Sheffield Exchange, Toy trains, music and fun!

[Clive Mortimore]

6 hours ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

Andy,

 

The Google Ads have not been an issue.  I just thought I’d air my issue with the Digitrains video.  I enjoyed watching it once, it was even useful, but it is slowing everything down.  My internet is not the best, living in the back of beyond, but it becomes an issue when the video uploads, but users photos do not on different threads, without several attempts.  
I’m aware of the issues you’ve had to contend with and I appreciate your work in maintaining this site.

 

Paul

Hi Paul this one

 

Under there is this thread. Plus I don't need to know what the inside of Digitrains looks like, I was there last Thursday, after climbing up The Steep to B&H models, they are closed on a Thursday. The chap in Digitrains thanked me for reminding him they were closed as he has in the past sent customer to B&H on a Thursday.

I don't want a Xmas jumper or see what members look like, I bet she doesn't post on here.

[Bloodnok]

15 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

I don't want a Xmas jumper or see what members look like, I bet she doesn't post on here.

I doubt the "Wide range of DCC systems" is particularly appealing to you either...

[Bloodnok]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

@AY Mod- Telling me I must turn off my adblocker (doing will greatly slow down PC performance while it runs all the animated ads for things I won't be buying) is like telling me I must leave my house unlocked because otherwise door-to-door salesmen can't let themselves into my house.

 

Almost, but not quite. What Andy actually needs is not for you to let every salesman in -- just for you to let his salesmen in ... and he's going to send you at least one every time you use the service. When the salesman Andy sends doesn't get in to your house, he doesn't get paid his kick-back from the salesman, and he's using that money to cover the cost of running the service. As he says, the service is not cheap and the money has to come from somewhere.

Now a nice, friendly, respectful salesman telling you about something you might be interested in every now and then sounds fine, particularly as you also get a service you like for nothing.

Unfortunately there are plenty of salesmen out there that are not any of those things, and as usual, the worst have ruined what was a functioning (if exploitable) system. A long time ago, rather than just giving their pitch and leaving, some salesmen figured out that if you daub something on the wall of each house you go to, you can look for that on a later visit and match up where you've already been (and more interestingly, when and why). Two things you can do with that; look for patterns to see if you can predict what someone might do in future based on what you've seen other people do, and use live data to live-choose what to advertise right as the salesman's visit begins. Every salesman, without fail, does that marking now because you can't really be a competitive salesman without doing it.

When they realised they got away with that they started getting greedy for more data, and are now happy to leave bugs that actively track you (rather than just the more passive tracking of leaving markers for themselves to look at later). And some of the particularly brazen ones are only pretending to be salesmen in the first place, but are instead thieves -- either stealing your stuff directly or using your power and tools to make things for free that they then sell elsewhere.

 

Andy does a good job avoiding the bad ones, and most people will say to themselves "I'll only keep the door locked for the bad ones", so it should still work OK, right?

If only. The arms race continues, and the bad ones keep getting more and more sneaky, and at some point you've spent enough time cleaning up after the bad ones that "I'll only keep the bad ones out" morphs into "I will keep the bad ones out, whatever it takes" and all of a sudden many of the nice(r) ones are getting blocked too. Andy, through no fault of his own, is now looking at a future where he may not be able to cover his costs via advertising.

This is very much a problem across the modern web, and it is far from unique to RMWeb.

The simple problem we all have to face is that if you aren't paying for something, you aren't the customer. RMWeb's customers are the ones spending money -- Intermediaries like Google and Connatix, and advertisers like Digitrains. They are RMWeb's customers, and you are the product being sold to them. If you'd like to be the customer instead of the advertisers, good news -- Andy has a subscription service you can buy which will do exactly this.

There's a more complex problem though -- not enough people will subscribe in that way. You might visit thousands of websites in total, Intentionally re-visit hundreds of them, post regularly on tens of them, but you'll be down to single figures for how many you'll be willing to pay money for. Cross-product that across the entire audience, and the vast majority of website visitors, if forced to either pay or leave, will probably leave.

