BoD

I’m very disappointed to read that. Most un-ER-like. I hadn’t noticed anything untoward... apart from you not posting that is. I missed the reports from Lords and the Proms, although I guess we wouldn’t have had them anyway. What is this night mail of which you speak?

No, it's definitely not a Bell's.

Regarding hobbies. I like to listen to music and read a lot. Since I retired I am working my way through the pile of books I collected when I was working - in the hope that one day I might have time to read them all. Somehow though, the pile still seems to be growing rather than shrinking. Also since retiring I have dabbled in drawing and watercolours, and bashing tunes out of a keyboard (sorry Tony). This photograph I bodged a while ago rather nicely sums up some of my other interests.

That only happens when they were conceived either side of midnight.

Many happy returns to Chrisf's aunts. Like others I really do hope that you can see them again soon, Chris. I'm always amazed though, by how all of the sets of twins that I know have birthdays on the same day. I mean, what are the chances of that happening?

Our front room needs doing and I don’t mind if you try to sing whilst you do it.

That looks interesting. I do like the idea of the graphics for functions. Whilst there is some standardisation of functions there is also a lot of variation too, even within projects by the same person/company. Recently I have been thinking about how I might easily reference the actual actions of functions whilst operating.

Your 400 day clock has lasted well then.

I've got a couple of 37s to improve so I'd be interested to know how and where you fit the boom box (and what you think of the sound, of course).

Only if his flip flops had steel toe caps. We aren't totally daft you know.

What exactly do you mean by size? If you mean physical size that usually comes in the description of the LED or on it's datasheet which is normally available as a download at point of purchase. If you are talking about anything else - current draw, resistor needed you will need to provide more information. Also, if I may, can I suggest that you look more closely at the structure of the forum and the different topics/areas available. Posting something like this in he electrics section is likely to get a better response.

Ah, Oscar - a collection of aphorisms looking for a storyline. I bet you didn’t realise that I was once the Literary Critic for Exchange and Mart.

Ah, good old Fran. An iconic picture that. I'm wearing a pair of his shorts at the moment. Well not actually his you understand but a product of his clothing company. I find that they are designed to suit those of more generous proportions.

Having freely admitting that he hadn't prepared the team well enough I know what his next statement should have been. However, I also think that, to a certain extent, the 'elephants in the room' are the Sarries players.

That run may well end on Saturday.

I spoke to my sister last night. She is, and has been for a while giving vaccines. Finished at 8pm yesterday. Starting another 7 day week this morning. Hasn't been able to visit our mum for weeks. Sometimes I feel like punching those ignoring rules or pushing the boundaries.

Morning all Snow here too. Not that much, but difficult to tell because of the wind. In places there is barely a dusting but where it has blown to, it is deeper. On Saturday evening one of the house circuit breakers tripped. I checked to see if anything had ‘blown’ to cause it but there was nothing obvious. Discovered that it was the cooker element when we went to cook Sunday dinner. Pah! was not expressive enough. Valerie is convinced that we should upgrade and buy a new oven. I am going to set about repairing it today although local sources of a replacement seem to be closed.

When England’s plan A didn’t work they flawlessly switched to plan A and in the end even managed to introduce plan A. Fair play though, the Scots were better in every department.

There is a lot of legislation but It is also quite surprising how often Health & Safety gets blamed when rules and regulations are put in place that have nothing to do with the legislation. ‘Oh, it’s health and safety’ gets blurted out far too often. On the positive side, over the years unscrupulous employers have been prevented from putting employees at risk by penny pinching and treating them as an expendable resource. In so many ways sad that it should have been necessary.

About couplings, even after much deliberation as mentioned earlier, I have ended up with a complete mix of coupling types. Ideally I would have used as close to prototypical as I could. I have ended up with: 3 link/instanter couplings. On the trains made up of earlier stock (12T vans etc) running in fixed rakes I have used these. I just like the close coupling they give and watching each wagon ‘take up’ in turn. At each end I have created a converter wagon with 3 link/instanter at one end and a tension lock at the other. Sprat and Winkling couplings. 3 links are great but with one eye on possibly deteriorating vision in the future (see what I did there?) I have used S&W t on ‘seventies’ stock that is to be shunted. They are slightly better looking that proprietary tension lock couplings and much easier to use for coupling and uncoupling than three link, including hands free work with buried magnets . At the moment however I still do shunt some 3 link stock. As alluded to earlier, the loop has to be a bit further forward than ideal to prevent the hook fowling the detailing when propelling. Propriety couplings. On the 80s stock, VDA, OCA etc. I have stuck with manufacturers tension locks just for ease of use. They mostly run in rakes anyway or shunted as a few wagons rather than individuals. It also allows me to stick a TTA tank wagon or two on the end of a passenger set on the branch line - a la Mallaig. The tension hooks just fit over the loops on the locos and work well. Carriage rakes use the Bachmann connectors with a tension lock coupling at each end which also just hooks onto the loop on the loco. I may rethink the use of tension lock couplings on these eventually but they remain for now. As I said, a right mish-mash but it works for me although sometimes I do wonder if sticking with manufacturers' couplings might have been easier in the long run. However, when I see rake of wagons with 3 links/instanters it is worth the effort ... in my opinion anyway.

Not the best photos, Rob but I hope they are useful. With care, the buffer beam on the 27s can be removed which makes it easier to work with. The loop is created using a Bill Bedford bending jig. On some locos there are two holes, one near each buffer that can be used with the ends of the loops bent behind the buffer beam and glued in place. Others you have to drill a couple of holes. If you use existing holes you lose some of the pipework - but I still think it looks quite effective. The loops are closer to the buffers at each side than that last photo suggests.

I thought it was only me who did things like that.

I made sure that the loops run the whole of the width of the gap between the buffers. I baulked at actually soldering/gluing them onto the buffers themselves as some have done. I did find that I had to mount them a mm or two further forward of the buffers than I would prefer otherwise the coupling hooks could become entangled in the pipework detail when propelling stock.

Ah, couplings. The cause of much naval gazing, wailing and gnashing of teeth. And not necessarily in that order. Firstly the question of derailments caused by use of the loops. I decided that when I started that, on the visible section at least, I would try to keep the curves as close to a minimum of 36” as I could. I have mostly achieved this and even in the fiddle yard area the worst curve is slightly greater than 4th radius. Having said that I still exhaustively tested the loops on each type of loco before fitting them across them all. Fortunately they didn’t cause any problems. It is a great pity that they cause derailments on just so a small section of your layout Rob because, as you point out, it does improve the appearance of the loco being able to do away with the tension lock couplings. Even up close the loops are, when blackened, sometimes difficult to pick out. As to the actual couplings that I use on stock, well that is a topic in itself...

Hope it goes to plan. The only serious side effect I have heard of was someone having an uncontrollable urge to upgrade to Windows 10.