Suzie

I am thinking in terms of there being insufficient capacity to provide an intermediate station between London and the Birmingham junction. The only real answer to this would be making that section four track at some point so that its capacity would match that of the Northern section + Birmingham section. Intermediate stations with not all trains stopping on the Northern section only works on the northern section if the paths used by London Birmingham trains are left empty or are used by trains terminating in Birmingham, which implies that traffic from Birmingham to the North will be the same as Birmingham to London when running at maximum capacity which I suspect will not be the case. Squeezing four tracks into two is going to be a bottleneck at some point and with no plan in place for quadrupling it will leave the poor (who will stump up to pay for HS2 in their taxes) to be priced off of HS2 on to the old west coast and the roads when prices are raised to regulate the demand. HS2 is key infrastructure and should not just be a limited service for the wealthy.

All this discussion rather begs the question of why is a line being built that will be operating at pretty much full capacity from day one with little prospect of any capacity increase later.

240MW is a whole Magnox nuclear power station's normal output.

Perhaps the buses could stop and drop in a low-speed conduit guide for the crossing.

Surely a man with a red flag walking in front of the bus would ensure the safety of the passengers ;-)

I can see that new railway build will have to factor in the cost of building a new dedicated power station for the electricity supply soon, like in the olden days before the national grid. The inability to get adequate power on sensible terms has scuppered North American electrification projects.

I saw a picture of four class 20s on a west coast flask train, so perhaps not so far fetched.

The NCE mini panel can be used for input buttons since you have an NCE system, and the NCE will allow you to set up routes in macros so there is no need for a diode matrix when you have a good system like the NCE. How many points do you have?

Even if the frog juicer changes the frog polarity, it will not change the point which will remain set against the train and possibly derail it. If you are likely to encounter this problem install circuit breakers to cut the power to the train without shutting down the whole layout until the point can be correctly set - a much more sensible investment.

16/02 will be fine for the droppers and frog connections.

I know your layout is not large, but I would recommend using at least 1.5mm2 wire (15A) and ideally 2.5mm2 for the main track bus. The droppers and frog wiring should only be quite short and should not be a problem then - if there is a problem it will show up. There should be no need to double up any of the switch connections if all is well. If the coin test is failing in places it would indicate that your wiring is marginal and that areas of the layout have a circuit impedance of at least 6R - and it should be possible to measure that with a multimeter to isolate the specific problem area. One big problem with many systems (not sure about the Power cab because I have not seen one) is that the connectors are not quite big enough to get a reasonable sized wire in making getting a good connection to the track output rather difficult.

It sounds like your wiring (possibly the wiring in the the loco) is a bit thin. If the resistance of the short circuit is too high to conduct the full current from the command station it will not shut down. It will probably be best to beef up your wiring a bit, and check that the switch in the tortoise is switching properly otherwise you will really need to put in a lower current circuit breaker to prevent potential disaster of a melting loco.

Although tortoises are specified for higher voltage they will run from 5V so you can just connect one between two outputs of the Arduino if you don't mind the tortoise being a little slower and quieter than normal. Current consumption is in the order of 6mA (less than an old fashioned LED) so it should not overload the Arduino.

I just wonder which one of the 29 functions it does not operate. It does sound promising though with most of the issues specifically addressed.

Ahh. The big five, where as well as the East coast LNE and West coast London and Scottish route there would be the upgraded Midland route to Scotland via the Settle and Carlisle and the Waverley with a challenge to match the timings of the other routes resulting in some early main line electric traction. I think that BR Blue has beaten the thought out of us that there could ever be anything other than the one uniform nationalised railway. I even feel I have to slavishly reproduce International Underground to be as authentic as possible even though no one has heard of it (well done Bachmann) and no one really cares other than me.

The 36-557 is a different decoder from a different manufacturer to the 36-554, so you will need to get the manual for it to see which CVs it supports and how to configure them.

I am sure it can be easily funded by redeveloping the station site. The passengers can then be de-trained south of Cambridge and bussed through the new tunnel to Kings Lynn - thoughtfully stopping at every bus stop on the way, because that is what the passengers want. I did see some trolley buses appearing out of bus-tunnels in Boston, USA so the possibility that it might be implemented is always there even though London's Kingsway tunnel which served a similar purpose with trams was abandoned.

The capacitor is something like 0.1uF 50V ceramic, and not too critical of value. If you cannot see the light you can add a neon extension lamp, just connect it across the track terminals of the Relco. Neon indicators can often be salvaged from old electrical equipment - I had an old neon nixie tube on my control panel from a redundant desk calculator that lit up with the number of the controller which was quite fun - the technology of the 1950s rather matched my antique DC controller.

The Relco does get warm in operation, but it should be nothing to worry about. I never bother with the switches - just use the wiring method where you connect 16V AC in one end, and put the other end in series with the track feed. Don't forget to put the capacitor across your controller output, you don't want to clean the inside of your controller. I consider a Relco to be indispensable on a DC layout, track cleaning is just a horrendous and ineffective chore otherwise. Driving trains is much more fun than endless track cleaning - the neon light on the Relco will tell you where any areas that need extra attention are.

With Eurostars no longer required for tunnel services they could be replaced with higher capacity trains and moved to HS2 for the extension services. A ready made solution if they are not worn out by then.

The GC was criticised and later closed for missing a lot of where it passed. At least there is time to see the light and improve the East Midlands section or Leeds might as well be reached via a short spur from Manchester - I think Arthur Daley can do a good deal on a second-hand tunnel.

Why connect the red LED between +3.3V and the transistor, why not connect it between GPIO and 0V?

Just saw a pair of 315s heading down from Chelmsford yesterday, so it looks like they are getting further afield in to the countryside giving more modellers a need to have some. (anyone know where they were going? Presumably Colchester, but Witham or Braintree could be a possibility. Its the first time I have seen them get beyond Shenfield on the main line).

Since DMUs nowadays tend not to have corridor connections at the ends the use of an engine compartment behind one of the cabs like a thumper or 210 with electric transmission should not be a show stopper. DMUs tend to be shorter formations than EMUs and have lower density passenger accommodation than EMUs, so there is some scope to make room.

A rare opportunity this weekend to see longer trains running express service on the Blackpool South route. Four car sets made of a pair of 150s have been running between Preston and Ansdel and Fairhaven with selective stops to maintain a two trains an hour service. Anyone of the other persuasion might be interested in the rail replacement bus service that replaces the normal trains on this route for non-golf enthusiasts. Northern rail have published a special timetable.