Category: General

Add keep Alive to Hornby Jinty

I bought the Hornby Freight set. It came with a class 8 shunt diesel and a Jinty steam loco. At the time of the purchase I added a keep alive capacitor to the diesel shutter and housed it in the radiator. The Jinty had an open cab. There was no room for the capacitor any where so I couldn’t install one. While browsing the internet sight of YouChoos an option presented itself. It was a 6800uf super capacitor. My reasoning suggest that it might be able to be installed in the bunker. One was bought on spec. It turned out to be just the right size to fit the bunker of the Jinty.

Note the position of the capacitor in the bunker. Look closely. The capacitor is clear of the mounting hole.

To start the body of the loco was removed. The DCC chip does not have the usual heat shrink plastic cover on it. It was removed from the clip in preparation for soldering. A very small hair sized insulated blue copper wire was soldered to the + of the capacitor. A similar piece of white wire was soldered to the – of the capacitor. These wires were about 4 inches long. The capacitor was fastened into the bunker via double sided tape. Be careful to not cover up the little cutout in the body for, if it is covered you won’t be able to get the body back on the chassis.

Next task is to run the wires to the DCC chip. I fastened the wires to the body via the use of a little Loctite 401. Super glue will also suffice. In either case don’t glue yourself to the model. In the photo you can see how I routed the wires in the tanks on either side of the loco. It went under the footplate on either side too. The visible part of the wires were painted black. The glue was applied using a small Jules’s screw driver. This helps. A small pair of tweezers will be of assistance as well.

You can see the capacitor in the bunker and where to solder the wires on the chip.

A third hand is recommended. Something to hold the DCC chip steady. The photo shows how the two wires were soldered to the points on the board. Remember that blue is + and white is –. Care should be taken when soldering. You don’t want to bridge any connections. Use a visual aid and a small soldering iron. This stuff is so tinny that it is like grains of sand. Loose one on the floor and you will never find it. What I am saying is this. If you are not familiar with such fine soldering work, you might want to get someone to do it for you. Or alternatively go on line and learn about how to successfully do this kind of work. Once this is done the DCC chip can be put back in its clip and the body can be fitted back on the loco. Now comes the time to test. If all went well, the loco should have a functioning keep alive feature.

A close up of the jinty’s DCC chip so you can better see where the wires go.

My loco used to stop on points from time to time. Having keep alive functionality helps the loco get over these spots without faltering. How it works. The super capacitor is like a small battery. It supplies power to the chip for a few seconds. This allows the loco to still operate for a short time while it passes the dead section. Enjoy your modeling.

My View on the Up Take Of EVs in Australia

                   My View on the Up Take Of EVs in Australia

Tesla Model X

It is apparent to me that a lot of people are under the impression that the up take of electric vehicles will not begin in earnest for at least five to ten years. If you check out the internet and view the videos from different EV events it is clear that it will be much sooner than that. There are a lot of manufacturers with EV cars available right now. About the only SUV that I have come across is the Tesla model X. It is no wonder that it has become very popular in Europe. Manufacturers in Europe can’t get their diesel ICE cars up to tear 6 pollution requirements. Therefore they have dropped diesel powered models from their range.

Nissan Leaf

A lot of manufacturers have added EVs models to their range. If you look back in history to the up take of mobile phones then I would say the stage of the market with EVs is about the point where the iPhone came into existence for mobile phones. Many companies started copping and the situation was that soon everyone had mobile phones. Well the Tesla model 3 is to be available in Australia by 2020. The Nissan Leaf is slated to be here by the later half of this year 2018. Therefore Nissan will have the drop on Tesla as far as the lower end market is concerned in Australia. The price of Tesla model 3 will be more middle priced rather than low end. The Nissan Leaf is slated to be around $50,000 to $55,000 Australian dollars when it arrives. This puts out of the reach of many low income earners.

Other manufacturers have models coming between now and 2020. So the stage is set for the up take of electric vehicles at least by 2020. I think that by then demand will out strip supply. The manufacturers simply won’t be able to make enough electric cars while the Giggle pots sit on the sales lot because people want to go electric and the price of fuel for ICE cars will make electric vehicles the car of choice. Of course the oil companies may drop the price of oil to move their product. You might be able to get an ICE car for a steal as manufacturers and car yards try to liquidate their stock.

