big jim

They were a godsend on the hachette Partwork coaches from a while back, reaming the bogies and fitting Hornby wheels transformed the running brilliantly! Well worth the money

It’s not just the met that gets spurious tripcock activations, I’ve been stopped by blocks of Snow and ice that have fallen off vehicles on Bentley heath crossing near dorridge And regularly as pointed out elsewhere after ballast drops where the shoulder is too high

hence why i know its set to 62mph!

Yes, manchester Piccadilly was a pain for it, you had to slow to 5mph then power up to make it to the blocks!

Regards the overspeed at chesterfield it’s set to 62mph apparently, the grids in question are within a 70mph PSR area a good 1/2 mile before the 60 actually starts, in my opinion set far too low for the location, they could easily be set to 65 and still be able to safely brake down to 60

quite simply dont move until you have permission from the signaller i (embarrassingly) once tripped an overspeed near chesterfield, supposedly going too fast for a fixed speed restriction and my tpws 4 dropped the brake and then continually chirps up ‘overspeed please contact signaller’ and shows a brake demand light (red) until i stop and acknowledge it with the AWS button (then reset using a couple of other buttons), had i had older tpws fitted it just have a brake application and demand light no audible warning, therefore i wouldnt know the reason i was being bought to a stop so id have to speak to the signaller in case i had had a spad, a ‘reset and go’ is one of the biggest no no’s now and career suicide if you do it and get caught! there is also a rule that when you see a spad indicator lit you must stop immediately and contact the signaller even if you know for definate you havent spadded otherwise you could be heading towards a collision with something that has! of course, the above is applicable to NR metals but the bit about not moving applies to LUL too

One from Sunday, possession in Leicester 66788 Locomotion15 on a train of salmons and autoballasters

been racking my brain to think what you are refering to, do you mean the incident at greenford where the driver went past the section signal onto the single line toward south ruislip?

you can see the signal tripcock in action in the video linked to further back in the thread, ill see if i can get the time mark and edit this post accordingly something else to consider, not only no TWPS on the met, there is also no AWS either! the chiltern ‘Met rules’ are a watered down version of the full LUL rules dealing with issues you may encounter on the ‘fast lines’ north of harrow on the hill, no point learning rules applicable to the slows which have different types of signals, or south of harrow into the tunnels as chiltern drivers dont work over there, they only sign the conventionally signalled (bar the tripcocks) EX GCR fast lines from neasden jn to amersham one thing that does apply to both sets of rules though, if you pass a signal at danger you dont make any futher moves until you gave spoken to the signaller and have permission to proceed! EDIT: tripcock arm in action at 38:55 on the linked video

been a while since I’ve done met rules so I’ll be totally honest I really can’t remember the exact rule.

One thing just do know is if you push the speak to signaller button on the GSM-R on the met it puts you through to Baker Street control not the relevant signal box maybe that’s caused some confusion, who can say? when you Have to pass a signal at danger with signallers authority on the met they just say “obey the rule” which is them basically telling you to pass the signal, I only ever did it once and I got him to use proper protocol before I moved such as confirming the signal number, repeating the message etc better safe than sorry!

Yeah I did see him, bloody mad being out that time of morning!

A real shame as derby is always one of the highlights of the exhibition season for me, hopefully when you are in a position to do so a new Venue can be found I’m sure you can hire rooms at the RTC complex?

