Broithe

Quick chat on the news just now - 95 bridge strikes this year, ten up on last year's total.

You may have cracked it - just a single one today.

That's always seemed the better way to me - any lateral force on a rail will almost always be outwards. The 'normal way' may be to do with stopping the rail from 'rolling' in the chair, perhaps?

This - - seems to be the first one, if that's any help.

I've recently started getting duplicated alerts for each new thread - not life-threatening, I will survive and just thought I would mention it.

I had two Hornby controllers, one was a lot worse than the other. Even when they work, the low speed control is poor. It can also be worth checking track and loco underside for loose trackpins, etc., that could cause shorts. Things like that can even get stuck up behind wheels.

Odd indeed - it's only ever happened to me when things have been running for a few minutes, then it all just turns off. There are much better devices out there - in fact, there may not be a worse one...

We've had a similar question just lately - http://irishrailwaymodeller.com/showthread.php/5938-MM201-Erratic-running?highlight=gaugemaster The Hornby 'train set' controller is not the best device around.

I see from October's Model Rail that the GSR Sentinel has sold out and there are only about 60 NCB ones left now, I believe.

There appears to have been a reconnaissance visit to Heuston today. I hope you've all been good boys....

Long before the days of auto-correct, we urgently needed about four inches of two inch brass bar, but, as it would be a 'new batch', we would also need a test piece (and a spare, if it all went wrong), so we decided we would get a whole metre. The 'new girl' was told to type out the order and it was sent off. Two days later, the delivery driver arrived, "Where do you want this brass bar?" - "Oh, just leave it here, under my desk." - Blank Look - "What's the problem?" - "There's two lorry-loads outside..." "She" had missed one of the ms when typing 1000mm and we had a kilometre of bar arrive, too heavy for one truck....

I was after a Porsche and a mistress, too, but auto-correct had me ending up with a porch and a mattress.

The Q1 is a nice device - and a 'plausible' Bulleid Irish possibility..? I note that there appears to be a halo in the above picture... ...or, at least, an aura...

My final visit to the emporium today - I'll have to find another community centre to attend now... The Captain on the bridge, bringing the ship in to a safe landing.

Ah, well, it's always worth a try.. For my own pictures on this and my other forum, I always use Imgur.

Someone had a very similar problem on my other forum after the recent Windows update - a restart seemed to sort it for them.

Lisduff this morning. A style of tree that you don't often find on a layout.

This is the controller that I have in mind. We had two, one lasted much longer than the other would running the same load - so, I opened them up to see if there was a different component that could be 'improved', but they appeared to be identical. If I was confined to using them, then I might be tempted to short the cut-out out altogether, as it seemed to be operating well before there was any real overheating. If you are staying DC, then Gaugemaster is the way to go, I think. Save the Hornby power units for running lighting, etc. It's a long time ago, but I think the cut-out may have been in the plug-in transformer unit (it should be, anyway).

If it's the 'train set' controller, they have a thermal cut-out in and these can be very variable. Try just leaving it for a few minutes and see if it works again. Are you running anything else off it? Lighting, etc.? The larger engine may just be tipping it over the edge.

And, on the tarmac front, no two pieces of tarmac have ever existed that were the same colour. The variations in reality can even look a little false on a layout. It can be as light as an almost off-white colour. Trenches, patches and filled-in potholes very rarely blend in properly.

Perhaps a specialist feature, and they've gone recently, when the Guards had a new wall, but these stones that were just a bit too big and, so, were just tarmacked round, amused me for many years.

Possibly the origin of the phrase "Feeling a bit under the weather"....

Another one this morning.... Delays up to 15 minutes to DART & Commuter services due earlier anti-social behaviour at Donabate. And it's not swans...

The 'sport-based' disorder in the UK gave a good training ground for combating this sort of thing - much easier to organise against than random events. Going on a train on a Saturday, before football went 24-7, was not always a good idea. I used to try to be aware of football fixtures and attempt to avoid certain teams' matches, though the worst event of all (by far) was down to Australian rugby fans. Over the last 25 years, my rail travel has been fairly evenly split between UK and Ireland, with almost all the 'entertainment' here on the big island. Whenever coppers have eventually got involved, they have been whatever the local force in the area is. I've only ever seen BTP once in my life and they didn't seem to be on an emergency at the time. I did once have what turned out to be a copper jump on me from behind as I entered the station, only for his mate to shout "It's not him!", causing him to jump off and release me with a "Sorry, mate", before I could react at all...

It would be feasible to get an injunction banning rail travel and, if the person broke the injunction, either being recognised, or informed upon, then that could amount to contempt of court. In the UK, it's common enough to find such conditions in ASBOs and it is frequently applied in bail conditions, apparently, for rail-related transgressions. Enforcement and detection are the issues - though, face-recognition technology is improving all the time. Lifetime and temporary bans from football grounds are fairly common here, and suffer from the same difficulty of detection as a railway ban would, though the scenes and times are rather more restricted, I suppose.