Something else is happening right now. This is converting existing ICE vehicles to all electric. Expect to see that become more prevalent. The time it takes to charge an electric vehicle is getting shorter. There is one that can be recharged in 6 minutes. This is what it takes now to fill a gas tank if it is empty.

Airoplanes are now becoming electric. You can buy an airoplane that is electric. It has a flight time of around four hours. At the air port the battery pack can be exchanged with a fully charged one. The one I saw was a small passenger plane. Others are on the drawing board as well. You won’t see an electric air bus or dream liner any time soon though. The amount of power that these things need is too astronomical.

What about boats. Well you can buy an electric out board motor. It is usually quite small. Used for fishing where an ICE motor might scare the fish. In time to come though you might be able to get an electric runabout which is covered completely both inside and out with a light sensitive membrane which will generate the power. Add a battery and it could still be used when the sun goes down. Can you imagine a Tesla motor and converter connected to a water jet? If Elon doesn’t do it someone else will. That boat will really boogie.

Tesla Model 3

It appears that Elon can sell as many cars as he can make. I think we are on the edge of a cliff when it comes to electric vehicles. For me the market is consumer driven. If everyone is like me. I have been waiting for my electric car for 72 years. It’s still not in my garage. The next five years will be very interesting indeed. It is difficult to see the future. We will soon see how I went with my predictions. So many variables to consider it is easy to get it wrong.

Sorry about the pictures. For some reason my site is not up loading pictures to use in my posts. Yes! I fixed the issue with photos.

No Flat Earth No Hollow Earth

No Flat Earth No Hollow Earth

It amazes me that people still believe in this, in this enlightened age. Despite what some conspiracy theorist say about these topics man has ventured forth to other bodies in our solar system. We have gone to the moon in person on NASA’s back and on probes to other places including Mars. We can look back to our home and see that it is in fact a ball. A beautiful living planet against the vastness of space.

Another argument is this. There is NASA footage taken on board the ISS that verifies how mater will clump together in space. The astronauts conducted a demonstration showing how things left floating around the cabin will clump together. Make them seperate again and they will come together again if left floating and not tied down.

This is how objects like planets moons and the like are formed. This is a 3D world not two dimensional. There are those who still claim that God created the earth only six thousand years ago and that it is flat. This flies in the face of all that is reasonable. It also fails to take into account actual biblical events like the grate floor.

The Summarians were said to be the first civilisation. That was six thousand years ago. Technically this is incorrect. It is probably the first one in our time. That is the time since the great flood. The great flood is said to be around nine to twelve thousand years ago. I can’t pull an accurate date out of my head. The thing is that after the great flood, there were just a few people left on Earth. Just the ones on the ark.

It only makes common sense that it would take several thousand years for the population to increase enough to warrant a city.

The biblical account has a civialization before the flood. It also says that there were giants in the land in those days. There is also an accounting of how many there were and that they all died in the flood. Every thing was washed away including the cities. David and Galiath was a very very long time ago. Adam and Eve is thought to be about sixty thousand years ago. So my question is “ How on earth will you fit all of the bibles’ accounts into just six thousand year?”.

Truely! Someone must be filling some peoples head with rocks. Yes! The disinformation experts are doing it again. You should never call yourself an expert. X is an undefined factor and a spert is a drip under pressure.

The hollow earth can’t exhist either for the same reasons the flat earth can’t exhist. Also, have you ever seen anybody walk on the roof of a cave? The ones who believe in a hollow earth will tell you that centrifugal force holds them to the roof of the cave. I gave not seen it. They conveniently forgot that those of us on the surface would be flung off. In fact the earth would fling itself to pieces. In truth our planet is just a loose conglomerate of matter held together by what we call gravity. Never mind that the center is molten from the tremendous pressure down there. Pressure gives heat. Heat melts rock. Newton’s laws cause and effect.

Now! Something about belief. You can spit in one hand and believe in the other. All you have at the end of the day is a hand full of spit. Your beliefs can not change that which exists only your perception of it. There are stranger things in heaven and on earth than you can possibly imagine. Check out the rest of my blog. It is highly probable that you won’t believe much of it. Remember, I have only relaid my experience in an unusual life. I don’t care weather you believe it or not. It actually happened. There is much I have yet to tell.

