Pete the Elaner

I saw earlier in another thread that braking is on F27. My system is a Powercab so I can't change my functions & I've just seen your comment about function mapping on the Turbomotive thread 😒

F27 - TXS supports dynamic brake? That's interesting. Can you re-map functions with this? Surely it would be better to shove it on the same function as the braking sound & allow it to be varied by CV. Is that a little too much to ask from what is still a much cheaper decoder than a Zimo or ESU?

Handy to know. There is a lot which analogue chips won't do that DCC will: proper coasting, controllable acceleration/deceleration/braking, consisting. TXS will not do the lot & that is what keeps the cost lower than an ESU or Zimo.

Isolate the 2 inside rails after the frog (vee). Re-feed after each point. By making each section as small as possible, you eliminate feeds coming from the wrong direction. There are lots of advantages: If you need to join 2 small sections, you can easily do it below the board. If you need to separate a section into 2 smaller ones you need to rip up some track, which is a problem if you have ballasted it. Copper wire is a better conductor than Nickel Silver rail (NS is used because it stays relatively clean). Fishplates are a weakness, especially when the rails have been painted & the track has been ballasted with watered down glue. Lots of small sections is very scaleable: Apart from more sections, bigger layouts are no more complicated. The disadvantage: You have lots of rail feeds & lots of sections, which take longer to connect. I always dread it when somebody at the club (or contacting us) when somebody asks someone to troubleshoot their electrics because everyone leaves muggins to respond out of courtesy & you can guarantee they have used the minimum number of insulating joiners possible (sometimes none), leaving the track fed from a weird place.

Sort of. It's another 36bn that the PM can boast about saving in a few weeks' time.

Haven't they just signed a 10 year deal for this place? I understand the problem they had with the tyres but it was difficult to know who was racing who until 5 laps before the end. For that reason, it was not the most exciting of races.

I remember that. It was a pain and, as you point out, you won't be able to get there via the football stadium this year.

"I'm sorry the roads aren't wide enough for you. Some of the English cars have steering wheels"

There is a very good case for an EV being easier to drive: An electric motor gives its best performance from stationary & only needs 1 gear. This means that it pulls from a standstill instantly. There is no waiting for the torque converter to gradually engage; It gives you maximum performance immediately. There is also no waiting for kickdown & the chance it will briefly kick down before changing back up again before you get any useful response. I would argue that this makes it easier to drive than an auto, regardless of how quickly it can change gear. You place too much importance on range. EVs require a different mindset to ICE vehicles. Do you ever start a journey with half a tank? One of my cars has that right now & the other has a quarter, so I need to consider filling one of them up. With an EV, a home charger is a essential then you always start every journey with a full charge. You only need to get to your first stop or resting place & 200 miles is enough for 3 hours when for safety's sake, you should be giving yourself a rest. Being able to charge when you stop & the speed it can re-charge is definitely an issue. If these were good (which currently is not always the case) then a 400 mile range would be pointless. Being unable to install a home charger is a definite deal-breaker. It may well be unfeasible for you to have an EV at this time, but range is not the problem. Wasn't this thread about HS1 & HS2?

The tender is a bit on the light side & mine jumped off at one point, which I believe was due to its lack of weight. The decoder & speaker are in the loco though, so there should be room to add a balance weight or 2.

It depends what you are modelling: A depot layout can easily have several which look almost identical. It would look very obvious if you ran a named loco one way then it re-appeared in the other direction (unless of course there was a terminus very close off-scene). Would you notice a 9F the same way though, with its running number partially obscured with grime? Only one was named when running for BR & that was green anyway. Otherwise, it would be hard to tell from the previous one unless it was one of the few Crostis or single chimney locos, so you could just turn it & it would not look like it had just been turned. Multiple units are pretty anonymous too. a 321 in NSE looks almost the same as the last one unless you look very closely, so it can also depend on the viewing distance.

I remember Andy York mentioning EM when the E train was first released.

There will never be a need for an EV to manage 800 miles without recharging. How long does it take to drive 800 miles? With clear roads, about 12 hours. Could you really drive 12 hours non-stop? No chance. It would probably be a 2 day journey with at least 1 extra stop each day. The key to making EVs work is to make charging available wherever you stop & make it fast enough that even a quick toilet break gives you 90 minutes driving time. A stop for lunch will give it enough time to charge for double that. These are the targets it needs to achieve. 250 miles is plenty for this. The technology is there; Tesla have it right now. The infrastructure is not though; everyone needs access to it, but they don't yet. It won't be there by 2035 either. There is just too much to do & not enough being done. How did HS1 v HS2 drift to EVs?

HS2 is now just London-Birmingham. That removes the cost of Birmingham-Crewe & Manchester. Sheffield & Leeds having been removed some time ago. The plans for HS2a can now be archived because archive storage is cheaper than storage which can be accessed more regularly. It will be resurrected at a later date & renamed HS3, but the cost of that will probably be twice that of the saving on HS2. The point is that this trick has made HS2 cheaper. Had any physical work been started on HS2a beyond the connection to the Trent Valley section of the WCML? I suspect not. If any of the route has already been purchased, that will probably be sold to offset the cost too.

