GrumpyPenguin

Can be done via a decoder counting motor revolutions which would be easier to retrofit 0 no need to dismantle, upsetting fine valve gear & quartering. For me, the biggist issue is not fitting the speaker in the smokebox - once your ears are attuned to the sound coming from the wrong end of the locomotive the effect is lost.,

It was not really an issue, once it was discovered that the Kingspan required both sides to have the foil removed or left in place. There may very well be superior products available accross the water (after all, they are pretty good with wooden houses) but we use what we can obtain.

Well that means you cant "hover it over may garden" if anyone is occupying it then.

"2m airspace" - BT told me that regarding their cables over property - I think it's safe to assume that their legal people know what they are on about. "Environmental Health" - comes under peaceful enjoyment of your property would think, does not have to be just/only noise. "Greyish areas" - did you not see the image or realise the comment was TIC ? One of my neighbours (#1) bought a drone (quite a pricy one AFAIK) & made it clear he would fly it over the residential area. One of my other neighbours(#2) (whose wife & daughters sunbath in his secluded & walled garden) made it more than clear that if it was even seen from his garden he would need a trip to A & E to have it removed. #2 never flew it above residential. At the end of the day Drone Flyers need to respect other peoples privacy & the right to enjoy their property without having to think about intrusion by drone. There are plenty of other places to fly them.

I may be wrong here but I thought that the house vendor had to provide an "Electrical Installation Condition Report" - if that is still the case whoever signed off the report clearly missed something & maybe you have some recourse. At least the breaker did it's job !

If anyone tried that sort of stunt with me I would buy one too - I'm not too good with radio controlled things and whilst practicing they may unfortunatly collide.....................

Whoever owns the property owns the airspace up to two meters above any part of the property/building/structure. There are legal ways of stopping anyone "hovering their drone" above your garden - via Environmental Health for a start. There are also "grey area's" too ;

Most builders merchants stock it. It's also worth looking for a bulk suppliers like "Encon" - they will almost give you damaged sheets that they cannot sell & it costs them serious money to dispose of it..

I disagree, I'm using it on an exhibition layout with 3 of 8' x 2.5' boards, mostly 50mm and in a lightweight ply frame, strong & lightweight. The only issue I've had is where I've used offcuts for scenary & peeled off the foil from one side & it tended to go banana shaped. I suspect that it tensions during the manufacturing process & removing the foil from one side "relaxes" one side. No issues with temperatures either - it's been in the box trailer in temperatures between -5 & +35 degree C, the woodwork suffered a little (as did the track) but the "Kingspan" remained stable.

There is probably a little more work to syncronise sound/smoke using the decoder for reference - AFAIK the decoder "counts" the motor revolutions & works it out from there - accurate enough toi stop locomotives to with a mm when constant braking distance acticated. The method Hornby use is probably more cost-effective for production models - not a new concept though - Fleischmann (& probably others) have used this type of sensors in their Tachowagons.

Maybe, that's what manufactures are hoping - modellers do their job for them - a disgraceful state of affairs (glad that I model European Mainland in that case). Over 45 years I've only had 2 x failures, 1 x Heljan & 1 x Brawa & they both went back. Manufactures would soon up their game if they ended up with a a load of defective models & a lighter bank ballance.,

All the time customers are prepaired to rectify faults/bad design some manufactures will continue to sell products that fall short of expectations. The situation will (may ?) only improve when modellers return every single item that falls short.

The issue here is privacy - drone could be near your property but you have no way of knowing if it's camera is perving your under 18 daughter in your garden. It would not surprise me in the least if "drone shooting" becomes a secondary interest. (Yes, I know, techically illegal).

S'funny, I never said anything about reliability &/or dealers but here we have a reply to my comment........... & before anyone starts going on about the reliability or RR's** compared to LC's I'm well aware of the pro's & cons between the two vehicles & I'm not anticipating going "1,000 km" from anywhere. LC's are fine for hard work but there are not in the same league as a RR for the way they drive. ** I've had two so I know from experience about how reliable they are.

The MP* Range of point motors are excellent - personally use the MP5 - easy to mount & set up, also they stay in position during power off/on. They are considerably smaller than Tortoise or Cobalts. Only issue with them is that they can often be diffecult to obtain.

Maybe so, but there is nothing quite like a Range Rover - you either get that statement or you dont (& that goes for most of the products that came out of Solihul, at least until recently).

Compared to later RR's they are, but far, far less to go wrong.

My favourite aut of that last set is the very original looking 2-door Range Rover.

Summed it up pretty well indeed.

Thanks again guys, I'm aware that they should be barrow gauge but would prefer to stick with standard for robustness - it will only be a loop on a "Crossroads of Europe" layout so I can live with the scale inaccuracy as long as the track/roadway looks acceptable to me.

Am I correct in thinking that many old exchanges had two sets of batteries - one set on change & one set powering the exchange, then they would change over at intervals ? At least the DC from the batteries would be a good as it could ever get (at the time).

We have now entered another drift - no matter how "HGV specific" a SatNag is, it's as much use as a choclate iron if the vehcile statistics are not logged into it. All the HGV's I ever drove had the cab height indicators set at the maximum height the vehicle could be in an unloaded condition & the suspention set to normal. Some interesting points in your post, however, I do feel that figures from "multi-agency enforcement" can make the issues seem to be worse than they are overall. You don't see many vehicles from the likes of supermarkets being pulled. The DVSA/VOSA Officers I have spoken to are of the opinion that there is no point pulling vehicles from certain big fleets because they always run legally, smaller fleets that "look tidy" (i.e. curtain straps tucked in) are also less likely to be pulled.

Indeed - a switch or lever - on some Renaults you had to "knock over" the gear leave when in the neutral position to change the range - left for low, right for high (IIRC). Some transmissions had a splitter to give you half gears - very rarely did you use all of the gears selected.

Thanks Andy & Nick. Getting the trams themselves is easy (Roco/Lima HO). The problem with using HO track with infills is that it looks just like - HO railway track with infills. Hartel made some good tram track (although the joiners were not very good) but it'sd no longer available which is a shame because they did some really tight radius curves. The supply of Tillig is a bit hit & miss - I don't want to end up getting a few bits hear & there.