Technology

What I’d like to talk about today is technology. In my early life there was much less than there is today. We tend to take it for granted. For example. I am sitting out the front of Woolworth’s in Boyne/Tannum writing this on my iPad mini. In earlier times there was no such thing. When I was a kid we didn’t even have TV. All we had was AM radio.

There was a comic strip called Dick Tracy. It depicted  a watch that worked like a videophone. There were super fast ferries that used water jets. This was all science fiction back then. It’s all fact now.

I was in the cadets when I was in high school. Once when we were at a training camp I was amazed that someone could be hiding in plain sight. During the exercise one of the COs stood at a distance. He was in carkey. It was night so we couldn’t see him. Another fired a military flair. We still couldn’t see the one standing at a distance until he was ordered to move. Then we saw him.

In this time there are aircraft that are radar invisible. There are experiments going on to try to make a tank that can change its colour according to it’s surroundings. There is work going on into a film that can be attached to an aircraft in order to make it invisible in the light spectrum. It works by taking video pictures on one side of a plane and displaying it on the opposite side.

Now! There are people around that think all science fiction is nonsense. They couldn’t be more wrong. Over the years we have had many science fiction movies and books depicting what will come to pass in the future. One can pick any science fiction work and there will be inventions there that are in the wings. Somewhere in the world someone will be quietly working on it.

It is likely that in fifty years there won’t be any transport vehicles as we know them today. Can you imagine a city anywhere in the world where there are no cars, buss and trucks. No trains either. About one century ago Nicola Tesla spoke of this. Doors will become a thing of the past. Why. We will simply walk through the walls. Impossible you say. Well they did it in “Doom”.

How to get around in the future? Well in “Jupiter Assenting ” one of the characters just tickles his ear and is transported to any where he wants to be. Where is all this leading? Well it is my considered opinion there people in this world that have such secrets that they know this is already possible. You see most of the larger countries have had in their possession crashed technology from other worlds. They are studding and reverse engineering these craft.

Hitler’s Germany had flying saucers. People were told that they were just paper machete models but you don’t spend billions over 15 years and finish up with a paper machete model. They also built a thing called an Andromeda device which was essentially a mother ship. It was basically a submarine without the tower. All the allied forces were flabbergasted at the technology that Hitler had. So much so that they took as much of it as possible home with them. They even took the scientists who were essentially SS officers.

Looking to the US now but it was the same elsewhere. After Roswell (that is the saucer crash) the powers that be had a big problem. How to bring an essentially backward world that had little technology up to speed with what they had come to know. With technology anything is possible. Even time travel, age regression and many other things that you can not possible imagine. So what were they going to do. Well, for the hole of my life and probably yours too they have kept it secret.

They have been drip feeding us using science fiction movies and books. While we were watching “Star Trek” on the television, they were doing it for real. Using Hitler’s technology. It is my considered opinion that humans from this planet have been trekking about the galaxy since the early 1950’s. That’s about the time they would have got an Andromeda device working. There was one working in Germany just before wars end.

You may not believe all this but you must surely see that technology is advancing exponentially. Much of what is only science fiction today will indeed come to pass in your life time. It it did in mine. One final question. What do you think would have happened if the powers that be just told the truth and gave everybody this secret? Sure it would have been a different world but we would have had a global melt down of biblical proportions if secrets weren’t kept. Now may be the time for every one to know the truth but governments will not give all. It just isn’t logical.

 

C. Q. Coal Trains Run Again

Update on Rail Traffic North Coast Line

Rockhampton / Gladstone

Today we went to Rockhampton by car. 11/04/2017. Although there were many coal trains stowed up, we actually saw three loaded coal trains coming to Gladstone. Two were Aurizon and one Pacific National. The Pacific National was hauled by three electrics. I thought FMB but the last loco had about 20 wagons behind it. One of the Aurizon trains was Electric FMB consist. The other was Diesel. There were empty trains heading west. As we were passing Raglan an electric FMB was leaving from the middle road. I don’t know if it had been stowed there or was passing through.

A grain train was parked in the North Coast Loop at Rocklands. The Western Loop there had a container train parked up. On the way home from Rockhampton the Rocklands / Yeppon section was closed to all traffic while some maintenance was being performed. This section had been ballasted and machines were tampering and regulating the ballast. At Midgee a Aurizon container was waiting to get into Rockhampton. At the Archer Down Home an empty Stocky was held up.

