BoD

Strangely enough I received an e-mail earlier this morning and was just updating the Eastwood Town thread when your notification came through.

The road to recovery for Gordon is long and hard and there are complications, of which I won’t go into detail here. Suffice to say that on Tuesday the surgeons were talking about a 50/50 chance of the procedure failing. I received a further update this morning and the indicators are starting to turn positive but there is a key scan today. Fingers crossed.

I'm not clear about how what you mean by connecting frog wires to main points loom? How are the frogs switched? If you are using the built in switch on the SEEP point motor then, without being rude, you have to be very careful in fitting and aligning the motors or it's possible that they don't actually throw the switch which would result in the frog being the wrong polarity. Again, don't be offended, I don't know how confident you are with the wiring side of things, but can you confirm that you have used insulated rail joiners on both rails of the frog?

The forum index page should look something like this... If it doesn't you need to click on the Forum Index button on the home screen as Pete said above. If you scroll down you can see the main subtopics and the sub forums within them. It is often just a case of browsing and having a look to see what is in each one. To speed things up you could use the search box at the top right of this page.

You need to navigate the forum and find the most suitable subforum for your topic then click on Start New Topic there...

You could try using the Loksound’s own auto tuning facility. You do not say which system you are using or how familiar you are with it but you need to know how to alter individual CVs. The process is as follows Place the loco on a length of track that is long enough for it to run at full speed for a couple of seconds. Set speed to 0. Write 0 to CV54. This is where you need to be familiar with your own system. Return to normal operation mode and Press F1 - it is at this point that the loco will shoot forward for a couple of seconds then stop. That is the fine tuning process complete. It won’t always work but I have done this for a few locos (Bachman 37 included) and it has improved the slow running no end.

A thermally activated expansion cutout occurred?

Unfortunately though most of the revenue will come from TV deals and I can’t see many giving up their subscriptions... and for those that do I think there will many more worldwide to replace them. The fans haven’t mattered to these clubs for a good while now. Even if some compromise is reached this time it won’t be long before the owners of big clubs are back demanding a bigger cut and the whole circus is repeated. It has already happened more than once in the recent past. Will the National organisations, UEFA and FIFA have the cojones (or legal authority) to carry through the punishments that they have threatened? I doubt it. Money talks.

I didn’t say that leagues themselves were similar, just the reasons behind their formation.

So, the Premier League that broke away from the football league, for similar reasons, are against this. Oh, the irony.

None of this is making me smile at all. I always was a miserable git though.

The feed to the frog needs to be switched according to the setting of the point. This can be done in many ways including automatic electronic devices such as frog juicers. How are you switching the feed to the frog? Do you get continuity faults without any locos on the layout? Have you fitted insulated rail joiners to the electro frog part of the point?

Update on Gordon over on E.T.

Update Gordon started to wake on Friday morning. Later that day they were able to take his breathing tube out. There are lots of things the surgeons are still worried about but he was awake for longer yesterday. He is still very poorly and weak, finds it difficult to talk but is now drinking water and nutritional fruit drinks. It is very confusing to go into an operation and wake up 8 days later and it will take some time for Gordon to make sense of it all. He is just at the start of a long journey back to good health both physically and emotionally. I'm sure he will continue to be in our thoughts for as long as necessary.

A day off then?

Gordon’s good lady has said that she will only e-mail if there is any change. That was four days ago so we have to assume that no news is good news. The surgeons have said it could be as long as two or three weeks before he is fully awake. Regards to all.

Grab away, they are do-able. If you do decide to have a go get back in touch if you want. There are a couple of things that will make life much easier when doing the catfish but will probably only make sense if you have the kit in front of you. The Key publishing magazine, Modelling British Railways Engineering Wagons is very good. This was the series mentioned, I think, over on Rob’s West Highland topic.

Possibly, different plastic, but still from the old moulds, there was plenty of ‘flash’ to clear. I was just pleased to get the chassis square and level. The hoppers were the pain and the supports are where some bodging is needed. Still, when you see the price of the Heljan ones on Ebay... The Tunnies are Chivers/Five79 and went together like a dream. When things are quoted as ‘being largely seen on...’ I activate my modeller’s licence.

I did wonder if anyone would spot that.

I was browsing Paul Bartlett's site and noticed a nice couple of photographs of dogfish at Crianlarich. (I guess there are photographs of dogfish at just about everywhere). Well I thought it would be rude not to. Those Cambrian kits aren't the easiest, and that's being kind, so there is still some fettling and bodging to do. I've thrown in a couple of Tunny/Tunney* for good measure. *take your pick.

Further update re Gordon.

I wasn't sure how often to update or with how much detail - or indeed how much detail Gordon would want to share. I wouldn't want to steal all of his thunder when he returns. However, I know that he has many friends here and we all have his best interests at heart so ... On Sunday the consultants explained what had happened. During surgery Gordon lost over 9L of blood - twice! That's more than an armful, as Tony Hancock would say. Obviously this was replaced and has been topped up since. At the moment his kidneys aren't working very well because of the shock of the blood loss. This apparently is normal under those circumstances. They are expected to recover but that, together with only having a little bit of liver remaining, means that Gordon isn't clearing the anaesthetic from his body, which is why he is not waking up. It could be a good few days more before he does wake up. Other scans and tests carried out yesterday have returned good positive results. Gordon is in for a long marathon, not a sprint. I will update again when there is any change.

I find a pack of wooden cocktail sticks and a lump of blu tack the most versatile and wouldn’t be without tools that I own.

I will certainly let Gordon’s wife know that there are many people here rooting for him. I am sure she will pass those good wishes on even if Gordon can’t hear them at the moment.

Gordon’s better half has regularly kept people up to date via e-mail and has given me permission to relay her updates to you. Here is a, by necessity, brief summary of her reports over the last few days Gordon underwent his operation on Thursday as planned although it took a lot longer than envisaged and was more difficult than expected. He lost a lot of blood and they had to do transfusions but were able to do what they wanted to do and were cautiously optimistic. Because the surgery took longer than expected it is taking Gordon a lot longer to recover and on Friday they were unable to wake Gordon but this was not unexpected given the amount of anaesthetic he had had. On Saturday the aim was to get him off as much medication as possible as his little bit liver needs to be recovering rather than processing everything. He was still intubated as they did not want him using energy breathing on his own and fighting pain. It is all a fine balance to get him better. The surgeons felt that, all things considered Gordon was doing well. There has been no further update today, which has apparently been a difficult day, and it would appear that Gordon needs all the positive thoughts that we can muster.