Pete the Elaner

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.

I've seen the sound described as a fairly constant hiss along with a whine which becomes audible at around 15mph & raises in pitch as the loco goes faster. This sounds pretty consistent with a modern turbojet, which has some similarities.

It is a cheap trick accountants have been using for a long time. Move it to next year's budget to reduce this year's one. Then it becomes a bigger problem next year. In many cases, this means doing the job badly, which creates unnecessary repairs in future years; but who cares about those because they are another department's problem.

I can very much see your points. A lot mis-understood Verstappen's driving style earlier in his career. While he couldn't win a title, he was building a reputation similar to Senna & Schumacher, that he will crash rather than lose a wheel to wheel battle & the sooner others learned that, the quicker they will get out of his way. That helped a lot in 2021. There were several incidents early in the season when Hamilton did back off rather than get punted off, but when Hamilton switched to using the same attitude in Silverstone, his fanatical followers (& you can include Horner with those) were all too keen to cry foul.

I am assuming you mean HS2 here? I detrain between Watford & Coventry. I live in Milton Keynes. Trains which pass through my station without stopping are of no use to me. It is these which will use HS2, providing more capacity for services which I can use. So HS2 will be helping me.

If the late Brian Clough were an F1 team manager, Verstappen would be dropped after clinching the title.

There are certain ways in which you just can't treat drivers completely equally. Race strategy: If they are close together, you cannot usually allow them to both pit on the same lap because this would cause a delay for the second driver. Safety car periods are an obvious exception. Car design is another. If the 2 drivers like very different setups, which would you prioritise? The driver you think will be faster or the slower one? Or would you design something they both hate & tell them to shut up & get on with it? I don't have an issue with any of that, but I do have an issue with the media & deluded followers denying it, then criticising others for using similar tactics. The next 2 GPS are Qatar & US. Unless there are any big surprises, Verstappen should have won the title by then. After the US is Mexico. If Red Bull have any sense, they would throw their support fully behind Perez. A win for him there would not only boost his chances of finishing in P2 but they would gain huge popularity within Mexico & it would not affect the team or Verstappen in any way. I would publicly give Verstappen team orders to help Perez. Let's see what balls the Red Bull management really have?

You mean move the WCMLs problems onto the MML? That hardly has a bundle of spare capacity either. There are already objections to making the Bedford section 6 track to cope with East-West rail sharing the route for a mile or 2. How many more times must it be said? HS2 is not & never was about speed. It is about capacity. It was badly named. That is all. Constantly repeating these lies displays an ignorance. You have acknowledged a capacity problem in your other comments so you are clearly not ignorant. Don't do yourself an injustice. Here we go again. Freight can exist easily with local passenger services. When they stop, freights start to catch them. When they get going again, they will go faster than freights & create a gap, which allows them to stop again without slowing freights down & the whole process can repeat with each stop. A dedicated freight line therefore creates very little benefit. Semi fasts can exist with these with some careful planning & the help of another pair of running lines. Long distance, minimal stop, services catch these up & because they don't stop other than major destinations, these are the best to move to a different path...a new one. If you are building a new one, it seems ridiculous to not build it to modern standards.

Yes, but it does not access anything. You can see a garage to the right & behind it is an alleyway to access houses. It is here: https://what3words.com/beard.oven.garage In the throat of a close. All 4 sides of the close have garages & the houses are behind. In the centre of the close (more or less where I took the photo from) is a roundabout & cars almost always park all around the island itself. By parking so far out, the Focus makes it quite a tight turn to get in ... for me in a car. A van driver would probably not be able to get around it at all so would have to back out. It is indeed dark grey.

That was an interesting read. I don't think he is being managed too well. Good management would take the pressure off him. Marko has occasionally been quoted as criticising him. While I do not believe what he said has been reported very accurately, he should not have said anything even slightly quotable. Bottas never seemed to suffer like that at Mercedes & was often able to push & compete with Hamilton. A better example is Ferrari though: The Italian media are very demanding & the drivers often seem to feel this pressure. That was particularly noticeable with Vettel & last season with Leclerc. When Todt was there, he protected the drivers from this & it allowed them to perform better.

Bad idea. Why? Freight has no problem existing with local services. The 2 have a concertina effect as the local service stops to set down/pick up, then quickly accelerates to its line speed, so their average speed is similar. If the solution is to build a new line, it is better to take the least compatible class of train away & that is the long distance one with few stops. The WCML frequently has overnight engineering work. 'Fast' trains which leave Euston after 10pm take 50minutes instead of 30 to reach Milton Keynes because the timetable is designed to cope with line closures without adjustment. The early morning sleeper trains are regularly late due to engineering work. Sending all freight at this time would compound the problem. Freightliner still have a fleet of 90s. Only DB have removed them from service. Most WCML freight is class 66 hauled & has been for several years. I don't know when you go looking for freights, but I often used to pass 2 of them on my way home from work before my semi-fast switched to the slow lines before stopping at Leighton Buzzard. That was in addition to any heading the other way.