Empty coal trains were stowed at Yarwun or the new unloading siding. Another stowed at Aldoga in the new siding. Another in the down road Raglan.

It appears that coal is once again coming in from the Black Water Coalfields. Empties are also heading out to the coalfields. In Rockhampton the river is starting to show the rocks again.

Laptop Computer Problems HP

Laptop Computer Problems HP

Recently my daughter has been having trouble with her HP pavilion laptop. It is about 5 years old. It started running very slow. The hard drive reported a problem. To fix it I tried formatting it. No joy. The next step was to delete and recreate the petition that Windows was on. After reinstalling Windows there were no drivers for a lot of the devices including both Ethernet and WiFi. This meant no internet to get drivers. A quick look on the internet revealed that others were having the same trouble.

Researching the network for drivers revealed that HP’s site did no longer have the drivers needed. Trying to find drivers from another source caused many attempts to install different ones. These attempts all failed to install. Further research on the internet showed that HP corporatizes its drivers and software, the ones from the original device manufacturers. This caused so much frustration. I ended up having a song and dance on Facebook about it.

Bill Hughes

December 20 at 11:41pm ·

I’ve spent the last few days trying to fix a HP laptop. The hard drive had a fault and the computer wouldn’t run properly. So we reformatted the partition that was defective and reinstalled windows. Alas. No more drivers. I installed Ubuntu to test functionality. Everything worked fine. So windows and HP sucks. Don’t take my word.  You Just Google it.
I wouldn’t buy another one. Asus and Toshiba have been found to be quite good by me but may be you can find some flack about them on the net too.
If you have one of those dreaded HPs and are having trouble, Ubuntu might be the go. I used version 14.

My son was over for Christmas Eve. He told me that his girlfriend had the same problem with her HP. Its hard drive failed. All he did was chuck the old hard drive over his shoulder and installed a new one. They bought a fresh copy of Windows 7 and installed that. This worked fine. I got to thinking “What’s the difference here?” What I did next was pretend that the old hard drive was a new one by using a partition-er to remove all the existing partitions. Then I used a USB stick with a bootable ISO copy of windows 8 on it to install that OS. During the install, it failed when trying to connect to the internet.

This was obviously not a good install. The next move was a bit unorthodox. The computer had its lid shut, was turned over on its back, the battery was removed and the power cord pulled out. Why? We wanted to remove the hard drive at this point and connect it to another computer. I planned to use Paragon 5 to look at the partitioning and also test it. We could not find cables to connect it externally to my computer so we decided to go inside and hook it up there. To do this one of the hard drives had to be disconnected. Alas! Wrong one! My computer wouldn’t start. We couldn’t find the wright hard drive in cmos to boot from.

We had family staying over for Christmas. They had just arrived. Not wanting to have computers pulled apart all over the place, we decided to put them all back together again for the mean time.

Later that evening, when the visitors were out, I decided to turn it back on to see what would happen if I retyped the WiFi password and tried again. While running Ubuntu I used Virtualbox to see how Windows 7 would work in a virtual machine. I wasn’t happy with that, but the result was that the computer’s cmos had the virtual machine setting enabled. Knowing that I had cut the power in the middle of a process, the computer was started in cmos recovery mode.

The process came back to where it had left off. I was able to back up one screen and re-enter the WiFi credentials. When I pressed enter the laptop connected to my WiFi and the program obtained all the drivers from the internet. After Windows 8 finished installing, everything worked fine. After using Device Manager one could see the remaining “!” warnings disappear one by one. Because Windows was already registered to my daughter on this laptop, it just automatically registered again. No codes were input during the install. Windows does that now. All that is required is that you sign in to your Microsoft account.

So now I have egg on my face. Windows is fine with HP computers even though they corporatize their stuff. You just need to persevere with it. Get as much help from the internet as you can.

Through the Eyes of a Child.

One hears learned people with letters after their name say the silliest things. It reminds me of when I was a child. In about grade three we started to learn about history, geology and the like. There were pictures in our books to help illustrate the lessons. So one day, after we had learned about how the rain and weather can ware down rocks. I looked at the accompanying picture. It was stated how it takes hundreds of thousands of years to create the ware shown in the picture.

On to the next lesson. This was about the great pyramid of Guise. It was claimed that this was only about four thousand years old. I looked at the picture and said “No way. There’s way too much damage here”.

