Pete the Elaner

I am surprised Bottas's seat is allegedly under threat. He does seem to follow team orders & so far has kept it clean when battling with Hamilton. He has raised his game this season. winning 2 races (including the 1st) & out-qualifying Hamilton on several occasions, pushing him without being a threat. If his team-mate is 1st in the championship, how much better can he do than 2nd?

You can cut the points to make the track centres narrower. We have done it at the club on the layout we are currently re-building & a friend did it on his layout using early prototypes I knocked up. The work on our club layout is much more recent, but it also allowed us to get rid of the last bearer which is at an angle to the main line (prototypically incorrect on a crossing & it annoys 2 of us in particular). We even managed to line bearers up with those on their adjacent rails too. It was a bit of effort but far we found it far more satisfying than just laying the track down. Our post-club pint went down very well that night Whether or not it is worth the effort is a matter of opinion, but if you were not bothered, you would probably not be reading this thread!

Why do you specifically mention GWR? Do Hornby's models have a W prefix? Loco hauled Mk3As ran on the west coast main line, so would not have had 125 on them. They had some other details differences like buffers, different roof vents & required a different ETH supply. With the exception of roof vents, it is easier to add detail than remove it. Maybe Hornby were trying to make the model easily convertible into whichever type was required?

No, they don't want that at all. They are a company who make money & employ people by manufacturing things which sell well. Most of their range is always available at any good model shop, unless someone had just cleared them out of something in particular . Maintaining this is much more of a priority than releasing something new for a small minority of customers.

As far as I understand: Peco only go as large as they do because all 3 radii share a common geometry at the toe end, so you can make a crossover out of 1 long & 1 short point. Any longer & this will not work. Hopefully someone will be along soon to confirm this or put me right. Yes, C&L do the components you need. Templates are available for OO, EM or P4. I don't know what the sizes mean (A6, B7 etc). Someone told me once but I have forgotten. A roller gauge or 2 will be useful & you may also want a 3 point tool. I need to learn this too because I want to have a go at Scale7

I travelled from Euston-Birmingham weekly for a while around 1992. It was usually 86/ Mk2F / DVT but on 1 occasion (when I caught an earlier train) it was a Mk3A set. Manchester has always seemed to have been the flagship service publicised for its journey time (A cut in journey time to Glasgow less well publicised), so this would make Mk3As preferred over Mk2Fs. I have commuted from Milton Keynes to Euston from 2002, but the stock was the same so I assume the service would have been similar. Whenever I caught it, the 1655 Euston to Manchester was a Mk3A set as was the 1700 Euston to Liverpool. In the morning, there was an up HST from MK around 0702. I assume this originated in Chester or Holyhead but was surprised when I learned it was actually from Manchester. It was always an HST, so a diesel under the wires all the way. So I agree with the above post. They may not have run all the services but the majority from London to both Manchester & Liverpool were Mk3As. There were some odd rakes too. Typical length would have been 9 coaches + DVT but I remember a 6 coach + DVT set turning up once.

RB said over the radio they he had been undercut & they seemed quite certain about it. They only had a guess as to when Verstappen's tyres would drop off & by how much. If they were expecting them to drop off by so much, they would have pitted Verstappen first. I was very surprised when Hamilton pitted but only because I was not looking at the gaps very closely. If I had been watching these, I would have noticed that they would not have lost any places by changing tyres.

The team didn't think they could pull it off. They told him that over the radio. At the time they were not even sure Verstappen had to stop again. The fact that they stopped him so late proved they were not planning a second stop.

None of those vere viable options. 1 lap was enough to perform the undercut, so pitting Verstappen on the following lap would have put him in 2nd place. They couldn't pit him first because they didn't really know how the tyres would last. If they had tried & Hamilton stayed out, Verstappen may not have been able to catch up again. This would have made them look very silly. They were probably all lacking tyre data because the practise sessions were wet. They couldn't pit them together because Mercedes are often selling dummies with pit stops, even though it is not really allowed...so RB would not know for sure that Hamilton was pitting until Verstappen had passed the pit lane entry. Once this happened, it was simply a question of could Hamilton catch up again....& for 10 laps it looked like he would not be able to.

Verstappen's continual improvement was making Ricciardo a no.2 driver, which he did not want. He is certainly not a no.2 at Renault so I don't think he will be too unhappy about his move. He was popular within RB & they were sad to see him go.

