Pete the Elaner

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.

I have not seen taper boilers mentioned. The whole purpose of these was to distribute weight differently; move some away from the leading bogie & over the driving wheels where it could be used for adhesion. GWR had been using taper boilers for years but the higher cost of them created some opposition within the LMS when Stanier introduced them. They never really caught on with SR or LNER. The tapering of Brittania boilers was quite mild (presumably due to cost-saving which became more of a priority) & these were known for slipping too.

Another recommendation for Coastal. I have found Kevin to be helpful. A visit to the shop sounds like an ideal excuse for some class 90 + Mk3A travel before they disappear. If you do decide to go with a PowerCab, make use of the ammeter feature mentioned earlier. A clock occupies the top right of the display by you can change this on a PowerCab to an ammeter, which I found much more useful. I usually used less current than I thought, but it will show you if you need to add a booster.

The pre-cut rails are a newer idea. I think they added them when they needed to renew the tooling. I assume the Y's don't sell as well as the LH & RH so the old tooling has not worn out yet & has therefore not been replaced with the updated & improved design. As for your jumper links; they look tidy but instead of just linking the 2 rails together, why not use these as a connection directly to the bus? It will provide a better connection that from wherever though 1 or more rail joiners.

Good choice. I would definitely recommend starting small. You will inevitably learn from each layout & don't want to be stuck with poor decisions/methods on a project which is going to take years to complete. It would always be dissatisfying.

That doesn't sound like a very welcoming club. I can understand you being put off by it. My first club was in a station building & as part of the rent, the club were tasked with keeping the station tidy, so all they ever seemed to do was gardening. I didn't stay there very long. & we wonder why the hobby seems to be full of ageing people with fewer younger modellers being encouraged. Thankfully not all clubs are like that.

You shared the same hobby. That sounds like something quite significant in common. How would you know what they were really like if you only went once or twice? The second statement makes you sound like you have a low opinion of yourself.

After about 20 clubless years, I was encouraged to join one about 18 months ago. In that time, we have changed venue, got some new members (younger members too:- the entire hobby is crying out for these) & those working on the large OO all wanted to rebuild it so we drew up some proposals & the club agreed we should do this (this was originally planned, started & abandoned largely by members who have now left & ran very poorly, which I was unable to fix. I seem to be on my own with marking out the boards but I desperately want to get others involved at this stage because I don't want to be going off on a tangent like Crompton describes. Those who work on the layout chat about it all the time on a FB chat & several of us go to the pub after club night, so this helps to create a good vibe at the club.

You have mentioned diesels, so I assume the list is for them. There are some you have missed which others may find desirable: 19 Compressor 20 Sander 21 Exhauster 22 Roof fan 23 Spirax valves 24 Air release 25 Fuel primer 26 Detonators Some other features require functions too: 27 Rear lights on/off 28 Day/night light select 29 RETB token request 30 Remote uncouple for no1 end 31 Remote uncouple for no2 end The last 2 are features not currently offered but would it be useful to uncouple with a press of a button rather than using a hook/stick? As manufacturers offer an increasing amount of features in order to beat competition & tempt modellers to upgrade to newer models, the ability to add even more functions may become desirable. Your argument of having 'more than enough' reminds me of when I first started in IT & my manager bought a 13GB hard drive, which at the time was the largest available. Many remarked that 'he will never fill that'.

That reminds me of a (DC) layout I built when I was about 15. I knew no better back then. It was fine to start with but after a couple of years, the boards sagged & as the trains ran round the back of the layout they slowed to about 1/3 of the speed of what they were near the feed. I try to learn something from each layout & I never want to be caught out by this again. I am currently starting a new club layout. I would use a feed for each piece of track purely to not rely on rail joiners but we are also going to isolate them at board level in order to keep open the possibility of using block detection at a later date.

I fail to see why this is such a commonly held view. History has proven that Ferrari usually finish the year in 2nd. They start each year with lots of promise & things consistently go wrong. Only Kimi & Schumacher have won the title there since 1980 & Kimi's title was handed to him by controversy at McLaren. So Ferrari has consistently been the wrong place to be for anyone who wants to be world champion. They still allegedly seem to get 'special' payments which means they can pay their drivers more. This will probably mean less to Hamilton now than the prospect of another championship.

Surely maintenance costs were a bit of a mystery back then with both types of transmission being relatively new to the railways? If you are going to try 2 different technologies, it would make sense to concentrate the less common type into a particular region so the fitters can specialise in 1 type, hence the hydraulics being concentrated on the WR.

Going back to the original post There is no need to mirror your track diagram with the wiring bus. The idea of the bus is to get a nice, clean supply to every piece of track. Nickel silver has a relatively high resistance (compared to copper - NS's advantage is that it stays quite clean) & that rail joints can build up resistance over time, especially once weathered & ballasted. Using a bus reduces the volt drop caused by these 2 & although I have not seen it, I suspect a bad connection may have an effect on a high frequency square wave. Quite how big your layout needs to be before you see any issue is not something any of us wish to find out. You would think that DC would also suffer from volt drop. It does. It is harder to work around & a layout has to get quite big before you see any severe degradation in performance as you move further from the power supply.

Bad luck for LeClerc. Was this a sign of Ferrari pushing too hard? I actually think it was simply bad luck because their reliability has generally been good. I think Vettel can learn from LeClerc. Dropped to 3rd after a bad start but did not panic & accepted he would get passed, then when the grip came to him, he carefully but quickly made his way past both Hamilton & Vettel. Maybe Vettel could learn from that; when pushed by Hamilton, it seemed that yet again he pushed too hard to keep in touch & lost a few extra places as a result.

Because I didn't know about it Thanks. I'll give it a try.

I have spent most of the evening trying to get a PI configured as a DHCP server & WAP so I can connect it to our club's PowerCab to provide access to WiThrottle. That has taken me most of the evening, admittedly hampered by a bottle of red & some drams of single malt. I have not got the wifi network visible yet. I am troubleshooting this bit. It just goes to show how much effort is required to achieve your goal. If you can make use of someone else's work then I would do this.

I think... Websites like this query your cookies/history. It would be interesting to flush history after each browsing session & see if it still happens. Setting this up to flush automatically is an option on most, if not all, browsers but about 3 options deep on Opera, so not the easiest to find.

I think we both did it so long ago that we have forgotten all about it. I have no memory of doing it on my PowerCab either, but I have bought a PowerPro more recently & I had to do it on those. I have had my PowerCab for around 10 years now. Maybe it was set up as a function key back then & the default has changed? I think this is unlikely. It was a post on this forum somewhere from Paul Chetter who explained that the button was by default configured to act as a brake key. I have no memory of using it for this so I do not know what, if anything, I am missing. I have since set this up for a couple of friends who have bought their PowerCabs more recently.

It seems that the OP's question has been answered but for anyone else reading, what you describe is not the default action on the Option button. The Option button is programmable & by default is is a 'Brake' button, so if anyone uses this, they will lose this feature by enabling extended functions. To enable access to functions 10-28 via the Option button, do the following: Hold down 'Select Loco' while you plug in the Powercab/Procab. This gives you access to several features such as cab address. If you only want to change the behaviour of the Option key, then enter through the different features until it reads OPTION, setting this value to 122.