KingEdwardII

Small correction - it's Glanypwll. Sorry, but the mistake grated with me. In Welsh, "pwll" == pool or pond, "glanypwll" == "shore of the pool".

Indeed - I can't see many people who have an Android phone going out and buying an Apple smartphone just for their model railway. I certainly would not. Yours, Mike.

Yes, it is doable, but liquifying Hydrogen comes with a horrendous cost in terms of the energy required to do it. This simply makes the Hydrogen that much more expensive at the other end, since the energy must be paid for. There are no magic solutions here. Yours, Mike.

Yes, except that transporting Hydrogen long distances is technically very challenging and also very costly in terms of energy. My own view is that Hydrogen is likely to be a niche player only in future energy provision. Yours, Mike.

It might translate to some of the cities in the UK, most particularly London, where owning a car can be problematic and is not a necessity. My son lives on the edge of Wimbledon with his partner and they do not own a car. They use public transport a lot, but for more difficult journeys will hire a zip car as needed. Once you get outside the major cities, things change radically. It is never going to be practical to provide enough public transport in rural areas. Without cars, many villages and rural small towns would be dead. It would take a lot of changes to make the journey from my house in Hampshire to my wife's family in Northumberland practical by any means other than a car, for example. The 10 miles at each end between the station and the house is tricky, let alone the hassle of crossing London, makes the train option both difficult and expensive. Yours, Mike.

I do this with my DR4018 decoders and MTB MP1 motors - but there is 1 motor for each turnout in the crossover and each motor has its own switch for handling the frog polarity, so this is handled naturally for each turnout. So both turnouts operate at the same time using a single command to one channel on the DR4018. Yours, Mike.

I think that conservationists sometimes forget what "nature red in tooth & claw" is really like. A couple of years ago a local nature lover got really upset about the arrival of Red Kites in our area, because they started eating some of the small birds, which he definitely did not like. That the Red Kites were native birds that we humans had exterminated in the past seemed to be forgotten - and the Red Kites were only doing what they had always been doing. Top predators eat lots of prey - surprise, surprise! I just wish the Red Kites had crow on the menu - we have a local plague of those and some reduction in numbers would be appreciated... Yours, Mike.

Looks like that layout would demand a few sheep to go with "Bopeep Junction"...

There is nothing new in this kinf of design error. I remember the IBM mainframe computers in the 1980s had a main panel with a large red button in the middle for "emergency off", which would shut down the machine. Every installation I came across had added a safety cover over this button - usually an ingeniously taped-on small box - so that you could not directly press the button, but had to lift off the cover first. The cost of mistakenly pushing this button, e.g. during the weekly payroll run, was rather high... Yours, Mike.

Not boring - just quietly efficient, doing what it says on the tin... ...that is what you really want from any transport system. Yours, Mike.

Hurrah! About time. No more awkward lengthy walks to change trains at Paddington and Liverpool Street... so just one more step and we shall be complete, next spring with the direct Shenfield to Heathrow services. I'm looking forward to that since I travel from west London to Stratford for sports events. Yours, Mike.

The really stupid thing is that there is plenty more coal sitting in the ground in South Wales, but the Welsh government is stupidly withholding licences to extract it. Yours, Mike.

Errm - why is that? A steady voltage is exactly what I get on the outputs from my DR4018 units when driving MP1 motors, using Preset 6 on the DR4018. I have a fairly standard multimeter - and the DR4018 outputs are supposed to be a steady voltage in this mode, which should be straightforward to measure. If you're getting a voltage pulse when the channel is activated, which then fades away, that is indicative of some other mode of the DR4018 being active - many of these modes give short lived pulses by design. Yours, Mike.

A multimeter should not do that. Are you using a multimeter? What sort of disruption did you experience? As Iain said, with Preset 6 you should get a steady voltage between common and one of the other outputs on a channel and zero on the other output. There are *lots* of other settings for the DR4018, many of which provide short lived output voltages on a channel - you need to be sure that you're not using any of those for an MP1 motor. What happens when you activate/switch a given channel? Yours, Mike.

I agree with Iain's suggestion that you check out voltages. What your description of wiring does not make clear is how you are powering the DR4018s. Do you have separate signal and power cabling to the DR4018, or are you using a single cable to provide both signal and power? A single cable might have more voltage drop over 11M since it is probably supplying multiple devices along the way - the voltage checks should show this. I have separate signal and power cables to my DR4018s - I feed 12V to the power cable. Yours, Mike.

