Pandora

The pitfall will be "to whom can we offload the blame" ? After the major incident, so convenient to throw the book at " the deceased driver" . Otherwise management face the discomfort and rigour of examination of the driverless safety system.

Azuma units Latest is, a number of HSTs are being retained as 1 in 3 out of KX have to be diesel as they're overpowered for the wires. Which part of the traction power system is the problem? Is it the line supply being overloaded by the Azuma,.... the 25kV catenary overhead wires , or the traction return side of the system, the running rail bonds "red bonds" etc. which return the "used" electricity back to the traction lineside huts

Agreed, colour perception and recollection is a thorny topic indeed! The matter for myself is to clarify , using photographic and other evidence, as to the vexing topic of the blue paintwork of the AL6 class of locomotives E3100 built at Doncaster and by EE/Vulcan. Some authorities maintain 100% of the fleet were delivered in Rail Blue, others claim the fleet was of mixed livery, some examples in electric or neo-electric blue and others in rail blue. The AC loco group, probably the real experts are uncertain of the historical facts. Roll on the debate until this one is settled!

As a schoolboy in the 1960s I recall a chemistry lesson where we saw an educational film made by ICI, "the work of the Research Chemist" the subject being the pigment Monastral Blue, an "accidental" discovery from a contaminant derived from an industrial process. the chemist demonstrated several properties of Monastral Blue including an extreme quality of resilience to light-fade, at the time I formed the conclusion of BR had chosen blue as the corporate image for that reason, a conclusion which may be wrong, I am not aware of light fade with blue cars, I have owned two, both long-term 15+ years, red seems to be the least resilient, changing from gloss to matt pink, or even eroding away to white! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalocyanine_Blue_BN

Thank you for the information, In this link, E3172 is an EE/Vulcan Foundry loco (AC Electric group technical database) and has blue buffer beams http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p366027746/h428EE7C#h428ee7c

The pronounced contrast between the blue of the locomotive E3140 and the coaching stock is the deciding factor for me, electric blue it is! http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p366027746/h428EE7C#h2eb0da29 Note E3140, the last of the batch erected at Doncaster Plant, I have a B&W copy of the works photographers record of E3140 with office staff posed for the classic staff groupshot, presumably in the paintshop. the loco has the SYP from new

Agreed, but the question for me is to find an answer to the question of did the AL6 locomotives E3100 -99, wear the attractive electric blue paint or were they all delivered in the rail blue paint as certain posters maintain. From the photographic evidence I believe at least some of the AL6 locos wore electric blue and I hope to paint up a few spare Hornby bodies in the white cabs/ small yellow panels electric blue livery

The darker shade of blue for E3050 in the lower shot may be due to photographic "vignetting". Vignetting is an undesirable effect where the corners of the negative are under-exposed to light compared to the central "hotspot" of the negative. Bear in mind , early 1960s colour film was slow, very low ASA numbers, such as 25, therefore very prone to under exposure. There are many reasons for vignetting, the lens, camera body etc, here is a wikipaedia link fora better explanation of vignetting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignetting

Here is link to a slide-show of new AL6 locos in electric blue with AL1 -AL5 classes, permitting a direct comparison without misgivings of rendition of colours by our monitors and film stock. I am intrigued to see that the buffer beams of the AL6 are also in electric blue and not red http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p366027746/slideshow E3172 E3059 1966-05-01 Willesden DED: http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p366027746/e428ee7c

The wagons have compensated axles and underframes, on one side of the wagon the axle bearings are fitted into a rocking beam, interconnecting the axles. This avoids the "four-legged" stool on an uneven floor effect which causes so much poor running on non-compensated wagons

DJM has also dropped a hint, the class 84, the NRM loco, was being looked at by another manufacturer.

My pre-order is with my retailer. With the 87 taken care off, this leaves the 81 to 84 classes for the future. Looking at some of the shots, the "garden shed" mid-roof there may be a changeover switch for track or overhead pantograph power collection

Any good websites which have details of the Class 13 Master and Slave units of Tinsley yard?

Immediately post WW2 the LNER pre-war plans for dieselisation of the ECML by 25 large express passenger diesels were not simply shelved, they were abandoned by the newly nationalised British Railways This may be gleaned from Michael Bonavia " British Rail , the first 25 years " Bonavia was assistant to Miles Beevor Acting Chief General Manager and in a position to know about such matters This may be the earliest reference to a class of locomotive to act as a special purpose fleet such as the Deltics. I need to head off to Kew National Archives and try and look up some LNER board minutes. Can anyone shed such light upon the express diesels the LNER had in mind for the ECML? I envisage 1600 to 2000 bhp versions of the LMS 10000 or Southern 10203 locos, possibly based on the body style of the Woodhead EM2 locomotives

i read that initial design proposal use the LMS 10000 / 1 bogie so the class would be CoCo wheel arrangement.

