BR60103

Kadee make so many couplers because there are so many different places to mount them. (The glories of Free Enterprise) If you have an NEM pocket and the tension lock coupling has a straight shank, one of the 17-20 series should fit. Start with one where the back of the knuckle comes a bit beyond the buffers. Try 2 vehicles through your extreme trackwork (sharpest curve, S curve, crossover). If the buffers jam together, use the next longest and try again. If the tension lock is screwed to the underside of the wagon, you should be able to drill a hole in the NEM shank (triangular depression) and screw it on. Similar for old rivetted, but a bit more work. Bogies with couplings moulded on require surgery. Kadee has a chart showing how high above the rails you need a flat space. I used a Dremel tool with a routing bit to carve an opening. If you have one with the cranked TL, ingenuity is called for. One of our club has made a new box using 3D printing. The stupidest problem I have is Duke of Gloucester. The longest NEM (20) sits behind the buffer beam.

No, my wife does.

Yes. It was vulnerable to larger little boys.

I have an idea that British trolley buses had to have the switch in the overhead turned manually, or at least by something on a post. American trolley buses had contacts on the overhead. There was a contact on each wire and they were staggered. The idea was that if the bus was turning, the poles would form a non-rectangle and hit both contacts at the same time. If it was going straight through it would not complete the circuit. Some sort of electromagnet would change the switch to curved and the shoes would track through. There was a mechanical bit on the frog and that would set it straight again. One of my books has some diagrams suggesting the optimum path around a corner to have the best chance of getting both contacts. Also, the poles had ropes that went to a mechanism on the back of the bus (and streetcars, too). I think it worked something like a window blind -- if the pole started to rise too fast it would be pulled back down. The TTC at one point had the rear bit of the roofs made of fiberglass and the sudden whack of the poles could shatter it. (applied to rebuilt streetcars, too) They took a rubber ball and got it on the retriever ropes so that it stopped the mechanism just before the poles hit the roof. The retriever device was mounted just below the back window. In some American cities it was mounted above the window.

Toronto had trolley coaches for most of my time there. The major purchase was about 1950. (sorry, not up on dates) The bus bodies had a lifespan of 20 years but the mechanisms were good for 60. In 1970 or so they looked for someone that would supply bodies only and found one. They replaced the whole fleet but bought buses from other cities so that the mechanisms would be standard. (the original system had bought from other sities that were abandoning almost-new trolleys). When the time came that the replacement bodies were going, they decided to abandon trolley buses altogether.

I don't think I know anyone with honours. But the daughter of friends of ours was Head of Honours for Canada for a couple of years. We used to see her on TV standing at the side of the room, reading names with a stack of Order of Canada looped about her neck. Last time we saw her, she said that it was probably impossible to get an hereditary peerage for my father. We refrain from reminding her that we saw her the day she was born. We did Thanksgiving this weekend. Roast stuffed turkey breast with brussels sprouts, carrots and potatoes and pumpkin pie for desssert. For two. Had two meals of it already. SWMBO decided to make it a special occasion and serve ir from dishes.

I could get away with buying things with Chessie on them -- my wife would approve them. She even did a Chessie in needlepoint. The smaller hopper looks like the same mould as one from my first (1953) Lionel O27 set.

I finally had enough with one of our screws. There is a little indentation with latch where you pull the sliding doors. One of the + screws had been done up hard enough that some sharp metal was sticking up. So after 7 years of us (out of almost 20 for the house) the little ****** was replaced last month. I had to get one with an odd little head and couldn't get it in brass. The neighbours have become worried. They've been very careful since comng back from Florida last spring, not even going out shopping, if we're right. They had their air conditioner replaced yesterday, thinking that it would all be done outside. The technician had to go in to the furnace to do something (s) and as in and out and didn't always wear his mask. They spent the last half of the day outside and were unhappy about going inside after that. I think they spent most of today away from the house.

At the risk of censure, Recent televised political "debates" made me think of a sketch where "The category is Answering the Question after This one". Or possibly Answering the Question you Wanted to be Asked.

