Time to clear up some of the more bizarre rumours about this website that are currently doing the rounds, methinks. Firstly, I have not removed Electric Nose from the internet - I would have thought the very fact that people have been reading it is proof enough of that. If a site has been removed then you'll see a "page not found" error or perhaps a nice screen saying "This Site Is Now Closed." If you see a page like this, however, with a few illiterate ramblings and a handful of train snaps, then the site is what we computer professionals like to refer to as "still there."
Joking aside, in an effort to remove my e-mail address from these pages yesterday (I get far too much mail on a normal day, yet alone when I'm about to trash a large layout) I b*lls*d something up in the database that generates the thing and so garbled a substantial number of pages. In order to leave something visible in the short term (we've got house-guests at the moment and my time is limited) I hastily uploaded a very cut-down OMWB with a view to fixing things in the morning, something I've since done. I suppose I should be gratified by the interest shown, but the irony is that a measure designed to reduce my mail has resulted in a flood of enquiries. You just can't win - grrrrrrrr!
Secondly, I have not abandoned UK D&E modelling. I have switched my large layout plan from UK to US, but that isn't quite the same thing. As well as my other interests, such as 7mm modelling, I'm still going to be dabbling in 4mm UK stuff, but as a sideline rather than on the main layout. I'll still be buying new products, too - look out for some photos of the new Bachmann Deltic later on. This is probably their least accurate model so far, indeed it was the sight of a sample yesterday that made me realise I was wasting my time with my UK project.
Thirdly, my switch back to US modelling is not in any way to do with the quaint notion that a complete layout will fall out of the box - a layout of this size will consume 10 years or more of leisure time. The driving force behind the change is the fact that UK products are so poor, not that the rest of the world's products are so good. We're still being given shoddy toys that are fundamentally the wrong shape. I've seen a lot of juvenile comments in the last few months suggesting that anyone wanting products even half as good as the rest of the world is a whinger, that somebody who expects a model to be of the correct general shape is a rivet-counter. Only yesterday I read a particularly assinine claim that some people wouldn't be happy until their models were perfect down to miniature diesel engines. Where do these idiots come from? If they're happy being second class citizens being sold third rate products then fine, that's their perogative, but if they think they're going to drag me down to their level then they've got another thing coming, I'm afraid.
Fourthly, the screen shot below is of a spreadsheet where I change various figures to get an idea of their impact on the project's feasibility. The figures visible are just the ones that happened to be there at the time and are in no way supposed to represent a master plan!
Finally, as my modelling will be changing direction then the emphasis of this site will obviously have to change as well. I've made no decisions about this as yet, but clearly sections describing a US layout being transformed into a UK one will need some remedial work...