Pete the Elaner

How can it possibly be a fully private project? It will not generate any revenue for several years. Railways are rarely self-sufficient, usually requiring subsidy. That is certainly true in UK. I guess it is budget-shifting again. If private companies are 'funding' it, then the subsidy will come from a different budget & not from the HS2 construction budget.

Indeed. Frees up £36billion for projects which have already got their funding approved.

So in summary, if you have an insufficient number of boosters & power districts, you will get poor running. In that case, when planning a layout, wire it with more sections than you think you need. Give each section a separate power bus, but connect them in groups you think will be sufficient. If that works well, then great. If not, then you can just separate the power busses into smaller groups. That is what I did several years ago anyway after learning from others on here.

Use plenty of different coloured wires. It is useful to document what is used for what. Even Nigel used 4 colours for his section diagram & that hopefully made it easier to understand (it did for me). I also prefer to power sidings from switches rather the points. This gives several advantages: I can do small shunt movements without having to set the points to power the siding. (Some like to provide power from points but I would rather see my live sections on a panel). Isolating & re-feeding after points keeps the electrical sections very small. These are less likely to provide short due to feeding from the wrong place & easier to troubleshoot if anything does go wrong. Rail joiners are weaknesses for electrical continuity. By isolating & re-feeding, you rely on them less. If you've ever seen a layout where the trains always slow in a certain area, poor rail joiners are the cause. This gets worse over time, especially if the track has been ballasted & weathered. Removing a point to fix it is a lot of work. If you later choose to go DCC or sell the layout to somebody who wants DCC control, it is no problem: just close all your switches to make the track live. The disadvantage is a bit more wiring. For me, this is outweighed by all the advantages.

The locking pf projects to decoders is to protect the work of the project maker though. I know they all strive to not only compete with each other but to improve their own work, so regularly improve & update their projects. Those who make these sound files make a living from it. They have become professionals & in return, we get great sounding projects. Projects from 10 years ago do not sound anywhere near as good as recent ones with good speakers. I believe they charge about £20 for each re-blow. This is what allows them to make a living giving customers a better product. I think this is similar to 3d printing. I am happy to share .stl files which I have created because I have done them for my own benefit & none have taken me more than a few hours because they were quite simple. If I were to design an entire loco or wagon, these would take me several days or weeks each to get right & if they became in demand, I would certainly want some recompense for my efforts. That is why you only find bits & pieces on Thingyverse. If you want something more interesting like an Oerlikon unit, you will need to check Shapeways & pay for it. As an aside, all LMS pacifics were 4 cylinder locomotives (apart from the one with a turbine which never chuffed at all). I believe all LNER pacifics were 3 cylinder. You can tell the difference now. My apologies if ignorance was bliss in this respect. 😉

Good grief. This government is really trying to set a record for how much damage it can do to the country.

Have you done it before? I have just looked through the v3.5 manual & there is no mention anywhere of stay-alives. https://www.dccconcepts.com/manual/esu-owners-manual-loksound-v3-5/

Does that mean Beijiao will be dieselised as well? 😁

I passed before theory tests but I was taught that when I learned (on a video I think). It gives you longer to react so you can do so a little more gently, which gives the tailgater a better chance of avoiding an incident. Regardless of whose fault it would be, I do not want to be dealing with a repair to my car if I can avoid it.

Powercab should do quite nicely for the required situation & can be upgraded as/when required. A booster could be useful but if you use the ammeter function*, you can see if this is necessary. You can even upgrade it to Powerpro specs without paying any, if at all, extra compared to buying the Powerpro in the first place. *One feature the Powercab has but the Powerpro does not, is the ammeter function.

Interesting comment because when I learned to drive, I was taught to slow with the brakes instead of changing down. This was considered better because it shows the brake lights. It would be interesting to see just how much regen braking can be done before the brake lights come on. It is definitely better to be cautious rather than careless about it though.

That raises another issue. Electric cars do not coast like petrol/diesel ones do; they brake a little as soon as you take your foot off the accelerator. I do not believe the brake lights come on straight away though.

I used to know somebody who, as a teenager, insisted he would react to any obstruction before the driver in front. He refused to accept that his vision blocked by what he was following. I have no idea if he has changed his ways, having not seen him for over 25 years. Aren't most motorway incidents caused by people following too closely? After sitting in a 20 minutes delay caused by an accident a few weeks ago, about 2-3 minutes after we cleared the damaged vehicles, I saw another driver close up to within about half a metre of the car in front before pulling out to pass them. He had 20 minutes to think "this was probably caused by tailgating" just the same as I did. Some simply do not bother to think.

