AndrueC

Hi, my big project for Winter (yeah I know but I like to plan in advance) is to install turnout motors and LED signals on my layout. I'm currently using an NCE PowerCab and run a maximum of two N-gauge locomotives at a time with six others sat powered but idle. Should I add a second power bus just for the turnouts? Should I buy a booster so that though controlled from the same 'Cab they have their own power? There will be over a dozen turnout motors but they will tend to be switched infrequently, mostly just to select a different train to run rather than as part of a route or for shunting. I'm going to be using DCC Concepts Cobalt-SS motors and associated kit.

Yup. https://peco-uk.com/products/turnout-1st-radius-right-hand-2 My 4-6-2 can handle a single one now that she's been adjusted but one of my sidings has two back to back because the entrance to the siding is a curve and she still can't handle that. Luckily the other sidings are 'back to front' so she can go in any of those. You can of course mix Setrack and Streamline but doing that with turnouts mean you lose the inherent geometry in which case you might as well just go all Streamline. That's what I'm going to do on my next layout but it does seem to consume a bit more space.

My first piece of advice would be to avoid first radius curves if you can. My layout is n-gauge built from 2nd radius curves and Setrack turnouts. Most of my diesels are perfectly happy but I had to remove the buffers of the class 58s because they would foul their couplers or wagon buffers. My class 56 (triple axel bogies) sounds a little piqued running round the curves but I pretend it's just the sound of it 'working hard' My single steam loco - a 4-6-2 Queen Elizabeth - was quite unhappy with the turnouts and not keen on the curves until I sent her to be serviced. Having come back with corrected B2B she's now a lot happier. Meanwhile a Hall I bought to replace her simple won't run on my layout at all. I also prefer layout 1 although I sympathise with the length of siding issue. One of the things I love about my layout is being able to run almost metre long trains. But then my board is the size of a double bed

I'm a computer programmer and agree with this sentiment. It's a problem I face frequently, especially when working on live/legacy systems. Add in the resources available for modification and 'It'll have to do as it is' is sadly sometimes the only option.

All governments spend too much money (which we are forced to give them). Unless there is a material detriment experienced by a significant proportion of the population then I'm in favour. A bridge that hardly anyone uses(*) is not a bridge. It's a waste of resources and/or a potential danger due to neglect. Mind you I'm a little sceptical of how much some old bridges cost to maintain. There's one at Brackley that has a public foot path over and under it - a well signed path to a local park in fact - that often has stones on the ground underneath it. https://goo.gl/maps/gdxav9o48wodUFQZA http://mkttransport.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DSC_0012-1-1024x683.jpg (http://mkttransport.co.uk/photography/disused-railways-in-focus-brackley/) "Today the section of line west of Brackley high street has become a walking and cycling route, allowing it to be walked for a short distance up to the former Banbury Road bridge, where a new junction with the A422 bypass has cut off the route. " It is a moderately interesting feature so it'd be a shame if it were removed. On the other hand it'd be an even bigger shame if someone got killed by falling masonry and I'd struggle to justify the cost of renovating it. (*)I include 'a lot of people like to look at it' as 'usage'.

Don't mention APT-E. I'd love to have one of those on my layout but sadly only one company has ever done one in N gauge and the chances of picking one up are low. One day I might get into 3D printing and try and make my own. Either that or buy a spare HST, and attack it with a scalpel to push the windscreen inwards

Now that's interesting. I don't currently have any sound enabled locos (sadly still uncommon in N gauge). I did have one for a short period of time but it never ran well (if at all) and got sent back to the retailer within a couple of days. I would like to add sound to my future layout (and just about anything else I can think of - it's my second hobby for my eventual retirement). I'm actually going to have stations this time (yes, a loop-de-loop but this time with the pretence of going somewhere useful ) so was thinking of a tannoy system for those as well as train sounds.

Not sure how I'm going to do the inclines this time around. I might go for Woodland Scenics again but now that feels like a cop-out. One of my proposed inclines (a decline actually) is on a curve which will be interesting. I've never had any issues with the ones on my current layout so thought I'd step it up a bit

Interesting. I didn't find that much of a problem with Setrack as I only have one radius of curve anyway but I see what you're saying about sidings. I was 'forced' to follow the geometry but it was just assembling a jigsaw and everything just fitted together. Actually one more question would be track fixing. For my current layout I didn't fix anything until I was done and then just sprayed 'wet water' over the track and dribbled PVA down the middle. I'm assuming that for Streamline curves I'm going to have to fix them in some fashion during initial construction. From my brief experiments the track will tend to straighten out a bit unless it's held down.

