About The Fat Controller.

My interest in railways goes back further than I can remember. My first 19 years from 1947 was spent living in my home, which was in the fork of Heaton Norris junction in the UK. Heaton Norris junction was about one mile North of Stockport and about five miles South of Manchester. The line to the West was the main line from Manchester to London (180 miles South) and the line to the East was the branch from Stockport to Stalybridge, where it joined up with the Trans-pennine line (Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - Hull). Although I could not see the lines from home I was only a few yards from the main line and about 200 yards from the branch, and every train could be clearly heard. I was discouraged from going to work on the railways by my Father so after working in a butchers shop for two and a half years I went to work in the weaving division of the Textile Industry, where I have worked for over 35 years, I have been in my present job as a Textile Technician for 28 years (1971). I lost a bit of interest in railways after steam locos stopped running in the UK in 1968,I was also doing a spell of working on the South coast in Sussex, where most of the train were electric multiple units and very rare to see a loco hauled train. Which did not help to keep up the interest. In 1971 I came out to Australia and lived in Melbourne until I got transferred to Geelong with my work in 1988. My Interest in railways came back soon after coming to live in Australia and came to a peak when Wendy and I bought this former railway cottage at Gheringhap in 1990.

How it is all achieved

These Sightings have been possible due to having aMicro controlled (68HC705j1) interface to a VCR that was designed and built by my son inlaw who set this web site up.(Though he doesn't claim to be a website guru) He describes..... This unit replaces the need for an expensive time lapse unit..The unit is very versatile due to having different software variables that can be altered for various VCR models, that is ..Some VCRs have different load up times and also inactivity time out intervals. Some VCRs have partial loadup , full loadup and no pre loadup at all (like an older models such as NV370 ,VC486) This would cause problems with discrete controllers such as one shown in a recent electronics magazine publication. Also.. the software has the ability to detect false triggers..a must with the PIRs'. The software also stops the tape from unloading ( with full load machines such as modern ones ) by a simple routine. The unit has Video input switching so you can select different cameras for night and day or direction..or what ever you want to switch.. It also had time and date stamping (not with software) until a separate unit was built to do this. Contact Robert at rgcookie@bigpond.com