Ian J.

I suppose there are all sorts of people in life, and that includes those who find it difficult to accept they might be wrong about something. I am personally a 'mea culpa' kind of guy. I accept when I make an error and do my best to correct it, rather than bluster and attempt to save face. I think the AS folk might be similar to me, but I don't know the about the people who run Rapido, Revolution or Cavalex. However, KR's folk are less able to do so, something they share with Heljan and Dapol. Bachmann and Hornby I'm not able to comment on.

A little experiment tonight: I took one of the 'spare' turnouts and removed the 'clips' holding in the check rail on the non-stock rail side. Then I filed away some of the foot of the rail that faces the stock rail. This was done very awkwardly using fingers and tweezers to hold the check rail against a piece of scrap ply. The results weren't entirely clean, but good enough to know that if I could more reliably reduce the width of the foot on that side of the check rail and get it 'pointed' again so if fits against the double-sided clips that also hold the stock rail in place, then the gap would be reduced by the needed amount to get the gap to about 1mm. There is enough plastic in the base that Peco put in for the check rail to glue the check rail back into place, probably using Araldite or similar. Any constructive advice on how to accurately reduce the width of the foot of the check rail on the stock rail side and 'reprofile' it would be gratefully received. I have around 60 of these little blighters to do and I want to be able to do the work cleanly and accurately.

Silly thought: could two models be 'split' down the middle, and the resultant four halves mixed correctly to produce two 'accurate' Fells for different time periods?

I'm a relative newcomer to the game, having only started watching it in late 2014, but from what I can see it's relatively difficult to improvise when so much is dependent on pre-trained moves for players, and systems based on those in order to try and 'fool' the opposing team into making the wrong decision about what you're set up to do. What I can see though is that players who can improvise successfully after the snap when things start to evolve rapidly, tend to do better, both visibly on the field, and in their stats.

I beg to differ on either of the OO Heljan 33/0s. Both have deficiencies, and I'd very much like to see someone like Accurascale, Cavalex, Rapido, Revolution, etc, do one to a really good, accurate quality. The Heljan 33/1s and 33/2s are more or less OK though. I'd be happy to keep my existing ones of those, where I'd happily replace the sole 2nd generation 33/0 I only got recently.

WLTP isn't reflective of genuine real world conditions, despite being better than the previous efficiency tests. So take about 30% off those figures for the Teslas to get closer to what you're actually likely to get.

I think my point was that Vick could have been a long term mobile QB for the Falcons, but due to the conviction for the dog fighting (perhaps along with other issues as you state), he 'threw' that opportunity away, and instead had a relatively lacklustre career afterwards compared to what it could have been.

NMRA standards are pretty good at making sure everything runs pretty well. Even Peco have worked with them for their code 83 trackwork, as I have recently (to my chagrin) found out (check rail gaps). UK outline OO just doesn't have a proper standard that is fully agreed upon and all in the industry work to, so we end up with sloppy running that can only be corrected with a fair bit of time and patience. The advantage of such effort though is you can choose how far to apply your effort and get the standard you want (presuming you're not interested in running your stock on others' layouts or their stock on yours).

I try to always keep that in mind as a first thought approach. However, in the case of any situation where something is being touted as 'OK' to the general populace, and is in fact simply a lie because it truly is not 'OK' and there is at least some degree of attempt to cover up something, then I do believe it should be called out.

I'm stuck in that state with front of cab footsteps on these Bachmann 47s. For all that they're not that bad from normal viewing distances, I can't stop seeing how poor and unprototypical they look in photos on here, and remembering that Lima did a better representation purely from a moulded on version on their tooling thirty something years ago.

Vick was finished by his own stupidity in thinking that dog fighting was acceptable. Who knows how long he might have lasted had that not happened. Re ATL QBs, Matt Ryan was never the mobile quarterback though, and he's still feeling those effects in Indy where they haven't been able to protect him for some reason. So far, Mariota is looking reasonable for mobility, but he keeps lunging forwards when finishing scrambles which could lead to injury as it makes him a viable tackling target. Our back up, the rookie Desmond Ridder, hasn't seen any action this regular season yet.

I hope that Rapido may do the 14xx, as part of filling out the Titfield Thunderbolt items. However, I've no idea if that is even in their thoughts, let alone actually likely to happen.

Something I'm trying to rectify with my modelling. However, all the things that are needed to be done to get good quality running that looks realistic are extensive, and not for the faint hearted. Bear in mind that the first of these is accepting that 2nd radius curves are out, and settling on a minimum of approx 36 inch or more radius throughout a layout, something that many will not accept as they want to cram as much in on their layouts as possible.

