SRman

Surely the streets, and even the buildings of Ankh-Morpork were uneven anyway!

I never rode any of Southdown's Commers, Chris, but many years later I got a ride in a preserved Commer bus here in Melbourne. With less sound insulation than a coach would have, this was an experience and a half! My ears were ringing afterwards.

I'm just working on another unfinished project, a Bristol RELL that I have been doing as a Thames Valley vehicle. Unfortunately for me, the TV REs had tall destination boxes at both ends, although when I started this model, I hadn't realised the back end had this feature as well. Anyway, thanks to some very helpful modellers in the Model Bus Federation Facebook group, I have a couple of photos and a set of blueprints to work from now, so work commenced with some thick plastic sheet, laminated for the main body and heavily filed to blend into the roof curves. The next stage will be to use some filler, then a lot more filing, before painting it to match back in. P_20181126_165637_vHDR_On by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr P_20181126_165628_vHDR_On cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

Work continues on the Little Bus Company Southdown Duple Coronation Ambassador kit. All that remains to be done now is to paint on the tail lights, print and fix some registration numbers (probably MCD 46), fix up the poorly fitted corner windscreens (the close-up photo cruelly shows them as looking really bad!), and give the model a good coat of varnish. It looks like it will be ready to enter in the competition on Sunday 2nd December. P_20181126_124704_vHDR_On cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr P_20181126_124720_vHDR_On cropped by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr Sorry about the stray cat hair on the rear end in the photo.

The blurb on the details says that both styles of cabside windows are to be produced. Looking at these models, I would say they are not fully finished for some of the detailing. The side windows in the pics and videos seem to have a moulded vertical bar/divider which isn't painted on these samples.

When I was building my previous layout (around 28 years ago!), I got to the stage where I could join up the track on one circuit. I quickly hooked up some wires before I had even pinned the track down (Peco code 100). In spite of the terrible kinks and undulations in the track, I set off a 4 VEP unit converted from four Lima mark 1 coaches with MJT brass overlays and a Lima class 73 motor bogie: the pizza-cutter wheels were the saving grace at the time, as it went around at high speed without even the slightest problem.

If it is of any help, Bachmann in OO have modelled the early FKs in green and maroon liveries, as well as blue and grey, with the earlier style vents. They also correctly have the mark 1 style corridor connections.

They look and sound great so far, but what's with the headlights being on at both ends on both examples in the video?

We had a pair of EMUs separate on a run in Melbourne recently. Again, there were no injuries and both units came to a safe stop. No official cause has been made public yet. https://myaccount.news.com.au/sites/heraldsun/subscribe.html?sourceCode=HSWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&mode=premium&dest=https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/passengers-left-stuck-on-tracks-after-decouples-from-front-of-metro-train-in-croydon/news-story/b5bd533b1a840a61ac0b9adafdd3ba5b?memtype=anonymous The article was obviously written by someone with almost no railway knowledge!

I just ordered the early versions from Kernow - I had sufficient credit with them it isn't costing me anything this time! I ordered one FGA pair, and one FFA, but would really like to get more of the 20' BR Freightliner containers, so have refrained from ordering more FFAs for now. Hopefully Bachmann will do FFAs with three 20' containers in the future. In the meantime, does anyone want some of the old Triang/Hornby wagons? I was going to upgrade these but when the Bachmann wagons were announced I stopped any further work.

I scored 0, and I'm in my 60s. I knew that I had good colour perception, but this allows me to prove it!! I was a little sceptical because screens and monitors don't always render colours correctly and can be adjusted in many ways to suit individual users' needs, but the test uses relative colours within the ranges, so I would guess is quite fair. I do know that my laptop screen is not particularly good at rendering pale yellow shades (creams) correctly, which makes it difficult for me to use that to match paints or print colours.

Identify the correct pins and elder to the bases of those. Far safer than soldering to the decoder itself, although that does have the solder pads on it.

Agreeing with the previous posters: the models you have seen are most likely earlier Triang or Hornby 08s or the current RailRoad versions based on those older versions, which used a chassis shared with other locomotives in the range, like the old Jinty. In N scale, Graham Farish simplified the chassis design by having the inside frames too, although I am not sure if that was shared with any other models in their range (I am no expert on N scale matters).