My current layout is built with Peco Setrack (apart from the straights of course). The only problem I've had is with one diamond crossing which because I can't get to has to be painted to prevent shorts. None of my locos (Diesels and one 4-6-2) stall or stutter going over plastic frogs. I'm currently planning my next layout and it will be built out of Peco Streamline. Construction won't start for probably two years but having come up with a design I'm now pondering whether I should stick with insulated frogs or go for energised frogs. I imagine everyone is going to say the latter. But it sounds like additional hassle for (from my point of view) little benefit. I'll concede that having silver frogs instead of black would improve the aesthetics. I first thought of using an auto-reverse or frog juicer but have since realised that if I use the DCC Concepts kit as I intend to for my current layout over winter a lot of the hassle does seem to go away. The new layout has three connected loops so I'm thinking about splitting it into three sections if that makes any difference.

Thanks for that. I've accepted that Streamline will be more difficult to work with but the idea of printing 1:1 seems like a good one. For my current layout I could just plonk things down in about the right place then tweak until it fitted. The benefits of a fixed geometry. But as you rightly say Streamline is more realistic so that's what I want for the big layout and I just have to accept the difficulty factor and using the track plan as gospel is a good move.

I've started early planning of my next layout and like my current layout it will have staging yards. My current layout uses Setrack and sidings are spaced by having an opposite R2 curve connected to the diverging route of each turnout at some point to bring the track back to parallel. This is simple to design and easy to build. Playing around with AnyRail suggests it's more difficult with Streamline so how do people normally do it? Do you just work out the siding spacing then cut a section of rail to fit?

A little more work this weekend. I've been experimenting with track weathering so took a risk and decided to upgrade Wilf's Junction (built in honour of my late father). I'm pleased to say that it turned out quite well: The green ties on the right are the result of an earlier experiment so I'm going to adjust that later. And yes, I've removed that bit of fluff

I have two removal sections on my layout. The shorter straight section is just Modrock. It started out as Modrock+cardboard supports but it turned out that the Modrock on its own was enough to form a straight section of embankment about 250mm in length. The longer section is a curve and it was built out of polystyrene with a Modrock cover. I could probably detach the polystyrene now but there seems little point. The difficulty in both cases for me was hiding the join (a problem Ernie Wise never had ). For the small section I haven't yet come up with a solution but for the larger curve I just used the old 'hedgerow trick'. Short section: Removed Unfortunately whilst the small section does give access for cleaning and rerailing it doesn't allow me to actually work on that diamond crossing so I have to keep a bottle of nail varnish handy. Curved section: Some closes ups of the curved section: https://photos.app.goo.gl/jToUnDhjJCufE54T6

I don't think you understand how Occam's Razor works. It is ideally suited to to the discussion of what UFOs actually are. It doesn't matter what aliens looks like because Occam's Razor suggests that you shouldn't assume they even exist let alone wonder about what they look like. No you wouldn't. That isn't how OR works. The entire point of OR is that you shouldn't try to prove things you don't know. OR suggests that in the absence of proof the most likely explanation involves those things you know to be true. We know that humans have indeed made the mistakes you mention. Ergo, there is no need to make up anything else. No it didn't. Again you demonstrate a lack of understanding about OR. OR never dismisses anything. OR does not attempt to provide an explanation or a definitive answer. OR is there to help you make a decision based on what is likely. OR is the last resort when you have no more evidence but have to make a decision. OR claims (if it claims anything) to improve the odds in your favour of making the correct decision but it offers absolutely no guarantees as to validity of your decision. Yes OR says UFOs are unlikely to be aliens. But if some of them are then it doesn't invalidate OR. If you had to make a life or death decision based on whether a UFO was an alien or not you would (I hope) act on the assumption that it wasn't because it's the least likely explanation. That's what OR is for. What's that relatively famous saying? "If you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras'. That's OR in action

Vernor Vinge has written several excellent books and two of them are very good at conveying the size of the galaxy (let alone the size of the universe assuming it is finite). In one of them he talks about thousands of civilisations that are born, spread across dozens of star systems and then die out all without ever having made contact with another such. I also love his idea of Zones of Thought. A Fire Upon the Deep ends with one of the most poignant chapters I've read. An unknown entity is trying to send a ping around the galaxy and they can only make contact in one direction. They are scared that they might be right on the edge of a major catastrophe (which we as the reader know they are). Thousands of civilisations have been destroyed or at least crippled. If anyone likes S/F and hasn't read A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky they should. Now

And some people will believe anything and have never heard of Occam's Razor. I love the idea of alien life. As a child and for the earlier part of my adult life I was a huge science-fiction reader. I particularly enjoyed CJ Cherryh's Alliance/Compact series and that of Ian M Banks. I would love to talk to an alien, exchange ideas (*) and see the universe from a totally different perspective. I'd love to travel to different stars. But I'm also a realist. I don't want to play 'pretend aliens'. I want something that can be proven. The USAF footage is interesting for sure but it still doesn't meet my standards. Sorry. (*)Assuming we can meaningfully communicate. I've also read most of Cherryh's Atevi novels and understand that you might need more than just a dictionary to communicate. Or the Tc'a, Chi and Knnn of her Compact series which pretty much nobody has ever worked out how to talk to.