My first thoughts for a modification are to try and add some 'fill' to the side of the check rail to narrow the gap, as per some suggestions. To that end, I've measured the rail, and it looks like I'll need a 1.2mm wide / 0.175mm thick strip of some kind of metal that will solder to nickel silver to 'fill' the gap of the web related to the head. Then I need something similar, but 1.75mm wide and 0.2mm thick, to sit on the outside of that and be the actual padding to fill the gap between check rail head and stock rail head. I did wonder about using thin plasticard strip, but I'm not sure it would be available that thin, and also I'm not sure how well it would glue to the nickel silver check rail, and also hold shape with the flared ends.

That reminds me of 'Friday Night Lights'... As for taking the helmets off, that's been an idea for a while. Back to the leather bonnets then...? 😉

Re Class 56s, don't forget that Cavalex have theirs coming out soon-ish, and it's looking to be a quite significant upgrade in terms of appearance and features from the Hornby versions.

The turnouts have all already been purchased, and that was because I am not interested in handbuilding them for the fiddleyard. I've never been happy with the idea of even narrower gauge track for scenic areas, so 00SF has always been out of the question. I will have to do some experimenting on the best solution. I have a couple of spare Code 83 curved turnouts due to a minor change in turnouts I eventually settled on, so I will see how difficult each idea for narrowing the gap is likely to be then make a decision. Right now though I have other things to concern me so that slows things down, and it could be a few weeks before I have an answer.

So I did a little experimenting and it's not a good result. I took an axle from a recent-ish Hornby wagon and widened out the wheels to just short of being tight on the rails on plain track. This gave it a 'back-to-back' of 14.75mm, as far as my digital calipers could tell. The wheels wouldn't run through the crossing of a code 83 #6 when the stock rail wheel was up against the check rail, as it left the V wheel hitting the V. With the V wheel up against the V, I can see what appears to be around 0.1mm to 0.2mm daylight between the stock rail wheel and the check rail. Using the digital calipers, I've estimated the check rail gap at 1.2mm (it's not consistent through the check rail). The only answer will be to either move the check rail or, as others have suggested, pack the outer edge of it with something to take up that approx 0.2mm extra gap that leaves the V wheel hitting the V. As the check rails are nickel silver (unlike the U.K. Streamline which are plastic), I'm wondering if soldering a pre-shaped strip of phospher bronze or such like might be possible? I doubt I could pre-shape a thin piece of plasticard, and I'm not sure gluing it would really be viable in the long run.

Now here's a thought, something I hadn't realised. I checked the check rail gap on the Code 83 turnouts, and it 'turns out' that at about 1.2 mm it's somewhat less than UK Code 75 turnouts, which are around 1.5 mm. The NMRA standard is for gauge of 16.54 through the frog, with check rail gauge of 15.42, meaning an ideal gap of around 1.12 mm. Given that, it may be possible that a widened UK outline back to back of around 14.75 to 14.8 mm could get through without going the wrong side of the frog. I will need to experiment, but if that is so, I won't have to make any adjustments to the check rails at all, leaving the turnouts as is.

I am hoping one day I'll be able to have a BEV and drive it around, but currently they just don't have the range/recharge timings I can live with, as @Hobby says. However, one thing I will miss from ICE cars is a clutch. Not because I like having to use one heavily as in commuting traffic, as I can find that tiresome, but because I will lose the extra dimension of control of power to the wheels. That said, the reduction in pollution and the smell of ICE cars, and the simplicity of plugging in should be enough to outweigh my feelings of that loss of power control.

If the decoder is the same one, and JMRI on SPROG III can see CVs 51 and 52, then I wonder if this is a JMRI on ECoS issue, as the ECoS itself can see them...?

Oh, you lot are so full of wheat*... 😉 *wit

Interesting thoughts. I would think that to do so would most likely require removal of a couple of sleepers before laying the turnout, in order to do the job well. That's possible at the moment but I hadn't planned on it so will have to think through how it affects my track laying intentions. The wing rails have to stay where they are. The Code 83 track has a 'floor' between the wing and nose intended for NMRA flanges to ride to prevent the wheels dipping across the gap. Digging that out is a non-starter and I don't think it will be an issue as long as I ensure that, as I already know I have to, any UK stock has any over-deep flanges turned down so they can ride the 'floor'.

I have no idea of the other variants of LokSound 5. I only know that when I had JMRI read the decoder information it chose the 'LokSound 5 DCC' entry. I'm currently having JMRI do a full CV read of the Deltic so can't check anything else at the moment. Apparently a full read of CVs can take a few hours in this fashion.

There are at least two different V5 decoders listed in Decoder Pro, one has extra features for other digital control systems as well as DCC. The decoder in my Deltic is noted as 'LokSound 5 DCC', which I believe is the one that doesn't have the extra features. My Decoder Pro version is 5.0, Rc441642522, and it shows 51 and 52 in the CV table.