For something with a traditional publisher outlook like BRM, as long as the paying readers who do stick around pay enough to cover the bills, that's fine, the content will not suffer. But RMWeb is not like BRM. RMWeb is 100% user generated content. It is entirely dependent on the network effects generated by the size of the active userbase. A reduction in the amount or quality of users posting is a risk to the value proposition of a site membership.

[ian]

If everyone who follows the thread chips in 11p then Clive could be ad-free for a year.

 

Where should I send the cheque?

[Clive Mortimore]

£12 Paid, I am still getting the Digitrains advert and adverts suggesting I choose a good garage and for the perfect Xmas party.

 

 

[Clive Mortimore]

I clicked on the X on the Digitrains advert to get one saying whats in the loco.

[Clive Mortimore]

I don't want flashing BRM Black Friday adverts or Probiotic ones. Something isn't working.

[St Enodoc]

2 hours ago, Bloodnok said:

Andy has a subscription service you can buy which will do exactly this.

 

49 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

£12 Paid,

I think that this is the point. I signed up for Premium as soon as it became available, to get rid of the ads. The problem seems to be that some premium members (not I, as it happens) are now seeing ads that they weren't seeing a week or two ago, which is what's upsetting them.

[Clive Mortimore]

Andy has sorted out my inability to follow instructions and I am no longer being shown around Digitrains.

 

Remember if visiting Lincoln's model shops B&H is closed on a Thursday, both B&H and Digitrains are worth a visit as between them they cater for most railway modellers.

[Graham T]

10 hours ago, Bloodnok said:

 

Almost, but not quite. What Andy actually needs is not for you to let every salesman in -- just for you to let his salesmen in ... and he's going to send you at least one every time you use the service. When the salesman Andy sends doesn't get in to your house, he doesn't get paid his kick-back from the salesman, and he's using that money to cover the cost of running the service. As he says, the service is not cheap and the money has to come from somewhere.

Now a nice, friendly, respectful salesman telling you about something you might be interested in every now and then sounds fine, particularly as you also get a service you like for nothing.

Unfortunately there are plenty of salesmen out there that are not any of those things, and as usual, the worst have ruined what was a functioning (if exploitable) system. A long time ago, rather than just giving their pitch and leaving, some salesmen figured out that if you daub something on the wall of each house you go to, you can look for that on a later visit and match up where you've already been (and more interestingly, when and why). Two things you can do with that; look for patterns to see if you can predict what someone might do in future based on what you've seen other people do, and use live data to live-choose what to advertise right as the salesman's visit begins. Every salesman, without fail, does that marking now because you can't really be a competitive salesman without doing it.

When they realised they got away with that they started getting greedy for more data, and are now happy to leave bugs that actively track you (rather than just the more passive tracking of leaving markers for themselves to look at later). And some of the particularly brazen ones are only pretending to be salesmen in the first place, but are instead thieves -- either stealing your stuff directly or using your power and tools to make things for free that they then sell elsewhere.

 

Andy does a good job avoiding the bad ones, and most people will say to themselves "I'll only keep the door locked for the bad ones", so it should still work OK, right?

If only. The arms race continues, and the bad ones keep getting more and more sneaky, and at some point you've spent enough time cleaning up after the bad ones that "I'll only keep the bad ones out" morphs into "I will keep the bad ones out, whatever it takes" and all of a sudden many of the nice(r) ones are getting blocked too. Andy, through no fault of his own, is now looking at a future where he may not be able to cover his costs via advertising.

This is very much a problem across the modern web, and it is far from unique to RMWeb.

The simple problem we all have to face is that if you aren't paying for something, you aren't the customer. RMWeb's customers are the ones spending money -- Intermediaries like Google and Connatix, and advertisers like Digitrains. They are RMWeb's customers, and you are the product being sold to them. If you'd like to be the customer instead of the advertisers, good news -- Andy has a subscription service you can buy which will do exactly this.