I agree with comments above that Lima can be made to run nicely with a little work (a few lucky ones run well from the start, a few others will never run well - luck of the draw). However, two related things no one has mentioned yet are the wheels and electrical pickups. Most (apart from some of the last models produced) have a diagonal electrical pickup, with electrical connections from only one side of each bogie. Add to that the brass wheels that tarnish almost as you watch, and you have a recipe for poor behaviour (even without traction tyres). Fixing the wheels is expensive, or the alternative is frequent wheel cleaning. Adding extra electrical pickups and wiring can transform running qualities (this also applies to most of the older Hornby ringfield motored items too). Improve the pickups and add the CD motors or alternatives and you have a good candidate for excellent and controllable running qualities on DC or DCC. One of my Lima class 73s has a ModelTorque motor, now no longer available, ground down flanges, traction tyres replaced by Bullfrog Snot (an excellent product), and extra pickups, but still requires frequent wheel cleaning. It is on DCC and runs nicely, but still not as well as the newer Hornby chassis for the same locos. I have not done any more of the Lima upgrades as I decided it was a lot of work, whereas dropping in the Hornby chassis (usually bought as bargains) is a lot easier for a better result. My policy since has been to replace the chassis on all of the Lima models I want to keep, using the latest Hornby ones bought as cheaply as possible. This includes the Lima diesel classes 73, 31 and 59, but not class 37 (preferring the Bachmann and ViTrains models), and DMU classes 101, 117 and 121 - the class 117 and conversions using that (like a class 120) use the Hornby 121 chassis with slight modifications to fit the squared off trailing ends of the DMBS cars. A Lima NSE class 47 received a new ViTrains chassis. My other less satisfactory Lima models such as the class 33s got sold off, to be replaced by the better models from other manufacturers.

When I posted the earlier comment, I had forgotten that the 07 was 6- not 8-pin. However, I have now covered both.

6-pin won't work at all if it is the wrong way round. It still should not cause any problems as far as shorting out or burning out the decoder - all of the NEM decoder standards are fail-safe, in that sense. The input wires from the track are the middle two pins on the 6-pin decoder.

In one sense, Doctor Who has returned to its roots: a Doctor with three companions, looking at historical events. The original was intended to be educational, but that all changed when the Daleks came along. Even so, as Pete and others have indicated, the writing on this series really doesn't come up to scratch.

I have taken to marking the number of the cab on the backs of each of them, for my own layout's use. This also means that if I take one as a 'guest' on someone else's layout, I can set it to any convenient cab number, then reset it back to what I need on my layout without having to scratch my head as to which one it was to start with. The cab #4 problem and creeping locomotive suggest that one of the existing cabs is set to 4, and may be operating that locomotive. At one stage I had two Power Cabs on v1.28, and one on the earlier 1.10. All three operated perfectly well together on both Power Cab and Power Pro systems, with the proviso I always made sure the 1.10 cab was used as a slave. All of them have been upgraded to v1.65 now.

Since the wheel is spinning at the same time, there isn't much friction. I haven't noted any problems in all the years I have been doing this, and as it was a trick passed on to me by a friend who has been doing the same for even more years, I don't see that as being too much of a problem. In the case of the old Lima and Heljan brass wheels which tarnished while you looked at them, the wire brush method worked a treat. With plated wheels, I think the wheels are actually harder than the wire in the brush.

D0260, Lion, but that's already been done by Heljan. That has white painted everything!

A quick way to clean the trailing bogie wheels is to put a fine wire brush in the Dremel (or other mini-drill), and spin the wheels while cleaning them.

With an 8-pin decoder, it doesn't matter which way round you insert it, it won't short out or cause any problems, unless there is a problem with the locomotives wiring, which is what it sounds like here, as Steve has surmised. What does happen if the decoder is wrong-way-round is that the lights won't work at all, and the loco will run in the reverse direction to that which is expected.

I actually achieved this through JMRI Decoder Pro, so only had to tick the checkboxes to turn on the lights in both directions for F0. I don't know the CVs off-hand, but I don't think it is difficult - it will be in the decoder manual for whatever brand you have installed.

So instead of slipping on dropped onions, we'll now be treading on snags that have slid off the top of the onions!

The lights should turn off and on with F0. As this is a shunter, I also tweaked the settings on mine so that the front and rear lights are all on at the same time, showing one red and one white light at each end (still using F0 to turn the lot on or off).