Yes the connection is bootle jn where you join the line from edge hill to seaforth, you normally go to marsh lane to cross over get back off if your coming from Sandhills but the points were out last night hence the trip to hall road i need a conductor from bootle jn on that job as I know the rest but he gets on at crewe as the train also needs a brake test prior to departure and it saves having a shunter come out just to do that

Some from last night/this morning UTU around the Mersey rail network , 37610 powering crewe bootle Oriel Road Sandhills Ormskirk We then did Kirkby and should have turned back at marsh lane but the points were out of use so we had to go to hall road to turn back Lovely waiting room And finally back into crewe nice little job, back to a normal one tomorrow On a Possession again

Hmmm, don’t suppose I’ve got an excuse not to buy 37610 now! my home for the next 8 hours trundling round the northern end of the Merseyrail network She was being a bit temperamental earlier, didn’t want to fire up but I got her going in the end, low voltage relay tripped while starting which is common if you have lots of lights on etc, annoyingly the light which tells me it’s tripped wasn’t lit afterwards but I had a good idea what the issue was

Whatever happens any freight along the north wales coast will be good to see! not bothered with pics the last couple of days really, trafford park and another landor st to toton, this time with wagons Class 70 passing landor st 66770 in toton IM tonight around the Mersey

Yeah that’s the one she had it started out with a rover engine but it got swapped out for a Honda one under warranty after it started using oil very early on in its life! my mate had a tuned up 220 turbo with, looking back now, a god awful ‘predator’ body kit on it with massive rear wing, it went like stink though but Retrospectively looked terrible. if me from now went back to 1996 in a time machine id be telling him to Think again about the kit that’s for sure

Dine some non scientific analysis of the NMT! as I used to drive it I have managed to get quite a few pics of it from unusual angles etc and using ‘markup’ on the iPhone I have had a look at the decals on the buffered powercars first impression is 43014 has a very slightly wonky decal on the same side as the Hornby model as can be seen by placing a line (ruler tool) along the top of the red bit of the network rail logo it intersects the writing about 1/3 of the way up but appears to go out a bit towards the end but nothing massively noticeable however it would appear that the real vehicles have the ‘Improving your railway’ branding in different places again going by the red line on the NR logo, an imaginary line dissects ‘Improving’ whereas 43013, the imaginary line is level with the bottom of ‘improving’ which is how Hornby have lined it up on both powercars so there we have it, slightly more wonky than the prototype and in the wrong place by a Gnats knacker on one powercar, personally though I do see an issue with the one that’s in the wrong place, it’s hardly noticeable really, I didn’t notice until I started playing about with the prototype pictures, and as I put before I’d be happy to live with the sightly wonky decal as it’s a far better finish than I will ever achieve when I come to re-decal up my NMT which has the old livery powercars

Nice! my mum had the 2l T bar roof version in the same colour back in the mid 90s (is it T bar or removable glass panels I’m thinking of?)

I’ll be honest I’ve not heard anything official but then again my Home Depot wouldn’t be involved with that work, most likely the north west depots doing it but from a personal point of view I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground as I’m sure it said it would be going to hope on the hope valley line, I currently (just about) sign penmaenmawr to Saltley jn then the rest of route, assuming it goes mouldsworth, altrincham, Skelton jn, hazel grove, chinley and hope I still sign and are nicely in date

When I was lead driver with another company I had drivers who signed places And had them on their route card but then when asked to do a shunt told the signaller they didn’t sign the shunt moves for those area and only the mainline! similarly with another company, drivers only signed the route in one direction! ive been with gb for coming up to 2 years now so a fair bit of my historic route card needs reviewing or I will lose it, difficult at the moment with Covid as I can’t get in passenger train cabs to refresh it, we can do it with official videos though, I’m hoping not to lose too much but the likes of the Cambrian and Holyhead are likely to lapse as there is no need to go to either (at the moment!)

Some from yesterday Leamington to crewe Crewe then back to landor st for a light engine to toton trafford park tonight

i was watching that too when it was £25 as nice as it is I couldn’t believe how much it went for in the end time to fire up the 3D printer I think!

Here is my bit of eBay madness for the week https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Arnold-Rapido-N-Gauge-Railcars-X-3-GWR-repaint-/383620578446?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49293 they are not a bad repaint job in all fairness, something different to say the least! I bought them to use the chassis’ and motor under a 009 model but thought I’d try my luck on eBay instead!