RFS

I got an email today saying they now have them in stock.

I'm off to Australia for a month next week visiting grandchildren, so was worried my pre-order from Hatton's would arrive after we left. I rang them yesterday afternoon to enquire and was told they had no idea when their consignment would be delivered. So I had a look around and found Model Railways Direct had 11 in stock for the same price (well 80p cheaper!). So I cancelled the Hatton's order, placed an order with MRD at 3.30pm yesterday and the postie delivered it at 10am this morning.

Got mine today - arrived with the smokebox door loose in the box together with one tender foot step. Out with the superglue again! But I agree it's a right faff fitting a DCC decoder, and unnecessarily so. Why are the two screws that fix the body to the tender underneath the bogies, so you have to remove the bogies to get at them? A hole in the bogie frame to allow access via a screwdriver (magnetic of course!) would have made the whole job so much easier, especially as while you're doing this the bogies remain attached to the tender frame only by their pickup wires. (Note to self for when late BR version arrives: undo bogie, move to one side to get tender screw out, then immediately replace bogie). Finally got a Lenz Standard+ decoder fitted (no problem with space), checked it out on the programming track, re-assembled the tender and put it on the main track to start running in. Immediate system short! After staring at it for a while I concluded that I'd put the front bogie back on the wrong way round, so easily corrected! I'm very relieved after all this work that the bogie wires were all still intact. I think the problem is due to Hornby's insistence on sticking with their basic R8249 8-pin wired decoder: with a tender this size there's no need for a decoder with wires. A 21-pin decoder socket in a compartment underneath the coal fitting would have made things so much easier. Only problem now is the NEM coupling pocket on the tender is way too low for a Kadee - just like my King Arthur which has a similar tender. So it looks like manufacturing another stepped coupling ... Apart from these issues it's a lovely loco and runs very smoothly. Well pleased with my purchase.

Looks good. With any luck, once you've successfully completed this project, Bachmann will announce a 4-BEP variant and save the rest of us the trouble!

There have been several problems reported with Wi-Fi and Windows 10 which it is believed are being caused by the Wi-Fi device drivers. I would recommend finding out which Wi-Fi card your laptop has, and seeing if there's an up-to-date version of its device driver.

I had the update yesterday for both a desktop (upgraded from W7) and a laptop (upgraded from W7, then had a clean W10 install). Neither had System Restore enabled, but they have now.

ANE Models are perfectly legit and have been around for some time. They are the manufacturers of the SmartSwitch, for example, which Peco are selling here under their own name.

From Vista onwards, Windows employs program caching, using memory that is available and not required for anything else. First time you load a program it has to get it off the hard drive, but when you close the program it leaves it in the memory cache. Provided the memory is not needed for anything else in the meantime, when you start the program the next time, Windows retrieves the program modules from the cache rather than accessing them on the disk. This is why the second load is often a lot quicker.

Actual film of the level crossing crash in Germany a couple of days ago - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34272214

I've also been using W10 for RMWeb since the beginning of August, but I'm not having the problems you describe. However, I'm using IE11 rather than Edge as I think this new browser is still a work-in-progress.

I use Office 2003 on Windows 10 and it works fine for me. However, there are a couple of glitches that probably started with Windows 8.1, but I can live with them. Firstly, if I receive an email with a hyperlink, then when I click on it IE starts but in my home page, not the page referenced by the link. Workaround is to make Edge your default browser. Minor inconvenience as IE still works fine everywhere else. Secondly, if you create a new email and start typing the "to" address, Outlook generates a drop-down menu of names starting with what you're typing. If you click on one of the entries, it doesn't work and the reliability monitor shows Outlook suffered a program fault. One bypass is to turn off using Word as your email editor, but then you lose spellchecking as you type - at least I've not been able to get it to work other than using Word. I've not needed to run Outlook 2003 in compatibility mode.

I would advise a read of this post on another forum (Your Model Railway Club) regarding the provenance of Lais decoders. Personally I would stick to recognized brands .... http://yourmodelrailway.net/view_topic.php?id=13788&forum_id=10#p248603

Hornby web-site has the BR versions arriving on 8th October and the SR one on 18th October.

