DK123GWR

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

 

I don't know about model railway items, but a lot of returns to manufacturers are destroyed on a contract basis to stop them re-entering the market, thereby damaging profits and reputation.

That sort of wastefulness that really should be criminalised (along with large online retailers throwing away vast amounts of unsold stock). Given the difficulties in sourcing computer chips (and the environmental costs associated with both producing and disposing of many goods, especially electricals) why not prohibit firms from disposing of saleable stock without safety issues*? I recognise of course that such regulations may increase firms' costs, but this isn't really a good counter-argument providing that the increase is not disproportionate or unfair. The whole point of the law is (or should be) to make people do things that they wouldn't want to do from a rational egoist perspective but that lead to the socially optimal outcome in the end. In this case the problem is of the firm's own making since they used resources innefficiently (either by insufficient quality control leading to many good components being 'wasted' due to one faulty one rendering the product inoperable, or in the other case alluded to by simply producing or procuring too many units).

*Specifically, obligate them to offer the goods for sale at vastly reduced prices, and ultimately for free (to charities if appropriate), before disposing of them.

2 hours ago, WIMorrison said:

Not quite correct, the correct action is;

 

read cv29 and if it is EVEN add 1 to the value and write it, if it is ODD then subtract 1 from the value and write the value to the decoder.

True, but every decoder I've used has taken an even value by default, and I was operating on the assumption that this one would be too. I suppose that if the loco is pre-owned a previous owner might have wired the decoder in reverse and already changed CV29 to correct the error.

12 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

OK, I guess that topic title is a bit odd - let me explain.

 

I have a tender loco which I want to run as tender-first when in forward. How can I change that please?

Add 1 to the value of CV29.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60999800

I hope this is a joke! The (much derided) student newspapers at my university would have done a better job than this.

Here are the highlights:

"Colchester: Scrapped Intercity 125 to join rail heritage collection"

Why have they bought a scrapped one when there are plenty of fully serviceable ones around? I'm guessing that they haven't.

"A heritage group has bought three Intercity 125 high speed diesel trains for a railway collection."

The rest of the article suggests that it has one (short) train and a spare power car (referred to as an 'engine', but this is reasonable for a mass-media article)

"According to Mr Bunt, the 125 holds the speed record for the fastest diesel train carrying passengers; of 148 miles per hour (approx 240km/ph), achieved in November 1987."

No criticism of Mr Bunt is intended, but was he really the most authoratative source they could find for this? Was it too much work to check anything more official? (Also, I'm not 100% sure that this run was carrying passengers.)

"Heritage 125 has bought three Intercity engines including three carriages complete with dining car and kitchen"

In other news, I have just bought three bananas including three apples. This sentence is unintelligible, but especially perplexing when the article also states that "Heritage 125 has bought three Intercity engines, along with three carriages complete with dining car and kitchen".

Yes, it's good that the BBC (which I'm normally supportive of) is trying to support heritage railways, especially when they're trying to tap into a potentially huge new market such as the HST nostalgia generation (which includes people younger than me and older than my parents). However, if this was written by a professional jounalist, it must be some kind of joke.

Our last image for the day is this. Firstly, note the rather intricate decoration (both official and otherwise) on the NCN signpost. Secondly, the tree behind it appears to have had some of it's branches trimmed. I would imagine that this could be quite hard to replicate on a model, but it would certainly stop your trees from looking the same as everyone else's. Finally, there is something in this photo which is less little than usual. The River Avon, like many rivers up and down the country, is managed in a way which causes certain areas to flood whenever there is heavy rainfall. In Chippenham, it is this section, just below the weir. There is a path which continues off to the right (follow the signpost) under the road bridge. I was stood as far down it as I could without being in the river. Perhaps it's because many models are set in summer, but flooding (even on a small scale like this) isn't something which is seen often on a model railway.

I've just been looking back through my camera roll. It struck me that a few images might be of interest.

A 'bridge' in a new-ish housing estate (the cattle market which I believe formerly occupied this site closed in 2005). The deck may have been made from former railway sleepers (there are holes in each piece of timber about the right distance apart for rails, which may have been where the chairs were).

Nearby, a bridge which is no longer within the railway fence (it used to carry the Calne Branch). The public footpath under here is one of the worst I have seen, and is completely inaccessible for much of the year due to being so overgrown.

Note the warning sign on the other side. I think I had to duck a little to get under it.

A selection of very little things next, but they can be found across the county. If you want your model railway is supposed to tell the story of a place, then using a blue plaque as a nod to the past might be a useful tool for doing that. Alternatively, a plaque commemorating a made-up person or event could present an opportunity for humour (even if it will only be apprecieated by the most eagle-eyed). Note the variation in both style and condition, even within a single town.

I have one more to add, but I'm reaching the upload limit. Hopefully I'll be back soon.

I've heard that Andy is investigating reports that the driver replacement carried out by Dediserve saw Crashtor Maldonado and (fresh from his firing by Haas) Nikita Mazespin taking the wheel of the RMWeb cars.

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

* Be aware that the use of more than three !s tends to indicate some degree of mental instability!!!!!!!!

That's strange. I haven't noticed any in young Vladimir's press releases lately.

He must be another of those very stable geniuses we put in charge of nuclear weapons...

20 minutes ago, Godfrey Glyn said:

I do find studying the model railway industry fascinating and noting the certainty sometimes expressed on here as to how firms should develop their range of models in the coming months. One thing I haven't seen expressed here, and apologies if I have missed it, is that we are about to face a financial recession when a great deal of what is now disposable income will need to be spent on gas, electricity and fuel. Much as I love the incoming high quality models from the 'newcomers' to the business - I have plenty of items on order myself - I can't help feeling that high price items like four car DMUs and EMUs will not provide the commissioner with a good return on their investment in the immediate future. Neither am I likely to be giving my young grandchildren one of the new high fidelity products. We also need to remember that those of us who regularly log on to RMWeb and enjoy the discourse are a very small minority of those who spend their money on these delightful ranges of toys.

all the very best

Godfrey

A pertinent question may be how many of the people buying 4-car EMUs in reasonable numbers are also the people who will have to cut back on their spending. I would suggest that such people are generally among the better off modellers and won't be feeling the squeeze quite as much. There's probably some truth to the notion of consumption smoothing, so as long as a recovery is expected those who have significant savings probably won't cut back much even if their real incomes do fall. Climate-change-induced economic crises will probably be worse for luxury goods manufacturers than the next year or so, because the decrease in incomes is far more likely to be permanent, so even the wealthy will have to cut back.

6 minutes ago, Alex Neth said:

Could I have a drawing or a diagram of what you are talking about?

Not from me. Of course, if you stick a Churchward cab on a Grange you'll probably have the general idea. The source cited by Wikipedia is volume 9 of the RCTS' The Locomotives of the Great Western Railway.

12 minutes ago, Alex Neth said:

On the topic of never-were locomotives, what are some other pre-grouping locos that never-were, or might have been "were"?

A locomotive with a Standard No.1 boiler and 5ft 8inch driving wheels was apparently proposed in Churchward's day.

51 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Not so.  Everyone gets the electricity the grid supplies to them unless they generate their own - you get only what comes down the power lines and you. can't decide whether you want it or not depending on how it was generated.  Even generating some of my own with solar panels doesn't make any difference to what comes through the mains - just that I use a bit less of it.

 

What some suppliers do is claim in tv adverts to supply only renewable energy and I do wonder if they will be accused of 'green washing' (those ads don't seem so common now incidently).  But if you look deeper into these companies they make it absolutely clear that what you get is just the same as anybody else is getting depending entirely on what is being fed into the national grid.  But what they actually do is pay a special charge which is effectively a 'green energy' premium to purchase REGO certificates (REGO = Renewable Energy Guarantees Origin), each certificate equates to 1 megawatt of power.  If an energy supplier buys, or trades-in, enough REGOs to cover the amount of electricity their customers are consuming off the national grid they can then claim that they supplying only green/renewable energy - even if they aren't

 

Going on 2019 prices of REGOs it would have cost an electricity supplier the grand sum of £1.30 per domestic customer to claim that they are supplying the average domestic customer with green electricity for an entire year.  And that electricity could be generated by anything from a wind farm to a coal fired power station or even imrted from a French nuclear power station.  However some suppliers do actually also have generator contracts and reallybuy in enough real green energy to match what they supply - it's just that the end customer doesn't receive  

Assuming that the system has some integrity, there shouldn't be any more certificates issued than megawatts of low-carbon energy generated. I don't know exactly how the system works, but one would assume that firms generating low-carbon energy receive the revenue from these certificates, in which case an increase in the price of these certificates would create an incentive for companies to invest in low-carbon generation capacity (if it doesn't, then the people who designed it should be sacked and replaced with first-year economics students). If that is the case, there is some merit in companies promising (and people choosing) '100% renewable energy' deals. If there is an increase in demand for such deals, there will be an increase in demand for certificates, which should increase their price which should create lead to additional investment in low-carbon energy generation.

That's roughly how I would expect a free-market mechanism to encourage investment in low-carbon energy to work. Alternative methods of encouraging such investment are available, but many require a very large number of people to engage in long-term thinking, or a smaller number of very rich people with the relevant experience and connections to engage in thinking about others. Alas, neither happens very often, so this is the sort of mechanism we're stuck with.*

*Of course, if you are a person and decide to engage in long-term thinking, or are a very rich person with the relevant experience/connections and decide to engage in thinking about others, you can help to change this.

5 minutes ago, tythatguy1312 said:

Hey the Puffing Billy Railway got a Class 04 to 2ft 6in gauge, anything's possible with 0-6-0's

Surely a class 04 doesn't have two 1.5ft diameter cylinders between the wheels...

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

apparently no one but an elected representative is allowed to grace those leather covers with their rear end.

This is true usually true, but there is one exception. MPs are the only people allowed to sit on the green benches except for Members of Youth Parliament during their annual sitting in the Commons. In 2019, this fell between the dissolution of Parliament and the general election, meaning there were no MPs, so the only people allowed to sit on the green benches at that time were 369 teenagers. It was probably the most grown-up conversation in that room for years!

I'll now make the usual joke about hot air as a source of green energy for HS2, so that it's at least tenuously related.

28 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

I still can't get my head around the fact that people born in 2001 or 2002 are now adults

I fear your head may be turned inside out, but now so are those of us from 2003 and early 2004.

18 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

ViTrains tried that with buffer beam detail on the class 37, what a firestorm that started!

 

Mike.

That's in part because it didn't improve QC (in general, I don't think QC was a ViTrains strongpoint) - you had to open out the holes quite significantly in order to make things fit, while trying not to damage the loco.

26 minutes ago, exmoordave said:

GARDEN SALE

6 trampolines

21 fence panels (various sizes)

45 Marley roof tiles

Half a shed

Contact me for prices......

UPDATE.....correction, only 4 trampolines, 2 have moved on

***NEW STOCK ARRIVING EVERY 5 MINUTES***

 

I think the contents of @jbqfc's garden may have blown into yours following storm Eunice. Perhaps you'd consider returning their possesions, rather than selling them?

13 minutes ago, Porcy Mane said:

 

It might all be just blamed on the office intern. You know the type of stuff, "He/she pressed a few buttons they weren't meant to in between making the tea's. It's alright now we've discovered their mistake. Things are slowly getting back to normal now they've gone back to Uni. Sorry but as you can see, it wasn't our fault."

Have they gone back to the University of Sheffield? Do they perchance have a part time job on Rails' ebay store?

22 minutes ago, PieGuyRob said:

If that's the case, then why are they being sold?

Because if you need to eat tomorrow, enough money to buy bread today is far more useful than enough money to buy a Ferrari in 10 years time (not that I'm agreeing with their projection of the item's future value).

I can think of many words to describe these, but 'rare' isn't one I'd go for.

1 hour ago, BR(S) said:

 

Very good boxed condition. Professionally resprayed and weathered. May be one or two chips in paintwork on front and side. See photo for details. Please note that I do NOT accept refunds.

£82.75 for a DCC fitted 2010 tooling Hornby Castle, including delivery and accessory pack. The only caveat (unless I've been hoodwinked) is that the front bogie has come off, which should be an easy (and free) fix.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/rails-sheffield/m.html?item=203825048349&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2562

15% off ebay sale including Rails using the code 'TAKEIT'. I've already managed to get a 2010 tooling Hornby Castle DCC fitted for £82.75 (the bogie has come off, but it looks like an easy fix). A few others that I noticed:

- Sound and Kadee fitted Bachmann 57xx £129.07 (has some dodgy weathering though)

- Hornby Grange at £86.57

- Hornby Adams Radial £69.75

- Hornby 2005 tooling King £52.57 (loose pipework)

All prices quoted above (except my Castle) are the advertised price with 15% discount and £2 postage. However, Rails usually accept offers (the castle was advertised at £109, my offer of £95 was accepted first time, so you might be able to get them a fair bit cheaper). Postage can be combined at £3 for 2 items or £4 for 3, up to a 1.8kg limit. Obviously, it's second hand, so look carefully before buying.

18 minutes ago, PieGuyRob said:

For that price, I hope it serves a meal from a Michelin star chef.

I wonder why Hornby are planning some FGW stock...

It was in short supply, fetching silly prices, even when I was a (proper) child and FGW was still around. I know this because I was given a Virgin HST instead (complete with what I now know to be an aircon Mk2). Grr...

12 minutes ago, 5944 said:

Wasn't a lot of the reason for 2MTs due to weight considerations, rather than minimal power? The thing that confused me is why did BR decide it needed both 2-6-0 and 4-6-0 4MTs, as well as tender and tank versions of 3MTs. 

If I had to guess (and this is a guess, based on the characteristics of the locos rather than how they were used):

-The driving wheels on the 4-6-0 are 5ft 8, rather than 5ft 3 on the mogul. So the 4-6-0 was perhaps better suited to higher speeds, and the mogul to heavier goods work and faster acceleration.

-The 3MT tender engines have a tender (so larger range) and the 3MT tank engine was a tank engine (so didn't need to be turned). One was probably suitable for long-ish rural branchlines, and the other for suburban work which didn't require a 4MT, or for much shorter branches which lacked the equipment to turn locos.