AndrueC

1 hour ago, chris p bacon said:

As for a few seconds on the wrong side of the road, she had actually covered some distance before the collision occurred.

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.

28 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Any US bases nearby?

 

They have them near bases to remind the Yanks. Unfortunately some don't take a blind bit of notice like the "expletive" woman who hit that poor lad on his bike.

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.

4 minutes ago, Jack374 said:

The issue with locos of today is the amount of grease/lube they pour in, which will attract any fibres, dust or small particles. I find I need to de-grease RTR locos far more often than I need to grease any!! 

 

Jack.

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..

/me shrugs.

In over 30 years I've never worked anywhere that didn't provide tea/coffee making facilities for free. At some places it wasn't well organised and someone might have to pop out for more milk or tea bags or coffee now and again but that's what petty cash is for.

At my current office (which I hope never to use again other than once a month for a team conference) we have a reasonably good coffee vending machine. Personally as a tea drinker I don't use it. But it's all free.

15 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Mike,

 

No its me as well, so that is two of us that may well be called smarty ares, miserable or miserable by those that can't think for themselves and spend money on wasteful products. Strange old world we live in.

 

Gibbo

Make that three. I've never understood why people pay several quid (!) to get coffee from a shop when on their way to work in an office. Every office I've worked in had offered free tea or coffee making facilities. And if it didn't I'd make mine at home and use a thermos flask.

But then again why can't people use bins or carry their rubbish back home to dispose of it? Sheer laziness I assume.

22 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

My wife has great difficulty disentangling web addresses with more than one word in the address. This one is one where the words could be split in more than one way. Do you have any other examples?

This is seriously geeky, but I'm a programmer. If you target the Windows platform you sometimes have to work with 'Shell item ID's.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shtypes/ns-shtypes-shitemid

Go on, laugh

I found that the Woodlands Scenics mats worked quite well. I had a large area to cover (a couple of fields) and what I did in the end was roughly create the underlying scenery from polystyrene layers (just putting down layers and leaving the edges 'stepped'). Then I smeared globs of wall filler here and there to create lumps and bumps. Then I glued the mats to that. At the stepped bits I randomly pushed the mats down and added a few weights. Once dry, add scatter to hide the joins so that it looks like a hedge.

I like the result.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VT2A2EmXWprZA9cCA

Hi,

I'd like to experiment with some track painting. I have a spray gun (as yet un-used) but there is a possible snag. I've laid the track and ballasted it and I want the sleepers to stand out from the ballast.

My proposed strategy is therefore:

* Spray the rails 'rusty colour' - minimise overspray but don't fret it. Clean the rail tops.

* Cover the rails (I've read that half a drinking straw works well although for N-gauge I'm not sure).

• Paint the sleepers.
• Spray everything 'ballast colour' - I'm hoping that this won't 'hide' the sleepers. Is there anything I can do to make the ballast spray less likely to adhere to the sleepers or if the colours are sufficiently different will I just get away with it?
• Spray the centre of the track 'dirty ballast colour' - as above I don't want to hide the sleepers but they should get some of this colour on them since they get the same dirt as the ballast.
• In the staging yards paint a few oil patches where locos stand.

Does this seem reasonable?

Custom line crossings as well. I'm not a prototypical modeller and I like that 'gloriously silly' junction

I'm also in the 'build what you want' camp. Hardly surprising given that Circularium is two loops without a single station

However when it comes to adding scenery having a prototype to copy from would make things easier. Without a prototype it's all down to imagination. I have two staging yards and while I know roughly what a staging yard looks like and can look at photos it's quite difficult to transfer that onto my own board. I think that really good scenery not only needs to be well built but also needs to make sense with its surroundings. Any 'human controlled' area will become organised according to human needs and if you don't have personal experience or a real-life area to copy from you might not achieve full realism.

On 24/05/2021 at 18:25, Kris said:

Those points look like set track points. If you do use these be aware that there are quite a few locos (mainly steam outline) that are not designed to run on track that is less than 2nd radius. Set track points are 1st radius. The latest mk2 coaches area also designed for 2nd radius and above. These will not go round 1str radius curves without modification.  

Agreed. I have a 4-6-2 locomotive that is only 'rated' for R2 and above but she will happily negotiate a single turnout. She is not so happy with two back to back however.

I would also advise against trying to access across the the full width of the board. My board is 2.1 x 1.5 metres and I found accessing my central section to be awkward and tiring. There is a big difference between 'I can reach it' and 'I can stand there for ten minutes fiddling with another *censored* fishplate'.