The burnout is something to worry about, therefore please unscrew and lift the "motherboard" check if there is anything on the underside of the motherboard which is shorting to the chassis, such as an oversized solder blob on the circuit board.

Class 15 reserved today. The next project, a type 2, with your connection to the class 15 society, I thought of the CoBo, but then posts refer to the many variations of the intended model The Cobo class 28 had virtually zero variations, the Vauxhall Cresta cab windows were soon patched over. if you change direction, please put me down for Cobos in each livery variation

On the mainline under normal signalling, the same BR RT3251 Group Standards apply, the Tamper driver is a fully qualified main line driver. in an engineers possession the standards are relaxed to allow non RT3251 drivers to drive within a worksite at slow speed. . The driver needs to be certificated, ie, passed out, on the particular make model of tamper "Traction knowledge" In addition Drivers are Operators of the on-board computers systems for track maintenance and design work, plus you need the ability to operate the tamping banks and lifting frame. Tamper working is is a lot harder than being a passenger or freight train driver,

1 ) A key point is that by using DCC technology platform we have digitized everything bar the final link, and that final link is the 12V DC motor in the locomotive. 2) Replacing the "analogue" 12V DC motor with a "digital" stepper motor offers very fine control of operation especially at very low rotational speeds with high torque, a stepper motor offers this level of quality of control at lower cost than an equivalent 12 V DC motor. 3) A locomotive with a stepper motor would still be compatible with existing DCC technology, if a stepper drive DCC decoder were designed and manufactured, no need to scrap existing DCC technology. My first choice of locomotive for stepper motor drive would be a shunting locomotive from wikipedia: Advantages & disadvantages of stepper motors Advantages Low cost for control achieved High torque at startup and low speeds Ruggedness Simplicity of construction Can operate in an open loop control system Low maintenance Less likely to stall or slip Will work in any environment Can be used in robotics in a wide scale. High reliability The rotation angle of the motor is proportional to the input pulse. The motor has full torque at standstill (if the windings are energized) Precise positioning and repeatability of movement since good stepper motors have an accuracy of 3 – 5% of a step and this error is non-cumulative from one step to the next. Excellent response to starting/stopping/reversing. Very reliable since there are no contact brushes in the motor. Therefore the life of the motor is simply dependant on the life of the bearing. The motors response to digital input pulses provides open-loop control, making the motor simpler and less costly to control. It is possible to achieve very low-speed synchronous rotation with a load that is directly coupled to the shaft. A wide range of rotational speeds can be realized as the speed is proportional to the frequency of the input pulses. Disadvantages Require a dedicated control circuit Use more current than D.C. motors Torque reduces at higher speeds Resonances can occur if not properly controlled. Not easy to operate at extremely high speeds.

I believe it time for a major invasive re-think into DCC, for example we still use the 12V DC "analogue" motor to power our models, despite the intervening DCC digital hardware between the operators controller and the driving wheels. A motor which is operating very poorly at slow speeds due to running close to its stall current power setting. Perhaps we may eventually develop the technology to replace the 12v motor with digital stepper motors which offer superb slow speed control and high torque, observe the performance of devices such as inkjet printers DVD drives 3D printers, to name just 3 they all use stepper motors for precise positioning and speed control of the working parts

I think the post showing the full yellow end of the model of 815 not matching the actual 815 is correct, but do not become too carried away with details, I can recall an article for the yellow paint being Dulux daffodil Yellow, purchased by an LPO ( Local Purchase Order) when the stores were too slow to fulfil an order for the correct BR specification of warning panel yellow, having worked for BR I will not dispute such stories, it is how the Railway works behind the scenes when the staff at the sharp end have to deliver against the odds

I think the Warship is their best release to date. Warning! Take care with the cab windows, they are a clip-in fit from the exterior with the windscreen wipers to hold them in place. when I receive the replacement sprue I will use Pacer's Formula 560 canopy glue to refasten them. I will not use super-glue as it will fog all the transparent plastic

Another benefit is the Bluetooth system is that by separating the combined power and control signals , the expensive ( for 7mm ) DCC booster is obsolete, being replaced by permanent 12 V DC supply to the running rails, or a 12Volt car battery to the running rails.

a step in the evolutionary direction, it is too expensive to generate sound in the locomotive model by a dedicated hardware sound DCC chip, ( cost £100 for every loco ) far better to generate the sound externally , eg, a laptop and simply transmit to a low cost bluetooth receiver / amplifier in the model. expect to see higher quality of sounds, CD quality, and a big drop in cost of equipping a large fleet to sound

As a worst case solution to the weighting problem, load the internals of a 20 foot container with steel