Pete the Elaner

There has often been domination by 1 team. Lotus won the championship for several seasons in the early 70s with a virtually unchanged car, so that must have been way ahead of the rest when it was introduced. McLaren had both Lauda & Prost competing for the title in 1984 for a year of domination before Senna & Prost later in the decade. Williams were virtually unbeatable with the last active suspension designs in the early 90s. When Mansell drove for them, they scored plenty of 1-2's with Piquet then Patrese driving the other car. It was McLaren's turn again in the late 90s when Hakkinen & Coulthard were there. The one constant throughout these times is Ferrari being 2nd best. I do not like the reliability though. Pushing to the limit and beyond should mean more failures. I f you do not suffer a failure once in a while, have you really been pushing hard enough?

That is not flat. The fact that it is still an arch makes a huge difference to its strength.

We hear that every year, but we are only 4 races in so far too early to judge. Vettel's remark was that Mercedes dominance was making it boring..but why? LeClerc was quickest in Bahrain & Baku. He was unlucky in Bahrain & pushed too hard in Baku. Vettel was in an identical car on both occasions so it is hardly Mercedes fault that he could not beat them.

There are also some models which could see new life as dummys for double heading. I have a few which fall into this category.

& the Bachmann 90 has a speaker fitted too. As Andy remarked earlier, years ago we heard calls for better models. Now we have better models but at higher prices. You cannot have it both ways.

I saw it mentioned earlier that Andi Dell (Dagworth) modified a pan to operate with a DCC function. I remember speaking to him about it at DEMU Showcase in Bretby, so that would have been quite a few years ago. He used memory wire but found that only 1 brand of decoder was suitable (Lenz I think) because there was something different about the way they controlled functions. I cannot remember exactly why, possibly the ability to use a pulsed function output. What was not mentioned was whether some CV settings had to be changed to enable the function to work properly for this. Other, newer decoders may now be able to provide the required output. That may go some way to explaining why Bachmann feel it necessary to recommend a dedicated decoder.

While I agree with the bit I highlighted, unfortunately they got the blame time after time & this forced them to react by forcing updates out. Remember we live in a world where McDonalds got sued for not marking a hot cup of tea with a warning of 'hot liquid' after someone scalded themselves. You couldn't make it up.

Losing data is not bad luck. It is poor planning. A hard drive can fail at any time & if it is not backed up, you could lose it. Backup devices are cheap & come in different forms, some of which are easy to use. If you don't trust cloud (I didn't until I started learning about it), then backup drives are available. I set one up for someone & was impressed with how easy it is to do. Their hard drive failed a few months later & no data was lost. Was this lucky or good planning?

It looks like you have used ply for the board tops. It seems to be much less prone to warping than chipboard or MDF. Suggestions: Getting something running is a major milestone for most modellers. It looks like you have done that. Don't be tempted to get too complicated too quickly. By keeping things simple, you can understand how it works & will be able to fix it when it goes wrong.

& to confirm the news article, I saw one in service last night.

That is common attitude but ill-informed. There is a very good reason they force the updates. They have developers employed to find security issues before customers do. Hopefully they do actually find these first. Security fixes are then published. There are unscrupulous people out there who reverse engineer the new security fixes as soon as they can to create viruses. This is where the forcing comes in... If Microsoft published the update & let users install them in their own time, there would be a period when many machines would be vulnerable to the new viruses. This is what used to happen & they got criticised for it. Their reaction was to push updates out as soon as they were happy with them. Occasionally one gets through which causes an issue on a combination of things they have not tested but, as remarked earlier, they have made the system so widely compatible that it would not be possible to try it with every possible hardware/software combination. It is partly this compatibility which makes Windows such a resource-hungry system. The biggest example I can remember was around 2005-2006 when I was in desktop & server support. The media reported it as being the 'So big' virus which I found amusing because it was actually Welchia! The latest update was available for a few days before the virus became an issue & guess what...it would have secured the vulnerability that the virus exploited. The problem was that it had not been applied to most machines. So how about looking at this from the opposite angle? How many major virus issues have been prevented because updates are now forced out more quickly?

