Pete the Elaner

You are free to get up an hour earlier. Quite a lot of people do things like shopping, running, cycling at 9am. That is not excessively early but would be dark in December if we used BST. GMT is not a solution to a problem. It is the UK's native time & existed long before BST. Working hours were based on GMT but this was considered wasteful in the summer as I explained earlier. BST is the bodge, not GMT.

Not just light. The daily thermal cycle lags behind daylight & it is usually coldest at dawn. It takes a while for the sunlight to warm the place up again. When it gets frosty, UTC means the frost thaws an hour 'earlier' which is an advantage when going anywhere.

It makes plenty of sense to change time zones. We don't "get given an hour of darkness in the evenings" or "lose an hour of light". We trade light (& temperature), evening for morning. GMT is the UK's native time, so it makes less sense to use BST at all but. as is often the case, a study of history will explain it: 2-3 centuries ago, everywhere judged time locally, defining noon as when the sun was at its highest point. This was fine until transport became fast enough to make it a problem. You could catch a train from London to Bristol, which was 10 minutes behind, so it was decided to use a standard. GMT was therefore introduced. A few years later, countries with lots of daylight variation had sunrise at 4am in the summer before most people had got up, so it was of little use to most but sunset at 8pm, when most people were still active. Temperature follows this by a few hours (the coldest time of day is when the sun rises) which is why our social time is in the evening. In order to make it easier for everyone, summer time was introduced in 1916 to make more use of the extra hours of daylight without forcing people to change their schedules. This kept buses, trains, work & school all together without making it necessary to publish any changes. Most countries within the tropics do not use daylight saving because their daylight varies so little. & the important bit: In the 1968, the UK decided to trial abandoning GMT & keep BST all year round. This meant that in the winter, sunrise was as late as 9.30am, with sunset at 4.30pm. Road accidents were allegedly reduced in this time, but drink driving was made an offence in 1967, which would also have had a big effect on road safety, so it is impossible to determine which was the more significant factor. In 1971, it was decided that summer time in the winter was awful if you regularly do things fairly early in the morning, so UTC (GMT with a minor correction because somebody declared it inaccurate) was adopted for winter time in Britain. Nothing significant with the way we work, learn or use transport has changed with society since the early 70s. Abandoning winter time has been tried but viewed as a failed experiment. In other words, summer time in winter was considered horrible. We could either learn from the past or repeat the same mistakes. Repeating the same mistakes seems very silly though.

It looks a bit optimistic in slow motion, but reminded me of when Vettel & Raikkonen sandwiched Verstappen in Singapore a few years ago, taking all 3 out. Perez got there from 5th & must of thought he got such a good start that he could carry that speed around the first corner & into the lead. He will not have seen exactly where Verstappen was because Leclerc was in the way. They have a really poor sideways view.

That sounds promising. I have always maintained that rules should not be changed mid-way through a contest, which in the case of F1 is a season. Otherwise it would be unfair to allow someone to benefit from a loophole then block someone else from doing it in return within the same contest. Changing rules during the closed season if different because everyone starts at zero, so they all have the same chances. Giving the last place starter a 10 place grid penalty is a good example of a rule which does not work. I also noticed that some drivers were knocked out in Q1 before they could set a better lap because Alonso caused a yellow flag. He qualified in 13th. This is another rule I have mentioned several times as being broken & it can easily be fixed. The possibility of somebody causing a deliberate incident to gain an advantage needs to be eliminated. If they make a genuine mistake, surely they deserve some sort of penalty for it anyway.

I don't think it is his fault. I believe he is a product of his environment. Vettel seemed overly arrogant while he was at Red Bull, but by the time he retired, he became very likeable. Have they both been fuelled by huge team support, insisting they can never do anything wrong, even when they blatantly punt others off the track? Verstappen's F1 career has mirrored Vettel's very closely. The team seem to choose who they believe is the faster driver, then throw more support behind him then tell the world they are treating them equally. This helps to inflate the ego of their 1st driver even more, which works well for him & the team even if it means possibly sacrificing 2nd in the driver's title. It is hard to argue against it from the team's point of view.

More amusing developments on the Bletchley-Bedford section. It seems that rail replacement buses are still providing the service. I was shown a report last night that during driver re-training & route re-acceptance for the class 150s to go into service, 1 hit a car on a level crossing. I would consider that unfortunate except the report went on to say that the train had suffered significant damage but the car could not be identified because it had been driven away. What? A 2 car 150 weighs 70T. Even the heaviest of cars weighs no more than 1/20 of that. There is no way the car could possibly be driveable after anything other than a minor scrape. It is just another example of how the ToC treat this line with real contempt & will use any excuse to avoid running a service on it.

The tender light is also switched on & off by squeezing it on DCC. It defaults to on when the system is restarted which is a little annoying if you usually run it at the front of a train, which is what the headlamps indicate (& maybe also when the loco is removed from the track - I have not tried that).

I wish everybody at the club acknowledged that.

Next time we meet, you can explain that. (We met at Aylesbury having a (soft) drink outside in the sun.)