There's a more complex problem though -- not enough people will subscribe in that way. You might visit thousands of websites in total, Intentionally re-visit hundreds of them, post regularly on tens of them, but you'll be down to single figures for how many you'll be willing to pay money for. Cross-product that across the entire audience, and the vast majority of website visitors, if forced to either pay or leave, will probably leave.

For something with a traditional publisher outlook like BRM, as long as the paying readers who do stick around pay enough to cover the bills, that's fine, the content will not suffer. But RMWeb is not like BRM. RMWeb is 100% user generated content. It is entirely dependent on the network effects generated by the size of the active userbase. A reduction in the amount or quality of users posting is a risk to the value proposition of a site membership.

 

That is, IMHO, a succint and very good explanation of a lot of what is wrong with the interwebs.  And if you'd like to know more about you being the product rather than the consumer, I'd strongly recommend watching "The Social Dilemma".

 

[Graham T]

20 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Andy has sorted out my inability to follow instructions and I am no longer being shown around Digitrains.

 

Remember if visiting Lincoln's model shops B&H is closed on a Thursday, both B&H and Digitrains are worth a visit as between them they cater for most railway modellers.

 

Glad you got it sorted Clive.  The ads used to drive me batty, especially on a mobile.

 

[Mallard60022]

10 hours ago, Bloodnok said:

 

Almost, but not quite. What Andy actually needs is not for you to let every salesman in -- just for you to let his salesmen in ... and he's going to send you at least one every time you use the service. When the salesman Andy sends doesn't get in to your house, he doesn't get paid his kick-back from the salesman, and he's using that money to cover the cost of running the service. As he says, the service is not cheap and the money has to come from somewhere.

Now a nice, friendly, respectful salesman telling you about something you might be interested in every now and then sounds fine, particularly as you also get a service you like for nothing.

Unfortunately there are plenty of salesmen out there that are not any of those things, and as usual, the worst have ruined what was a functioning (if exploitable) system. A long time ago, rather than just giving their pitch and leaving, some salesmen figured out that if you daub something on the wall of each house you go to, you can look for that on a later visit and match up where you've already been (and more interestingly, when and why). Two things you can do with that; look for patterns to see if you can predict what someone might do in future based on what you've seen other people do, and use live data to live-choose what to advertise right as the salesman's visit begins. Every salesman, without fail, does that marking now because you can't really be a competitive salesman without doing it.

When they realised they got away with that they started getting greedy for more data, and are now happy to leave bugs that actively track you (rather than just the more passive tracking of leaving markers for themselves to look at later). And some of the particularly brazen ones are only pretending to be salesmen in the first place, but are instead thieves -- either stealing your stuff directly or using your power and tools to make things for free that they then sell elsewhere.

 

Andy does a good job avoiding the bad ones, and most people will say to themselves "I'll only keep the door locked for the bad ones", so it should still work OK, right?

If only. The arms race continues, and the bad ones keep getting more and more sneaky, and at some point you've spent enough time cleaning up after the bad ones that "I'll only keep the bad ones out" morphs into "I will keep the bad ones out, whatever it takes" and all of a sudden many of the nice(r) ones are getting blocked too. Andy, through no fault of his own, is now looking at a future where he may not be able to cover his costs via advertising.

This is very much a problem across the modern web, and it is far from unique to RMWeb.

The simple problem we all have to face is that if you aren't paying for something, you aren't the customer. RMWeb's customers are the ones spending money -- Intermediaries like Google and Connatix, and advertisers like Digitrains. They are RMWeb's customers, and you are the product being sold to them. If you'd like to be the customer instead of the advertisers, good news -- Andy has a subscription service you can buy which will do exactly this.

There's a more complex problem though -- not enough people will subscribe in that way. You might visit thousands of websites in total, Intentionally re-visit hundreds of them, post regularly on tens of them, but you'll be down to single figures for how many you'll be willing to pay money for. Cross-product that across the entire audience, and the vast majority of website visitors, if forced to either pay or leave, will probably leave.

