GrumpyPenguin

I've had at least two "spam" calls that have "cloned" legit' personal landline numbers.

I often wonder about the logic of these "black boxes" - you could have an excellent driver with a well maintained car (premium brand tyres ect) that "does not hang about" who scores bady but has un unblemished claims record, on the otjher hand a poor driver with a borderline MOT car (missmatched budget tyres ect) that dodders around and has a claim or two in the distant past.

Wonder what the Encap rating is ? Whatever it is I'll stick to my Range Rover thanks.

Believe it or not some of us do require something like a RR. Personally I require the following on one vehicle ; Ability to seat between 1 > 5 in resonable comfort. Ability to carry as much as a small van (with the rear seats down). Ability to legally town a 2.5ton Box Trailer. Not much choice really, unless I run more than one vehicle.

HGV's alkready pay Road Fund Licence by weight. The more an HGV weighs (vehicle & load) then the more fuel it uses - for every £60 worth of diesel used approx' £40 goesd to HMG in various taxes. So, HGV's certainly pay a huge ammount towards the roads. We could of course have smaller &/or lighter trucks but that would mean more roadspace required, more drivers & of course the cost of moving our goods around would increase & we are certainly not going to accept that.

It does look unacceptable top me, however, I thought that this Locomotive had a close coupling mechanism ?

On the subject of lamp brightness any half decent decoders will be able to dim them as well as switching them on & off.

Does not always work because the scammers use technology to "fool" caller ID (in other words "pretend" to be where they are not).

When complaining about the traffic remember - YOU are the traffic !

The environmentalists will not like "resulting black cloud" as tubes are cleaned but hey - the non availability of Welsh Coal is because of ? That's right, the environmentalists. Oil fired steam is still better than no-steam. Have alternatives such as CNG been considered ?

Which is why I suggested moving the wheel assemblies from side to side.

& then you have to re-set them again, i find the way I test much quicker.

Would you care to explain that to Mrs Grumpy as she suffers from arthritis ? I don't recall ever being cold anywhere in steam days.

hmmmmmm - the problem with checking pickups on DCC is that if you have acceleration set it can take a while to react. I use a straight forward multimeter set to resistance - locomotive on it's back (suitably protected) & try one side at a time - one probe on the first axel with pickup, the other probe on the next axel - if you have continuity then move the other probe to the third axel & so on. Next, same again on the other side. Any lack of continuity with be a pointer to where the issue lies. When checking move the axels sideways to see if the wipers loose contact as they would on curves/points.

Nice try for a silly comment - absolutly nothing on my phone of any use to anyone as I don't use it for any form of internet &/or finance - even the Google account is a throw away one.

I must admit that even the younf lady took a while to sort it out.

Very true, but it's not going to end well with body parts trapped between bike (very hard & sticky out bits) & other traffic (also hard but probably less sticky out bits).

I tend to use Google Maps on a journey, even when I know where I am going - it's useful for traffic holdups. However, last week it went into "cycling mode" & tried to direct me down alleyways & off the main road. I too keep a road atlas in the car & reverted to that until I found a helpful young lady to reset my Google Maps for me.

Thanks, especially liked the kof & the Croc.

Every single biker I know tells me that when an accident is inevitable they are better off away from the bike which means that many do not "fall off", they "get off". I once witnessed a biker "loose it" on a sweeping bend - as the bike went down he "got off", tucked his arms in & rolled to a stop - minor bruising & trashed leathers - the bike however rolled, cartwheeled & bounced several times - you certainly would not want to be strapped to it !

What happened to "duty of care for yourself then ?" Would it not make sense to stand away from the plateform edge ? Maybe, they could paint a yellow line or something away from the platform edge & errect some instructional signs for those that need assistance !

" a big lorry (7.5t) " - sorry, that made me laugh ! 7.5t is whats know as a "puddle jumper". FYI I've been driving fully loaded HGV's (proper "lorries") and had to use full emergency braking on more than one occasion & can assure you that the decelleration would be quite capable of "throwing you through the windscren" if not for wearing the seatbelt/holding on tight.

During a short spell with European N-Gauge I found this a particular problem with Fleischmann Tender Drive 2-10-0's. I found the problem was that the "driven" wheel treads became polished & to cure the issue I useda fibreglass pencil to remove the "polish". If everything else is OK (including quartering) then it may be worth a try.

I've been running DCC for a couple of decades, I've tried many brands/re-brands & always go back to Lenz as my "go-too", currently the Silver. I would probably use more Zimo if they were more readily available to me. Asking for advice/opinions is a bit like opening one of these ;

Most "European" accessories from this era use 16v AC - many have AC motors.