Oakydoke

It must be something like "two out of three cats prefer Pedigree Chum...." ......or was that Dog's?

The plan all along has been that Crossrail replaces all the stoppers, leaving only 2 limited stop non-Crossrail trains to Paddington per hour, plus the peak only services from Henley and Bourne End to Paddington (1tph each). Regarding capacity east of Airport Junction, a lot will hinge on what happens to HEX once the access agreement expires in 2024. NR covets the 4 paths per hour they take up on the fast lines and after that date would like these paths to be reallocated to addition fasts to Reading and beyond, with HEX more than likely being replaced with additional Crossrail services on the Relief lines. What Heathrow Airport Ltd's future position on this will be once Crossrail is up and running and has already taken over the Connect services, is anybody's guess. Currently it is thought that they will want to defend and extend the contract term on their HEX services. Of course the whole issue may be turned upside down on its head, if a decision is made to expand Heathrow with new runways, as the current and planned rail provision will be totally inadequate in those circumstances. On the current plans, all the stopping services from the west will be provided by Crossrail and will carry on through the central section. The exception being the 2tph limited stop services and the 2tph peak only services from Henley and Bourne End. So yes, there will be extra platform capacity at Paddington, but I don't know how it is planned to be utilised.

Big on the American Blues scene, big in Germany, big in his trousers. Popa Chubby. On a European tour at the moment, but only appearing at one small gig in the UK, in Southsea Portsmouth on 26th March.

If they are monitoring this thread, they'd also see that 66.67% of respondents to the poll say they would use new 00 RTL track for their next layout if it was available and 15% would even rebuild their layout with new 00 track. Only 7% would continue using their existing choice and that figure will include the hand and kit builders. Those percentages have remained exactly constant, without deviation from early in the poll when there had been only 20 odd people voting, right up to 141 votes. As such the trend suggests those proportions may remain the same even if there were 1000 votes cast.

Again, hazarding a guess, I would think that all the non-00 disciplines would add up to no more than 15 to 20% of the total market. Based on 100,000 modellers, that would mean at least 80,000 00 modellers. If it was as low as the 30,000 at the bottom of your guess, then we wouldn't be seeing a fraction of the RTR that normally appears from the likes of Hornby and Bachmann, let alone the other manufacturers producing 00 RTR.

One huge big bloke, but what a guitar player. Popa Chubby - coming back to the UK in March.

Nothing like that at all. The SmartFrog is an electronic module for automatically switching the polarity of a powered frog. By the way, it's not a Hexjuicer either. It's a Frog Juicer. The Hex Frog Juicer is a 6 output version, the Dual Frog Juicer is 2 output version and the Mono Frog Juicer is guess?

You mean a Frog Juicer, made by Tam Valley Depot. The Hex version (Hex meaning 6 outputs) is the most expensive model. The Dual and Mono versions are much cheaper. From the info available, the Peco SmartFrog appears to be a one point, mono device.

What about giving them some of Martin's designs and the Tillig catalogue, with the words " we suggest these (designs) to this standard and quality (Tillig)".

I agree that Hornby are probably not going to enter this area, but not just because of the specific market size. Their focus starts from the toy sector perspective and having gone through and continuing to go through some serious difficulties, they are probably less inclined to look too far outside their various current product lines while trying to stabilise the ship. As other contributors have mentioned, Peco have been slowly intoducing new track ranges, to serve much smaller markets than the potential market for a proper 00 track range. They have the capability to introduce 00 track at a containable price and would ensure the product is placed with their retail distributors and will promote and market it accordingly. Bearing in mind their "heals firmly stuck in the ground" reputation, shouldn't the focus of this discussion be on the need to convince Peco that there's something worth pursuing here. Rather than getting lost down various blind alleys discussing detail, or tooling costs, wouldn't it be better to concentrate on creating a loud voice to get the message across the hobby and a situation which Peco cannot ignore? As Colin, Bill, Ron and others have said, let's stop pouring cold water on these endeavors and get behind Joseph and the others in trying to move this issue forward. Success can only benefit and strengthen the hobby.

They do look very old fashioned "train-set" and not scale-model. Would it be easy to change them for something better?

I definitely wouldn't want to see a sprung locking mechanism like that on the Peco Streamline points. Even with Peco, there are people who go to good deal of trouble to remove the ugly plastic lump to improve the looks. Latching can be easily achieved in other, less visually obtrusive ways. A new product should start off with the intention of achieving this goal.

