Ron Ron Ron

......and almost two miles from the Airport Terminal. .

It might turn out to be poetic justice for the non-penalty Newcastle were awarded last week.

There may be some element of that Mick. Even though (cliches coming in a football stylee) he's been there, done that, got the souvenirs and seen it all before (....and boy does his track record prove it ), I'm sure there comes a time where previous sound judgement and experience can be "caught out" by changing circumstances. I go along with the view of the professional commentators and many of his peers, that he remains a very wily and shrewd manager, but I often wonder about the presence of certain apparent "blind spots" that now seem to affect his decision making. A couple of seasons ago he remarked about the then Chelsea squad becoming old, but has since allowed his own squad to go the same way. There's lot's of talk about all the young new players, but by the end of last season there were 13 players over the age of 30 in the squad. 4 have since retired or moved on, but another has now passed that landmark, making it now 8 players, some who are obviously in the twilight of their careers and can't last much longer. This may not matter too much if the balance of age and strength in depth in various parts of the pitch is good enough, but I don't believe it is. I could bore you to tears if I went through each "department" from Goalkeeper to Strikers in turn, but I feel there are problems of age, lack of experience or competence in each of those areas. I won't repeat what I said in the previous post about the lack of proper squad rotation, except to add that the number of injuries and the problems I've just highlighted may drive the situation to a certain extent. A lot may be down to the coaching and I'm increasingly feeling that the whole coaching regime may have has lost its way. I see similar evidence watching the Reserves and Academy teams on MUTV. IMHO, the biggest failing is in midfield where there appears to be a reluctance to defend and fight for the ball, when opponents have possession. As such it's no surprise to me that a recently given statistic, indicated that despite United's still very good defensive record (apart from one serious blip !), they had the worst record in the Premiership this season, for opponents attempts on goal (on and off target). Conversely, going forward it's apparent to all that there's often a lack of creativity in breaking down the opposing team in the final quarter of the pitch. This aspect seems to get the highlight, but personally I like to see the more important issues addressed first. I have to ask is it the coaching, is it the manager and his assistant's tactics, or is it the players? I have come to believe it's a combination of all three. So back to age? It could be SAF has seen all this, or elements of this before and managed the team through it. It could be that he had more competent assistance in previous years. I fear that now all the problems seem to be coming at once and that his judgement may not have recognised how deep some of those issues are. However I suspect he knows only too well, but is keeping it all "in-house" so to speak. The future is not entirely bleak. United have a number of exciting and potentially capable young players in the squad. We just seem to be missing two or three key components that would enable the team to successfully transition from yesterdays glories, to a continued successful future. Naturally there are others on here who would not like to see it happen. .

I'm more frustrated than bothered about this result. Fergi regularly puts out a mixed team of reserves, squad players and juniors from the academy on these occasions. A much stronger team is usually fielded if they reach the final. It's worked for him for a number of seasons, winning 3 Carling Cup finals in the last 6 years. The same sort of result happened at the same stage in last seasons competition, with a similar rag bag selection of 2nd & 3rd string players getting a right tonking against West Ham. My frustration lies with SAF not adopting a proper managed squad rotation system, which maintains a continuous solid first team at all times. Instead he seems to just constantly assemble random teams with an ever shifting line up of defenders, midfield and strikers. That's not rotating players, it's chaos. It's now happening with the first team in important games as well. Combine that with several serious weaknesses in the team and the ageing of a large proportion of the first team squad (8 of them are over 30, including Giggs at 38) and I can't see United continuing very far in Europe this season (based on what's happened so far), nor winning the Premiership. Oh yes ! It was a fantastic goal by Ambrose. Totally unstoppable as far as the 'keeper goes (Ben Amos - a very very good young keeper). It's just the way the United central midfield pair looked completely disinterested and allowed the move to take place, allowing Ambrose a completely free reign to take his shot. Never mind. well done Palace and pleasing to see they got Cardiff in the draw for the semi-final, rather than face a certain exit against Liverpool or City. .

