KingEdwardII

Yes, the number of reported accidents is 52K for 30MPH roads and 11K for 60MPH roads, with an additional 2,500 for Motorways. (Year 2020). Fatalities tell a different story - 468 @ 30MPH, 473 @ 60MPH, 76 on Motorways. The stats don't really back that up - accidents generally have been on a gently declining trend for the past few years, even before Covid affected driving habits and reduced the numbers markedly. This is despite the fact that the number of vehicle miles driven has been quietly rising, until Covid. Yours, Mike. PS Figures are for 2020 - I could not find final figures for 2021.

How do you want to operate the point motors? DCC via your Prodigy, or via some manal means like flicking switches - it's not clear from your posting? For DCC operation, the DR4018 is a very good option - I originally had my DR4018s working with a Gaugemaster Prodigy Advanced 2 system, although I now use a Digikeijs 5000. If not using DCC, MTB MP1 point motors can be driven using simple switches - SPDT will do - using a 12V DC supply. The voltage supplied to the MP1 is left "on" when the motor reaches the end of travel - the motor itelf turns the current off, so there is no need to organise any separate timeout or break in the current. One difference from the DCC concepts SS controller is that the switch used to power the frog is part of the MP1 motor rather than the controller. Yours, Mike.

Indeed - very unusual. Any idea what the freight (?) train in grey is all about? Yours, Mike.

"OshKosh B'Gosh" is a major US maker of childrens clothes. It has a history going back to 1895. I don't think it has anything to do with the arms manufacturer other than the name of the town.

Yes, a useful piece of wisdom. Shorts & electronics don't mix. Yours, Mike

Situation normal, then...

That whole video is a study in the very different fate of railways in North America compared with Europe and Britain in particular. In NA, railways have retreated into being largely freight-oriented concerns, dealing with (mostly) long distance transit of goods. In Britain, railways have largely given up freight and are oriented to passenger traffic. The instances of major tracks running down town streets is also fascinating - and hair raising! In Britain, most such arrangements were closed long since. The train carrying what looked like a whole division's worth of tanks was interesting - painted in what looked like desert colours. Yours, Mike.

It might be worth contemplating doing just that. Otherwise you face the possibility of it failing once again and having to do it as an emergency. These old pipes have a habit of failing - a planned replacement would probably be cheaper and far less stressful. We replaced the whole of the old supply pipe to our house - the pipe was 1920s vintage and some 50 feet long through the front garden to the road. One short section of the old pipe was removed and looked like a Swiss cheese - pits and holes all over it. Fortunately, we were able to mole the new run for the replacement plastic pipe, so minimal digging. A few years after doing this, the local water company decided to replace the main along the road with new plastic mains pipe, including all the stopcocks - they too were getting too many leaks on a regular basis from the old pipes. Yours, Mike.

The majority of Iceland's electricity is actually produced by hydro power. They do have thermal energy power stations, but in practice it produces only a small proportion of the electricity. The thermal energy is of more practical use in providing heating for buildings, especially in the major centres like Reykjavik. The thermal energy is also extensively used for saunas and geothermal spas. For a cold country like Iceland, that makes a lot of sense. Well, only if it makes economic sense. No source of power is free. Smelting iron is still more cheaply done by using coke. For the Aluminium smelters, the process is inherently based on the use of electricity. So a place with lots of low-cost electricity is favoured for the smelters. In Iceland, the last Aluminium smelter constructed also required a large and controversial hydro scheme to be built - fortunately Iceland is both mountainous and wet, so at least this was practical. Yours, Mike.

Hmm, you really do believe in fairy dust! As far as I know, Iceland does not produce steel. They do produce Aluminium, which is a better use for their hydroelectricity. The Swedes have produced steel from ore using a Hydrogen reduction process rather than Coke, but they have been very quiet on how much it costs. The prediction is that it will be unaffordably expensive. Yours, Mike.

And just how do they think they are going to do that? Use fairy dust?? Yours, Mike.

My thoughts are that the 1st & 3rd pictures are of Nantgarw Colliery/Coking Works, which closed in early 1987. This is just to the east of the Taff River north of Taffs Well - the main Cardiff - Pontypridd line runs on the opposite bank of the river, to the west. Photos 1 & 3 are looking south. In earlier days the works had a series of tall chimneys which would have been in the centre of photo 3. Photo 2 is so generic that it could be anywhere in the valleys, although there is an area south of Nantgarw that looks something like this. Here is a 1984 picture from Peter Brabham on Flickr taken from the mountain to the south giving a grand view over the works and the nearby Treforest Trading Estate - the line to the works can be seen on the bottom right. The ex-TVR line to Pontypridd is on the left - it's a 4-track formation which gives you an idea of just how busy it was in its heyday. In those days, my father worked as an engineer responsible for the services (mainly water & steam) to the many factories on the trading estate. The coking works is long gone now. Yours, Mike.

Well, I run OO and I encountered the problem of bridging between switch rail and stock rail with my Hornby GWR 2-8-2T. A modern loco running on new Peco code 100 track. So this is not just some theoretical problem. How it works out on N gauge I can't say. The problem is that if you don't modify the electrofrog points, you may be fine for some time, but then run into the problem of shorting when you acquire some nice shiny new loco - then you have to rip up your trackwork to make the modifications to fix the problem. Not a great plan, I think. Yours, Mike.

In a word: no. You can use mechanical operation of the turnouts. However, you will need to add a mechanism for powering the frogs with the correct polarity. This can be an electrical switch that is mechanically connected to the position of the turnout tiebar, which thus gets operated whenever the turnout is operated. Frog juicers are an alternative - these are purely electrical and are not connected to the mechanism of the turnout. If you do decide to use point motors, some point motors have built-in electrical switches that can be used for powering the frog, giving a neat all-in-one package. Yours, Mike.

Looking at the supplied diagram - the current situation is that there are no insulating fishplates for each of the turnouts (top diagram). This will cause shorts when the turnouts are operated. What's needed is shown in the bottom case - with the "dead" green sections of track that require separate power feeds to be added. Now, it is possible to implement the bottom diagram without altering the electrofrog turnouts in any way. There are 2 potential problems that can occur with unmodified turnouts, that are solved by modifying the turnouts: a) Unmodified turnouts rely on switch blade contact to transmit power to the switch blade and to the frog. This can get unreliable over time. The fix is to feed power to the frog - but this must be of a polarity that changes depending on whether the turnout direction is set to normal or switched. This then requires some mechanism - either a switch associated with the position of the turnout tiebar (can be incorporated into a point motor, or can be a separate switch) - or alternatively a "frog juicer" that operates by detecting a short circuit and flipping the polarity. Each mechanism has its fans. b) Unmodified turnouts will have both switch blades having the same polarity as the frog. This means that there is a small gap between one of the switch rails and the adjacent stock rail, depending on the turnout direction - and these rails will be of opposite polarity. It is possible for a metal wheel (typically a loco wheel) to bridge this gap and cause a short. Cutting the wire that connects the switch rail to the frog gets rid of this problem. To avoid the potential for the switch rail to be dead (relying on the contact to transmit power), it is advisable to add wires connecting the switch rail to the nearest stock rail. That is a basic explanation of the complexities of using electrofrog turnouts. Yours, Mike.

So, are you using insulating fishplates/rail joiners on the rails leading from the frogs of each of the electrofrog points? If you are using insulating fishplates, then at minimum each of the 3 sections of track between the points will need their own power feeds. Otherwise those sections will be dead. If you are not using insulating fishplates, then you will get shorting when you switch the points and things will not go well. Basically, with electrofrog points you must use insulating fishplates on the two rails leading away from the frog. Period. Yours, Mike.

Strangely, the USB Power Delivery standard is separate from the standards for USB-C - I suspect there are a limited number of implementations of Power Delivery Revision 3.1 because it is so new. Plus, as I understand it, it is a permissive standard, so that any given power supply does not have to support all the available options (e.g. Voltages). I think that my Apple Power Supply is USB-C 3.1, but max 20V and it is certainly pre-Power Delivery 3.1. All a recipe for confusion, I think... Yours, Mike.

Clear all the trees is exactly what should be done - the ones growing directly alongside railway lines are nothing less than a menace. If they are not dropping leaves all over the lines, they are playing kamikaze and falling across the lines. Even worse where the lines are electrified and the trees take the overhead equipment with them as they go. Trees close to the track are a clear safety hazard - any 'environmental backlash' should be given short shrift. Safe and efficient operation of the railway comes first here - plant trees elsewhere. Yours, Mike.

I think there may be a role for governments to play here - just as with the EC forcing mobile phone chargers to support USB-C. The free market seems to push suppliers to proprietary solutions to tie in their customers. It takes regulation to overcome this sort of nonsense. Yours, Mike.

There is an extended power standard for USB-C that provides for a range of voltages. The power supply can supply 5V or a higher voltage like 20V if the device supports it. My Apple MacBook USB-C power supply can charge my (Android) phone with 5V and my MacBook with 20V. The USB power delivery standard supports up to 100W power delivery at a range of voltages. The standard provides for negotiation of the voltage to use to avoid damage to equipment that cannot tolerate more than 5V. I've not heard of problems with the Apple power supplies. Cheapo Chinese ones are a different story - buyer beware! There is a very recent USB Power Delivery standard Revision 3,1 that now supports up to 240W at voltages of 28V, 36V and 48V: https://www.usb.org/usb-charger-pd This seems most definitely aimed at battery recharging for larger DIY devices like chain saws and mowers. The USB folk really do seem to want to rule the world. Yours, Mike.

The way I do the hole for the point rod from the motor is as follows: 1. Fix the turnout in place temporarily (I pin it) 2. Using a small diameter drill bit (1mm or less) drill down twice into the ply from above through the hole in the turnout tiebar - two holes corresponding to the two endpoints of motion of the tiebar. I tend to leave the turnout springs in at this time so that the tiebar is firmly at the end of travel in each case 3. Remove the turnout 4. Drill down through the 12mm ply using a 3mm drill twice, centred on the 2 1mm holes drilled previously. The 3mm holes should overlap a bit so you need to take care drilling the second one - a drilling jig can help here 5. Merge the 2 holes to form an oval - I do this using a 3mm router bit designed to cut channels, but it can be done using a regular 3mm wood drill bit, if you have a little patience. Basically, you want to remove any material that could snag the point rod. 6. Fix the turnout back in place - if you use underlay (cork, foam, etc) you will need to cut a slot in that under the turnout tiebar, corresponding to the hole in the baseboard ply. You should now have a suitable slot for the MP1 point rod, right underneath the tiebar of the turnout, enabling you to fit the MP1 point motor underneath the baseboard. I make this a bit easier for myself by positioning a bright torch above the turnout tiebar to make the hole in the tiebar stand out, making threading the point rod easier. Make sure that the final location of the turnout matches the original temporary position - using a paper 1:1 printout of the track plan on top of the baseboard can help with this. Yours, Mike.

I don't know that every section of track should be isolated - that sounds like overkill - but if you want block detection, then you do need to isolate each block, so you would be part-way down that isolation path. Typically, for blocks the feeds to one rail need to go via a detection unit of some kind (e.g. Digikeijs DR4088 and its various siblings), so that use of a "general" bus arrangement is not the approach. However, block sizes may not match the length of a single track section - you typically need the blocks to be larger than your max train length. As for plastic rail joiners - one down side is that they are much less rigid than metal ones and you have to work hard to avoid a kink if joining rails on a curve. Yours, Mike.

Indeed - that is where many of the latest designs have gone. Caused some ructions in the Apple Mac world when they moved to USB-C and abandoned the previous MagSafe power adapter, but it means one less specialized port on the laptop. It also means a single charger unit can do for laptop, smartphone and a range of other gear now. It will be good to get away from every battery powered gizmo having its own charger. Even some power tool companies seem to be heading in the direction of USB-C for their charging units. Yours, Mike.

Ah, I would never have associated that with the term "double crossover" ! Double slips are very straightforward - I've got one. Basically, you need two MP1s and each MP1 controls the frog polarity of one of the two frogs on the double slip. Waaay easier than that scissors crossing I quoted in my previous posting. Yours, Mike.

I'm going to assume that "double crossover" here means "scissors crossing" - and the PECO SL-E383F in particular. Not a beastie I've used since I'm using OO gauge There is a diagram for wiring the SL-E383F with Cobalt motors from DCC Concepts, but the same principle applies to using MP1s: https://www.dccconcepts.com/manual/cobalt-ip-digital-scissors-n-gauge-peco-sl-e383f-frog-wiring-from-an-accessory-bus/ You will see that all that is necessary is a single switch on each point motor, but do beware the comment: "The frog wiring assumes that both pairs will never feed the diamond at the same time", which makes sense, but you may want to provide a guard against this happening. Yours, Mike.