For something with a traditional publisher outlook like BRM, as long as the paying readers who do stick around pay enough to cover the bills, that's fine, the content will not suffer. But RMWeb is not like BRM. RMWeb is 100% user generated content. It is entirely dependent on the network effects generated by the size of the active userbase. A reduction in the amount or quality of users posting is a risk to the value proposition of a site membership.

I'll have you defend me in Court anytime....Excellent summary of the Corporate nonsense that is today's sales system for too many.

P

[Mallard60022]

9 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

£12 Paid, I am still getting the Digitrains advert and adverts suggesting I choose a good garage and for the perfect Xmas party.

What's the £12 for Clive? I'm happy to pay that to support RMW, but don't want the Gold thingy at the moment.

P

[teaky]

3 minutes ago, Mallard60022 said:

What's the £12 for Clive? I'm happy to pay that to support RMW, but don't want the Gold thingy at the moment.

P

It's for Premium Membership.  Didn't you read the advert?  😀

[teaky]

See: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/171928-rmweb-premium-no-google-ads/#comment-4817386

[Mallard60022]

16 minutes ago, teaky said:

It's for Premium Membership.  Didn't you read the advert?  😀

I can't read,sadly.

P

[Tim Dubya]

6 hours ago, Mallard60022 said:

What's the £12 for Clive? I'm happy to pay that to support RMW, but don't want the Gold thingy at the moment.

P

 

Gold for £12?  Tight ar$e X

 

PS: Hope you're feeling better.

 

 

[Northmoor]

On 21/11/2022 at 23:41, Bloodnok said:

 

Almost, but not quite. What Andy actually needs is not for you to let every salesman in -- just for you to let his salesmen in ... and he's going to send you at least one every time you use the service. When the salesman Andy sends doesn't get in to your house, he doesn't get paid his kick-back from the salesman, and he's using that money to cover the cost of running the service. As he says, the service is not cheap and the money has to come from somewhere.

Now a nice, friendly, respectful salesman telling you about something you might be interested in every now and then sounds fine, particularly as you also get a service you like for nothing.

Unfortunately there are plenty of salesmen out there that are not any of those things, and as usual, the worst have ruined what was a functioning (if exploitable) system. A long time ago, rather than just giving their pitch and leaving, some salesmen figured out that if you daub something on the wall of each house you go to, you can look for that on a later visit and match up where you've already been (and more interestingly, when and why). Two things you can do with that; look for patterns to see if you can predict what someone might do in future based on what you've seen other people do, and use live data to live-choose what to advertise right as the salesman's visit begins. Every salesman, without fail, does that marking now because you can't really be a competitive salesman without doing it.

When they realised they got away with that they started getting greedy for more data, and are now happy to leave bugs that actively track you (rather than just the more passive tracking of leaving markers for themselves to look at later). And some of the particularly brazen ones are only pretending to be salesmen in the first place, but are instead thieves -- either stealing your stuff directly or using your power and tools to make things for free that they then sell elsewhere.

 

Andy does a good job avoiding the bad ones, and most people will say to themselves "I'll only keep the door locked for the bad ones", so it should still work OK, right?

If only. The arms race continues, and the bad ones keep getting more and more sneaky, and at some point you've spent enough time cleaning up after the bad ones that "I'll only keep the bad ones out" morphs into "I will keep the bad ones out, whatever it takes" and all of a sudden many of the nice(r) ones are getting blocked too. Andy, through no fault of his own, is now looking at a future where he may not be able to cover his costs via advertising.

This is very much a problem across the modern web, and it is far from unique to RMWeb.

The simple problem we all have to face is that if you aren't paying for something, you aren't the customer. RMWeb's customers are the ones spending money -- Intermediaries like Google and Connatix, and advertisers like Digitrains. They are RMWeb's customers, and you are the product being sold to them. If you'd like to be the customer instead of the advertisers, good news -- Andy has a subscription service you can buy which will do exactly this.

