whart57

Those 10xx railcars sound as if the engines aren't really powerful enough, high revs in low gear to get them moving. Might extract the horn sounds though to use as notification sounds on my phone 😁

This is interesting. http://www.worsleyworks.co.uk/Image-Pages/Image_N_2HAP.htm I know Allen Doherty and I've built some of his stuff. I also know a lot of others that have. Basically the kit is an overlay over a commercial coach. So you get a suitable coach - probably a bit of battered second hand - cut out the window separators where they are in the wrong place, smooth down all surface detail and then stick on the new sides. Put the glazing back, and then fit a motor bogie, again that could be the works from a second hand job.

I think so.

That will be a Tonbridge to Reading service via Redhill, Dorking and Guildford. These days that is a First Great Western franchise so I suspect there have been times when it was operated by BR(W). According to Wikipedia Class 119 and 109 DMUs were introduced to the line in 1979 and NSE's DEMUs withdrawn in 1981. Redhill to Tonbridge was electrified in the 1990s and Reading line trains ran to Gatwick Airport instead.

This route is a possibility: https://www.shapeways.com/product/YGZJR29S9/class-207-dms?optionId=299296428&li=shops I've used this sort of stuff in 3mm scale and it's pretty good. In N gauge I guess you see what second hand you can pick up at swapmeets and the like and cannibalise them for the underframes and motorised chassis, no scratchbuilt mechs like I had to do in 3mm scale.

Try this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Classes_201,_202_and_203 Additionally I have the Middleton Press book on the Hastings to Ashford line. Most pictures are steam era but one picture shows that "Hampshire" and "Oxted Line" DEMUs were used as well. Presumably the singling of the track through the narrow London-Hastings line tunnels removed the need for restricted width stock there. According to this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_205 Class 205 2H units 1119-1122 were built for the Hastings-Ashford line. There was also Class 207, the Oxted line units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_207

That would be the junction of the line to Sheerness.

I'm not an expert on double track junctions, but I'm guessing there are trade-offs in terms of signalling and track complexity. It may even be that empty stock doesn't run from the Ramsgate direction directly but either runs to Herne Bay and reverses there, possibly doing a revenue service run as a connecting service from a London train, or there is a refuge siding provided to reverse in. In manual signalling days there was a Reculvers signal box in real life breaking the section between Herne Bay and Birchington into two blocks.

Well not exactly like that, there would need to be crossovers to get trains running onto the correct lines. The reasoning for a spur to Ramsgate is that that is where the loco sheds - in steam days - and EMU stabling was. So for empty stock movement

I can't resist interfering 😁 In my scenario the non-electrified line to Canterbury via Grove Ferry is single track, so I've made that your simplest in and out from the top line of the fiddle yard to Platform 1. Platform 0 is for parcels and side loading freight and the factory siding is on a kick-back. Incoming freight though is from one of the Faversham lines in the fiddle yard and has to route over two points to reach its unloading point. Platforms 2 and 3 are your London services via Faversham. However the line is double track so outgoing trains should swap over to the right running line. But you could imagine some carriage stabling sidings a bit down the line which involve a short distance of wrong line running as well. Finally, if you have room it might be nice to have a disused platform 4 with the track lifted just as a scenic feature. A not unheard of feature of the 1980s if I recall. An extra touch might be to have retaining walls along part of the outside of platforms 1 and 4 to suggest an overall roof was once in place but has been removed for safety reasons.

I bow to others regarding actual type, but I'm presuming Thumpers or Tadpole units.

The real Ashford Hastings was a DMU

The London Victoria via Canterbury service is a long way over SR electrified lines for non-electrified stock. How about your day service being Reculver to Hastings? Linking the Canterbury West to Reculver and the Ashford to Hastings via Rye DMU services by the relatively short link over the electrified tracks between Canterbury and Ashford might be a better use of shift times and DMU running times than a short shuttle service. You could explain this away by suggesting it allows some Ramsgate to Charing Cross services to run non-stop between Canterbury and Ashford as the Reculver-Hastings service acts as the stopper for Chartham, Chilham and Wye.

Does this look a bit better?

I think you need to have a third platform. What if you put the factory sidings on a kick back? Something like this: If you're tight on space you can lose the scissors that lets all incoming and outgoing trains use either of platforms 1&2. Pretend its offstage. Platform 3 is for the ex SER line trains, and as it would be the quietest platform it is also used to access your Zanussi distribution centre.

