Since Steve And Kai Have Left We Have Had A Quiet Couple Of Days,

I have been trying, in between the Internet going down, to get the blog up to date,

and I have now caught up,

in the evening we went to the market to buy some fresh fruit,

we watched The Big Country, in the evening what a powerful performance by Burl Ives, then off to bed,

yesterday we started at Swensons for an ice cream and milk shake, also the DVD player I have upstairs in the train room has decided to strike and not play anything, so we bought this radio, 95 or 96 FM will be listen to from here on in, only 670 baht,

Jay and Precil called to say Hi, they had been to the coral islands, but unfortunately missed Steve and Kai, we had a look at the train set,

then Phil arrived with some very good news indeed, two trains had arrived which he kindly brought over for me, but more importantly the control unit was repaired and sent to him by those nice people at Gaugemaster Controls Ltd, although out of guarantee the unit has been replaced and sent to Phil completely on trust, I e-mail Greg there to send me the bill and I would pay it and then send the controller to Phil, but without receiving a penny from me it was sent DHL to Phil, all on trust, if you are into trains this is their web site here, also out of interest the controller I have is this one, Gaugemaster Prodigy Advance2 if you want to read more about click here, but once again I have to say how pleased I was with service of Gauagemaster, thoroughly recommended!

then Alex called in to say hello, so I guess he will be bringing Alex Jr. over to play with the trains now that the controller is back,

and this is what the fuss was all about, the Prodigy Advance 2 it consists of three elements, the Power Pack, this transforms the power from the mains socket ready for the Base Unit, the Base Unit is the brains behind the operation, it contains all the technology needed to send DCC commands to your trains and accessories individually, the Walkaround is a hand-held controller that you use to send your commands to the Base Unit, which then sends them on to the relevant decoder on your layout, you control the speed and direction of your trains from here, one of the key features of DCC operation is that each of your locomotives has a numeric address which you select as and when you want to run that locomotive, DCC allows you to run it anywhere on your railway at the same time as other trains are moving as well, so there you have it a great system,

a bachmann 9F, that Phil brought over with him,

he also brought over a BR 4-6-2 Princess Royal Class 'Princess Margaret Rose' many thanks to Phil, as our friends left it was time to shower and change and hit the town.