Dungrange

I agree and I'm not convinced that there is as much genuine 'panic' buying going on as the media reports and photographs circulating on social media are intended to suggest. However, what I think we are seeing is a weakness in the 'just in time' way in which society normally works brought about first by a fear of being quarantined and then by the second fear of disruption and it's becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. The problem as I see it is that manufacturers produce goods and ship them to distribution centres as quickly as possible. These centres then distribute to stores as quickly as possible and goods are taken from the delivery vehicle straight to the shelf. There are not large warehouses full of stock as that is 'dead' capital. That's fine when everyone is acting normally and perhaps doesn't buy toilet rolls until they have only two rolls left. That is, they also normally buy on a 'just in time' principle much like the supermarkets. However, fear created by the media makes individuals rethink their own personal strategy. Instead of waiting until their cupboard is almost empty, they buy earlier because they might be quarantined. That's not a panic, but preparation. They are not necessarily buying much more than they usually would, but they buy earlier to build up some reserve in their cupboards and it doesn't take too many people buying earlier to lead to shortages because the supermarket doesn't have enough stock to refill the shelf until their next delivery. The supermarkets would be able to restock quickly enough if that was the only fear, but photographs of these shortages, then give rise to the second fear that the shops will run out and seeing empty shelves just gives credence to that fear which produces a second round of buying, which just makes matters worse. It will hopefully sort itself out in time, but I can appreciate that the sudden change in shopping habits will make it difficult for supermarkets to estimate future demand.

I agree that it's not pleasant reading for older people and those with health conditions, but it makes perfect sense for society as a whole. Do you use one critical care bed for an old person who would require it for four weeks and then if they survive thy might only live for another five years or do you use it for two younger healthier people who may each only require such care for two weeks and both may go on to live for another 20 or 30 years? Whilst it's medical staff who have to perform that triage, it's sound enough economic theory to choose the option that has the greatest benefit to society as a whole.

But that doesn't actually disprove Lantavian's point. Guesses are often wildly inaccurate simply because nobody can see far inside the jar - nobody is disputing that. The point being made is whether or not those making a guess know what others have guessed. I could look at said jar and estimate that there might be about 30 sweets in the bottom 'layer' and there might be 20 such layers, so I'll guess that there are 600 sweets in the jar. If I don't know what others are guessing, then that will be my guess. However, if I look at other peoples guesses and see that every other guess has been in the range between say 150 and 400, I might be tempted to rethink my estimation strategy once I'm aware that my guess (which might be spot on) looks like an outlier.

It's certainly true that the majority of those who have died are in the older age group. However, what proportion of these deaths of older people are due to 'death selection' by the medical professionals in countries at the centre of the outbreak? In Wuhan, the healthcare system was 'swamped' by high numbers of new admissions and reportedly unable to cope. The Chinese solution was two build two temporary hospitals to increase the capacity of its healthcare system to try to meet demand. I believe that we have the same situation in the Lombardy region of Italy, where there are not enough ambulances, all hospital beds are full and there are insufficient critical care facilities. This means that people who should probably be in hospital are left alone at home. This therefore presents medics with an incredibly tough choice. They have two admissions that need critical care facilities, but only one hospital bed. Do they focus resources (staff as well as beds and critical care equipment) on a 30 year old mother with a good chance of survival or an 80 year old man with underlying health conditions? That choice might seem quite clear: let the older person die. Of course it gets more difficult when the older person is healthy and the young person less so. I'm glad that I'm not on the front-line making these sort of touch choices that ultimately determine who lives and who dies. Obviously in the less affected countries, which includes the UK for now, those choices are not yet having to be made by medical staff, but they probably will be soon.

I know the feeling. We had a new kitchen fitted last year, which also involved taking down a couple of walls and lifting and relaying the floor which originally sloped about 3" from one side to the other. Microwaved meals and takeaway pizza was a novelty for a few weeks, but after a few months, the novelty had well and truly worn off. At least it looks like you are nearing the end of your works.