Hi Ray, good to see the Reculver idea getting an airing. Just for the benefit of anyone coming new to this, here is a link to the imaginary Reculver story I put together

Saturday was a good day. More than 300 people through the door, among them a lot of families. Our club has a pretty good junior section giving juniors - and their dads - a chance to help build a small layout using the sort of track and stock that can be got pretty cheaply from second hand stalls at shows, something quite important in this era of tight family finances. So hopefully a few will come back on Wednesdays to get involved. But Maenamburi was there, a lot of people came to look and talk about what I was trying to achieve, including a number of people who had worked or lived in SE Asia as expats. Some nice comments about my attempts at reproducing tropical vegetation. I learnt quite a bit about my layout, most of it good. I started out with some derailment issues which I tracked down to a couple of sluggish points - tie bars not quite going over. Making sure the switch blades had gone over completely by poking them with a dental pick before attempting reverse a four coach train through the turn-out got me through the day, but a more permanent solution should be possible before the next outing. The two locos and the 158 set ended up being good runners. A day's work did them a power of good. At the end of the day they were responsive and achieved good slow running, even though a cotton bud soaked in IPA and wiped over the track kept coming up black. I had enough running to get through this sort of low level show, but for a real show I need a fiddle yard so trains can actually leave the stage. Shunting the carriages between platform and carriage sidings works as a show, particularly when the Kadee couplers are properly set and remote uncoupling works, but without being able to depart for destinations elsewhere - or arrive from same - the exercise has a certain futility. But to complete this report, a link to the club's Facebook page and a couple of pics taken by a fellow club member. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=817305247090428&set=pcb.817313387089614

Open Day on Saturday, less than 48 hours away. Although I've not been updating this I have been working hard on getting ready. However what I've been doing doesn't lend itself to nice pictures. I've been doing a lot of testing and troubleshooting, and while doing so figured out on some minimal wiring changes that will make the layout operable after backsliding from DCC to DC. I hope to get a few isolators installed this afternoon so I can park locos. The other major task is to have built a complete set of legs to hold the layout. A misunderstanding between me and the Exhibition Manager at the club had led to me to believe I would have some six foot long tables to put the layout on. What the EM actually meant was if I really needed them he would try and get some from another church. So with less than three weeks to go I had to craft some legs. Fortunately some bargains from the centre aisle at Lidl meant I had some useful power tools to speed the job along, and as I had already designed some very successful supports for HMRC's Chesworth layout, I had a good solid design to work from. Oh yes, the first phase of the club's 00 Finescale layout is also at the Open Day. Fortunately the team working on this has grown since last year so my absence on things Thai has been less noticeable.

You'd have to ballast most of the layout though. Seriously though, the New Romney branch - Dungeness being a branch off a branch - would be a good choice for the SECR loco collector given that Ashford works used the branch for running in turns.

It's Horsham club Open Day this coming weekend - Saturday April 6. The club's 00 Finescale layout, Chesworth, will be there, showing off the progress made on the Holbrook station section. (As will your blogger's own Maenamburi layout, based on the State Railway of Thailand). The Dog and Bacon pub is nearly complete, it just needs the pub sign and some vegetables in the garden. Apparently back in the 1940s and 50s the owner of the cottages sold beans and other veg to locals and passers by. This picture, taken on a club night, shows a couple of day trippers have called in for lunch in their Oxford Diecast motors. A travelling crane has also turned up in the goods yard, not sure why, except that one of our members had an itch to scratch-build the K&ESR crane. The information came from the magazine of the Colonel Stephens Society plus some computer manipulation of the two published photos of the crane. The model was mainly scratchbuilt out of Plastikard but riding on Parkside chassis. The chassis needed to be cut and shut for the much shorter wheelbase of these vehicles. Other bits are etched gears and fine chain sourced out on the internet. The Open Day is, as I said, Saturday April 6, and doors open from 10 am to 4 pm. The venue is the St Leonards Church Hall, Cambridge Rd, Horsham RH13 5ED. Street parking is available in the streets around though I should point out that this is a residential area and local residents are also parking their cars in the street.

Hi, You asked me to report if it was happening again and send you a screenshot. The reason I haven't got back to you yet is that for some reason I only get that advert when I go on to rmweb from my smartphone. I get the same videos of model railways on my computer but without that ad, though I do get others that I would classify as acceptably generic advertising. The problem is that I'm not so smart on my smartphone and I don't know how to take a screenshot. It might be something in the settings being different, but as regards browsing history, my smartphone browsing is pretty straightforward - rmweb, the Isthmian League website and the Guardian newspaper. Other apps I use regularly Network Rail's timetables and Google Maps. Occasionally I look things up using DuckDuckGo, but they are all one offs. My computer browsing is more eclectic, I view all of those plus Amazon, many other model shops on line, Screwfix, M&S and other clothes shops plus other social media websites. So make of that what you will.

So would I. Facebook recently suggested my niece as a "friend". As she was family I contacted her to explain personally that I don't - ever - sign up people on Facebook as "friends" and she should not see it as a rejection if I didn't. Turns out she hasn't used Facebook for years and she certainly didn't make a friends request. I now regard friend requests as scam attempts.

Many railways used the term "coal engine" for an obsolescent goods loco fit only for the slowest mineral traffic. The South Eastern even used the term in their livery definitions, namely that "coal engines" were painted black with no lining and minimal lettering.

Not really possible, the bridge at Arnhem was in a built up area. The nearest open ground was marshy, that was what held up XXX Corps, and the Luftwaffe occupied the next best bit of flat ground.

It was apparently never considered that as Arnhem was only a few miles from the German border that that would stiffen German morale. It became a defence of the Fatherland.