I hope you don't mind me repeating you Charlie..... and for the purposes of the DDA (in keeping with the contemporary theme) I'll just make it a little bit bigger.... Roll on the 450 .

8-pin will only give 3 functions off the socket and any decoder with more functions available will have to have the extra wires soldered separately. 21-pin, as suggested by Ian, will allow all those extra lighting functions to be available and as David says, allow the tail lights to be switched independently, allowing multiple units to operate with prototypical lighting. You will also get the kudos of being one of, if not the first, British outline RTR manufacturer to incorporate a full set of proper working lights. The limitation will be availability of suitable decoders with more than 4 functions. Thankfully, the Lenz Silver+ range has 5 function outputs, the TCS EU621 has 6 and many of Zimo's range now have 6 as standard. However this cuts out the lower-mid and budget price decoders and other brands that can only muster 4 function outputs (note the Bachmann 21-pin only has 3 functions). Personally speaking, a model this good deserves to have a decent decoder and if that allows extra functionality, such as full working lights, all to the good IMHO. Ian has raised an interesting point here, as the 21-pin socket is set to be phased out (See the thread in the Dapol section). Outside of the UK, all-new models are now beginning to be released with the new PluX sockets, as recommended by the NMRA and MOROP, however as the UK hasn't got this far yet, it may be prudent to stick with the 21-pin connector for now. If the release date is mid-next year onwards, it might require a different decision. Pricing of decoders fitted with the new PluX connectors appears to be on a par with their manufacturers equivalent (identical) models fitted with 8 and 21 pin connectors; i.e. £23 and upwards. Being early days, there are no budget options as yet. With this change looming, I guess it's a tricky time for RTR manufacturers making a choice of what socket to fit in British outline models. 21-pin looks the favourite for now, but that may change in the coming years. .

Yes you are correct about the sound fitted models; they (Hornby) openly use ESU sound decoders. I should have clarified that I wasn't including sound decoders as they're not a Hornby DCC product. The way you worded your post, I thought you were referring to Hornby's own branded chips and suggesting they came from ESU, which they don't ! .

Sorry Steve, I think you're mixing up Bachmann and Hornby there. Bachmann use a couple of ESU made decoders (the LokPilot Basic in the guise of the 36-553 & 36-554), but Hornby don't use ESU. Whilst the exact Chinese source of Hornby decoders is yet to be properly identified, it is thought they may come from the source of Hornby's other digital electronic products (Scalextrix & DCC), SGAI Tech of Hong Kong. SGAI Tech is a joint venture between Cambridge based Sagentia (formerly known as Scientific Generics) and Hong Kong based AML. Scientific Generics (now known as Sagentia) developed the digital products for Hornby. Back to the Desiro..... Did anyone lobby Bachmann reps at Warley, with a request for the 450? .

Dave, do you mean a 22 pin version of the MTC connector, i.e. without pin 11 removed, as per 21 pin versions used for DCC? If it's not and they've fitted a PluX connector, then there's no way of modifying it as that uses a different pin and spacing arrangement. Hopefully it's the former. edit: Disregard, I see Nick (buffalo) has sorted it by snipping off pin 11

Very nice. Well done Bachmann. 450 Next .............Please !

Will they make it in time for Warley? Probably not, unfortunately.

Apparently in the late 1980's and early 90's, BR were working on plans for a number of new diesel and electric locos, intended to replace most of the 50's and 60's "classic" types from the late 90's onwards. My understanding is that all work on these schemes was halted in the run-up to privatisation. In answer to your two points... 1. IIRC, there were two more powerful diesel freight locos under consideration. One optimised for coal & mineral traffic (General Motors ? - class 62 ?) and the other for intermodal (class 65 ?). 2. A lower powered and re-geared diesel loco based on and similar to the class 60, but intended for both passenger and freight work, is noted as the class 41 (re-used in the best BR tradition) by some sources. I think this was intended to replace the 47 and other remaining passenger diesel locos, although MU's were expected to increasingly dominate the passenger scene. .

