AndrueC

I've had Sky Q almost since it came out. There are a couple of advantages to the box over the Sky+ units and a couple of disadvantages. For me the biggest gain was the ability to record up to six programmes at the same time. I never watch live TV and most of my viewing is in the 9pm to 11pm slot so I often need all six options. The On Demand side of things is pretty slick and integration with Netflix et al is nice and pretty cost effective. Things you lose: Slow motion replay. Bookmarks. Reminders I don't miss any of those. The fact it's more graphical is nice but there are a couple of disadvantages: You can't switch off the small picture in the Guide (at times it will go away but when there is space for it it will be there). I leave my box permanently tuned to channel 401 because I don't have the sports package and at least then the small screen is either just showing a silent 'You must subscribe...' message or whatever I'm currently playing back. The page up/down key only works on the programme guide. There are plenty of other times when it would be nice to have it. A classic example is if you want to find the latest episode of a long running series. Lord help you if you ever want to find the latest episode of Wheeler Dealers for instance. My biggest bugbear. when exiting playback you are unlikely to be returned to the recording selection page (sometimes you will but not often). Most likely you will end up at the main menu which forces you to then navigate back through your recordings to find what you've just been watching so that you can delete it. This has been a bug since day one and Sky are just that useless at fixing bugs. But the UI does the job and despite the age of my box (must be over six, maybe seven years by now) rarely crashes. If it ever does fail then it won't cost me anything. Sky Q boxes remain the property of Sky so they will get you back up and running without you have to pay a penny. On the other hand that will mean you lose all your recordings which is a bit annoying. I don't archive anything (I'm a strictly, record, watch, delete person) but because I don't watch live TV it would be very frustrating having an empty box.

..as the actress said to the bishop.

Isn't that basically the history of the Coronation Class?

Thank you, lol. I bought it with the intention of it performing that loop in the background while the other trains took turns to strut their stuff. I'm hoping that after a few more daysweeksmonths running it might quieten down. The instructions did say to lubricate it first and I did that. There's enough oil on the gears for it to very slightly stain a tissue.

Hi, I have a class 121 dummy in Chiltern green. Unfortunately the lights show as white which is a bit unrealistic since it's always being towed. Is there an easy way to switch them to red without the expense of buying a decoder for it? On a very related note: Does the powered 121 whine ever fade? It's far and away the noisiest loco I have and the only advantage is that it drowns out the sound of turnout motors operating.

Very late to the party here but good to see that Dapol are consistent at least. My N scale 121 also has a high pitched whine. That's a bit annoying because it's a unit I intent to have continuously circling on a branch loop. On the plus side it does drown out the sound of turnout motors operating 🙂

And I'd wager that: a) It didn't affect their sales in the slightest. b) 95% of people who looked at the stand had no idea and/or wouldn't have cared 😉

Yes that's what I meant when I mentioned radio controlled. It seems unlikely the car uses that because those systems all include local DST information. I'll grant that as a software engineer I treat hardware manufacturers (eg;Toyota) with disdain but the chips for such systems come ready to plug in so it defies logic that a car would have such a system yet fail to correctly switch to/from DST. Actually I did miss out another possibility - DAB. However I used to have a DAB clock radio and: It could be wrong by up to two minutes (I believe this is actually part of the DAB spec) and I got so annoyed by it that I got rid of it. It often didn't switch to/from DST until 8 or 9am (see above for the annoyance factor). Update: From some web searches it shows that this might be down to the receiver implementation rather than DAB itself. Still - if it gets the time from DAB it ought to automatically update. Oh and I've never used the radio so have no idea if it's tuned into anything at the moment. 🙂

Technical rant alert! So my current car - a Corolla - maintains an accurate clock. I just checked again and it agrees to the second with my watch which is a Casio G-Shock that syncs to the national time signal every night. As I see it there are three possibilities here: The car gets the time from GPS. My model has sat nav but even those that don't will have GPS as part of the eCall system. The car gets the time from the traffic information that Toyota helps fund. The car gets the time from a Bluetooth device when it connects and it will always connect to my phone when I drive it. (I discount inherent accuracy because digital clocks always drift even if it's only half a second a day). I have to manually enable/disable DST so I think we can rule out Bluetooth since that includes that information. For a similar reason I think we can exclude the traffic information plus I'm guessing that might only be received when I use the satnav and these days I use Google Maps and Android Auto rather than pay Toyota's outrageous map update fee. So it probably gets the time from GPS and that will be UTC without time zone information so meh. It's annoying but can't be helped. But then we get to my previous car a Honda Jazz. That's much the same situation (except no eCall and my model didn't have satnav). But when configuring the clock you had to specify the time zone. I selected WET (Western European Time) because that's what we use. Did it help? Did it heck as like. I still had to manually enable/disable DST. Now that is stupid. Meanwhile my three watches, all my clocks and even my central heating thermostat sort themselves out via radio control. All I have to change indoors are the microwave and some timers I have controlling power sockets.