There's almost nothing of any substance in that article. It's a short piece about things that supposedly happened that no-one can actually prove. And it doesn't particularly contradict anything I posted. The main thrust of what I posted was that unidentified craft flying around with their lights on are highly unlikely to be aliens. That article doesn't say that the aliens that Pres. Eisenhower met flew around with their lights on. It doesn't actually say how they arrived on Earth. I see nothing in that article that would make me revise my opinion.

I automatically discount any suggestion that craft with lights on are aliens because it makes no sense. If they wanted us to know they existed they'd land in the middle of a motorway (or in front of the Whitehouse) or take over the air waves broadcasting a message to us. The idea that an alien capable of building a craft that can travel FTL or trans-dimensionally being unable to work out how to communicate with us is if they wish to is ridiculous. Similarly if they don't want us to know they are visiting they will ensure that their navigation lights are off, window blinds are drawn and that the 'hyper-mega cloaking shield 3000' is enabled. They could spend a week hovering over Area 51 while holding a raucous party and no human would ever be any the wiser. Now having written that I will state that I believe that intelligent aliens exist. I think it's reasonable to assume that some have even discovered how to travel the vast distances between stars. But space is so big that the chances of them ever having come here are miniscule. And I think that if aliens do ever come here they'll most likely ignore us for the same reason we ignore an ant heap that we happened to see on the side of a woodland path. We'd just not be important enough for them to bother with, stuck down at the bottom of a gravity well we can barely climb out of. If little Charlie has to come up with a project for playschool he might drop a couple of 'spy satellites' off but even then his teacher will probably chastise him for being lazy.

The queen is back! It's been a while since the last update. Because golf. But due to the vagaries of the British weather I have been doing some work on the layout so here's a status update. I have started work on the staging area dioramas. Very early days yet but I'm still hopeful of producing a 'macro photography standard' scene here over the winter. I've built out the embankments on the inside of my two top curves. I think they've turned out quite well and definitely add to the atmosphere of that area. I've still got to paint the rock wall on one of them but that's a winter job. A friend used their laser cutter to provide me with two new bridges: I mentioned a while back that my Queen Elizabeth had come back from Bachman Servicing so I'll finish this short post with a link to a video of her strutting her stuff. She stutters once or twice where I've been doing scenery work (probably needs the track cleaning) and at low speed her tender jumps rather alarmingly at the exit of Wilf's junction. But she ran for nearly ten minutes without a serious mishap so I think I can claim that my track laying is of an acceptable standard. https://photos.app.goo.gl/x6nUgsoNnuQSLvfr9 One thing that amuses me - at times the resonance with my baseboard means that she actually sounds like a steam engine. Lol. No sound decoders were installed prior to the making of this video

Mine has two annoyances: * The design of the fog light switch means that it's impossible to only have the rear fogs on. You can have fronts and optionally the rears but not the other way around. The switch is on/off for the fronts and push further then release for the rears. My previous car also had pull then release for the rears. * You activate the rear washer/wiper (which doesn't have a non-return valve for the fluid) by pushing the washer stalk forward whereas I expect it to be pull back - on the grounds that it's the rear window.

Judging from where the flowers were placed it was only about a hundred yards I thought. But yeah a sad case. It just seems to me that furore over it has made things worse and calling her names or labelling her 'evil' is not justified.

The council has now painted direction arrows on the road outside that base. I drive that road fairly frequently on my way to a local golf course. If you've driven on an opposing side road network and never ever drove for a few seconds on the wrong side (which is about all she did) when exiting a junction then you must be some kind of saint. I even did it once in the centre of Kettering at some traffic lights. My Kettering incident (which occurred at night when no-one was around, many, many years ago) was gross negligence. Having being trained to drive on the LHS I had no excuse. It would be reasonable to punish me for such a transgression because I should be expected to know better. But an RHS trained driver temporarily reverting to their original training is an unfortunate but understandable human mistake. It shouldn't be treated the same way. Yes she should have stayed to face the courts (who based on other cases would have been lenient because of her prior training) but we don't actually know that she chose to leave. It's possible that her husband's job meant that it was US policy to immediately recall both of them rather than risk her getting into the hands of foreign police authorities. So it seems to me that the public furore has done more harm than good. All it has done is cost a lot of money in legal fees and pretty much ensured that she was never going to be extradited here because the chances of a 'fair trial' were about zero.

Ain't that the truth. One of the reasons I named my Class 43 'Miss Behaviour' was because she left a trail of slime behind her. Any loco run after her would stutter and stumble. It's not quite that bad now but I still give the track a wipe after I've run her. And of course the instructions that come with her state clearly that over lubrication should be avoided..