My version of it. Not the best design.

My father taught English (among other things) at high school. He dreaded one year because the book was King Solomon's Mines (IIRC) and one of the landmarks is called "the nipples on Julia's breasts". Not something you want to read in front of a class of mixed 12-14 year olds.

On another forum, I was guided to a program called IrfanView. This does a number of of ueful tasks like rotating and reducing the size (bytes) of pictures. It should also crop, but I can never get that to work. Mine was a free download.

Douglas: a bit of musical trivia about the chimes (assuming they are Westminster) The sequence requires 10 4-note patterns*, which is actually a repeat of 5 patterns. Something to do with a 5-sided plate. The patterns are set so that the half-hour and the hour end on the tonic (do) of the scale. So that is patterns 3 and 5. * 1+2+3+4=10

I built mine (the low relief version) with a crane from Tichy Trains.

My print copy came in the mail yesterday. Pges 722 et seq are there.

We were taught the metric system in high school science. But when the country adopted it, the system was different. SWMBO still converts anything metric to imperial and I have to convert the results back to read it on the meter or whatever. In our motor home I have two stickers on the rearview mirror giving the height in meters and in feetninches. When you're sailing along at 100 kph it takes too long to do the conversion of a warning sign.

The GG1 on the Pennsylvania RR had air filters on the side. They started failing one year. Turned out that there is a certain type of frozen rain or mist that sits at a certain height. The height was the same as the air intakes and the ice was the right size to get through the filters. If you look at pictures of these locos, you can see that the filters on the hoods have changed position. (remember "The wrong type of snow"?

I have just realized that yesterday (Sept 28) would have been my father's 100th birthday. He died two months before his 89th birthday.

We have a device to check the freezer. Half fill a plastic water bottle then freeze it standing upright. Put it in the freezer on its side. If you find the water has refrozen itself into the new position, chuck out everything. We haven't had to do it yet.

Sign on a clinic today: Starve the mosquitoes: Give blood.

I start like Wheatley but simply solder the code 75 to the top of the crushed railjoiner -- it's usually at the right height. With care, no solder gets on the code 100. You will need to ensure that the inside edges of the rails line up -- a code 75 rail gauge? This also works for connecting bullhead scale rail.

I don't remember the R1 in a North American style train set. They sold a freight set with the re-painted Duchess pulling the two bogie wagons and a brake van with a cupola on it but that was 3-rail. There were a few odd 0-6-0Ts imported from Japan and I think Mantua made something (Little 6).

The first unit (CM1) has speed control and direction. There is a pair of blue wires which are AC in 14/18 V. The red and black pair are track power. If the unit is used solo the left hand terminals will have a bridging strip. (that's left hand looking at it from the back) The second unit (SM1) does the fancy braking. It has 3 wires - red, black, yellow. Take off the bridging strip. The black wire goes to the top terminal on the left. Yellow to bottom terminal on the left. Red to bottom terminal on the right. Nothing to the top terminal on the right. The RH terminals provide uncontrollable 12V DC, top is negative. I was lucky -- found both my controller and the directions instantly. If you need more info, just ask.

Frank: Is this the 2-part controller? Digession: I received mine when a friend in Englnd went to DCC. I brought it back on the plane in the top of my carry-on luggage. The inspectors didn't say a thing.

I use Peco Electrolube on various contacts. Aside: I was going to use it on the pickups for some coach lighting. I'd done about a half dozen of them and saw that the lights weren't on at all. Then I noticed that the tube I'd used was actually lubricating oil. I had to carefully towel them all off and use real Electrolube. That made a lot of difference. I'd use Elube for any spots where the pickup goes through the axle ends into bogie sideframes or through axles into the mainframes. Older motors had a characteristic called "JackRabbit start". The motor needed more volts to start than to run at minimum speed. There was a feature in power packs called "pulse power" which was half wave DC where only half the AC was rectified. This was supposed to act like a lot of little blows on the motor to get it spinning. The pulse was supposed to be turned off after a point because it made the motor heat up.