Done that a few times

With no IRJs: Z has to be straight when driving on B? I agree this is the case, but by cutting corners with wiring, you have introduced an operating problem. With the points set straight & both controllers in use, you effectively have common return (Red A & blue B). so the controllers need to be fed from electrically decoupled supplies (usually different windings from a transformer). One of the reasons I recommend breaking up a layout of this size into small electrical sections instead of using points to feed power is that the thought process can be scaled up to large layouts. Instead of a big complex layout, you just have a lot of smaller sections, which is a lot easier to deal with. I have seen larger layouts which use points for power feed & throwing a seemingly unrelated point has caused it to short out. I would therefore put IRJs in every location marked on your DCC diagram, regardless of whether I am using DC or DCC. If you have a dead section, you need to add a feed. It is easy to add a feed after the track is laid. Adding a break/IRJ is much more trouble.

Quite an easy call when you think about the position at the time (which is what the strategists are there for). It looked like Mercedes were easier on tyres, so Red Bull were not going to bring Verstappen in for new tyres just in case Mercedes didn't need to. The practise sessions were ruined by rain, so the longevity of the tyres was more of an unknown than usual. Hamilton had already tried & failed to pass & that was with fresh tyres. His chances of getting past with older tyres were virtually non-existent. LeClerc was 40 seconds behind in 3rd place, so they would not lose anything. So the worst Hamilton could have done was stayed in 2nd place, but got the extra point for fastest lap. For 10 laps, it looked like that is exactly what was going to happen....until Verstappen's tyres started to drop off quite rapidly.

Absolutely. Droppers & IRJs are just as relevant for DC as they are for DCC. Please can we drop DCC from the discussion? It is just confusing the issue.

You do because they are electrofrog points. Without IRJ,s you will be feeding them from the wrong direction which will cause the controllers to oppose each other.

Calculations at the time showed that a much high pressure gave better efficiency. Experience with Fury proved this was true, but the increased engineering cost was considered disproportionately high.

Sounds pretty typical of modern companies. How many times have we called a number & heard an automated greeting of something like "due to the unusually current high volume of calls, we are unable to answer at present, please wait for an operator". So we phone back later in the day - the same. Then later in the afternoon - the same. Then first thing in the morning - the same. Then mid-morning - the same. It doesn't really matter what time you call, you get the same response. So what the automated greeting really means is "Due to us employing too few staff, we do not have enough left to cope with the amount of phone calls we receive. If we lose business then we do not really care". The problem is you can't quantify lost business.

Although it is not completely necessary to modify the points & switch the frogs separately, the extra work is in most cases well worth it. You won't rely on point blades for contact (which can be a continual problem) & it breaks the layout into smaller sections, which makes troubleshooting much easier. After doing it this way for the first time, experiencing how few problems I get & how easy they are to trace, I would never want go back to using points to make sidings live or dead.

I'm going to go against the trend here... QR codes are a great idea & currently very underused, probably because we do not see enough of them. You can do so much more with one than simply provide a URL. The more common they get, the more useful they will be. I doubt you will try to make this the only way to get information, just another option.

You have an error in your maths. 3.6/km = 3.6/100m = 0.036/m ..so 3ohms / 100m is close enough for our needs. But I agree that you will see a larger resistance through rails & across joins.

The only scaling of time is to cut out the pauses between train movements. Other than that, "what looks right is right" is good enough for me.

I agree that most brakes seem to effective. I guess the programmers prefer to provide something you can see easily, then you can back this off if required. I can't remember where I got this from & have not got around to trying it yet but I have the below in my notes: CV346 is the braking rate for Zimo decoders. CV179 is braking rate for Loksound, I think I may have 1 decoder which uses this. For both, a lower value for braking rate makes the brake weaker.

While reading the instructions for DCC Concepts' DML-EOTS3 flashing tail lamp unit, it claimed that "This is the ONLY 4 fn, function only decoder that can be read on the program track without a dummy load". I can't find this decoder anywhere though. Maybe it is something they plan to release in the future?

If you have a multimeter, set it to measure volts & see what you get across your controller terminals while you drive a loco.

A reasonable acceleration & deceleration makes driving trains more fun. Surely that is why we got into the hobby in the first place? A while back, a friend of mine spent all evening trying to stop an EMU at the the end of the platform on my layout. He could easily have slowed it down earlier & crawled into the station, but wanted to leave it as late as possible. This is a little like what drivers of real trains have to cope with when trying to keep or recover time. Some decoders go one step further (particularly sound projects on Zimo decoders) by including a brake feature. Deceleration can be set to a decent value for coasting & if you want to slow down, hit the brake. I am sure I have seen this on a Loksound v4 decoder too. I understand most non-sound Zimo decoders can do this but I have not worked out how to set it up. I am sure it is all in the manual I find this a much more satisfying driving experience than turning a knob & seeing the loco instantly react.