Our PM is the biggest liar we have ever had leading the country, but this is one of the few occasions where he may be telling the truth. Business & government both seem to be about making a quick buck. Selling off land will certainly achieve this. That was another trick. "We are going to build HS2, but northerners need not worry, we are also going to work on Northern Powerhouse". I guess that seems like a nicer phrase than Liverpool-Hull, but it also means they can retain the name while shrinking it to Manchester-Leeds. Then later they claim they are going to "cancel HS2a & spend the money instead on Northern Powerhouse". But didn't they say they were going to build HS2a AND build Northern Powerhouse?

I think Digitrax was objecting to the 'complex move' which Paul wanted to try. It started working after it was too late to practice the procedure before the public arrived.

I have just dropped off the van after my first weekend operating the layout. Being at a show with a layout for a weekend usually seems hard work & this was no exception, but quite enjoyable on reflection.

I often hear the "solution where no problem exists" argument banded about incorrectly but I believe this is really one of those situations. There have always been plenty of fans at circuits over the weekend. Many have 3 day passes & others have just gone to watch the practise & qualifying sessions anyway, especially with all practise session now being broadcast live on TV. Turning 1 of these into a race has attracted very few, if any, extra supporters.

Seeing as the Chiltern line is the only remaining diesel route into London, it is about time it was electrified. DRS have some 90s they could re-deploy. They make less noise than 68s.

With Greg on the front. 😀 I don't think he moved from there all weekend. I like operating from 1 side at the front. It seems to be a very good way to involve & entertain viewers.

I guess their view is that it would not make a difference. Customers will either want their products or not, regardless of any updates they may provide. The models will be available when they are ready & making frequent announcements will not change that. Some companies in other industries take the view that getting involved with correspondence delays their service.

People also complain about the higher entry & parking prices for larger venues like NEC & SECC. I have seen queues for the NEC backed up so badly that they blocked the M42 before now too. As far as the venue is concerned, it is certainly not the only time in the year the arena is used. It is simply a booking which this week filled the hall with model railways. I am sure the venue management does not consider model railways to be any more special than the PDC Masters darts tournament in early February. That has been known to clash with a home match too. The arena seems to have 4-6 events per month, many of which will also require more days for setting up. The surrounding shops are always there, so football supporters are used to working around these & if they don't like it, they need to be reminded that the arena & hotel subsidise the football ground. "It's not all about maximising revenue for the organisers or what admission prices have to be to meet break even costs. " Just what do you think an exhibition is for? A donation to you from those who organise it? Neither clubs or businesses will want to produce a show which makes a loss. For a club, it is a fund raiser to pay for model railways without having to raise subs high, because that will discourage members. Businesses exist to make money for their staff & directors. This could be directly from exhibition revenue, future exhibition revenue or increased magazine sales. Getting the balance right is a matter of debate, so they do not want to be discouraging attendees from returning. Whoever organises it, a show which loses money is not successful.

But the team who built it (& therefore also present it) live nowhere near Ely ... or Rome, so neither are of any use are they?

I can imagine. People who make comments like that think they are being original & funny but he has probably heard it hundreds or even thousands of times. Certainly enough to get bored of it. He probably has a response for it though. It is probably like when I'm washing the car, I frequently get the ever so stale joke of "you can wash my one afterwards if you like". People actually seem to think I've never heard it before & actually get upset when I fake laugh & suggest they try something more original.

Shows, especially on this scale need to be planned months, possible over a year in advance. Football fixtures cannot be published before they are calculated & which teams form each league are not known until the end of the previous season when any promotion & relegation have been decided. It could be late May or early June before this is known. Most football stadiums have other facilities, used for conferences or other events. These are kept booked as much as possible to make money from them, some of which supports the football clubs. It will be completely impossible to honour any type of request to avoid matches on certain days.

That sounds very plausible but I saw a poster at the MK show today advertising a show at the NEC I think in March next year.

GETS is not 'blighted by the venue'. You are just looking for an excuse to complain. I would not be surprised if you've never even been there. The Bowl is really not very far away & the bus ride is short. Football traffic escapes fairly quickly. I've mistakenly been shopping in Asda at football time & dreaded getting out, but have never had a problem so 'getting caught up in stationary traffic' is not an issue. You know what time the match is too, so get there earlier & either leave before it finishes or stay until the end of the show. Or maybe go on Sunday? GETS outgrew its previous venue at the Motor museum in Gaydon. Where exactly should it go? Ally Pally? We have one there & it is a bit of a pain to drive to once you get inside the north circular. Peterborough? Sorry, the showground has been sold to developers. NEC? Huge venue with high costs which the show is not big enough to justify.

Shoppers have never caused me any issues with getting in, out or parked. Unless you mean Ikea, which is at the far side of Asda? NEC events always draw complaints of cost too. You need a bus to get to the venue itself from most of its car parks anyway. That is not very different from parking at the Bowl & getting a bus in from there.

Not possible to guarantee because the teams in each division differ between seasons. I would be surprised if the FA even tried to do this. There was speculation a few years ago that the team requested an away match for the GETS weekend. I said at the time that this was not possible (because many teams have multi purpose facilities & they cannot all get their requests). There is probably something going on at this venue more than half the weeks of the year anyway. MK can cope with such a fixture clash better than most places, partly because the team is less well supported than somebody in a higher division & also because the city was designed to cope with plenty of traffic movement. The Bowl is not many minutes away by bus. I have known a home match to be taking place while the PDC Masters darts event is in the Arena, so it should not be a major problem. Good venues are hard to find. There is always a downside with them, whether it is parking, cost or accessibility.