Yes, but at the moment, people in lots of other countries still look at the 81,000 cases in China and think "I don't want to go there". Other countries are still banning travel to/from China, so I guess the demand for foreigners to go and reinfect the Chinese population isn't there yet. However, I agree that their is a potential vulnerability there. However, the number of active cases in China (~12,000) has now dropped below the number of active cases in Italy (~15,000), so the World Health Organisation (WHO) is correct in identifying Europe as the epicentre of the problem. Ideally Governments around the world would be looking at how South Korea has handled their outbreak. From 8,086 cases to date, they have had only 72 deaths, which is a case fatality ratio of just 0.89%. Also reassuring is that of their remaining 7,300 active cases, only 59 are in a serious or critical condition, so the final mortality figure may not be radically different from the current proportion. Their high testing regime seems to have potentially picked up a lot of mild cases that are probably going undetected elsewhere, but which is causing greater spread. The data from South Korea points to the WHO estimated mortality rate of 3.4% being too high, which is positive. The alarming point though is when you apply this low mortality rate from South Korea (0.89%) to Italy, where the number of deaths is currently 1,266, that would lead to the conclusion that the number of people infected with Coronavirus in Italy could be closer to 142,179, which is obviously much, much higher than the number of confirmed cases (17,660). Do I believe that there are more than 120,000 mild cases in Italy that haven't been diagnosed yet? Probably not, which means that the death rate in Italy seems to be greater than South Korea. Some of this can probably be attributed to demographic factors, most noticeably a higher proportion of people above the age of 65, but we need to try and understand what other factors are contributing to the differences between South Korea and Italy.

The problem with looking at China as a single homogeneous country is that it is not. Around three quarters of cases and deaths occurred in just one province: Hubei. Hubei province has a population of almost 60 million, so is directly comparable in size to Italy. Hubei province ~ 61,000 cases: Italy ~ 18,000 cases Hubei province ~ 2,300 deaths: Italy ~ 1,200 deaths The main difference is that China seems to have been better at containing the main impact to Hubei, whereas in Europe, the number of cases spreading to Spain, France, Germany, the UK and many other EU countries has been much less effective, which is the most worrying thing.

Personally, I'd go with putting an order in and being patient. Some of the 'one man businesses' operate from the owners home with the owner having a full or part-time job somewhere else to pay the bills. In such scenarios, if the owner is unable to work for their main employer due to a shut-down, they may actually have more time to dedicate to their sideline business from home.

Have a look at https://www.worldometers.info/ As well as world population counters, there are also ones for many other causes of death this year globally. Almost 95,000 from seasonal flu; 60,000 from childbirth; 191,000 from malaria; 488,000 from alcohol; 977,000 from smoking; 1.6 million from cancer; 209,000 from suicide; 264,000 from road traffic accidents. You can look at the others. The number of deaths from Covid-19 is still very small by comparison, but nonetheless rising at an alarming rate. Of course the biggest cause of death worldwide is actually from hunger: 2.1 million people this year.

I think that is precisely the issue. There is a sense that we should prepare for an enforced period of isolation (like in Northern Italy) to reduce the risk of being infected and/or spreading infection to others, but when will that happen? - Don't know. What parts of the country will be most affected? - Don't know. What should anyone be doing to 'be prepared'? - Don't know. My wife bought a multi-pack of toilet roll on her last trip to the supermarket. Why? Well it was apparently because everyone else seems to be buying it. Since no-one really knows the best way to prepare, they tend to copy others and that creates the problem. I also read an article where a psychologist stated that when we panic we are usually drawn to grabbing larger items such as toilet roll, as we tend to think that size is important - ie we want to grab the biggest thing we can find and there isn't too much that bigger than a multi-pack of toilet rolls.

If you search for "Brian Kirby couplings", you should get various threads about the modifications that Brian Kirby proposed - effectively extending the bottom part of the coupling with a piece of metal, so that it is attracted to a magnet.

No. The 1% figure is one that has been made up by that well known expert called Donald Trump. Toilet paper knows more than he does - perhaps that's why people are buying it. The latest World Heath Organisation estimate is a mortality rate of 3.4% for Coronavirus. The latest figures for China are 80,703 cases, of which 3,098 have died, which works out at a case mortality rate of at least 3.8%. 57,333 people in China (71%) have recovered, which leaves 20,272 active cases: final outcome unknown. If the survival rate of these active cases is the same as the closed cases (ie one for which there is an outcome) then that will give a final case mortality rate for China of something around 5%. However, there will be some under reporting of people who have just mild symptoms and never get tested, which is why the WHO figure is lower. However, it's pretty clear from China that the mortality impacts of Coronavirus are tens of times greater than for seasonal flu. The figures emerging for Italy are much worse than China. This could be because Asian people have better immunity than white Caucasians in Europe to this particular virus, or it could be because the population in Europe is older and as has been pointed out males over the age of 60, especially those with pre-existing medical conditions, seem to be the most likely to die. It could also point to the virus mutating into a more dangerous strain than those who were first affected. It is really too early to tell.