If a mere child can see this, what’s wrong with all the (PH.D.) types. Why can’t they see it? The answer is surely “The Emperor has no cloths”. You see we have all been taught how to think. Like the adults from the children’s story we, all of us, have been told what we should see. What we should think. Whereas a child without this conditioning sees things as they are.

Now I am going to take some of the comments used in the UFO saga by apparently learned people in order to explain it away and use it in everyday life. Let’s see what we come up with. You see that bus on the corner. Well there is really no such thing as a bus. That is only swamp gas. Never the less I will catch this bus and it will take me to the train station.

Now trains don’t really exist. That just a fog in the tunnel. Never the less I will take that train. It will take me to the airport. Since aeroplanes don’t exist that must be a flock of birds. Never the less I will board a plane. In just hours it will take me half way around the world. I will be in London, England. But we all know that’s not possible, don’t we. It takes at least six months to get there from here.

Well! That appears to be the thinking. Sounds silly doesn’t it? Credible witnesses see real objects that others won’t accept. Can’t accept. Then some (PH.D)  type, who did not bare witness to the event, vents real verbal diarrhoea on the actual witnesses. Yes the Emperor has no clothes. Those ruthless tailors  are at it again.

Then why is it that this is done. This fools nobody. It appears that, if you have letters after your name you can’t be seen to be stumped. Be mindful of what you say. Children are watching. They will see you for what you are.

Yes! The Emperor has no cloths.

 

Rail Master Update and Antivirus Software

Recently version 1.63 of RailMaster became publicly available. My copy of RailMaster was duly updated automatically. From that moment RailMaster stopped working correctly. It would start-up ok and set all points to normal but then it kept complaining about loosing communication with the Elite. Nothing I could do would convince it otherwise. It was definitely RailMaster that was at fault. The railway worked fine with JMRI and the Elite.

Two days ago I bit the bullet and decided to fix it. Well I started reading all the PDF files on it that rm_setup.exe puts on the desktop. Systematically each remedy was tried but to no avail. Next thing was to try to install RailMaster on another computer. The first attempt failed. Here is where I twigged that BullGuard might be the cause. This is where rm_setup.exe was prevented from completing the install by BullGuard.

Next step was to make sure I had the latest rm_setup.exe downloaded to a temporary directory. Then go to settings in BullGuard and make sure that both anti virus and firewall will not continue to work once the program was shut down. Switch off the Internet.  BullGuard was then closed. I have Windows 10, so I went to security and settings from control panel to check that Windows firewall and Windows defender were both turned off.

After using programs and features from control panel to uninstall RailMaster, RailMaster installed correctly on my 64 bit computer. A test was done on a short straight piece of track and a single loco. Every thing ran as it should. Before the next step restart your anti virus and firewall software on all the computers that had it turned off and restart the Internet connection.

Now back to the train set computer. It is a 32 bit clam. In the instructions supplied as desktop PDF files some where it says “Make sure you de-register your programme keys before uninstalling and reinstalling RailMaster otherwise you will loose your keys.” To de-register your programme you need to run RailMaster with an internet connection first. Once the programme comes up a nuisance window will come up saying that the programme has lost communication with the Elite.

Pay no heed to the contents of this pop up. You need to press the green tick to get to the "?" icon.
Pay no heed to the contents of this pop up. You need to press the green tick to get to the “?” icon.

Press the green tick every time this happens. Take no notice of what it says. While it is occupied trying to connect with the Elite, click on the “?” icon. The window that comes up will have your keys displayed. At the right is a box to select the key you want to de-register. If you have remote devices de-register them also. Once you have ticks all down the right of the keys click on de-register. A pop-up will show asking if you really want to do this. Answer yes. After a time the RailMaster main screen will show “EVALUATION” at the bottom right and a window will pop up saying you have successfully de-registered your programme. Gee! I hope you remembered to write down all the keys and what they were for.

Remember to de register your keys.
Remember to de register your keys.

Do not proceed any further if you did not receive a successful de-registered message. At this point I went to programs and functions to uninstall RailMaster. What I noticed was that there were two instances in the list of RailMaster. I un-installed both. A copy of the latest rm_setup.exe needs to be available for installation. The internet was once again turned off. I could have done the key de-registration while it was on the first time but I didn’t. The anti virus and firewall software was once again disabled. On the 32 bit clam the rm_setup.exe programme was right clicked on and it was run with administrator privileges. This time the set-up programme completed successfully.

