Pete the Elaner

& a Faiveley pantograph rather than the Brecknell-Willis one in the sample.

The aim is to serve them during a pit stop because when this happens, we get to see them racing for position. They do not work so well when the finishing positions are adjusted after the race.

But this is also one of theirs. It would be correct for 86402.

Happily, this is far from the case. I wired a friend's exhibition layout for DC using many sections, just like I would do for DCC. He later donated it to my club where I was asked if it can be converted to run on either. No problem at all. It is even possible to switch the entire layout from DC to DCC at the flick of a er, switch! I cannot add much to any of the previous responses (which agree with each other & are all excellent) except to say that I prefer to wire a DC layout with smaller sections which makes it compatible with DCC anyway. The drawback is a little extra wiring to switch sidings on & off manually rather than with the point, but this has benefits: You can see the siding is live by looking a the panel. When on DCC, you can isolate sections of the layout if you want to program a loco. You are not relying on feeding power through excessive lengths of rail (Nickel silver is a relatively poor conductor compared to copper wire) or through many rail joiners, so this makes the method more scalable if you ever work on a big layout). The smaller the section, the easier fault finding becomes although you will find faults are less common anyway. You cannot easily electrically split 2 sections which have been connected together at rail level. But you can easily join 2 sections below the board which have been isolated at rail level.

Well, you've just answered both of my questions before I posted them! Are the MU boxes in a detail pack? If not, I have the artwork for 3d printing & can take a load of them to the Great Electric Train Show in October.

I would be interested to know when it lost the older MU boxes/cables. My understanding was that they were removed in the early 90s, which according to the above text, was after it became 86602 & received RF livery. The TDM stowage boxes are also in their original orientation in the photos but revised in the model pre-production photos. I think this was an early 90's modification too, but after the TDM boxes were moved.

I hope the rumours of Norris to Red Bull are no more than that. He would surely know that he may get the equal fastest car but always 2nd best choice for everything else. Unless Red Bull are going to pay him significantly more than McLaren, he would be better off where he is.

& here we go again...back to back GPs They will be setting up in Japan today ready for tomorrow's practise. Was Singapore a blip for Red Bull? I think so. Their design seems to be based around good aero, which means they work best with high speed corners. These were lacking in Singapore but are very much a feature of Suzuka. Will the technical directive about flexi-wings have an effect? Maybe, but I expect it will be very minor. The FIA look like they dropped a clanger with flexi wings anyway. We have been through this a couple of seasons ago. It looks like they made their directive too specific back then. Surely something a little more thorough should have worked now too? After a good start to the season, Alonso is regularly being beaten by the Mercedes & now the McLarens have caught up too. We have seen this before. Things seem to go well for him in a new team but it does not last too long. He seems to not have the ability to work well within a team & his relationship with them slowly weakens. As for his team mate, Stroll is having a poor season. I can only remember him having 1 good weekend this season.

Sorry, but that was not the problem at all. The WCML takes 4 classes of traffic: Local passenger Freight Mid-distance passenger Long-distance passenger 90mph is enough for local passenger trains because they won't run very far at this speed before they need to slow down. Freight is limited to 60 or 75mph Mid-distance passenger (semi-fast) do 100 or 110mph Long distance passenger could go faster where the line is clear enough. Virgin wanted exclusive access to the fast lines so they could run 140mph services. This was denied because the slow lines cannot cope with Local, freight & semi-fast services. 140mph trains would catch up with 110 services too quickly for the increased maintenance costs to be useful. The required signalling upgrades would have been more expensive too. What would be the point? I regularly used a semi fast service on my way home from work. It took the fast lines from Euston & usually passed 2 freights & 2 local services before switching to the slow lines at Ledburn Junction. Within about 5-6 minutes, 2 Pendolinos had whizzed past. If they could do 140mph, they would get slowed by signals as early as Watford, so the extra speed would achieve very little.

That is the way it has been for some time. They have been consistent with this for some years. Hamilton's contact with Piastri in the last race was a recent example. It is wrong? My view is that it is. I am also a believer that rules should be changed between seasons. Inconsistency within a season is unfair because the contest is a season long so if someone gains an advantage from an action, then a competitor should be allowed exactly the same within the same contest. But making a change when all points are on zero is different.

I still don't like tyre changes during SC/VSC periods. I don't think I ever will. But RB seem to benefit from these more than most, so it is nice to see that they don't always work in their favour. Singapore has always had safety cars but you cannot really plan a strategy around them without knowing when one will be required. It came just at the right time for the drivers on mediums (& Leclerc did not do so badly on softs either). The way Sainz controlled the race, successfully & deliberately giving Norris DRS was well thought out & executed. I thought his British GP win last year was a needed confidence boost, but this will be even more of one.