If 35,000,000 people in the USA caught the flu and 50,000 died from it (which sounds about right), that works out at a mortality rate of 0.142% (ie 50,000 / 35,000,000). Look at the latest Coronavirus statistics from Italy, and from 7,375 people who have tested positive, 366 have died (as of today). That works out at a mortality rate of about 5% - ie about 1 in 20 people who have tested positive have gone on to die. However, half of the active cases have only recently tested positive, so some of them may die as well. If you compare the number who have died in Italy (366) with the number in Italy who have tested positive and recovered (622) then the Coronavirus mortality rate could be quite a bit higher than current estimates. Even taking the World Health Organisation's latest estimated mortality rate of 3.4%, if you apply that to 35 million catching Coronavirus, you'd get 1.19 million deaths - quite a bit more than 50,000. It's definitely something that needs to be taken seriously, even if as yet the numbers testing positive in the UK works out at about one in every 250,000 people.

I can see the Scalextric similarity - I used to have a similar figure of eight style Scalextric set when I was a child. It was fun trying to get the cars to stay on the track. Of course whether a layout can be operated like the real railway or not isn't important to many young children and a lot of published layout plans are possibly intended to cater for their needs as much as those of an adult. Operating at exhibitions, you'll occasionally hear an excited (and usually hopeful) "they're going to crash" from a young child who possibly finds layouts that aim for prototypical operation at prototypical speeds a bit dull. A head on collision with wagons derailing everywhere might be quite appealing to a young age group, but as an adult, I wouldn't relish the thought of a high speed impact between two new DCC Sound fitted locomotives hauling rakes of wagons costing £50 a piece. I have a different perspective compared to a young boy. Looking at the plan in the first post, I note that the stations have platforms that are around 18" in length. That's effectively a locomotive and a single coach - that's all that can be accommodated in the 'station'. Such short trains don't appeal to me, but to a child with pocket money constraints, they just have to pretend that their one coach train is actually a prestigious express. Growing up, I've lost that ability to pretend. I think you need to think about whether you are trying to create a model of the real railway or simply trying to create the sort of train set that you might have wanted as a boy. I can see that as a young child, I would probably have coveted the layout plan in the original post. Lots of track and the opportunity to run trains all over the place - who cares about prototypical operating practises. However, I'm no longer that young boy, which is why the original plan no longer appeals to the adult me.

I guess the question is what do you want from the layout? The first plan that you posted looks very much like it was an attempt to squeeze as much track as possible into the available space. Perhaps it's Hornby's desire to sell as much track as possible. That's not for me, but it is what some people want and that's okay. With regards your second plan, I'll make three comments: Both circuits have sections with R605 double first radius curves. These are okay if you plan to limit yourself to shorter wheelbase or older stock, but many newer models are designed for a minimum of second radius (ie R607). As such, the layout as drawn may prohibit you from running some new stock that you may like. If possible consider the use of R607 and R609 instead of R605 and R607. Gradients are something that personally I would avoid. You are going to need something like 3" or 75 mm clearance between your upper and lower track levels and you have something like 12 feet of track in which to make that climb and descent. That therefore gives you an average gradient of around 1:36, which is very much at the steep end of what people find acceptable. Possible problems will be exacerbated by the tight curves in the middle of your gradient, which is usually where it will be steepest. Steep gradients mean that you need to run shorter trains. The definition of short will be dependent on the locomotives that you plan to use. Diesel locomotives tend to have better haulage than steam locomotives, but you're probably still going to limit yourself to maybe three or four coach trains at most and some locomotives may struggle with more than two coaches. It would be worthwhile conducting some gradient tests with your stock before committing to the plan. There doesn't appear to be any 'operational interest'. All you can do is drive two trains round and round, up and down your gradient. That might be all that you want, but I feel that there needs to be a purpose, otherwise the operation becomes boring. I would therefore be looking for some sidings that you can shunt, so you have at least half a dozen wagons that you need to marshal into your next goods train. Will there be a station? Does it need a loop to hold a train or a bay platform to allow a Diesel Multiple Unit or similar to turn back. When designing a layout, try to work through the way you would envisage operating it. Where does the train start from; in which direction are you going to drive it and how do you get back to where you started? Use your finger to trace your route. At the moment, you have shown a point that will presumably lead to a station, goods yard or motive power depot. You can drive out forwards, but to get back there, you need to reverse the train in after it has made several circuits of your track. Is that the type of operation that you want?

But... surely your "loyalty" was to the previous manager not the business. If the previous manager was a friend, then you would likely have got more out of the job because it was also a chance to socialise with someone whom you liked. I sense that you don't have that same sort of relationship with your new management, which means that you now have nothing but a poorly paid job.

If you don't enjoy the job and don't need the money, then I'm not sure why you're still there. If you need the money later, I'm sure that there are plenty of other minimum wage jobs that you could take.

According to the linked article, "the protests (are) in support of five Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who oppose the passage of the $6.6 billion Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory in Northern British Columbia". It's clearly designed to raise awareness of their grievances. Unfortunate for all of the businesses who are impacted though.

