Awn Ymlaen

The most valuable item in my record collection is this LP of Welsh primary school children singing in the late 1970s. On most tracks they are accompanied by a piano; on a few by the organ. As well as being heart-breakingly melodic, as all Welsh choral music is, (to me, anyway) the record captures that earnest school assembly sound - very nostalgic (for me anyway.)

What I must do, is have it transferred to CD and MP3 format too, because I am certain that mine is one of the last copies of the record in existence. I couldn't bear for it to be lost for posterity. Years ago I transferred it to audio cassette tape and that still plays well but it's not a permanent solution.

A couple of years ago I purchased one of those USB turntables that one can use to transfer vinyl LPs to one's hard-drive. But, I could never get it to work satisfactorily.

I think the title, Awn Ymlaen, means "Let's go forward."

Sung by, I think, a "Gathering of combined primary schools from Mid-Glamorgan."

Set out Le Capitole and the Trans Europ Express to test for clearance and platform length issues. There don't seem to be any for now but perhaps there will be later on in the project when two trains are crossing adjacent points.

More frustration over DCC wiring.

Visited two different suppliers to the electrical trade and although both had very helpful staff and I'd brought with me an example of a snap lock connector (which to my great surprise, none of the staff at either store had seen before) they could not help me. They did not stock single core wire thick enough to be held securely by the connector.

I think I'll phone a model railway store in the UK somewhere and see what they come up with.

In the mean time, I decided to switch my attention to another aspect of building a layout, namely, "clearance". A full-length train can rub against or foul trains on adjacent tracks and platforms.

So, in order to start exploring this issue, I laid down a dummy platform of the correct dimensions and set up a full-length train beside it. How far away should track be from the platform, from adjacent track etc etc?

Beyond setting up one dummy platform and one train, I did nothing else. Will pursue matters further in the following days.

Didn't listen to any music today beyond being irritated by that played on Radio 3's breakfast show: it's hardly better than "light music" or "easy-listening music" that they play at that time in the morning.

Mark Oliver Everett

Fairly recently, a friend loaned me the complete works of Eels ie every CD. I knew of them and had enjoyed a couple of tracks and felt in my sonic bones that I would like to hear more of them. But the tipping point was my reading Mark Everett's autobiography, "Things the Grandchildren Should Know". I presume that the book is not a complete pack of lies - one can never be sure these days. Anyway, the CDs were fantastic and the book was fantastic. Up until the point of reading the biography, I hadn't realised that Eels is basically Mark Oliver Everett plus session musicians.

Over the past 6 weeks, I have played Eels music more than anything else.

The weather has been wintry today and so I couldn't find a shop to sort out the wiring to solve the problem of the snap lock connectors reported yesterday. Instead, here is a photo of my Roco rendition of Le Capitole. Looking forward to having the track complete and this machine running on it.

Snap Lock Connectors

A simple method for joining the plethora of feeder wires to the power BUS cable is through the use of snap lock connectors. This method is highly recommended in the literature and is an alternative to soldering.

Despite its simplicity, it didn't work . Read on.

The thicker BUS cable passes through the hole and then the thinner feeder wire is inserted in the socket next to the right of the hole. The plastic hinge is closed over the metal blade which forces the blade to cut into the BUS wire AND the feeder wire thus connecting the two wires electrically.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I had purchased the feeder wire specified in the literature, the snap lock would not retain it:  the feeder wire was too thin and just fell out. Utterly, frustrating. The feeder wire is supposed to be significantly thinner than the BUS wire. I purchased the smallest snap -locks available. So, it's difficult to know where to go next.

Saw Coldplay last night at the SECC, Glasgow in front of 10,000 people. 75% of the audience was middle-aged. Sensational performance; the crowd went mad for almost 2 hours. Fairly certain that my hearing has been affected since now I can hardly hear the electronic voice emitting messages from the house burglar alarm. I like the fact that Coldplay perform in the clothes they probably wear everyday.

DCC wiring of HO track

If my memory serves me well - and, frankly, if my memory serves me well, it isn't - wiring up a model railway 50 years ago was a non-issue. One simply clipped a connector to the track and off one went. Even a circuit with points demanded no more than a single connector.

However, even my relatively short DCC circuit is going to require considerable wiring. When one reads the model railway literature, one is frequently re-assured that DCC wiring is actually simpler than wiring for a traditional layout. This is true for large layouts of the type one sees at model railway exhibitions. I don't think it is true for small home layouts. However, I've chosen the DCC route, so hell mend me.

The essence of DCC wiring is getting a constant source of electricity to all parts of the layout. It is not enough to connect the electrical supply to the track at one point and then rely on the rails to carry the current elsewhere. The reasons for that are that the metal in the rails is only a moderately good conductor, connections between sections of track are even poorer and points need to be isolated. (Strikes me that those reasons would apply to non-DCC layouts too  - I'll have to think more about that.)

Anyway, the recommended solution to conductivity problems is to run a powerful pair of cables alongside the track (obviously, underneath the baseboard and out of sight) which carries a constant source of power to all areas of the layout and then take feeder wires from this primary source to the tracks themselves.

In the diagram below, the source cables are in blue and in red. (In the literature, this is referred to as a BUS or power BUS.) The feeder wires are the short,  thin black lines. In the diagram, there is only one set of feeder wires going to each track. In reality, feeder wires will go from the BUS to the track every 75cm so that the power is constant right to the farthest most points of the layout.)

Composers to be investigated more fully: Alexander Scriabin

Over the years I've heard numerous bits and pieces on Radio 3 and read a fair amount about him. (Russian - end of 19th beginning of 20th Century.) Greatly influenced by Chopin's nocturnes and subsequently an experimenter in tonality with mystical aspirations, he should be right up my street - ticks all the boxes, as they. However, something has stopped me short of actually purchasing an album.

Perhaps, I'll ask someone to buy me a Scriabin CD for Christmas. Their choice. But what a nuisance for someone to have to do this when I can simply download whatever I want from iTunes! There must be a moral there.

Hefner

Towards the end of John Peel's reign over the airwaves, I became only a sporadic listener. I was aware though that he had championed a group called Hefner in the way that he used to champion Captain Beefheart or the Sex Pistols. But I'd never managed to actually hear him play a Hefner record. One day, browsing through CDs in a record shop I came across a CD, Residue, by a group called Hefner. Bought it, took it home and played it and fell in love with it immediately. Still one of my favourite CDs. Another example of John Peel's great taste!

Well, no, actually it wasn't. Totally different Hefner.

Seems incredible that such a feeble name should be used by two different bands operating at more or less the same time in the same listening demographic.

Captain Beefheart

Watched The Collaborators broadcast live from the National Theatre, London to the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre). Absolutely dog, dog tired and fell asleep 100 times during the course of it. The acting was excellent but the subject matter, Josef Stalin and the moral chaos he caused in the Soviet Union, was very familiar to me and the play added little in the way of a new perspective - but then I was tired.

Have laid down track in almost the final formation. Not yet at the stage of pinning it to the board. The next stage is to bring power to the track. That will come from cables that will be situated underneath the baseboard. Holes will then be drilled to bring feeder wires from this heavy duty cable to the track itself.

Finally, Captain Beefheart. This record I bought at a Butlins Holiday Camp in the late 1960s. For some reason, my copy was released on Marble Arch records which was a budget label of the time specialising, as I remember, in light music! Although Trout Mask Replica is hailed as his masterpiece, it is Safe as Milk that I've played most frequently over the years.