saw: the best way to make a small fortune out of model railways, is to start with a big fortune.

Quite.

Ah, I see the difference clearly: one shows a class A train, the other a class D. So that’s what all the fuss was about... [in truth, I thought the Bachmann model looked wrong from day 1.)

The day after... ...disappointment.

Only 19%. In each direction.

Bit of tube and a couple of Peco track pins will do it!

What’s the trackplan, mister?

Are you sure that isn’t something ready made which you have repainted?

An odd remark, coming from the only person who has made it so... I already did for my own benefit, so I’ll take a rain check on that...

At some point, we will be placing a cat into the steam chest...

Well, if you don’t set targets, then you never know how well you are doing. There is nothing in this particular task that cannot be expedited with a large injection of cash! It ties with the SECR D class for most handsome engine ever built, in my book. It varies on the day as to how I feel about the aesthetics of inside versus outside cylinders.

It comes from a lifetime of seeing people deciding that something is too difficult before they even try. I can’t believe I am going to quote Howard Jones, but... “throw off those mental chains”.

Depends on the overhaul: some were just cosmetic.

Wheel centre castings; main frames, cylinder block castings (but not liners) some platework, motion (although bits could be replaced even there) and possibly some parts of the boiler and firebox shell. Oh, maybe the name and number plates. Usually it was the frames which denoted the identity of the engine, and even they might be replaced...

The western USA had lots of short-lived lines built to generate traffic which wasn’t there!

A thorough understanding of the principles, if I may say so. I take it that you have a socket very near your workbench, so that you can easily make adjustments?

I think that is quite the load of rubbish. Unique is binary, it is or it isn’t. Whether that is actually physically unique or unique in one’s mind is irrelevant - as far as the speaker is concerned, they are one and the same and as you say, it is an assertion that there is none other like it.It doesn’t require confidence, it requires knowledge, and nothing more than a touch of human humility to accept that you are wrong when it turns out that you were.

Different opinions on irons and solder! This is not conflicting advice, merely the fact that provided you clean and flux and have a sufficiently hot iron, then you can develop your own technique to suit. Personally I have a 25W iron for when I can’t use my main iron, which is an Antex 50W temperature controlled iron, normally set to about 350 degrees, and I use 9% phosphoric acid solution as flux (very occasionally fluxite) and 60/40 for just about everything - I have had some negative experiences with 145 solder, but then again I am do not usually build from etched kits, so do not have slots and tabs to provide mechanical support for the joint. If it is a big joint, I can whack up the temperature setting a bit, and for white metal I wind the temperature down to about 100, and simply wipe the bit throughly after use (whilst hot) to remove residues of low-melt. Personally, I wouldn’t let green label flux anywhere near just about anything. For butt-joints, 145 fails, in my experience: it needs something else, in which case it does a good job of getting into the small nooks and crevices. I prefer to get in and out quickly with a larger iron than some, as this avoids heat building up in situ. I generally avoid brass for the same reason!

Back to electrikery... A useful way to think of electricity is to compare it with water. Current is exactly the same: the rate of flow. Voltage is a measure of pressure - same current through a narrower aperture will require more pressure. Power is the combination of pressure and flow, and reflects the amount of energy produced over time. Thus, an on/off switch is like an on/off valve. A screw faucet is analogous to a potentiometer (variable resistor). A resistor is like a constriction due to a narrower bore pipe, where without changing the pressure, the flow is reduced. A diode is a non-return valve - and if you put that in the wrong way, you may as well not have bothered. Other switches, “double throw”, are like sluice gates, in that you can direct outflowing water into different streams and indeed, choose which source to use to fill a receptacle. A “double pole” switch is simply two switches working in parallel. Finally, a capacitor is rather like a pool up against a weir. That is provides a reserve of water up to a point, and once that point is reached, the water comes over the weir. You can add things like locks (switches) to bypass this in certain ways, or indeed allow some water to escape via a mill race, which being narrow is a resistance to control the outflow (and which is essentially how we provide “inertia simulation” in DC controllers) and can of course be further controlled with sluice gates. Hope that helps. If you understand how everything combines to provide that last analogy, you are there. Oh, and one last point, electricity requires a complete circuit as it is a closed system, and with a battery cell, you push electrons out of one end and put them back in the other. (Chemical interactions use up small amounts of energy in the process, so batteries do not last for ever.) you may think this doesn’t fit with the analogy, but it does. Water flows eventually to the sea and into plants, where evaporation takes it back into the coulds, to fall down as rain and replenish the streams. If you put all the water into underground caves, eventually the rain would disappear...

And close by all these puddles, on the edge of Bere Regis, is the wonderfully named “Sh1tterton”. Apologies to those offended by the vulgarity, but it is a real place name and unlike other places names which have corrupted over time to have an unfortunate homophonic resemblance to the old word for excrement, this was so named because that’s where they put it. Actually, no apologies: it is what it is, and reflects a practical approach to language. Northamptonshire seems to be escaping a lot of the silly place names, but there is an area that was re-named “Boothville” after the relocated people arriving into the new town objected to the original place name, which I never thought odd as I was born and grew up a few miles from it: Buttock’s Booth.

I meant the shafts are quite rigid. To quote yourself: No reference to, or practical experience of, this actually happening. With our small flywheels, the mass is not that great, and the loss is not proportionally small when hollowed out. With our small flywheels, we need all the mass we can get as the space is limited. If the flywheel is unbalanced, then yes, it will create problems but that will be immediately obvious due to noise and jerky running. The only time I have had this was with a (commercially supplied) hollowed out flywheel, where insufficient metal had been left at the end to be able safely mount it squarely on the shaft.

I think that given the small masses involved here and hardened steel shafts, and the infrequent low usage on most models, this may be a case of theoretical concerns and practical experience of full size machines not being particularly applicable to our situation.

Leave the record in place: the debate is useful.

Depends if they paint them green, blue or black, though. They are magnificent engines.