... Just anecdotally wondering if they were designed by a left-handed person?
Doubtful this is the reason, and in fact early on the direction button was on the right side of the screen and got changed to the left side.
You could do a whole study on this but from my fading observations a great many people I have seen use their throttles in the left hand. My guess is that perhaps subconsciously, for a right handed person, the fine motor skills in the left hand are fine enough to manipulate a throttle leaving the dominant hand with the best fine motor skills free to do other finer manipulation, such as uncoupling, re-railing a derailed locomotive, moving a stalled train by hand etc or even just pressing other buttons on a throttle when using both hands.
Personally I use the HC in the left hand but I'm not strictly right handed; and not truly ambidextrous either.
- Tim
PS, I've not forgotten the network problem, just had a very busy couple of weeks.