Are Hattons decoders really only £8? After trying out a Zimo MX600 & seeing how much better it is than the basic Hornby or Bachmann decoders, I was happy to pay the extra. The price gap has since got to less than the price of a beer, which works in even more favour of the Zimo. These are all 8 pin decoders but if the speaker is going to be pre-wired, the 90 will have a 21 pin fitting. The cheapest 21 pin decoders usually cost a little more. After bad experiences with all previous Bachmann decoders I have bought, I would not trust Bachmann's special 90 decoder to drive the loco nicely.

Is there any reason you chose to avoid Phoenix & Railmatch?

I did not know an R8213 was a Select. Reading CVs will not be possible so you can't query it for manufacturer/model code. It is definitely worth paying attention to your pickups. These would have been more of a challenge when designing a single than an 0-6-0 & a good electrical contact will always produce better running.

Zimos have a good reputation for smooth running & my experiences with Bachmann & Hornby "DCC Fitted" locos are bad because the decoders they have used have been cheap rubbish. Do you know what chip is actually fitted to the Single? I suspect Rapido are a bit more choosy about which decoders they use but it would be nice to find out what is inside. If you can read the manufacturer & model codes then that would be useful.

But we are led to believe that it is 'the most famous steam loco'? Surely everyone would have been taking & publishing photos of it. Or could the most famous bit be recent marketing nonsense from the NRM, with Rocket & Mallard probably being the most famous 2 British steam locomotives?

I used to use a fairly small standard garage compressor. I had to fit my own oil/water separator but it was still relatively cheap compared to the usual brands of airbrush compressor mentioned earlier. Smooth, powerful, reliable, clean air delivery so it ticked all the right boxes except one: it was very noisy... So noisy that I would not use it at home in the evening. For this reason, I would also recommend something marketed as an airbrush compressor.

Somebody posted an oscilloscope trace of the output of a Clipper or Duette somewhere on this forum a few weeks ago. The voltage was all over the place, regularly dipping slightly into the negative when providing a net positive output. There were a couple of comments speculating that components had failed...but had they? Nobody who replied had ever seen a trace from an H&M controller before, so how would any of them know this was a fault & not simply how it had always been? I have never seen good slow running with any H&M controller. They always seem to jump to about 1/3 speed from zero without anything between.

But he wasn't looking strong. The 2 Ferraris were losing ground to the Mercs & Vettel was following as close as their aerodynamics allowed. The team told LeClerc to "go faster or we'll let Sebastian pass". Soon after we heard this, the Ferraris swapped places. If Vettel sped off, then we may have said it was understandable but he couldn't. Remember that we hear radio messages about a minute late, but I suspect they didn't give LeClerc much time to show he could go faster.

I like the second plan a lot more. The crossover & approach to platform 2 looked wobbly before. They look a lot better smoothed out. I can see the tracks are separated slightly through the platform. I think this looks a little strange so I would either bring them closer or separate them further to depict it as though there was an avoiding line there which has now been removed. Chelmsford is such an example. I can see you have mentioned run-rounds. BR stopped using these many years ago in favour of release locos. Not only do run round loops need a lot of clearance from the end of the platform, but having a release loco ready allows a faster turn-around, so that takes the train on its return leg then the original loco goes off to be prepared ready to take the next inbound service out.

So a 'bug' caused the decoder to give performance many found more desirable & extra features have been made unavailable to UK users? Sounds like I may now be favouring Zimo where possible.

Be wary of the CV54 trick. It gave my HST a maximum speed more appropriate for a class 08.

Some excellent points there. I had an OLE layout once (& plan to again). Many people asked me if re-railing was an issue under the wires. I never found this a problem but cleaning the track without damaging a wire was very fiddly. If you can avoid wires away from the scenic section, then this is very desirable. 1 contact point on a pantograph may be ok with 25kV, but multiple wheels are much better on a 0-12v, or even DCC model. When connecting 2 DC controllers for common return, these must be isolated by using separate windings (which effectively makes them a 'floating' 12v difference), then connected together at their outputs, therefore -12 - 0 - 12v. Some modellers are happy with this & some are not. With all the electronic trickery inside a DCC system, I would not want to try connecting mine to something else in this way?

That scenery looks great & shows that age can be irrelevant Excellent example of introducing younger modellers into the hobby. We have discussed a small layout built by junior members at our club...but they all want to join in with the one we're working on, which they are more than welcome to do.

I use that section regularly. Over-running works sometimes disrupt the morning peak but I have never known this to extend into the afternoon. Moor St to Marylebone sounds like a decent alternative unless you really want to sample tilting services.