Regarding Tillig track, I've just spotted this entry into Mr Nevard's excellent Blog and some photos of the said product...... Tuesday October 11th 2011 Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 .

Do you mean using TouchCab ? IIRC there are a few people on here using it with ECoS. Lenz users will be getting the opportunity soon. .

The good news is that there are lots of recorders available, many of which have twin tuners costing not much if anything more than a single tuner model. Are there still any single tuner models around? I'd get a twin tuner model, because sooner or later there'll be 2 things you'll want to record at the same time. I don't record much, but when I do it's like buses; 2 programmes I want to record turn up together. The other thing is do you want a hard drive (HDD) based PVR, or a HDD recorder with a built-in DVD recorder for archiving recordings that you want to keep? .

That's a tracked People Mover system Geoff. There are loads of them operating at airports around the world. This new system is in a different category of Personal Rapid Transit Systems. The Heathrow Pods and similar systems don't run on a track, but are "guided" along a "roadway" or "guideway". It can navigate junctions and multiple routing options according to destination on the system. .

Yeh ! They eight two be reminded about it.

Stewart, this first phase runs from Terminal 5 to the N3 long stay Business car park, which is situated at the western end of the "north side". The car park is secure and fenced with access limited to paying users. If you want to spend a months salary on a day's parking, I'm sure you can have as many "free" rides as you want. Seriously though, it might be possible to get a "free" return ride starting at T5, unless you have to produce valid car park tickets. You can see the track on Bing Maps ("Aerial view", not "Bird's Eye" yet)..... http://www.bing.com/...dom&form=LMLTCC .

It's taken over a year of testing and technical problems to finally open the 1st phase of the Heathrow system. For anyone interested, there's some detail here...... http://www.ultraprt.com/heathrow/ http://www.ultraprt.com/news/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgvsrHsgeQg&rel=0&fmt=18 ..and Surfsup, yes this system is being proposed for use in cities and small towns. A couple of cities in India are looking at it and they are being put into the futuristic new Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. .

Coming to model railways and an interest in real world railways, in my mid 40's, I found the use of the term "Prototype" quite confusing at first. All my life I've been used to that term meaning "first example of", "experimental", "test or trial version". At least that's the way the word is used in normal life and appears in the dictionary. I can't really see why it's applied in such an unorthodox way by railway modellers? .

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2034223/Devon-port-Holidaymaker-lodges-official-complaint-smell-fish-upset-children.html .

I take it you are referring to the post-2004 (54 or 05 plate onwards) second generation S40 which is based on the Mk2 Focus and not the earlier first generation S40 which was a joint venture with Mitsubishi (Nedcar project) and nothing to do with Ford whatsoever ? I am aware of the first generation S40/V40 being a heap, but I'm not aware of the completely different second model (S40/V50) having that reputation.

The original Napster, that was shut down, used P2P as part of a totally different business model based on free sharing and exchanging of music. That was declared illegal and stopped. I don't believe the current incarnation of Napster service uses P2P. It's a straightforward downloading and streaming service AFAIA. A couple of things put me off Napster, not least the low bit rate streams. they're still using 128k for the streaming service. Did you know they are owned by Best Buy ?

Any incoming stream is more than likely coming from the P2P network, unless nobody in your network has that track, or the user(s) with that track have their computer(s) offline. In which case, the stream will then come directly from the Spotify servers. Apparently, only a small proportion of music is streamed directly from the Spotify servers; most of it comes from other users on the P2P network. This is regardless of what you are receiving the stream on. Naturally, outgoing streams (which you don't control) can only go out from a computer where your Spotify cache resides. If you are only connected to the Spotify network by a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android etc), or a streaming device or system that can work with Spotify (e.g. some of the more recent AV products like AV recievers, or internet enabled Hi-Fi kit), then you can't support the P2P network by providing content from your cache. However, as soon as you switch on your computer and connect to the internet, Spotify is likely to be calling on it to take part in the P2P network, even though you're blissfully unaware it's happening. At least, that's how I understand it.