modfather

Could the bearings be matched in dimensions to the farish ones please to help those of us converting to 2mm standards?

156/153 in model form share couplers, engine, gearbox, gangways brake frames and bogies. After that they are both very different beasts. 153's are tempremental things at the best of time. Bear in mind both cab ends are formed differently as a result of their construction.

Bit of a curveball - does anyone in the southern hemisphere turn wheels down?

Yup, I've just left my place at Stoke Gifford TMC to work in Auckland for CAF rail... the 800's, AM class units here I come!

Test teams have been a mix of Hitachi, DB Minden, Alstom, and Brecknell Willis, amongst others.

Mike - Gbrf drivers, hitachi test staff who take responsibility for the train. I can't recall the ADD max height.

I'm coming from Bristol Uk. Landing 15th of May. I've been offered a job at the CAF depot at a point where I'm not happy with my job, the house I was buying fell through and I'm not long out of a ltr. No time like the present!

The 80x fleet also uses a gps and preprogrammed input.

Wiri, Auckland soon. I'll be bringing a crate of 2mm and n gauge over though.

Looks like I'll be headed to Auckland imminently to maintain trains in sunnier climes. All advice on the move welcome!

T3 is grey T4 is green

You also can't make a 9 car from two 5 car sets. For a start you need two unpowered, inside bearing fitted trailers...

Apart from the ceramic hobs, grill and convection ovens? There's only three choices of kugel designed catering fitted...

That would be lovely but I'd prefer a dummy dellner. (No one wants a real dellner, they are hateful things to work on compared to a BSI)

The crew doors are interlocked slam doors with inflatable air tight portal seals. The saloon doors are a sliding pocket type, forced against a soft portal seal by four actuators, once the train passes the low speed threshold. Of the stock I have previously worked on; 14x - the doors do the job, but have lots of issues with settling and they wear out fairly quickly compared to others. If they are opened/closed on low air pressure they don't lock, despite appearing to. 150 - good, simple above door mechanism, one ram, one adjuster for the local door, one regulator for the saloon. Limited obstacle detection, but very rugged. Until the bottom runners snap or the pockets get a bit mucky and need cleaning out... 153 - fine, although over complicated, with far too many microswitches. There's one switch that will close the door with no detection, which apparently hurts a lot when you are testing according to one of my colleagues. 158 - far too over complicated, rarely understood well. If you have any problems past centre over locking pressure, you may as well give up now - the four hard stops and four turnbuckles per door leaf require a huge amount of patience to get right. If in doubt, don't change components, ignore your modern VMI, set it up to the BREL manual then test to the modern spec to check. 14x and 158 always seem to get themselves out of sync, no-one cares why, open and close them all to fix! HST - simple to check but theres a fair degree of measuring and testing the latches as per any other mk2/3 door, nothing complicated, even CDL once you understand it isn't too scary.

that for a laugh. Slam doors need a lot of test and inspection and there's usually more of them. The 800 doors are proven and seem to be a really well considered solution.

It's a lovely depot to work in, scenic vistas of concrete sleeers as far as the eye can see and 66's left idling outside the mess room!

They open and slide back into the nose area. Remotely controlled from the cab.

Again, there are no/minimal redundancies due to the new work load on depot. It's really upset the old timers who have stayed on for a slice of the pie. I left to learn modern traction and have the oppourtunity to step up the ladder. SPM is very dated nowadays by industry standards.

They aren't mk3 style leather seats. A little bit of Google-fu shows 2+1 dark fabric. http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/800first.jpg

No - the bias of work at SPM is for units so the work does not replace theirs. Spm are currently after staff due to an increase in 14x, 15x and 16x C4 workload.

They also have a dot matrix display for each seat, I can't remember the supplier name, I just remember a pair of funny Belgian guys offering the training course.

May I offer a definite answer? The GWR fleets will have it fitted, the other fleets will have a blanking plate fitted in both the speedo and input panel locations. Both fleets will have ETCS capability, with it being left isolated until live. It currently provides a speedometer on the main screen.

Good rumour making. 004 is on stoke Gifford. No fire here unless I've missed something watching driver training.