Stu83

Thank you, that makes perfect sense. I had tried the dirt bike in the clip but hadn't made the connection to the helmet stand.

After building the mountain police headquarters, I noticed a few features that I could not figure out what they represented or their purpose. 1) the grey stand with a black 1x 2 brick with clip at the bottom (highlighted in the first pic) and adjacent 1x4 plate with two studs. What does the stand represent? What is the clip for? Why is that plate there? Such plates usually hold something lightly in place (like the office roof or the helipad in this set). 2) the blue pin with stud in the second picture - what is it there for? Is it to attach something, and if so what? Does anyone have any ideas or can point me to an explanation of what these are for?

Most British (and European?) freight locomotives are double cab units in American terminology, just like 7939. For example the BR Class 92. I am not certain, but amongst UK locomotives (as opposed to EMUs) I think only the Class 73 electro-diesels use third-rail without a pantograph.

Great explanation, thanks!

I notice that some of the parts recently added to the Part Tracker will not naturally appear in the part library once downloaded as they have the line "NotListedInLibrary" in the XML file. Why is this?

They are different concepts. Diesel-electrics are solely powered by an onboard diesel engine coupled to a generator. An electro-diesel has an onboard diesel engine AND the ability to connect to an external electrical supply, the latter usually being the main power source.

2) 4 votes 4) 2 votes 7) 1 vote

Yeah, I'm a Merchant Navy deck officer, but I have never worked with Voith-Schneider propulsion so I'm not totally familiar with how best to handle it. Does the mechanism allow you to set one unit to neutral pitch and use the other for transverse thrust?

This is normally known as a 'skeg', apparently from the Norse for 'beard'. Fantastic model! Have you tried sideways movement using only the after Voith-Schneider unit? It is about at what would normally be the pivot point and might be a little more successful than both together as the forward unit will tend to cause the yawing motion you have experienced.

Excellent! I was not expecting that when looking at the crane.

This model and the mention of "coal district" instantly made me think of the Ayrshire Railway Preservation Group and their small heritage railway at Dunaskin, East Ayrshire, not far from Kilmarnock where Andrew Barclay's works was (and still exists today as Brush Barclay). They don't have an example of this particular type in the collection, but do specialise in small industrial diesel and steam locomotives and preserve them in-situ in the Ayrshire coal fields. I am really looking forward to seeing the completed coal district project!

On purely economic grounds I use flextrack in a 2:2 ratio with straight tracks for a 20% saving on straights. On a floor layout 2:2 gives a fairly good balance between flexibility (resistance to kicks and nudges) and rigidity (maintaining geometry). Also handy as 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 straights. I have avoided long sections of flextrack as I found trains stopped on flextrack had insufficient traction to get going again, but that may have been an issue with the early harder rubber rings on the PF wheels, I haven't tried long sections with new-style rubber rings or 3rd party replacements. I guess kyphur and ZueriHB have not had this problem?

It has been discontinued in the UK for some weeks, retailers are mostly sold out and the resale price on the secondary market has already started rising.

In order to demonstrate I have just done this and added it to my sig. Draw it in the image editor of your choice, or in my case I very heavily edited the existing 7938 loco image, since my MOC is an alternate 7938. I used MS Paint because it's simple. The drawback with Paint is that it can't handle transparency so I had to modify the background to become transparent in GIMP, after looking up instructions on the web for how to do it since I've rarely used image editing software. I'm not sure exactly what scale the Train Depot originals are drawn at, but I've used approximately 1 pixel per plate and 2 pixels per stud and it seems about right.

When are you going to incorporate the Technic 8053 B model? The cab fits a minifig nicely. ;)