I'd only provide switch 1 for that very reason - ie a DC 009 locomotive could be left on the track when a DCC locomotive was being tested on the 00 track. However, you could replace that switch with simply lifting stock off and on each track and leave them both live and controlled from the same source at the same time if that is what would be preferred. However, switches are not that expensive. I think the only essential is to use Double Pole switches to keep the DC and DCC controllers completely separate and also to keep the Programming and Main outputs from the DCC Command Station completely separate - ie no common return between any of the controller outputs.

It doesn't look like you've left much space for scenery, so I'd tend to just keep things simple with some grass in the corners. If you're looking for buildings, then I'd probably consider a signal box in the triangular shaped are in the bottom middle. An engine servicing point or engine shed on one of the lines off your turntable. I notice at the top edge, you seem to have two tracks that look as though they are touching. Is that the case? It looks as though anything that you drive from your centre circuit into that pair of sidings to the left will hit anything driving on your outer circuit. I also note that these sidings are rather short - not much longer than the length of a large locomotive. Plenty of space to stable locomotives, but nowhere to park a rake of wagons or coaches.

Okay, I'd buy three Double Pole Double Throw (DPDT) switches preferably with centre off positions and these would be labelled: Switch 1 - '00 - 009'; Switch 2 - 'DC - DCC'; and Switch 3 - 'Programming - Main' Two track feeds from your 00 track to the left of switch 1 and two track feeds from your 009 track to the right side of switch 1. The centre terminals on switch 1 would then be connected to the centre terminals on switch 2. The left terminals on switch 2 would be connected to your DC controller. The right terminals on switch 2 would be connected to the centre terminals on switch 3. The left terminals on switch 3 would be connected to the programming output from your DCC Command Station and the right terminals on switch 3 would be connected to the main output from your DCC Command Station.

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That may be the correct term - I'm just wondering if different words have different meanings. I've seen "Pension Forecast" used in relation to the UK State Pension and "Pension Illustration" used in relation to Self Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs). I was therefore wondering if "Pension Quotation" or whatever term Terry has used is taken to mean something else in relation to company pension schemes. I guess the other potential source of misunderstanding is, does that "Pension Prediction" age have to be a certain time in the future - ie at least three or six months from now. That is, if Terry was to ask for a prediction as to what he would receive at say 59 and 65 then he would get an illustration of likely amount paid at these ages, but asking for one now (at his current age), means that the only way for the provider to give an exact figure, as opposed to an approximate one at some future date, is to ask Terry to sign up to the reduced pension. I seem to recall reading that you can't get a State Pension Forecast within about three months of reaching State Retirement Age.

But surely if it was bought as a present before Christmas 2019 and was not reported as faulty until after Christmas 2020, then the 12 month warranty has expired. Obviously the contract of sale is with the retailer, but since more than 12 months have now passed, would it be worthwhile contacting Dapol directly since it looks like the spare (blanking plate) that you need isn't available via their website?

Just looking at the Pension Wise website (https://www.pensionwise.gov.uk/en) it looks as though they can only advise on options in relation to a defined contribution scheme (also known as a 'money purchase' scheme) whereas it sounds as though Terry has a defined benefit scheme (ie either a final salary or career average salary scheme). That therefore puts this into the area for requiring personal advice from a qualified adviser rather than a phone service where someone can talk through the pros and cons of all the options for those with a defined contribution scheme. I think Polybear is correct and that what Terry has referred to as "pay back 5%" is actually a reduction in the amount that Terry would have been entitled to had he worked to 65: a reduced pension for retiring early. As others have said, that's what would seem to be the norm and is my understanding of the way most schemes work. Perhaps that hasn't been explained very well by the pension provider - ie Terry has misunderstood the terminology used or the way it has been presented. To try and explain, had Terry worked for 23.5 years at a salary of £20,000 per annum, he might have expected a pension of say 23.5 / 80 * £20,000 = £5,875 per annum starting at age 65. However, if he was to retire at age 58 (7 years early), then he would only receive 65% of that pension - ie £3,819 per annum (100% - 7 * 5%). Taking the reduced pension now would give Terry £26,731 in pension payments before the age of 65 (ie 7 * £3,819) but means that he'd be getting about £2,000 per annum less from age 65. How these sort of figures fit in with the rest of Terry's income is where an adviser is required. I would have expected the pension company to provide Terry with a breakdown of what he would receive if he was to take his pension now, but it seems as though they must think that they have provided this information and are therefore taking Terry's request for more information as an instruction to take the pension early hence the statements about signing up to the reduced pension. That doesn't seem very satisfactory, but I'm not sure what the correct question to ask the pension provider is. Is there a specific name for a future benefits quotation?