You remind me of the analysts I had when I was in charge of using a very complicated set of formulae to distribute the BC school grants to the 75 district in the province. It was 1983, and the province had insisted that the Ministry of Education get costs under control, so we came up with this method of calculating what each school would get, based on student numbers (22 kindergarten students = one teacher unit, 400 secondary students = one librarian, etc.), a total of 186 calculations for each district, multiplied by the number of schools in each district. We had four IBM PC's, state of the art, two using DBase and two using Lotus. Four analysts ran the calculations and when they agreed within $100,000 (on a $2.6 billion budget) we called it a wrap. Once a year a committee of teachers, school board members and administrators met to propose changes. I'd write down the proposal and give it to an analyst. Ten minutes later he or she would come back with the implications - who won, who lost, the total cost. I felt like a eunuch in a harem: I could see it done, I knew what was happening, but I was damned if I could do it myself. I used to pray that none of them would get hit by a bus. I see what you've done, and I'll do my best to duplicate it, but my guess is that it won't look like that. Not even close. But we'll see.
Meanwhile, my turnout machines came today. I bought a job lot on EBay. It included 20 switches (the ugly ones that bwells described), ten machines that I wanted - Atlas electric; 15 I didn't really want - Atlas under table electric; 10 more I didn't want - Atlas manual; and 30 of these, pictured below. Anyone tell me what they are, and anyone want them, really cheap? I can't believe that anyone made something with no maker's name on it, anywhere. Or can I adapt these to my Atlas turnouts? If so, it's not obvious.
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