Phil Himsworth

I didn't intend to imply they were anything to do with privatisation, but just the default mechanism of higher costs being passed on to the consumer. In circumstances like these it would seem fairer if those increased costs were met not by those least able to afford them but by either whoever was insisting on a prepaid meter in the first place or just society as a whole.

Way of the world, I guess; prepayment meters are probably more work to manage and are used by those more likely to be unable to pay, so the price goes up with the risk. I agree, it is grossly unfair that this artefact of unfettered capitalism is not outlawed.

I would imagine repaying the loans via energy consumers would be more regressive... someone with the capital to do so could greatly reduce their energy bills through solar PV, heat pumps, efficiency measures etcetera, so wouldn't contribute as much to the repayment of the loans. It would be left to just the people who can't afford to do that, still using the same amount of energy as before, left to do it instead.

Especially with the government picking up much of the tab for the energy we use, you would think it would be very much in their interest to bring usage down. How much energy we use this winter will now affect how much money the government has to borrow, and so the rate at which the government can borrow, for both energy and everything else... An energy efficiency drive - either real things like insulation, or just nudges like awareness of energy usage - could have very positive long term economic benefits.

It must be crazy trying to plan anything for a solar PV company. Demand going through the roof but very patchy supply of the equipment. We've had a roof full of panels for nearly two months, a battery in a cardboard box in the garage for three weeks, but no inverter yet. I've heard of others with panels and an inverter but waiting on the battery. Installers must have an awful lot of money tied up in half finished systems that they can't get paid for yet, and very little idea when they might be able to finish them...

Around here the leaves are falling but it's not wet enough for them to turn to mush; instead they just crumble, so it's like there has been an enormous explosion in a cornflake factory, with crunchy leaf fragments covering the ground everywhere. I presume RHTT season won't start until we start getting a lot more rainfall.

I cycle to work alongside some of the upper sections of the line; it is occasionally visited by Network Rail vans and the signals are still on, albeit they only have a single red light on them, the others having been removed. According to people more familiar with the bottom end of the line they have been doing work of some kind down there as well. I didn't know the bridge work had been done, that's interesting to hear. I'd be surprised if there's much material still to be removed from the power station site by now though; all the major demolition work was a couple of years ago now. It would be great to see trains on that line again, whether national services or TSR; Coalbrookdale is a spectacular setting.

It's not exactly an imaginative layout, is it? They've made the rookie mistake of having way too much track. Before they finish the detailing I think they really should simplify it a bit and use the space for something else.

Those warehouse signs behind are just lazy; they look like they've been quickly bodged up in Word or something.

Quite the opposite here; I did some ballasting on Thursday evening. Normally it has taken days to dry out properly, it was all bone dry by Friday evening :-)

I wonder if it's just for an elaborate version of pranking a new apprentice... "hey, can you bring the loco on the far road to the coal hopper? The turntable isn't working right now, but we're sure you'll find a way..."

Thanks for that, that's very useful. I don't think my curves are quite so tight as to cause serious issues, and they've always been laid along pre-measured out curves so I think I've avoided any radius tightening in the middle, so I think they're okay in that regard. Where I've had issues is mainly the joins; I wonder whether a very short piece of setrack to join two lengths of flexi on a fairly tight curve might help avoid any kinks from forming by ensuring the gauge is maintained where the sleepers have been cut back on the flexi. Anyway, I digress from the subject of the thread, as you were :-)

Can you explain what you mean by "going tight to gauge"? I've used flexitrack in a couple of places where I wished I had used setrack instead, mainly to avoid having to faff about to avoid kinks and gaps at the joins, but this isn't something I had heard of. Do setrack curves actually have a slightly wider gauge to compensate for the curve, or does flexitrack get tighter the more you bend it? I'm about to lay a short curved siding in flexitrack; it was going to be setrack but some idiot didn't notice I bought a single instead of a double curve so I don't have enough!

I sort of turned mine into a walkabout controller... drilled a big hole in the other end, widened the slot by the screw terminals, then fed the wires out of the screw terminals, inside the body, then out via a fairly big cable gland in the hole at the other end. Now the wires into the screw terminals don't move so there's no force on them, and the cable gland is more than enough support for where the cable bends as it leaves the unit.

Personally I have my doubts whether Thomas the Tank Engine really used that line during the time period depicted; an outrageous error. We intended to leave about an hour earlier than we did but we had to see and hear that 56 on the coal train "just one last time" about four times; an absolute dirty beast of a train, it really looked and sounded the part. It was the first exhibition I've been to in 30 years and I was blown away by the sheer ambition of it. It's massive, yet chock full of detail; we thought the derelict factories in particular were absolute masterpieces.

We spent almost as much time behind the layout watching the fiddle yard as we did out front, it was fascinating watching the trains doing their own thing. How long did it take for Thomas to do one lap? A great day out. My only criticism was that by Sunday morning all trace of the show on the website had gone; on the way there we were a little worried we'd got our dates completely messed up and would arrive at a closed showground having missed it all...

They could sell it as realistic smoke stains on bridges and things. Although I'm more worried about all the card bridges and brick paper going soggy...

Jim's bike got stuck again, so the only way out was up through the roof...

That is stunning, I struggle to believe it's N gauge. Thank you for posting.

Several (many?) pages ago there were some shots from a drone which were striking in how very looooooong the junctions and diveunder approaches are. We get so used to telephoto photos making everything look very short, which has the effect of making the track look far more wiggly than it really is.

It's easier to see its DCC address with numbering like this; maybe the Eastleigh operator could do with new glasses...

Thank you for your detailed reply. Emboldened by it I set about taking the keeper plate off to have a look. A few observations from doing so; - A couple of the screws holding the plate on were not doing very much; they just spun when turned. - They must have had lube to use up when it was put together, everything was covered in the stuff under the plate! - There was a little bit of flash just inside one of the middle axle slots; I thought it could be fouling the bearing so I scraped it off, but it didn't make any difference. - The front axle did have a spring above it, but the bearings were not free to move. The only driving axle that could move was the rearmost, which I suspect is the main problem; I think the rear right slot is too deep relative to the others, so the loco sags where it shouldn't. I thought about trying to pack it out a tiny bit, but decided the chance of it working at all let alone permanently was pretty slim, so I think the safest option is just to send it back and try another.

I received one of these yesterday, a DC BR late crest version. It arrived intact, it runs quietly and smoothly on plain track, but... it has a wobble, that seems to make it very prone to derailment over pointwork when moving forwards. It looks like not all six driving wheels are quite level, so it can rock diagonally. I can't tell whether it's because any wheels are above the intended level or below it; I can't see anything amiss, but when rocked backwards and to the right the front left wheel lifts up so there's not a lot of flange below the level of the rail, which is presumably why it derails easily. Has anyone else had this problem? Is it likely to be anything that can be easily fixed? I guess not, in which case back to the shop it will have to go... This is the first loco I have bought since about 1995. Just my luck!

Unless it's some kind of system for being close coupled when on straight track, but pushing the vehicles apart when on a bend?

I'll second (third?) that. Wherever I've been fiddling with electrics I've been replacing choc blocks with wago connectors; they are so much quicker and easier to connect and disconnect and don't mash the strands on multi-strand cable. The only thing wago don't do are two (or more) way pass through connectors, used to connect a pair of wires to another, but there are third party equivalents that do this. (Is it a "knock off" if it's something the original brand don't do...?)