Dagworth

In that case a double pole switch on the track bus will enable you to totally isolate the track and so restore the accessory bus and change the point. Andi

Yes, double pole. For exactly the reason in my previous post, DCOs only operate single pole as a rule. If you use a changeover type switch with a centre off then you can use one side of the switch to feed via a resistor to charge the caps in sound fitted locos before giving them full current as I mentioned at the show. My switches are before the DCOs but it doesn't make much difference. Andi

Do your point decoders also power the frogs from their accessory DCC supply or are they fed from a track bus for the frogs? If the former then a short from running an incorrect point still has the potential to shut down the accessory bus preventing the point being changed. I would also look at the viability of breaking the fiddle yard into 4 districts, Up high level, Down high level, Up low level and Down low level. That way a fault only shuts down one line. Andi

Buy the modules, I'll build them for you. There are seven of them under Ipswich. The other thing I've found really helpful is having switches that can isolate each of the power districts as well as the DCOs Andi

The internet is your friend https://www.esu.eu/uploads/tx_esudownloads/524xx_LokSound_V35_ESUKG_US_Betriebsanleitung_Auflage_IV_ebook_01.pdf Andi

He was created by the same team as Bagpuss and The Clangers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_the_Engine Andi

You'll be telling us next that you don't know Ivor The Engine next! Andi

You could try turning the sound volume down, that would help to keep the decoder cooler as it won't be working so hard. Andi

Red has always meant catering Andi

We as traincrew thought this was a really well thought out PR move, let's paint the stock that you're likely to get murdered in with a blood red stripe! Andi

NextWeekSouthWorst

Very rare to see any express stock on those trains, they were EPB until they went to Networker. Andi (Charing Cross driver 1988-1997)

Waiting - NMA

Damn.... living room full of flour now! Andi

56134 would later carry the name Blyth Power Andi

Flash - Queen

I have exactly this with Ipswich, my best result so far is to use soil from the garden, dried, sieved to remove any vegetable matter, and any lumps in the soil crushed so it is pretty much dust. This can then be used as ballast as is or dropped over normally ballasted track where the soil is so fine it fills the gaps between the ballast granules. Best bit of using soil is that it's free. Andi

A bit too late for my Ipswich layout but sorely tempted nonetheless. If the Dutch livery one appears that would be a definite! Andi

I grew up in East Anglia though my family originated on the southern end of the West Coast Main Line. My first real memories of trains are probably being with my cousins in the park at Berkhamsted and at my Great Nan's house that was alongside the line at North Wembley where we could stand at the end of the back garden and watch the trains. So my earliest memories of "real" trains were ones with pantographs, and a constant procession of them. The first loco name I ever remember seeing was 86206 City Of Stoke On Trent. My dad was an enthusiast too and took me to various museums and preserved lines from a very early age but they weren't the same as express trains on the big railway. I didn't know about train spotting until I joined the scouts in Stowmarket and met some other boys there that were train spotters, mainly on a walk into town one evening alongside the railway when they were talking about a 'foreign' 47 and I didn't understand what they meant (a non-Stratford one it turned out). From then on I was hooked on numbers and learning what all these locos were, discovering in the process that my Diesel was in fact a Triang Hornby Class 31. From then on my evenings and weekends found me a very regular visitor to Stowmarket station, then joining the local railway club too. My Grandma lived in London and I was allowed to go to London to see her without Mum so that was the first outings to the big termini on my own, watching the overhead wires into Liverpool St, discovering that I only needed the last three numbers of any Eastern EMU, then Euston was heaven, my beloved electrics! I cleared all the ACs for sight long before any diesel class... Paddington was strange long things with flat fronts, but thankfully all the right way up now! As for Clapham Junction... so many trains, where do you look, at what on earth was that strange shaped thing in the sidings next to the shed? (the PEP unit) and Cromptons and EDs, very odd to my Anglian eyes, used to 31s, 37s and 47s. Getting into the Midlands via Peterborough where we found Deltics then further north and west to Sheffield, 20s, 40s, PEAKS, things I'd only ever seen in photos, that couldn't describe the whistle or thrum of the EE beasts. Further afield once I joined BR in 1985 and had free travel, now Scotland beckoned, 47/7s, 26s, 27s, that was where I really felt a foreigner railwaywise. Meanwhile my electric locos now came to me with the electrification of the GE mainline to Norwich I moved to Charing Cross in 1988 and became a driver, by now I was not so much into number collecting, having graduated to haulage instead, but gradually lost a lot of interest by the mid 90s as it settled into being a job instead of a hobby. I have never stopped looking at loco numbers but I very rarely write anything down now. I left the railway in 97 and moved to Cheltenham. I don't think I did anything railway related for 2 or three years, then finally made my way into Cheltenham Model Centre and it all started again. Dagworth was reborn, a reincarnation of a layout I'd had in a caravan in my Mum's garden, and I joined DEMU and then a very young RMweb in its first days of existence. The rest is history and while I still look at trains and will normally point the phone camera at anything that isn't a unit my main interest now is recreating those glory years in my mind of the West Coast Main Line with Ravensclyffe and my early years on the railway with Ipswich. Andi

47523, one of only three 47/4s to carry that headlight, the other two being 432 and 434 Andi

Any activity in which the end goal is to kill anything except time should not qualify as a sport. Andi

Marvellously insane, I love this idea and project. Will there be a layout to showcase these beasts? Having been one of a team of four that came up with some crazy privatised railway ideas back in the 80s and built them in model form I will be following with interest. Andi

I was posting it as a whacky sign in that every I/C vehicle driving past it will have a tank of flammable or explosive fuel on board Andi