Broithe

Some variations in the masonry styles are evident.

The stainless steel 'bus shelter' has lasted well - note the wheelchair ramp stashed away. The 'new bridge' has some interesting weathering effects. The water crane is beginning to look like it was salvaged from a shipwreck. The two o'clock Heuston-Cork arrives on time, just before three. This unidentifiable one had whizzed through the other way a few minutes before.

Some pictures from Monday. Zero and 66½ mile posts. Car parking has become an issue - it's almost back to the main road - there's about another twenty cars not in this shot. It wouldn't be impossible to open up the 'ballast yard' most days, I would have thought. The 'back-slope' of the platforms is a little more obvious now, with the block paving. Even more so from low level.

Tell them that it is just like doll's houses, but smaller and in a community setting.

Some people use bits of PCBs, copper-coated fibreglass, cut to sleeper size, and firmly attached on either side of the baseboard joint. The rail can then be soldered to the copper surface of the rigidly attached sleepers. The copper needs to be broken between the rails, before painting, to avoid short circuits, as shown.

The ones in my picture on the first page are 'tube-in-tube', this puts an end to unravelling woes. I once changed the clutch on my first motorbike, only to find the the wire had frayed inside the casing and was not allowing the release bearing to release properly...

1, If the layout is in a 'steady environment', then you can probably have the joints tight - you may need a bit of leeway if the temperature/humidity can vary a lot, or if the layout is very large. Some people do like a bit of a gap at the joins for the clickety-clack sounds... 3, Under the board is probably better and easier in the long run - it only needs a small hole for the actuating pin to come up through.

Neither of the canal footbridges seems to be particularly 'necessary'. They're only a hundred yards each side of the Arden Road bridge, which has footpaths on both sides and a crossing in the middle.

There is some rather modern-looking fencing associated with the new canal bridges, but the older black canal fences are more in keeping, I think. It's fairly obvious that the horizontal rails are modern steel pipe, but the uprights really do look the part, even though they aren't the hollow cast iron posts that they appear to be. They are actually solid concrete, as evidenced by a few that have been damaged over the years.

There's actually two of those new bridges now, the second one has appeared since my last visit in 2010 - at least the old crane survived the installation of that one. Ah, I see what you mean now - I was talking about the new bridges over the canal, rather than the station's lift/bridge...

Could it be this - http://www.soundtraxx.com/surround/index.php ?

Looking at that afterwards, I felt it necessary to turn it over and cut off the "clues".

We only really used the cables because we had them spare and it meant that a lever system could be used to operate them in a 'signal-box' manner. It could, in that case, have also been done with rods, as the wall you see is at the 'back' of the layout and the rods would have run straight to the front. With points that "run across" your line of sight, you don't need a crank for single points, just use the rod direct for push-pull. There were quite a few other rod-operated points around the layout.

Here - I've found one - it's not easy to see, but each of the Bowden cables controls a pair of points that operate simultaneously. The 'far' point travels to its extreme movement first, in either direction, and the kinks in the linking wires allow a little more movement in the 'near' points after the 'far' ones have 'made'. The cables came up through the edge of the baseboard to levers with high-friction pivots, to hold the 'near' points in place against the spring of the mechanism. Even with just home-made plywood cranks held in by a wood-screw, they worked almost faultlessly for years. It was only really a lash-up to see if it was worth doing properly, but it didn't seem to need improving, so it was never improved...

The model aircraft type of Bowden cables are a bit lower on the friction front and easier to cut to size - I have some pictures somewhere - they've been up on here before, but I'll find them again in a bit.

I worked with a Japanese chap who used to buy his cars in Japan, second-hand, and ship them over to Southampton, a benefit of the Japanese having inherited right-hand drive. In the mid-80s there were very few foreigners in the UK and my top memory of him is the time he rang a local garage in what must have sounded like a spoof accent, and said "I have 1969 Toyota Carina - I have sripping crutch!" - we were astounded when they took him at face value and just carried on with the conversation. Even the existence of a Carina that old in those days was mad enough, but his "Benny Hill" accent was comical. Over the years his accent got worse, as we got better at understanding him - one day, a chap on the shop floor actually asked me how long it had taken me to learn Japanese - he didn't even realise that I was being spoken to in English...

I suspect that these don't get chucked into the canal very often - or, maybe the old ones blew away?

I took the ould fellah for an oil change at the hospital this morning, so had a walk round for an hour or so.

I've done it under the baseboard, with a few bits of stick and paper-clips, even linking pairs of points to operate simultaneously. It's worth protecting the outboard ends of the rods from being caught in clothing, etc.

In modern times, things updated a bit.

Is there a joint in the track where this occurs? The track joiners can fail to connect between sections after a while - either by 'creeping' away from one rail, or by just losing 'grip' on one of the rails - this is usually more of a problem with flexi-track.

I think the bridge is about 1,500 metres, not much over a mile, anyway. It does make it look worse than it was, but getting up to get off was not something to be approached in a blasé manner. It was a 300mm lens equivalent, I suppose.

Some of the track needed tidying up a bit.

It's often feasible to lay the track, wired-up, loosely on the bare baseboard - and test it out with all plausible scenarios, before 'hiding' the wiring underneath. When you're happy with it, the track can be fixed and the droppers dropped.