You are missing nothing. Quite the reverse, you are considering the 'bigger picture'. Most companies & governments seem to break things down into sectors or departments & demand that they all economically justify their existence. Even those departments who provide a service to others have an internal charge. So if money is cut from HS2, the government (& every party is the same to a degree) will be able to claim they have 'saved money' when what they have done is moved some spending from HS2 to pay unemployment benefit for the very same people; not just those actually working on the project, but for the suppliers & suppliers of the suppliers. Why is it that railways are judged on their profits while roads are not? Apart from the small number of toll roads, all are paid from a central budget & people accept that we simply need them. We never hear about the M6 losing money each year.

Unfortunately there seem to be plenty out there who do fall for these cheap government tricks. You don't have to look very hard to read "100bn is a waste just to save 10 minutes" to see how easily the general population are fooled. My worry is this: Those of us on this forum have a little more knowledge about railways than the average person because it is an interest. There are many things which the government deals with which are of less interest to me, so I know little about them. Who do I believe about those?

The government have caused it. The constant start/re-assess/stop/re-assess/start circle has had a huge effect in escalating the cost. They are only cutting back on things now so they can claim they are saving money on the run up to the next election. Who do you think chairs these committees? Somebody who wants a peerage or some other kind of honour, then they are given strong hints with what conclusion the government want it to have.

Saturday evening is the best part of a weekend show. It gives you a chance to relax & socialise with other modellers. The only club I can remember who arranged a Saturday night buffet was Croydon. I really enjoyed it.

All day Fridays attract those who do not work. I have exhibited at a show which was Friday evening. It was about 2015. It was a complete waste of time & made me wonder what the point was. I concluded that Friday evening shows are an old fashioned concept. They attracted those who finished at lunchtime on Fridays. This was a common thing for factories but not so any more, so the market for these is small. For those working even until 4pm, they would get home, have dinner then how much time would they have left? If you can't spend a couple of hours at a show, wouldn't you rather wait until the next day when you can? It seems most people do just this.

I have been to shows where the last hour is ridiculous. These are usually ones which stay open later. The CMRA one at St Albans stayed open until 6pm in January. I was there a few times as an exhibitor & it was often totally dead from 5pm, with nobody other than exhibitors wandering around waiting for the show to close. I also exhibited at the Bristol (Thornbury) show once & that stayed open until 6.30pm. Like St Albans, after 5, it was only exhibitors walking around. Some organisers need to realise that most exhibitors are volunteers & exhibiting can be tiresome but socialising is an important part of the weekend. Staying open late when they are not getting any more visitors can put people off from exhibiting (I have refused for this reason before now). It works differently for different shows though. I have exhibited at Warley, GETS & Modelrail Scotland, all of which do stay busy until 6.00, but most do not.

I travel between Euston & MK. It seems like a complete lottery as to which sub-class turns up. I think they initially tried to keep the /1s & /3s on longer distance services but then gave up.

I didn't know that. Thank you. I thought 3mm was about right though. Without going inside the centre line & with a 3mm pull-off, the wire over the 3rd radius will have to be no more than 110mm. That sounds very tight so maybe, as Andi suggested, ignore the 'not going inside the centre line' rule & then it can be 155mm.

I think you'll need them closer than that on your curves. You will need to place the 'pull' mast on the outside to pull the wire about 3mm further out than centre, then the wire's 'straightness' should overhang 3mm inside the centre, creating the stagger. I am sure @Dagworth or @Clive Mortimore will confirm or correct that 3mm either side of stagger is about right in 4mm? You'll need to use some trigonometry to work this out but some of us can do that if you want calculations confirmed (or done for you 😉). What radius curves are you using?

We certainly don't learn from history & here is a clear example of it: In a few weeks' time, the UK will be switching time zones to GMT & we'll have the annual nonsense about how we are having an hour's daylight "stolen". GMT was based on when the sun is at its highest over Greenwich. This was set at 12.00 & people were free to do whatever they wanted. It became apparent that when we had more daylight in the summer, it was getting light very early & going dark while people were out in the evening. The easiest thing to do was to make the whole country start an hour earlier & the easiest way to achieve this was simply to shift time zones forward by an hour. But in the winter, it worked very well. After 60 years of this, some became discontented with the shift & many had based their habits & working hours on summer time, so it was decided to abandon our native time & stick with summer time (which seems to me like the wrong way to have gone about it). So in the autumn on 1969, we did not revert to GMT. It December, it stayed dark until about 9.30am so we could have some extra afternoon light until 4.30pm. In 1971, it was decided that dark mornings were actually quite unpleasant & this was also the coldest part of the day, so we have gone back to GMT (technically UTC now) in the winter & BST in the summer. For those us us not alive to remember this, it happened. Instead of understanding how it evolved in the first place, we were stupid enough to try & change it? I have heard the argument that road traffic accidents decreased when we abandoned GMT. That may be true but drink/driving laws were also introduced at the same time. These would have influenced the number of incidents on our roads. By suggesting that we try it again, we are suggesting those who tried it & abandoned it were stupid.

Yes. It can depend on decoder but the usual way is to try to reset CV 8 to a value of 8. Systems often have their own 'reset' which does this for you. This should enable the short address, reset this to 3 & enable DC running (& possibly some other settings too, but you will probably want those reset anyway). All but the most basic systems will allow you to read settings including address, but don't worry about this until if & when you get more comfortable with DCC.