I was there helping run the LWMRS club's 30 year old layout, Meacham. Despite a few incidents in the fiddle yard(*) it went well and seemed to be popular with the visitors. I had a wander round the show and saw several other great layouts. Unlike a lot of shows it never felt crowded but there were plenty of people there. You also get access to the motor museum so that's another reason to go. Tomorrow is the last day folks! (*)Tail chasing is all great fun until it goes wrong :)

It's enough to make you weep..or climb up a pole :) I've redone my willow using a technique I found on YouTube. The result (my third attempt using different techniques) finally meets my standards. I used this technique to make the branches. As a diversion I've also installed some telegraph poles on the Western Cutting. In case anyone's wondering they are a scale 15m apart.

I'm not keen on Royal Mail anyway. I prefer to use a shell company.

Gives a whole new meaning to 'snail mail'. 🙂

That would be an ecumenical matter.

I don't think any Cobalt model consumes much when idle. The IP versions apparently consume around 4mA depending on the voltage but that will include power for the integral controller electronics on their digital versions at least. The -SS variant (the ones I use) are separate motors/controller and the motor is a stepper so presumably consumes nothing when idle. -SS controllers by their nature (a couple of small indicator LEDs and DCC decoder) will be consuming some power all the time. All models have built in CDU so shouldn't cause any spiking.

On my layout I used suitcase connectors to attach droppers to the bus. They are pretty easy to use but do require a little care. In particular making sure that the dropper is fully home before pushing the cutter down and then ensuring that the cutter is all the way down (the flap won't clip shut unless it is). Unfortunately their ease of use is also their downside. It encourages you to just slap 'em on where you want leading to a bit of an untidy mess. You also can't just unclip them because they cut the insulation of the through wire (the bus in this case). I have a couple of empty ones under my layout where the dropper wasn't fully home and fell out. I can't remove them or at least if I did I'd then have to wrap insulation around the bus wire so no point. That's actually an issue with DCC Concepts kit which I've used heavily. Not requiring soldering or wire prep is great but it means you're relying on standard wire lengths and a lot of the time that leaves slack wires hanging around. It also means you tend not to care about routing - you just want the wire to go from socket A to socket B so stuff it in whichever way achieves that.

Static grass ahoy (and the last of the army sand). Just a short update. Once I had more space between the inner track and the interchange I was able to create some proper scenery. No more naff card painted orange. This is the result: It needs a little more work around the turnout motor cover but it's a big improvement. I now have to decide what I'm going to put on that empty section of board. It's supposed to be a lift-out section (currently duck-under) so I could just remove it to reduce weight but that seems like a wasted opportunity. Having completed the above track work I could also add in some scenery to the right of the above image. Wallarium tries to be consistent in its track laying. Grey ballast sat on a sand base. This was the last section of track to be made good. It means that I have finally reached the point where I no longer have a need for army sand. This has been a running personal joke for a while. For some reason I over ordered it and several times while digging through my scenery for something else I'd find yet another container of army sand. Consequently whenever I needed some I'd joke to myself about being careful with it so as not to waste it. Naturally I've been left with quite a lot of army sand and no longer any use for it. I can't believe it's not...army sand.

I bought mine three years ago but it couldn't handle the 2nd radius curves on my previous layout and wasn't happy with one of the ones on my current layout which I know to be no worse than 3rd radius. Then one of the wires and the tender coupling broke. I repaired them but my other 4-6-2 (Graham Farish Queen Elizabeth) has never had any issues and has been handled a lot more often. So my Hall is in its box at the bottom of a drawer and will likely never be allowed to see daylight again.

I always liked the story of the old, empty barn.

The important thing is to keep it tidy. But yeah consistency is key. Dropper from outer fixed rails. Dropper from frog power source depends turnout controller should provide. Insulated joiners on frog rails. Job's a good 'un.