If you don't want all those default apps with their tiles then you can easily get rid of them. Right click on each and select "turn live tile off" and then "unpin from start". Also - especially if your internet connection is slow or you have usage constraints - go to the "store" app (it's in the "all apps" list), click on the icon next to the "search" box, select settings and turn off the automatic app updates. These seem to happen every day and I noticed today mine was nearly 500 Mb. I don't use them - hence I've turned this unnecessary updating off. IE is still there and has not been replaced by Edge - it's just that Edge is the default. If you go to "all apps" and find IE you can then right-click it and add to the task bar. I've done that and removed the Edge icon. Also if you click on settings and system you can change the default apps, so that IE is the default browser not Edge. You have to left-click on the Edge icon to get a list of alternatives. I would also recommend going through every setting and turning on or off features you don't want. The default Newsfeed is one you can turn off. I've also put a short-cut on the desktop for the Reliability Monitor - its properties should contain C:\Windows\System32\perfmon.exe /rel . This gives you indications of what's being installed/updated and any failures. Very useful.

All service providers, who store your personal data on their servers, have a clause in their Ts and Cs which basically says that, if they receive an order from a Law Enforcement Agency to disclose your stored personal data in order to further a criminal investigation, then they will comply with that order regardless of the obligations they have made to you regarding the privacy of your data. Worth having a read of this - http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-microsoft-is-not-spying-on-you-with-windows-10/

Indeed it was the largest Beta test ever: that's because MS started the Windows Insider program, and from October 1st last year anyone could register and take part by downloading a pre-release copy of W10. By the time of the official release on July 29th, 5m people were beta-testing it (me included) so when the official release became available on July 29th it was the most widely tested of any major software release. There was a flurry of updates in the weeks following, but that was no different than any previous release of Windows. There are now 75m PCs running Windows 10, and from my experience (3 PCs + Laptop) it's the best and most stable release of Windows I've ever used. I upgraded from W7 (W8 was a disaster) and now have W10 set up in a way that's just like W7, only better. Try it for yourself - I think you'll like it.

I've been reading through my copy of G T Moody's "Southern Electric 1909-1979". There he mentions that from June 12 1961, as part of phase 2, electric trains took over services running under the existing steam schedules, but also says "Some of the ordinary trains, however, consisted temporarily of steam stock hauled by an electric locomotive". He doesn't elucidate why, though. The full, accelerated electric service came into force a year later in June 1962. So presumably this is one of these trains, although the lines to Margate and Ramsgate were electrified under phase 1 in June 1959.

My thought too. I just wonder whether the date of summer 1961 is wrong, as E5000 looks in almost-new state for a loco that is purportedly nearly 3 years old. Perhaps it's early 1959 and the loco is on a test or proving run, perhaps before the full complement of CEPs had been delivered. Hard to tell but those coaches look like BR MK1s in crimson and cream. Robert Carroll also has a lot of photos here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/robertcwp/albums/72157603648772112 . 71s followed by 73s and then 74s.

A gallery of class 74 pictures here - http://railphotoprints.zenfolio.com/p33123299 And class 71 here - http://railphotoprints.zenfolio.com/p287659169

Windows 8 onwards changes the way the hard drives are handled (called Hybrid Boot). If you use a drive on Windows 8/10, then try to use it on an earlier OS (Win 7, XP etc.) that OS will run chkdsk at start-up. See http://www.pagestart.com/win8dbchkdsk121912.html

IE is not being replaced with Edge in W10. Both are available and I certainly won't be using Edge until it has all of its features delivered.

Have you tried going to settings, typing default in "find a setting" and then select "choose a default app for each type of file". You can then set the program you want for jpeg files.

I lost the start menu on my laptop a couple of times soon after I updated to Windows 10. Each time I was advised that I needed to logoff and logon again which fixed the issue. That was nearly 3 weeks ago and it's not happened since. I understand MS have fixed a number of issues in this area and hopefully this is one of them. We also have a couple of desktop PCs and these have never shown the problem. I would make sure that Windows Update has run and all available updates are installed - there have been quite a few.

You can opt out of this, which is what I have done on my Home Hub 5. My "BT Wi-fi Community status" shows "opted out". It also means I can't connect to others as well, but that doesn't bother me.

I think you may be referring to how Windows updates are delivered. There's an option that would allow you to retrieve them from another user's PC (and vice-versa) but I've no idea how they'd get past your firewall. To disable it go to settings -> update and security -> Windows update -> advanced options -> choose how your updates are delivered, and then set the option that you want.