What About The Bee

Different strokes for different folks. What appeals to me may not appeal to you and visa versa. There is also a current promotion that is really a raffle. Buy £100 and be entered into a 100,000 point contest. The maths tell me that 100,000 points is worth £1000. But only if I win. Is that an inducement. To some, yes. I think you and I are on the same page. I am induced to buy when I see a product I want AND it has a price that I personally think appropriate. Repeat, what I think appropriate. Not what the carpet boy thinks appropriate. To get back to the original thread, it is the price rise we are discussing. If I see value for a product I want, I will buy it. If I don't, I won't. Bee

Spot on Colin. What appeals to someone else may not appeal to you. If a catalog collector is sitting on the fence about a purchase, perhaps the inducement of a "free" catalog appeals to that person to stop sitting on his wallet. The value of that catalog to me, in the digital age, is zero. The value to the collector? That's another story. My personal view is that Hornby is attempting to generate sales, as they should. Does a price rise induce a buyer? No. But if it is a piece of kit I want, then it will not totally deter me. Then again, I do not need every bauble ever designed Bee

Me too @Peter Stiles

Hi GS I had to resort to trigonometry to get two tracks to "couple" in SCARM. As I recall, it was a very small value but memory is a bad choice for this discussion! I will set up an experiment in SCARM to determine what it thinks the value for R2 is and report back later. I'm in the middle of trying to get OO Twin Sisters to go "round the bend", and it is very tight indeed. The current chassis is just a wee bit too wide, but the motor is inside of the chassis. The motor also has manufacturing tolerances and is a wee bit bigger than claimed (12.06 mm diameter instead of 12.00 mm diameter). A miracle is about to occur! 😄 When in CAD, the tool requires mathematical precision. Its not meaningful or practical, but the numerical computations must resolve themselves or the designer (me) suffers the consequences. My self imposed requirements are to resolve to 1 micron. This is because the volumetric pixel (vixel) was ~0.016³ mm in Shapeways 3D fine plastic prints. That means everything is quantized. As a rule of thumb, design to about an order of magnitude better than the machinery used to create your object, and then place reasonable manufacturing tolerances on it Bee

Hi Going Spare Exactly that. Its not so proprietary, as SCARM and Anyrail, to name a few, can put up precise geometry on screen. SCARM complains about minute misalignment, so it must be using a precise value. A precise value to match what is manufactured. It is just a side interest to understand a bit of the history and public specification Bee

Hi @ColinB This is certainly not a debate over units. It matters not if it is in imperial or metric. The issue is one of standards. You may have heard me muttering about standards before. Some chatter about the barrel size on early tenders, the capacity of chaldrons and about the word "ton" as it relates to mineral waggons. Yet this "standard" is far from that. How can it be a standard if 17¼" is not equal to 438 mm? This standard is far closer to our hobby than some measurememt regarding an actual railway. I would still very much like to know when Hornby dropped imperial units in the spec, and exactly what radius the set track curves really are. Is it 17¼" round to 438 mm but still actually 17¼? Or is it actually 438 mm, precisely? Bee

The panel has that unusual feature as part of the locomotive. If it is to celebrate local history, then presenting the cow catcher seems like a strange choice, unless the local locomotive had one Bee

Hi @nashjuk Welcome Aboard! No one is born knowing how to do this, we all learned how. You can too! To answer your questions The red connector, labeled A B slides in between the sleepers of the track, the copper on top of the red makes contact with the underside of each rail. The battery controller takes TWO 5 volt lantern batteries. The springs on top of the batteries slide into the grooves on the underside of the battery controller. The long rectangular pieces clip on top of the sleepers. These are so you can decouple the locomotive from the cars. But instead of reading about this, why not watch Mr. Snooze show you exactly how! https://youtu.be/hUQBU9FzEq4 Its not the same locomotive, but the controller set up is. When you get tired of buying batteries, you can use a controller powered from mains. We can help with that. The most important thing is to have fun!! Bee

The deeper answer is that all locomotives can be live on track, all the time. You do not need to isolate tracks, like DC. Locomotives only move when you command them to do so, by address

Yes, of course!

Hi @Tim Allen From that description, it sounds like you have definitive knowledge. That the panel is representative of actual regional railway history. Is the locomotive in the panel evocative of the actual locomotives that were utilized there? Do you happen to have an image of a locomotive that "matches" the panel? Presumably with a cow catcher, of course. I think it is terrific that the panel isn't just a piece of art. Bee

Hi @Dave the Busker Move the engine away from the firehouse a bit. Won't be so noticeable. If it is coming back to the firehouse, no lights would be on. Or away, if you do want them on! Bee

Hi @BritInVanCA It was locked because it veered well off topic. The thread shifted to a discussion that attempted to cast a negative light on Hornby marketing practices. If I may be frank, there should have been more than just locking the thread. Use your imagination. Of course, if I am to be frank, I'll need a name change 😁 Bee

Your picture is fine Rana. My ability to see an abstract locomotive isn't so fine. Perhaps this art is better in person. Bee

Ha! I spent many minutes searching in the background for the locomotive Rana was talking about. Was it that smudge, that blob? I just couldn't see the locomotive. Check the text, check the image. Why couldn't I see it???? What is he talking about??? I finally realized, the buffers were right there, in plain view. Very, very sneaky!! Bee

I can move the demarcation line. In the 1984, Hornby Track Plans 6th Edition, the radii of the curves are given While it is a bit hard to see, R606 is denoted "2nd Radius 17¼, 438 mm". Apologies, but the image is scraped from the internet. This likely isn't the terminal date of the conflicted reference , as there were many more track plan editions after the 6th. Bee

Here is an early type of cow catcher, if you will. 1842, Francis Whishaw illustration of a London and Birmingham Railway passenger locomotive. An obvious Edmund Bury locomotive. Simple to see how it worked, it just picked stuff off the rails to prevent derailment. Bee

Wow! Very nice indeed! With this material selection, who needs cut outs, you can see right in. Presumably better with a bright back light. I note the footplate / tender floor height issue seems resolved. Very fetching @81FWell done Bee

Speaking as a USA based engineer, with what was an international clientele, being ambidextrous is a benefit. Surely it teaches the value of writing down the units! With System 6 identified as the decoupling from imperial units, is there someone with a System 6 track geometry specification from Hornby? Hopefully with a date!?!? I would still very much like to resolve the conundrum raised by @Gordonvale. Is it 438 mm or 438.15 mm? At this moment, I believe that as Roco produced metric track for Hornby, starting 50 or so years ago, the imperial units no longer apply and the standard is 438 mm. I can always be convinced otherwise..... Bee

Hi @96RAF I do not claim to understand why a broadcast e-Stop would result in writing to a configuration variable, presumably stored in non-volatile memory. My sole purpose here was to insure that you received the data you requested. LT&SR_NSE suggested to OP that it may be CV19. That triggered an association in my mind with your request. So if you want OP's data, as it relates to CV19, just say so. If you don't, just say so. I remain strictly on the sidelines, as an interested observer Bee

Austria adopted the metric system in 1875, so it is completely logical that any Roco track produced a century later would also be exclusively metric Bee

@SteveM6 I didn't catch that the team already had the fix in hand. 96RAF reports this, which I missed. If its a checksum problem, then pressing e-stop will not be related to CV19 as there is no deliberate writing to CVs. Bee