I like the layout. It's neat and packs a lot of interest in. The only thing I'd change (and it's strictly personal) are the dead-end sidings. I have two staging yards where I keep my rolling stock. They work but mean that in order to 'just have a play for half an hour' I have to first carefully reverse a train out onto the mainline. It doesn't take long but I've noticed that it detracts slightly from the experience. My next layout is going to be ready to run. I still have (larger) staging areas but they are double ended so all I'll have to do is set the turnouts and hit the Go! button

She's back! A fairly quick turn-around from Bachmann.

Apparently there was far more wrong with her than we suspected. The engineer found a broken cylinder block as well as all the B2B being out. He has replaced the block and the running gear and adjusted the B2B. I've only given her a once-around-the-track but she seems to be running better than ever. Unlike when I first got her there's not even the slightest indication of complaint with my R2 curves.

It does puzzle me how she came to be that damaged. Makes me wonder if she was second hand but as far as I know she was bought new. Anyway I'm glad to get her back.

Time to update my blog and create a video.

My experience of issues with an insulated frog diamond:

It was fine until recently so my guess is that the higher average temperatures have made the difference.

A real shame. I registered my interest only a week before the announcement so I can't help wondering if that precipitated a review. I didn't care if it tilted or not but I have always felt that the frontal design of the HST was boring. Maybe one day I will take a heated scalpel to the front window of my HST and push the bottom inward. Fill the gaps with some cardboard, repaint her and we're nearly there

Many years ago when I owned a Nissan Sunny with a 12 valve engine (the last before ECUs and Catalytic converters arrived) I felt that it had a bit more pep on high octane fuel and seemed more economical but neither was sufficient to justify the extra cost. Sunnys weren't as slow as people liked to claim at the time but even so 'more pep' was very much a relative description

Since then I've tried it in different 'bog standard' vehicles with no obvious benefit. I think that modern injection engines with ECUs render it pointless unless they have actually been designed to for it.

Incidentally I've just realised that @John ks correctly pointed this problem out earlier so a belated thank you to you, sir!

It's a good (very good) looking model. The only issue I've had with my two is a short on the centre of one of my crossings.

Not a disaster by any means and various solutions exist (although because of its location in a tunnel some are not available to me).

Oh and I had to remove the rear buffers because they fouled the (Rapido) couplers.

The best laid track of mice and men.

I'm supposed to be mostly playing golf but I moved all my rolling stock onto the layout so that I could have a quick 'play' as a reward for all the hard work over winter when the fancy took me. I was rewarded tonight by a loco stalling on a turnout when it was set to straight ahead. It would have only been mildly annoying but it's on my infamous mezzanine so difficult to reach making it more of a concern. I eventually determined that the points were not making good contact with the stock rails any longer and the closure rail had no power. But I was a bit puzzled because this is the first of three turnouts in a row and the next turnout (the one the loco didn't reach) has dropper feeds on it which means that the closure rail should be getting power from there.

So while contemplating having to solder the closure rails I did a bit more investigating and the light finally dawned. This was the section of rail with the badly installed fishplate that I had to cut a couple of months ago (see earlier episodes, lol). What this meant was that for the last couple of months the second turnout had been relying on the first turnout for its power. Apparently today was the day that turnout got fed up of it and decided not to play any more.

Luckily the fix was straightforward. Just solder the the rails back together in lieu of the removed fishplate.

I'm beginning to think that the warmer weather is having an effect on my layout. It's not really been warmer per se because it's in  a spare bedroom but it's not been getting as cold overnight or during the day when the heating is off. I suppose it's reasonable to assume that newly laid track is going to need some adjustment.

On the plus side Miss Behaviour (Class 43) has now backed out of the staging yard several times and run several circuits without ever doing anything wrong. It might finally be time to install the decoder I got to replace the one that failed and maybe even move her off address 3. I've been leaving her on 3 because of her annoying tendency to reset her decoder when she derailed.

Oh, and I now have a dedicated programming track. The end section of one my staging yards is supplied separately from the main bus and isolated. I have an NCE AutoSW that cuts power to the main bus when Program On Track is selected. So I can drive locos on/off then program them without affecting my other locos.

https://sites.google.com/site/markgurries/home/nce-info/nce-accessories/nce-autoswitch

It's not entirely coincidental that Miss Behaviour is parked on the staging yard that terminates with the programming track. I is not stupid and trust has to be earned 

1 hour ago, ISW said:

Looks like you have a couple of solutions open to you. The 'shim' idea on the inside of the obtuse crossing wing rail, and to simply 'file off' a fraction of a millimetre from the head of the obtuse crossing vee rail to 'lower it' below the Class 68 wheel. The latter should be possible even with your restricted tunnel access. The only problem with the latter is that it's probably permanent, so don't take off too much.