People in all walks of life are expected to do increasingly more, not less. Main roads are slower now with heavier traffic & more blockages. Local parking is also becoming less considerate, forcing delivery vans to park further away & spend more time walking to their delivery points. If delivery drivers have a choice of finishing work or spending longer walking to houses & getting home late, what do you think they would choose? I leave the following example of how some people think it is ok to park. The Focus in the photo was parked there overnight & is often left in a similar position. A yard closer to the garage would be easy to manage, as would 2 yards further forward but, some people just don't care. I have spoken to refuse collectors before who have told me it is becoming increasingly difficult to get into some roads.

The fact you have asked this means that it was badly publicised/sold, but we can come to that later. You are implying that the planners were too stupid to consider this simple option or were desperate to spend public money? Of course not. This would have been the first set of options they looked at & any large spend of public money is bad publicity What are the options for increasing capacity? Upgrade signalling to move trains closer together? This has been done many times & each upgrade only adds a small amount of capacity. Running trains closer together means slowing them down because they absolutely must be able to stop before they hit the next one even if it stops suddenly. So signalling upgrades only have limited use. Building another pair of lines beside the WCML - There are sections where there is simply no space for this; the inner city cuttings in London, Liverpool, Manchester & Birmingham are enclosed by their surroundings. This is especially true of Birmingham New St. Where exactly could this be expanded to? Many towns & cities have been built around the railway because it is there so they can use it. This means that adding a couple of extra lines would cause more re-homing than finding somewhere less populated. Merging more lines into less always causes congestion. There are areas where tracks could possibly be added to the East & others where there is space on the West, but these would require Ilford style flyovers every few miles. Shuffling the existing lines to the left & right is a theoretical option but how much would this involve? Re-alignment of the existing lines, re-signalling to turn fast lines into slow or the reverse. The disruption caused by any of these options would be enormous. But if you are going to build a new pair of lines, the best services to separate are the fastest ones. These only serve a few stations so their routes are flexible, so you could build it elsewhere. HS2 was a bad name for the new line because it created the idea that it aim was to cut journey times. Unfortunately we know what the media is like. They never let go of a lie because bad news sells. Most of the public would not even bother trying to understand why expanding the existing route is not a feasible option.

I have been told by 2 separate people that they cause derailments. When I asked how they could be worse than the alternative of just leaving a gap? Both refused to give me an answer (1 was online & another simply changed topic). I wonder why? 😂 Our club inherited a layout on which there was a cut rail because the builder forgot to add an IRJ, so the rail was cut after ballasting etc. One of the sleepers/rails had lifted, causing wagons to hop at the joint. Keeping it down was a problem solved by lots of unsightly pins which caused another problem: we needed to hide them. We solved that by covering them up with a barrow crossing.

It would be nice to see him snatch 2nd place. It would serve RB right for not supporting their 2nd driver enough. Without a win or 2nd, it is a big task though.

There are a lot of things which need tweaking & I don't believe ever had: Causing a yellow or red flag in qualy after setting a good lap is still a possibility. Taking a new engine when you have a grid penalty, knowing you can't be pushed back any further. Each such incident where the rules have not worked properly needs to be marked for review at the end of the season. Safety car re-start in cold conditions (this was a problem at the Nurburgring in 2020 & every driver was complaining. The FIA's answer was to hope it doesn't happen again). The question should be asked "what negative effect would a change cause, so would a change be better?".

That was a complete farce, but one of many in F1.

It was what I expected to be honest. There has been a lot of talk about the floor of the Red Bull this season. This is where the 'ground effects' downforce is generated. Ground effects are an efficient way to create downforce; efficient because it creates less drag than 'traditional' downforce from wings. By relying more heavily on ground effects, less drag at higher speeds allows them to go much faster. Singapore has no high speed curves, which reduced the advantage of downforce created by ground effects. Even Monaco has the tunnel, where you still need downforce but the reduction of drag is a huge advantage. Suzuka has more high speed curved sections, which suit ground effects quite nicely.

I have built a model of Fawlty Towers for my London based layout. I know it was based in Dorset but the real building was in south Buckinghamshire & Andre's restaurant (from Gourmet Night) was in Harrow. It will go on top of a tunnel, which is useful because if I get a derailment, I will be able to remove the building & the land it is on, rather than the entire tunnel. I also have a rake of dark green wagons which I intend to brand as Hawletts & fill with Ballast. Anyone who has seen the 1957 film Hell Drivers will understand that.