It is hypocritical.

Could the Tacky Glue also be used for ballasting? I have long been dissatisfied with PVA for ballast because it sets rock hard & transmits sound. When applied to a cork base, it soaks right into the cork & any sound insulation properties provided by the cork are lost. I have tried Copydex & find it a huge improvement over PVA for several reasons but it also has its drawbacks so I do not consider it perfect & am open to suggestions for a better alternative.

I can understand it. When you are used to qualifying well or having the confidence that you can blast past everybody in the race, losing that is not a nice feeling. To see this from a different perspective, watch the film Trading Places: "You must admit sir, you didn't like it yourself one bit."

That's just wrong. His impeding of Tsunoda was definitely worthy of a penalty, but being the "Red Bull 2nd team", they failed to turn up for the hearing so no penalty was applied. Why should they have to turn up anyway. But over in the world of Speedway, loads of chatter has broken out after the world champion & current series leader (Bartosz Zmarzlik) was disqualified from tonight's GP because he covered up a major sponsor (with another) on his race suit during practise. That may seem harsh, but the penalty is stated quite clearly in the rules.

The TV pundits were talking as if something has gone wrong. The answer is more simple: nothing has gone wrong. During Mercedes seasons of dominance, there were 2 tracks they did less well at than others: Monaco & Singapore. Why? Because the car has to be designed to work across a variety of tracks & these 2 are more different to the rest than any other. If it works really well at the others (& the Red Bull certainly does), then dropping a few points at these 2 is an acceptable sacrifice. I do not usually read too much into practice times & qualy is not always representative of race pace. The Red Bull seems to be so gentle on tyres that it has trouble preparing them over an out lap. The benefit is that they get better performance over the longer stints in a race. Red Bull's strength has been through high speed corners, so it gets a lot of grip from aero downforce. Singapore does not have any high speed corners & the RBs seem to be struggling for mechanical grip. Sliding the tyres wears them out & Singapore is difficult for passing so I do not think we will see them pass others as easily tomorrow.

Normally you can just take some things with a pinch of salt, but claiming Marko is not an employee was an outright lie. The fact he is a director is openly available from Companies House for anyone who wants to check it.

It should be furthest away from a 'typical track' than any since Monaco, so a car which works well at most can afford to favour this circuit less. It also needs mentioning that this year's Red Bull works better over longer stints & is so good at passing that a front grid spot is less critical than for others. It preserves tyres much longer than most so the drivers can afford to be patient. This also allows for a more flexible race strategy.

You are the first I can see who has mentioned the real problem. Too much high street trading has been lost to internet sales. There may be some things which are better to get right away but shops cannot always survive on these alone.

Repairing badly done wiring is not the only reason to access the undersides of the boards. A point motor can fail or you may want to change something. You also need to fix the wiring there in the first place. What happens if you are forced to move house? If you build the layout in sections (each of which can be flipped up), you can break up the layout into its parts for transportation. If you build it without any secitons, you will have to destroy it.

It is like building a tunnel under the channel, stopping halfway then building a port so passengers can do the second half by ferry. What a waste of effort.

Hattons list this as £43 more than the standard version. Hornby's sound recordings have been pretty good, so I would not be discouraged by not having heard it yet. It is the poor features of Hornby's decoders which would put me off. 6202's sound was rather unique & other than the running Swedish turbine loco, I doubt anyone would know anything further than how it sounded other than from a written description. Good news about the Wheeltappers project for it though. At least that will be on a decoder with plenty of features which work properly.

It is very childish of them if you ask me. Remember Beverly Hills Cop? I don't think a "banana in the tailpipe" actually works but a tennis ball may if you can distract them while somebody else puts it there? That would only be likely to escalate things further though, unless you could get a friend to upset them somehow. All the authorities (school, council, police) seem to wash their hands of doing things & claim it is somebody else's problem.

If no other nation is allowed to perform such a ritual then that surely that is wrong? The same rules (or restrictions) should apply equally to everyone. If they choose not to, then that is another matter.

I remember at what I believe was the first RMWeb members day in Mickelover, I was there helping a friend showing his layout. I had just partially re-wired it, but we needed his old control panel to operate the points. When we set up, he could not find the panel so believed he had left it at home. He considered this as something slightly different to a show, so while annoyed & embarrassed by it, he did not feel as bad as if it was a show with paying visitors. Even though I spent the first 2-3 hours of that day out of sight & underneath the boards, I was still enjoying chatting to fellow members. When we packed up, we discovered that the original panel was there after all. We don't know how it was missed earlier. I needed to do that work at some time or other so it was nice to get it out of the way!