Testing was done on this computer as it was with the 64 bit one. The tests were successful. What happened next? The anti virus and firewall software were turned back on. The internet connection was also turned on and once the internet became available RailMaster and the hand held devices were once again registered using my keys. Each hand held device becomes available for registration once you use it to connect to RailMaster.

BullGuard complained about rm_setup.exe being a virus. It complained twice and twice I pressed “Register a False Positive”. I don’t know weather this information gets back to BullGuard or not but my copy of the programme didn’t prevent RailMaster from running. I still don’t know what will happen when the next update comes around. Happy Railway sessions.

One thing must be mentioned before the end. What was said earlier about the pop up above where it says lost communication with the Elite only applys to this problem. You should explore its solutions first. Some anti virus programmes like McAfees and Nortons may need un installing first. Install Rail Master then install your anti virus programme again. This is one of the reasons I like BullGuard. You can turn it off, but be careful. Never go on the internet without protection.

 

The Grate Galactic War

The Grate Galactic War

I recently listened to “Coast to Coast AM” on you tube. In the broadcast a scientist was interviewed by George. He has two books out on this subject and has spent a decade studding the evidence left on Mars for 500 million years. The scientist is a plasma physicist. His name is John Brandenburg. The broadcast is dated July 27, 2015. Apparently Mars has been nuked in the past.

After listening to this broadcast I had a vision in my head of a horrific galactic war. May be it was interstellar. The vision goes like this. There were originally three planets in this solar system that supported life. Earth, Mars and one that was where the asteroid belt is now. Who ever nuked Mars wanted to make sure that this system would never rise again. They completely destroyed one planet, reduced the size of Mars so that it could never support life again, and put Earth in an ice age. The size of Mars was 0.9 earth masses. The size of the one that was destroyed was 1.5 earth masses.

In this scenario Earth gets a moon curtsey of the nuke job on Mars. The Mars blast was so powerful that it squashed Mars like a grape. Squirting out the core and sending it on a collision coarse with Earth. This moon size mass actually hits Earth, leaving some of its mass and taking some Earth mass with it. This is why the moon is so Earth like. It actually has material that started out its existence here on Earth. I have read that scientists have a hard time explaining how it was possible to capture such a large moon. Apparently the angle of the orbit would have to be such that the body would have to hit the earth.

Ok! After all this, anyone who was left waging war somewhere else in the Galaxy would have nowhere to call home. Therefore no chance of resupply.

Well I just felt that I should share this vision. Please enjoy it, but don’t let it distract from the facts that John has discovered. Facts are one thing. My fantasy has no grounding in discovered facts. I just wanted to share my vision.

The New Hornby 47 Class with TTS Sound

Hornby 47 401. <-Click this link to view video. I recently received the new 47 class loco with TTS sound (47 401) (R3287TTS) direct from Hornby.

First Impressions.

My first impression was one of amazement. When the postman handed me the package it was too light. I thought, that can’t be a locomotive. It’s too light. Well, I proceeded to unwrap it. Sure enough it was a loco.

The first thing I did was to put it on the programming track and had a bit of a play. Everything was well with the loco, so I programmed a new access number into it. All the sounds were there but way too loud in your face. The next step was to set the master sound to 1 instead of 4.

Down to testing on the layout. It was soon obvious that my early assessment of it being too light was correct. It wouldn’t pull the skin off a wet custard. About three modern coaches was all it could manage. Next I hooked it on to a rake of 12 four wheelers that I usually use a class 08 shunt loco on. It just sat there and spun its wheels. I wonder why.

Using the directions supplied with the model, I removed the body. Two screws hold down the speaker and another two hold down the plate it sits on. After removing the speaker and it’s mounting plate you gain access to the fuel tank area. It is probably meant to be a sound box for the speaker but an awesome sounding loco that can’t fulfill it’s primary function is useless.

After gaining access to the fuel tank I cut three pieces of steel plate from some scrap. They measure 24mm x 40mm x 4mm. After placing these in the fuel tank, I used a couple of very small pieces of blue tack to stop the metal from moving around. After putting the loco back together, it was possible to pull decent train. To my ear no discernible difference was made to the sound.