Pete the Elaner

The Princesses had no corridor tenders. The crew had to ride the train throughout. There may have been 2 crews on the footplate, which would have been a little crowded. Where did you get 5 hours from? The hourly London-Glasgow service is timetabled for 4h29 with 6 stops. Coronation Scot was scheduled to do this in 6h30, but this was a once a day service which stopped at Carlisle only. Even so, today's regular service is 45% quicker with an extra 5 stops included too. The 5h43 Lizzie was a publicity run, so better compared with the record of 3h52 set by the APT. The modern record is again about 45% quicker. You should be looking at a speed increase of at least 45% & debating if that is a giant leap.

I rarely chanced the District/Circle platforms when Paddington-Euston was part of my commute. I tried the H&C a few times but got very frustrated at the 'The next train is at Latimer Road & will arrive in 5 minutes'. It always seemed to be way longer than that so I timed it. It was 7. This may sound like a petty whinge but if I can time it at this, why can't TFL do the same & use an accurate announcement? I ended up only using the H&C if I passed an incoming train around the Royal Oak area. Bakerloo then Victoria lines became my preferred route for this part of the journey.

Yes. Not the one I drive every day though.

6229 in blue would have been more unusual

No. Twisting wires together reduces crosstalk. Snubbers ease spikes due to short circuits. I have not suffered either, although my bus is sheathed mains cable, so that may well be twisted & with reference to the above post about different recommendations for different systems, maybe both you & I have command stations which effectively have integrated snubbers? If I do get strange issues, I will know some things to try.

I often hear of of others struggling to find a name they like. This should certainly provide a few ideas.

What you can get away with is not always a good recommendation. Without discussions like this we don't learn from each other. Feel free to not implement them but please don't complain about them being discussed.

I meant it sounds like someone has fitted this since it left the Hornby factory.

Great video. I agree that tunnels can be very different & the chances of a RTR one being right for your chosen location are next to impossible. I bought a laser cutter for mine, which was particularly suitable for me because I am modelling the same location in different eras, so I have something I can easily repeat. I do consider using a computer to be cheating a little & feel than a manual creation process is more rewarding. Most of the techniques you used are ones I had never thought of. I particularly like the effect of adding then washing off the plaster.

That does not sound like an original class 60 installation. I am not aware of Hornby fitting a 21 pin socket to anything & certainly not on the underside of the board.

There could be a number of reasons to delay it. Maybe they have an issue with the tooling which needs modification or repair. Either could cause the production to miss its slot & be re-scheduled later. It could be something as simple as wanting to produce models they feel would be more popular first?

Useful replies, thanks. I am surprised there were no Mk2s & the formations were longer than I expected. I thought they would only have been around 8 coaches, not 10 or 11. These were way before my time though. I only moved to Mk in 2002.

It depends on how you define improvement. In business, many items & projects are judged not on quality, performance or reliability but purely on cost. The rest are a problem for someone else. This has been reflected with model railways. Dublo was viewed as 'model railways for the rich'. The 1977 model was a lot more affordable than the old 3-rail one, so it brought the model to a larger market than before. & when did you last see a centre 3rd rail on Shap? The 3-rail model can hardly be viewed as superior in this respect. Have you seen the haulage power of a Dublo loco? In those days it was normal to run a 3 coach train behind a pacific & they created so much drag that the loco simply couldn't pull much more. I won't use a Duchess for anything less than 8 coaches on my layout because it would look too short. The glazing on old tinplate models may have been more flush but door seams, hinges & handles were nothing more than black lines printed on. Models have been made more affordable because the market made this the way to go. It is only relatively recently that modellers have expressed a desire for better quality & the emergence of more companies competing with better models. This has driven the costs upwards, which prompted Hornby to introduce their Railroad range. This is a good thing because it allows Hornby to constantly assess whether quality is worth compromising on the grounds of cost. Back to the comparison between new & old Duchesses, I would not like to fit a sound decoder & speaker to a 3 rail Montrose. My 2011 Montrose has one though

I am sceptical about assuming you have no problem just because a coin trips out the system. As Phil suggested, this can be used to confirm that a short will cause the system to self-protect, but I would not use it for anything else. You could have 2 issues causing volt drop: Resistance in the circuit (rails & busses). This needs to be kept to a minimum. Internal resistance of the source. In a simple DC circuit, the power supply will have its own resistance as well as providing a voltage. The more locos you have on track, the more significant this becomes, which is why double-headed trains run more slowly on DC. DCC is much more complex & I have never looked into this aspect but I expect the effect will be much lower (or maybe not at all). You can test for track & bus resistance much more accurately than by shorting out the layout: Remove the system (in your case the Elite) altogether & replace it with a wire. Set your multimeter to resistance & measure this across the rails at different points around the layout, particularly at the closest & farthest points from where the Elite attaches. You should see very little variation between the near & far points. A larger variation indicates an issue. If you see this, test in a few more places. If you have a problem join, you will see a difference in resistance at each sides of the problem.

Milton Keynes looked a little different back then.

What coaching stock formations were used on the Cobbler service around 1990? I assume that it would have been hauled by an 86, maybe sometimes even a matching one?

It depends on when you want to model them. The blue streamliners were intended to haul the special blue Coronation Scot sets, but this only lasted about 2 years. Most of their work remained on the WCML but like most things, they occasionally strayed. They would typically have hauled LMS coaches, then in their latter days, Mk1s. As others have mentioned on here, there would have been some cross-country services in BR days then later on some goods services too. The you had the loco exchange trials, so you could get away with running City of Bradford (I think) on the GW

The PowerCab is usually pretty reliable at reading chip codes, so maybe you do have a decoder issue? I know it is a pain but swapping it with one from another loco may show you where the fault is. Does it stay with the chip or the loco? I would start by moving the chip first. If there is a fault with the loco, I would expect it would have blown the chip not just stop it responding, but the chip would be less likely to damage the loco board.

I quite like these Zimo decoders for their performance. It is nice to hear I am not just being snobbish!

If it is an older sound-fitted decoder, it could be a Loksound v3.5 or v4. It may or may not help to know what you actually have there. What system are you trying to control it with? Can you read the manufacturer & model id of the decoder? ESU's code is 151. I have just read a 3.5, which is model 59 & a v4 which is model 255 Hornby's manufacturer id is 48 & the only TTS decoder I have is model 132

Thank you. I mis-read the Mk2(z) as a 2F Were there any 2Fs in these trains apart from the DBSO? If not, a Scotrail 2F may be incorrect anyway. Most of the trains were formed of Mk3As Oxford produce these but it sounds like the distributor has sold out. Retailers still seem to have some though.

Welcome to the forum. Most of these rakes were formed of Mk3As. Bachmann are planning a Scotrail Mk2F TSO but have not released it yet. I think the reason they don't release the entire rake at once may be to allow customers to build a train slowly, which many would find more affordable than buying the whole lot together.

I have never set it up in a consist. I think it is just a Hornby quirk, which is why I usually avoid them. It is nice to have 1 or 2 available to test oddities like this though.

CV29 = 38 CV19 = 0 It is a Hornby TTS decoder (& I know Hornby decoders have quirks), programmed with a PowerPro. I do not usually program the CVs directly but instead do it through the menu. When I access it this way, short address seems to be set to 3 but disabled.

It does indeed. I just tried it because it conflicts with something I found a while ago. I assigned short address 1 to 1 of my locos & can control it by using address 91 but not 0091 or 091. One of my other locos is numbered 0062. I can select this by 0062 or 62.