Did you threaten to overrule him....? Aah, a truly classic political interview by the man at title. Now if I ran the BBC, all political interviews would be conducted with a Nicholas Parsons 'just a minute' style bell. As soon as the interviewee failed to answer the question or decried the opposing party, the bell would be abruptly rung and the interview terminated. Tell us what you're going to do, not what the other party aren't doing, otherwise you're off.

Anyway, as you've probably gathered I've been up to something in the Paxman department. First of all, I've done a bit of upgrade work to the Paxman HST sound project. This involved adding engine priming sounds of the correct duration, and a higher-revving speed step at the top end, with all its associated transitions. This has improved the driving experience no end. I've also developed a speed-dependant 'Mk3 coach wail' function. With this a 'wail' clip is played at regular (speed-related) intervals to mimic the airbag suspension noises. There are 8 different wails and the sequence is randomised so the end result sounds completely prototypical. The effect is on a function key and can be turned on and off at any speed as required. This will be rolled out to all Mk3-related chips (67, 86, 87, 90 etc) in due course. Finally, I have been studying a 'wired for sound' HST video in order to model the operation of the cooler group fan more accurately. I'm confident I can get it to behave prototypicaly now, I just need to develop the flowchart for it. This fantastic video gives you an idea of what I'm trying to achieve;

In other Paxman news, I had a very interesting discussion about 'Project Miller' with the chaps from the 125 Group at the Nottingham show this weekend. If you haven't heard, the aim of Project Miller is to restore the prototype HST to an operational state using a production Paxman engine. It turns out that the project is much more advanced than I was aware of so all being well we'll all be able to enjoy that Paxman scream again before too long. Details here;

http://www.projectmiller.org.uk/

and here;

http://www.125group.org.uk/

With the 57 now out of the way and the HST upgrade (almost) completed, the Heljan Deltic has come out of its box and back onto the workbench. Work continues on removing rough edges from the engine sound transitions and creating the last few clips I need to make the engine sounds as responsive as possible. Once this is done I now know where I'm going with the second engine so the whole thing can be brought to a conclusion (at least in 7mm). I'm sure it's going to sound rubbish in 4mm but there are a lot of devotees who won't take no for an answer so my work may not be over at that point...

In this week's photo, East Coast's 43320 leans to the curve as it hammers through Alexandra Palace on a Northbound working, unfortunately sounding like a lorry instead of a proper train :-)