There's a more complex problem though -- not enough people will subscribe in that way. You might visit thousands of websites in total, Intentionally re-visit hundreds of them, post regularly on tens of them, but you'll be down to single figures for how many you'll be willing to pay money for. Cross-product that across the entire audience, and the vast majority of website visitors, if forced to either pay or leave, will probably leave.

For something with a traditional publisher outlook like BRM, as long as the paying readers who do stick around pay enough to cover the bills, that's fine, the content will not suffer. But RMWeb is not like BRM. RMWeb is 100% user generated content. It is entirely dependent on the network effects generated by the size of the active userbase. A reduction in the amount or quality of users posting is a risk to the value proposition of a site membership.

An excellent explanation of the "State of the Nation", thank you.

 

What is frustrating about the RMWeb adverts is that I am certain that at least 99% of (commercial) advertisers are wasting their time trying to get me to buy their products. 

• I have zero, zilch, niente interest or intention to use DCC, because I'm quite happy to control my trains manually using controllers that are at least half as old as me.  I don't want to run more than two trains at a time and they'll be on separate circuits.
• Similarly DCC Sound; I can make my own sounds thanks (although my wife always tells me to apologise and open the window).
• I bought nearly all my locos in the 20th Century and have bought about four new ones in twenty years.  I cannot remember the last time I bought new rolling stock.  Yes I know they're all better than mine, but the new ones will have no personal attachment (and they'll cost five times what my "old rubbish" is worth).
• I have such a backlog of kits and projects - it's just that stage of life when family life gets in the way - that I am incredibly reluctant to buy more.  I could probably complete one a week and I would still be going in ten years.

So, how much would you like to spend trying to get my business?

 

In short, I'm the sort of customer who goes to swapmeets, ignores the new stuff at "bargain" prices and buys some two quid wagon with broken couplings from a tray under the table (that the dealer has been carting around for two years).  I used to get accosted in the street by mobile phone sales teams who were baffled how I managed to have a bill of under £5/month and how on earth the 300 "free" texts per month they were offering, would last me about five years.   I mean, what did I do all day?  My last five cars cost less than £5K in total and I did well over 150,000 miles in them (for a period, I was doing nearly 25,000 miles/year.  Yet some people couldn't understand how anyone could manage to drive anywhere in a car over about five years old.

 

I am a Registered Tightwad*.  There, I said it.  Try and sell me something.  Go on, I dare you.

 

*I have limits, in case anyone imagines a Compo-like character, I don't wear worn-out or secondhand clothes and don't live on Tesco Value Beans (still love a yellow sticker bargain but I enjoy good food).

 

Sorry Clive, I seem to have used your thread for good moan. 

I shall try not to do it again.

For a while.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Northmoor

[Peter Kazmierczak]

There is positive news!
Since all the ads have started to appear on RMweb (including THAT one), my laptop has stopped saying that it has been infected with various virsuses. Also I'm not getting ads from ladies who apparently live locally and want to "chat" with me.

[Clive Mortimore]

31 minutes ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

There is positive news!
Since all the ads have started to appear on RMweb (including THAT one), my laptop has stopped saying that it has been infected with various virsuses. Also I'm not getting ads from ladies who apparently live locally and want to "chat" with me.

Hi Peter

 

And there was the rest of us thinking you were a sociable type of person who enjoyed a nice conversation. 

[Clive Mortimore]

Sheffield Exchange has gained some more motive power.

 

A standard class five has been given a foster home as it was not wanted by the Duck of Seation Junction, it ain't got the extra "C".

 

A very lonely Jubilee with a Fowler tender very nicely asked me to rescue it from e-bay.

 

Both locos are waiting at red signals for a free platform.

Can the combined minds of Stationmaster Mike and Sainty help me with getting the rerailing crane into Halham Fruit and Veg Goods Shed as there seems to be a problem in there.