That makes a lot sense. Cut out the middleman in order to contain costs and take advantage of the trend towards direct selling. Hornby are doing that too, or so it seems.

We went to see John Lee's Barclay James Harvest last night. Support was Gordon Giltrap and Oliver Wakeman (Rick's son).

I was referring to the fact, as pointed out by Ron, that R/C systems specifically designed for model railways have been available for some time. Up to recently these have been aimed mostly at the larger gauges, but there are now commercially available systems for H0 and larger. Unfortunately, it seems these are not street legal in the EU. By "square wheel", I was referring to the attempts to use inappropriate R/C kit for this application. "..let off the hook" ? I'm not on any hook thank you.

If solutions to this requirement are already available in some form, why are people busy trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak and trying to make a square wheel work in the process?

I'm also very impressed with this system and the future possibilities that software development could bring. One area I'm interested in is layout control. The Z21 already allows you to take a photo of the layout (or part of a layout) with your device (iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android phone, Android Tablet) and then import it directly into the Z21 app. Points and crossover images are then dragged from a menu and superimposed onto the image of the layout. Operation of the points can then be done by touch. At the moment it all looks rather basic, but I'm sure this can be evolved into a more comprehensive method of layout contol. Combine it with an app designed for automatic train control and the result could be a rather powerful tool.

Clattenburg is getting a lot of undeserved flack IMHO. He was right to send off Torres for a most blatent dive. Isn't everyone crying out for this cheating to be stamped on? The offside goal happened so quickly, one second he was offside and the next he was back onside before the ball had hardly left the foot of the player who passed the ball. The linesmans view looked to be obscurred by the goaly and other players in the way. Unfortunately that's just bad luck on Chelsea's part.

While in the fullness of time, there may be plans to add another line, there isn't going to be a HS network. There is absolutely no need or justification for it, never mind the funds that will be required. The notion that Britain will be criss-crossed with HS lines is fanciful in the extreme. Even as it stands, the current proposals are not far off what all previous studies have concluded. The Network Rail study proposed the WCML relief line as in the current plan, but only running to Birmingham and Manchester, with only the outside possibuility of a business case to extend to Glasgow and Edinburgh via the Lake District WCML corridor. Their study concluded that case of a line to Leeds was marginal and to go beyond to Newcastle was not justified in the slightest. The HS2 study include Manchester and Leeds, but confirmed the case to go further was not sufficiently strong or developed to warrant an extension. I'm of the opinion that the talk about extending the current plan beyond Leeds and Manchester, is just political posturing and an attempt to gain wider support for the proposals. The case to actually do it must be incredibly weak.

Until they started aquiring other toy & model brands, in 2007 Hornby said that around 70% of their sales of model trains (the British outline Hornby stuff) was bought by adult modellers and collectors and 30% to the childrens toy market.

News from Birmingham 04:15 Reports that in Ealing, dozens of cars parked in residential streets have been smashed up or set on fire. The Sony distribution centre mentioned above, looks like it's completely destroyed. An eye-witness said he saw around 20 or so youths coming out of there loaded up with stolen electronic goods, before the flames took hold. There's a report just being given at the moment about Toxteth in Liverpool. The reporter says there was a crowd of around 300 involved including kids as young as 10 or 12 taking part in the looting.

01:30 I'm watching BBC News as reports are coming in from Birmingham, Liverpool and now Manchester. It's spread all over inner London. Ealing for gods sake! Hardly a deprived area. Looting and cars on fire. Clapham, Croydon, Lewisham - buildings and cars on fire. Hackney earlier, now Canning Town and Camden. No excuses. Poverty, alienation blah blah....all Rubbish. I'll stop there.

Wigan players were doling out plenty of "afters" in the first half of that game. Mark Clattenbeg let several very bad tackles go without even a free kick, let alone any cards for the Wigan players involved. McCarthy had also commited a few dirty challenges himself prior to the incident involving Rooney, although that's no excuse for any form of retribution or retaliation. The Wigan game plan was clearly to "rough up" United and try and prevent them settling into their rythmm. You can't complain if the same comes back and bites you on the B*m. Bring back Norman Hunter and Chopper Harris ! It's a man's game after all (oops! I'm glad I don't work for Sky TV...... ).

Ugly Betty ends up Morphing into a glamourous career woman. Class 70's ????????