Surprisingly, green dyes have historically been rather hard to produce - many of the older ones had a tendency to fade. For much of the Victorian period, many of the stable green dyes were poisonous as they were largely based on Arsenic. It is only in the 20th century that good stable and poison-free green dyes have become available. Yours, Mike.

We drive to the outskirts, park up and catch train/tube. Richmond/Kew is one location, while the new Elizabeth line means we also use Hayes & Harlington, depending on where we're going. Using the train all the way, e.g. from Winchester, is very expensive by contrast, and still requires us to use the car to get to the station... Yours, Mike.

That all depends on the journey involved. Trains are fine if the journey is city-to-city along an established route. But there are many journeys where the train rapidly becomes a pain and the car is easier. Our own journey from Hampshire to Northumberland to visit family is an example. We can get a train from Winchester to Alnmouth - either the faster route via London with the hassle of the Tube or a taxi, or the slower route via Birmingham New Street. However, this leaves us with the problem of getting from home to Winchester and from Alnmouth to our relations' place. Expensive taxis or having to rely on our relatives to pick us up. We have always driven there as a result. We have used Alnmouth and the train once in Northumberland - to travel to Newcastle and to Edinburgh, but used our own car to get to Alnmouth station from where we were staying. Yours, Mike.

Used to provide the backbone of our electricity supply. Unfortunately, we've unwisely closed most of them and are now over-reliant on gas fired stations. Yours, Mike.

I don't really follow your explanation at all. With the MP1, there are 2 screws in the case to remove in order to remove the slider unit which holds the rod. Once the screws are out, the slider unit can be removed to reveal the cam with its pin directly underneath. I typically do this holding the MP1 so that the slider unit is at the top all the time, easing the slider out by pushing the casing open slightly. Once the cam is exposed it is a very simply matter of extracting the pin with tweezers and moving it to the position needed for the throw distance you're trying to obtain. Then pop the slider unit back in, ensuring that the cam pin engages with the slot on the back face of the slider unit. Pop the screws back in and tighten - you're done... The only tricky bit is making sure you don't drop the cam pin, since it's on the small side and it's a pain to find if it drops to the floor. Yours, Mike.

I found the instructions just fine. The real trick is using a suitable set of tweezers to grab the small pin effectively - plus doing the operation in a tray of some kind to catch the pin if it drops from your grip. Now I use tweezers that are closed in their normal position and have to be pressed to release - the sort jewellers use. These are much more suitable for this operation. Yours, Mike.

Looking at the available pictures here: https://www.cambrian-news.co.uk/news/freight-trains-return-to-aberystwyth-in-surprise-timber-trial-546776 and this general picture of the approach to Aberystwyth station: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-aberystwyth-railway-station-with-the-cambrian-coast-train-appproaching-72460917.html?imageid=DF19084D-8D06-4A9A-BD06-F674B8B259F5&p=215211&pn=1&searchId=c24c5b87d7051d74b0ab9e9dbf68971d&searchtype=0 It looks like they used the "spare" second track alongside the main track to the platform to hold the timber train. Loading was done direct from timber trucks using hydraulic arm equipment. Note the old water column in both pictures which I think fixes the location. The old freight yard at Aberystwyth was enormous for the size of the town, but has long since been largely built over and no tracks remain. It was originally to the north of that water column (left side of the picture of the arriving train). I used to stand on the old Platform 5 and watch the shunting taking place (mid 1960s). The facilities at Aberystwyth station are now minimal, but do include a run-around using that second track. Yours, Mike.

That RAIB report has an excellent photo of the suspect wheel, showing a huge gouge - not so much a "flat". That must have been dragged locked a goodly distance - the blueing due to the heat shows up nicely. Reminds me of the time when one of the rear disc brakes locked up on one of my cars - the whole wheel assembly got incredibly hot before I realized there was a problem. Yours, Mike.

Wot, someone new in charge every other day???

What turnouts are you driving? For my PECO Streamline OO turnouts, I adjust the throw distance on the MP1s to 3mm, since 6mm is too great a distance for these turnouts. It may be the case that if left at 6mm throw, the MP1s can't complete their traverse. This would explain the "noise but no motion" element. This is the kind of behaviour I get if the MP1 is mispositioned below the turnout such that it can't reach the end of of its traverse. The MP1 motors should operate correctly if operated on their own without the operating pin being connected to a turnout. Is this the case? I'm assuming you have the DR4018 set up with preset 6... You can check the output of the DR4018 with a multimeter - for each channel there should be a constant voltage between the common and one of the other pair of wires, which changes to the other of the pair when the DR4018 channel is operated. Yours, Mike