 

Ian

I think that filing a bit off would be best.

I've been doing some research on wheels and track standards since getting to the bottom of this and it all seems like a sad state of affairs (particularly in the UK it seems). It would appear that UK suppliers are no better at adhering to standards than us software developers.

Oh well, now that I'm more aware of it it's just another thing to be careful of. Another reason to take more care when laying track and ensure I always have good access.

I think I've found it and you were almost right

It's not that one wheel is shorting across two tracks, I think it's two wheels on the same side of the bogie. There's a closer view of that front bogie here:

If Peco had cut the end of that rail on the right at an angle to match the rails the loco is currently sat on the problem might not be occurring. I can't get a clear enough view to confirm that there is contact but that image looks like there is. If the wheels had the 'correct' conical shape it shouldn't be a problem. I thought all modern models followed the NMRA guidelines?

I wonder if it is due to the new design? The bogies on Dapol's older models clip into the chassis with sufficient force to engage the bogie cogs with a worm drive and (mostly, lol) keep two vertical bogie pickups pressing into two horizontal chassis pickups. The class 68s use a cardan shaft for each bogie and the only thing stopping the bogie falling off is that shaft. The bogies droop quite alarmingly when the loco is lifted off the track. This could mean that the bogies tilt more when one of their wheels is inside the rail gap where the two opposing rails 'meet'.

36 minutes ago, ISW said:

John,

 

Looking at your photo, it seems to me that a wheel is 'bridging' at one (or both) of the obtuse crossings. Rather than try to describe / explain I've marked up your photo with some 'wheels':

Ah, that makes sense, I couldn't figure out how until you drew that picture. Interesting that the Class 68s are the only ones apparently suffering. They are very new Dapol locos (using their new non-removable bogie arrangement) so I wonder if they have an issue with the wheels?

That does give me something to think about (I've already thought about never burying track in a tunnel where the roof can't be removed again  ).

3 hours ago, pH said:

I find that absolutely astonishing! I worked for 35 years in software development and maintenance, in the UK and Canada. I would say that programmers and system analysts I worked with were roughly divided 70% male, 30% female.

If the proportion was even close to that it'd be nice.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/#:~:text=According to a global software,of the software development job.

https://www.frgconsulting.com/blog/female-developers-workforce/

It's a pretty depressing statistic. Now to be fair I haven't had all that many jobs (I prefer to stay in one place) but you're the first person who's told me they have worked with significant number of female programmers.

As for competency of course I have so little experience of female programmers that any opinion I have is irrelevant. But then you get studies like this just annoy the hell out of me:

https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2016/02/18/study-shows-women-are-better-coders-but-only-when-gender-is-hidden

But I can't help wondering - what percentage of railway modellers are women?

8 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

It's more a case that you would be in violation of the Equality Act for not employing women if you were using that as an excuse!

Something that continues to annoy me. My profession needs more female programmers. In thirty years I've only known two and one of those was working for another company. What I found interesting (and I doubt it's statistically significant) was how they approached it. Most of the blokes I've worked with tend to get a bit annoyed when things don't work as expected. They also tend to just 'give this a go' (experience just means mytheir guess is more likely to be correct). But those women thought about the problem first and if their solution was wrong they just sat and thought about it a bit more.

I've developed a theory that men are poor communicators so we are fooled into thinking that we are talking to the computer and hence we don't always put enough mental effort in and why we get annoyed. But women are better communicators so I think they realise it's a machine they are dealing with so give it more thought and see no point in getting annoyed. But based on various girlfriends I think this can only apply when considering computer programmers. Out in the wider world women are just as capable of getting annoyed at machines

I have long thought that if we had more women involved it would be a big improvement in the quality of software.

This is more of ponder that a request for help. I do like a technical puzzle so I'm trying to work out what/how might be shorting on that crossing. The crossing is used to form a figure of eight so the phase will be this:

That explains why it's the centre that I had to paint at any rate. The short occurs (only with some locos - both my Class 68s, not my Class 43) when traversing right to left.

I can't easily get a photo of the central frog but this is the frog from my other crossing for reference:

I can't see what could cause a short about that centre frog. I mean, sure, the frogs at either end (not visible above) have a very small gap between the rails like turnouts but the line drawing shows that they are the same phase anyway so nothing to short out. FYI the central metal guide rails do not have power, I assume they are only metal because it would look better than having an entirely plastic centre frog.

The frog that doesn't have problems has different phases so if it were to short it'd be at the ends, not the centre.

As I wrote earlier it's just curiosity really but I'm a software developer and have long since learnt that getting to the bottom of something can sometimes reveal a simple solution. Right now painting the centre frog seems like all I can do due to location: