KingEdwardII

I am another very happy user of MTB MP1 motors. I have OO PECO Streamline turnouts. I drive the MP1s via DCC using Digikeijs DR4018 units. I use the supplied operating rods with a 3mm throw, with the motors mounted below a 12mm baseboard. I regard the rigidity of the rods a plus point, since they assure that the turnouts are held firmly at either end-point of motion and can't come loose. It is possible to drive a pair of MP1s from a single channel of the DR4018 in cases where pairs of turnouts need to operate together, e.g. for crossovers. There are circumstances where you might need to consider using the MP5 motors. These have a pair of built-in switches, rather than the one on the MP1. Examples include junction configurations where you have a turnout leading to a diamond crossing, where there is a need to control the feed to two rails rather than one. Yours, Mike.

From my understanding, I think Colossus was the 2nd UK Pacific - just beaten to it by Churchward's "The Great Bear" for the GWR in 1908. http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/m_in_462.htm Yours, Mike.

Now you're cheating - you have TWO separate garages!! Based on my experience, I suspect that your new extension garage will have a short life as a garage before it gets converted into a habitable room. This seems to happen a lot to garages that are attached to the main house - the space is just too tempting! Lucky chap!! Wish I had the space & cash for that. Yours, Mike.

It is strange that people still have this peculiar idea that a garage is for keeping cars in. A car is the object you are least likely to find in a garage. Garages are far too useful and important to waste on storing cars. Cars can look after themselves elsewhere... Yours, Mike.

There was a sign behind the bar in one of the pubs in our village that used to say: "A tidy house is the sign of a wasted life." That particular landlady was certainly no paragon of tidyness, but she used to hold regular singalongs on Saturday nights that brought people in from miles around and made the pub - and our small village - renowned across the region. "It all depends on what you think is important" I remember her saying. Yours, Mike. I hasten to add that in no way do I think @St Enodoc has had a wasted life...

There is some more detail provided in the paper from 1985 found here: http://www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/comfort/comfort1.pdf To me, it is amazing at just how long it all took, when the need was understood from the early days. The real surprise is that they didn't even solve the problem effectively for First Class passengers - you'd have thought that attracting more of those high-fare-paying folk would have spurred things on (I can well understand the neglect of Third Class). Yours, Mike.

What a dull shortlist. I definitely think they should have added "That's Why the Lady Loves..." They could get a good sponsor for that one too. Yours, Mike.

That is what I and my friends did in the late '70s when we were at college in Cambridge and had friends in Oxford we visited for a weekend. The bus took too long and the timing was dire. The train via London let us leave at a convenient time on the Friday and get back pretty late on Sunday, maximising our time in Oxford. A direct train from Oxford to Cambridge would be a real plus, avoiding the hassle of getting between the London termini on the tube. Although I suppose that Crossrail is going to change things a bit given that you will be able to get to Liverpool Street from the Thames Valley and change for Cambridge there. It's a shame that the Liverpool Street to Cambridge trains are not as fast as the Cambridge trains from Kings Cross. Changing at Farringdon will be another possibility, using the Thameslink Cambridge services to avoid the need for another change of train. I suppose there will also be the question of the connection from the Oxford train to an Elizabeth line train. We shall have to wait to see the look of the timetables once Crossrail actually opens (!!!). Yours, Mike.

Well, it might do, but how would you know that it is giving you the curvature that you need, unless you had some way of working out that it fits correctly into your overall design? This is where the 1:1 printout comes in, since the computer software you're using can be used to get the design and the curvature to fit correctly. As @AndrueC is doing with AnyRail, you can demand that the design has no curves less than some minimum radius and the software will sort that out for you. Once you have the printouts fixed to the baseboard, then it is pretty straightforward to place the track correctly. If you use a suitable mimimum radius then you should have no problem with the flexitrack. If you need really tight curves, then flexitrack is the wrong tool for the job. Yours, Mike

Unfortunately, the placement of Cambridge station is almost entirely down to the machinations of the colleges/university in the Victorian era. It is said that they viewed an easy-to-access railway station as too much of a temptation for the students - and so they insisted on a station a long way from the colleges. Cambridge students have had plenty of opportunities for cursing them ever since... Yours, Mike.

Yes, although for me, the need for places like Cambourne to be on the line does not sit well with a southern route. Yours, Mike.