Getting the track back on track.. So I posted back in April that I wasn't happy with The Doorway Interchange. I also posted that fixing it would be one of my winter jobs. Well with the golf course shut (or at least recovering from the last day's rain) I decided now was the time to tackle it. The task was essentially simple. I just wanted to tighten the overall radius so that there was more of a gap between the inner track and the interchange. But this was to be my first attempt at lifting track that had been laid using underlay and Copydex. It was more difficult lifting it than it had been for track on my previous layout. For that layout I'd just plonked the track on top of the baseboard and dribbled PVA along the sleepers followed by ballast. Lifting that was easy as you just had to spray wet water on it and wait ten minutes. Lifting foam+Copydex is not so easy. It's not difficult but my idea of just sliding a pallet knife underneath and wiggling it a bit almost didn't work. If the foam had been completely glued down it would have been more of a struggle but as it happened it seemed I'd missed a bit when laying it so was able slide the pallet knife underneath that part of it and wiggle from there. Eventually the track came free albeit at the expense of a lot of the underlay. Luckily as I had previously acquired the last remaining Gaugemaster foam underlay in the country it wasn't a big deal. I just had to choose the right area to snip and join the track back up then I used a bit of the spare underlay to repair the damage. You'll be glad to know that I still have most of the five metre roll left. Waste not want not. All in all it took about an hour and a half to move the track. It's not moved a huge distance but now I have enough space to build some proper scenery around the turnout motors. In the picture below you can see the motor cover near the top of the picture and the extra space to the right of it. Looking at the underlay I'm reminded of a wise saying from Mr Eric Morcambe. "You can't see the join" 😁

So the golf course is closed today (lordy it's been getting wet and soft and it's only October 😢) so more time spent on t' railway. I dropped a bit more static grass around Wilf's Junction but I also went ferreting around in my scenery box. In the process I found some seats (I knew they were there) and some flower boxes (I'd forgotten about them). So I decided to add some furniture to my platforms. I need to add some more stuff so will probably knock up some vending machines and maybe a clock or two. I also removed that errant ballast after taking the above photo, lol.

As the weather worsens I get time to do a bit on the layout. I've been gradually putting down static grass and bushes everywhere. I've also laid most of the ballast at Wilf's Junction and confirmed that the frog juicer does what it should - I can run trains through the crossing quite happily. You might notice that I've added some grass to the right of the junction. It's supposed to look a bit scrubby and I think it's worked well. The biggest project so far has been building a mound for my castle ruins to sit on. I'd been wondering what do put there and realised that a ruined castle gives a good reason for building a tunnel instead of just blasting the whole hillside away. So I present the view of Bluff Corner on the left with the south entrance to Castle Tunnels on the right. Away from my layout I took a couple of locos and my bullet wagons to the club for some exercise and to practice controlling the layout (it's DC) for the upcoming Gaydon exhibition. We've done some work on the old layout to spruce her up a bit so wanted to make sure everything ran. The layout was mostly fine apart from one turnout on a yard that everything picks at the blade pivot but it did throw up a few quirks for me: My bullet wagons caught on some of the droppers and a couple of fiddle yard turnout solenoid extension levers. My Sonic GWR 56xx 0-6-2 refused to move. It's fine back on my DCC layout so maybe it's shipped with DC support disabled. My BR class 53 ran beautifully but think the DCC chip is in the wrong way round because it drives as if the nameplate is on the rear of the loco which seems wrong. My Pacer ran fine but the direction of travel was opposite to the lights - it always showed red lights to front and white to rear. When I got it back home it turned out that the decoder in the power unit was no longer able to move the loco - curiously it gave a high pitched buzz as if it was a DC loco on a DCC track. The decoder in the unpowered unit was fine so I swapped the decoders and it now runs fine (direction lights 'n all). But if you want to see the venerable Meacham layout it's on exhibition at the Gaydon Motor Museum over the weekend of October 28/9th. I will also be there on Saturday helping (or hindering, lol) the operation of the layout 🙂

What scale? The bodies of the HST MK3s I have in N scale are 150mm. The space occupied including coupler spacing is ~154mm. The coupler spacing might not be prototypical in order to accommodate the tighter radii of a model layout. 150mm in N equates to 22.2m. Interestingly the real thing is supposed to be 23m. That red/white coach shown in the article is exactly what I'm supposed to have on my layout. I wonder if the 23m length includes coupler spacing? It seems like it does since 23,000mm/148 is 155.4mm which is very close to what I'm getting holding a ruler against a parked train.

For me the only genuine running problems I've seen are with a Y turnout that my 4-6-2 Queen Elizabeth sometimes picks. In that case it's not the frogs it's the switch blade pivots where one of them seems to be a little out of alignment. At prototypical speeds (it's on the entry to a yard) it's generally fine but appears to need my turnout motors to pull the blade a bit tighter. All the other dozen or so turnouts seem fine although the QE's tender bounces a bit on some of them. Most of my stock is modern era and doesn't exhibit any issues. But it is a bit disconcerting that if I drop my single bogey onto the track then finger push it towards a turnout it will almost always derail unless I'm gentle.