The M6 & M42 are often at a standstill around there. That would probably make them a little quieter than the M6 toll, which is also nearby. You do not have to be a local to know any of that either. So you have the slow traffic pumping out pollution & the fast traffic creating noise...but a new railway which will be blended back into the countryside is too much? I question the sanity of any society which would treat her complaint seriously without considering the above.

Short debate because I doubt anyone can argue Hornby pantographs are anywhere near as good as those from Bachmann, Accurascale or Heljan. It seems that Hornby have an attitude that some items are unimportant & the pantograph is one of these. Track is another: Most passenger lines are on concrete sleepers but Hornby appear to have ignored this completely. I missed that completely & cannot find it with a search. Where do I find it please?

I do not entirely agree. I have some Hornby 87s. I agree that the pan is disappointing compared to Bachmann's 90 (which is a year newer but miles better) & decoder fitment is a nightmare. I managed to fit sound by hacking away at the cabs because the intended space is a complete joke. Its pan does actually raise, is poseable in 4 positions & looks quite good if you don't try to get it to interact with any wires, which should be the whole point of a pan. 🙄 The APT's pan is more of a disaster though. I have both the Hornby "Faiveley" one which seems to be based on a foreign design which never make it to the UK & also the BW type. They both unclip & don't raise very far before they feel like they will snap. They then flop back down. Even though I can see a spring in there, it does nothing. Their arms do not appear to clip onto the base properly so they do not even sit straight.

It was those of us keen enough to get our hands on one who bought the first batch (with capacitor issues) who made the second batch possible, so those less bothered got the better models. I don't know if the second batch have improved pantographs but they were dreadful on the first batch: flimsy & they flop straight back down when I try to raise them. Possibly the worst pans on any model?

30 years was a long slog. I expect many members have come & gone in that time, complaining that the fund raising was for nothing? It is hard though. Permanent premises are expensive, especially if they are to be maintained warm & dry. Hiring out a hall for several hours a week is less so, but storage is also required & time is lost setting up / packing away.

True. Always a good show.

That is how I have laid my fiddle yard. It shortens the longest sidings a little but it makes every train available for up & down. Trains usually come back from where they have gone to. I feel that many go with the traditional dedicated up & down lines in the fiddle yard because they have not really given it a great deal of thought. For the layout in general, I cannot see any definite view on whether it is to be above or below ground level. Oxford Road is above & I get the impression the OP has chosen to go the same way, but many city stations are in cuttings. This provides an excellent opportunity to squash the station in between retaining walls, tunnels & bridges without actually making it look squashed. Whether you enjoy the challenge of making suitable buildings necessary to work with this is a matter of personal preference.

I am sure more parts of what we knew as HS2a/HS3 etc will get built, but will not have HS in their name. This was a major publicity error. It was a bit like the class 91s & Mk4s being very similar to the designs of the APT-S.

Am I allowed to say that as an exhibitor, I did not like this show too much, but it was an obligation to be there? I liked it as a visitor though. Organising it must have taken a huge effort & been stressful at times so I would like to show my gratitude to the organisers. The hobby has lost its biggest UK show though. I find that thought rather sad.

Extending 3rd rail from Reading to Oxford? That would struggle on the grounds of safety. Bi-mode trains seem to be the modern (half baked) solution.

When a worked with a friend to wire up his DC layout, I future proofed it by isolating & re-feeding after all points. It must have been exhibited 10-15 times without an issue (not an electrical one anyway). He then donated it to the club & we wanted to use DCC. It was a small layout so the wiring was sufficient for the required current. We just close all the section switches & the whole layout is live. Modifying electrofrog points 'for DCC' is a misnomer. Powering the frog via a switch instead of the point blade is instead a reliability issue. We have never cleaned the point of contact between any stock rail & point blade, not have we ever had a loco stall on a point frog. A track cleaning block over all the rails is the only cleaning we have ever required.

Switching frog polarity does not require anything outside of the board to which the point is mounted. It would be 3 extra wires per point though. Whether you need to connect a Unifrog depends on what you intend to run. If you have small tank locos, then it may reduce stalling. If you run bogie diesel/electric locos then they should cope without, assuming of course your wheels & pickups are not filthy. Regarding the amount of wiring required for point control, solenoids would usually require 1 switched supply per coil plus 1 common return. Stall or servo types need 2 per motor, the polarity of which gets reversed when the point is thrown. This is 1 less wire (big deal) but it can be taken further: How about a 0v common to all motors with the other one switched between -12 & +12v (assuming the motors are 12v)? You would then halve the number of switched connections required for solenoid motors. The DC power supplies would need to be isolated from each other, maybe even fed from separate transformer windings, but it would make wiring less complex.