 

They will soon be moving as the empty fuel tanks are taken away by the Jocko and a Crab is removing the unloaded vans of the late running perishables train.

 

Our intrepid photographer's mate was also able to record rare event of two freight trains leaving Exchange Station.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Clive Mortimore

[Clive Mortimore]

The Class 5 brings in the Sheffield Exchange portion of the Newcastle to Cleethorpes Friday's only train. Note the 9F which arrived with the perishables train is waiting to get to the L&YR Halham Loco shed.

 

Another view of the Class 5 as it threads its train into platform 3.

 

The 9F scuttling across the station throat.

 

The signalman has been very quick in changing the crossover from the L&Y up and down lines so that the Halifax semi fast can proceed to the station and the Spaceship to continue its journey. 

 

The Jubilee gliding slowly with the Halifax train into platform 8.

 

A view taken high up on the station roof.

 

[Tim Dubya]

You alright mate?  You don't want to hang around with that @Mallard60022 geezer, you'll only wake up with the head off one of these in your bed...

 

 

[Mallard60022]

1 hour ago, Tim Dubya said:

You alright mate?  You don't want to hang around with that @Mallard60022 geezer, you'll only wake up with the head off one of these in your bed...

 

 

I do not like Green Spam I am. That bloke from CUBA loves Spam.

Clive that layout looks good mate. Really nice to see things really working including the Std 5. Somebody built that quite well and it wasn't me. Would be interesting to see if there is room in that Boiler area for the 'extra

C'. Also, what sort of Motor and Gearbox is in there.  I have a DJH Kit and that machine will be useful as a Visual Aid if I ever get around to building it AND finishing the thing; I'd need to wire it weirdly, unlike the conventional and comprehensive set up on that Engine. Will there be room in the Bouler for DCC gubbins or will it have to be in the Tender space? That would involve clever connections; that will be fun...NOT!  

Wot will remove the Cleethorpes from your excellent Station? Could it be something exotic? NOT a Diseasel, nooooooo!

Good Sigernals too by the way.

Deranged Duck. 

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, Mallard60022 said:

I do not like Green Spam I am. That bloke from CUBA loves Spam.

Clive that layout looks good mate. Really nice to see things really working including the Std 5. Somebody built that quite well and it wasn't me. Would be interesting to see if there is room in that Boiler area for the 'extra

C'. Also, what sort of Motor and Gearbox is in there.  I have a DJH Kit and that machine will be useful as a Visual Aid if I ever get around to building it AND finishing the thing; I'd need to wire it weirdly, unlike the conventional and comprehensive set up on that Engine. Will there be room in the Bouler for DCC gubbins or will it have to be in the Tender space? That would involve clever connections; that will be fun...NOT!  

Wot will remove the Cleethorpes from your excellent Station? Could it be something exotic? NOT a Diseasel, nooooooo!

Good Sigernals too by the way.

Deranged Duck. 

Meneer Duck

 

You need to get your wings flapping and come over for a play, at this time of the year the dyke at the bottom of the ranch is quite full of water so your landing will be comfortable. I will have a butchers at the inners of the class 5 for you.

In the old GNR loco yard there is a Standard 4 tank and 2-6-0, a Black 5, a B17 and another standard 5. Over in the more modern refurbished L&Y diesel yard are a load of BR type 2s that specialise in ECS workings so might be one of them. Who knows I will possibly forget it was a Friday's only train and its next journey might be an express to Liverpool behind a big English Electric 2000.

 

I have addressed Mr Duck in Frisian, it is a little spoke language in the north of the Netherlands which is supposed to be close to old English and the word DUCK is the same in both Frisian and modern English.

I use to be mates with some of the guys in Modern English so here is a song by them.

 

Steve the keyboard player (who you don't see until 2 seconds before the end of the video) was best man when I got married to Mrs M Mk1.

@Dagworth were you doing the lights?

I still have my copy of the Gathering Dust single.