I print out my track plan at 1:1 (from XtrakCad in my case) stick it to the baseboard and use that to line up all my track. The main concern is to make sure that you stick the printed plan sheets down accurately. XtrackCad provides a grid on the printout to help get that right. One big plus with flexitrack and a planning tool like XtrackCad is that you can design curves which don't have a fixed radius, but which naturally transition from straight to curve over a distance, with smoothly varying radius - I use Bezier curves in XtrackCad. This is hard to produce any other way, I think. Yours, Mike.

Do you mean this stuff?: https://www.peeblesshirenews.com/news/19915275.borders-gateway-development-works-starts-tweedbank-project/ ...which seems to be a variety of commercial development at least partly associated with the station & railway. Yours, Mike.

Best to return it, I say. What you describe sounds like a fault on the decoder. Yours, Mike.

Except on preserved lines, where they continue to give trouble in the time honoured way.

I think that they have missed a trick. Since this is the Platinum Jubilee, why not paint the loco Platinum colour?? That would really stand out, too, where purple is rather dark and will tend to disappear when viewed at distance. I'm all in favour of some distinctive liveries and very much like the blue livery for KEII... Yours, Mike.

That makes a pleasant change from pre-Covid times when I once stood all the way from Romsey to Bath on one service. However, things have much improved in that many services are now 5-coach rather than the 3-coach ones that used to run on this route, thanks I think to redeployment of units displaced by electrification on the main line out of Paddington. `Yours, Mike.

This means sending a DCC accessory command from the DR5000, using a (new) address that you want to use for the ADS unit. To do this you simply tell the DR5000 unit to switch an accessory at the address you pick. How you do this depends on how you are controlling the DR5000 - e.g. via some handset; via the Digikeijs software running on a Windows PC attached to the DR5000; via other software like JMRI running on a computer attached to the DR5000. I generally use JMRI on a Raspberry Pi connected to the DR5000 via a LAN and using the Loconet protocol - I can use the JMRI apps on the Pi to send accessory commands, or I can do the same via the EngineDriver app running on my Android smartphone. I've been using the DR5000 for about a year now and I am happy with it. I use it to drive trains, to switch accessories including MTB MP1 point motors and also servo motors driving semaphore signals. I don't yet have any block detection/feedback implemented, although I want to do that in the future. For me, the good computer connectivity of the DR5000 is key - I have it LAN connected, so that in principle it can be handled by computers that are remote (e.g. avoiding serial/USB wired connections). The Raspberry Pi has a large touchscreen attached and this has an on-screen control panel run via JMRI. Yours, Mike.

Clearly aiming at an entry for "Least appropriate music on a Video".

Yes, true - you get an overnight "floating hotel" for an 8.00am start from Hook of Holland. On the other hand, I checked the routes to Interlaken from Rotterdam and from London by train and it is just as quick to get to Interlaken from London "direct" as it is from Rotterdam (both journeys involve changes). All assuming you don't want to fly, of course, which seems to be cheaper as well as faster.

To paraphrase from Mrs Beeton: "First catch your porter".

Indeed. Your mention of "baggage" is one part of the change. Old-style boat trains had a goodly allowance for baggage, necessary if you were travelling on a long journey, especially a long ship journey. Modern trains, Eurostar excepted, have precious little provision for baggage - and you will get very little help with any baggage you do take with you. The cruise liners at Southampton are served by a network of coaches - with convenient local pickup points across the country and a generous amount of space for luggage, plus you and your luggage are transferred right to the berth in the docks. Yours, Mike.

My first bedroom looked out over the ex-TVR line from Aberdare south to Cardiff, pre-1964. Lots of steam hauled coal trains, interspersed with green DMUs. We could also see out over the valley and pick out trains running on the ex-GWR lines from Neath to Pontypool and the branch from that line to Merthyr Tydfil. The latter was exciting since I could see the trains climbing across the hillside and then disappearing into the tunnel under the mountain that separates Aberdare from Merthyr. In 1964 we moved to Aberystwyth - a very different place, but my school was right next to the station in the centre of town. I used to get my fix of watching trains on the way home from school by wandering down the platforms and checking out the activity in the quite large goods yard. Yours, Mike.

Yes. Fom National Rail Enquiries: 06.48 London Liverpool Street - 08.12 Harwich International 0 changes - this meshes with the 09.00 sailing from Harwich, Stena Line. 19.32 London Liverpool Street - 20.56 Harwich International 0 changes - this aims at the 23:00 sailing, I think - which does not mesh so well. Yours, Mike.

Yes, I agree - the twice daily direct Liverpool St to Harwich International services look like boat trains to me. Although they don't make much sense any longer given that the Eurostar services to the Netherlands are much faster and seem to cost the same sort of price. Unless you're really keen on boats, of course... Yours, Mike.