DCB

Just to confirm these do not have DCC decoders? If so removing them and fitting blankers might be a first step.

As no one else seems to have a theory, I wonder if it is traction tyres gripping and amplifying slight variations in the speed change. I used to have Manor and KIng classes (Now out of use) with Hornby Tender drives which did something similar when double heading Last year I had to fit non traction tyre wheels to a new Hornby (?) 156 sprinter to stop it de railing when starting and stopping as the grip was so harsh. My 1960s Triang DMU with brass wheels and a Lima DMU from the 1990s run at very different speeds but happily runs a 6 car set because the Triang slips and the Lima has spur gears so does not stop or start abruptly, so I suspect Traction Tyres.

It's sort of OK, Tens of thousands of simple layouts with 8 X 1st radius curves and a couple of straights have been built hundreds of "Minories" style terminusses, and Ashburton clones probably many thousands of "Paddingtons" and especially "Box Tunnel" but there is only one "Madder Valley," one "Garsdale Road" or "Heckmondwyke(?)" or "Craig" I think it's a bit disrespectful to replicate someone else's layout and keep the name they invented for it if that name is fictitious, like "Haddenhoe" my branch terminus, "Goat of Barton" my Scottish station and not in common use Hogwarts from Hairy Potter and Ffarquar from Thomas the Tank are ok by me. However there is only room for one "Ugleigh" layout, The Ugleigh Branch meanders down the Valley past Ugleigh St Mary and Ugleigh St Anne through Stanton on Ug. A mythical land where the Ugliegh Carnival is held annually and they crown the Ugleigh Carnival Queen,, the Ugleigh Womens Institute have an annual outing by train, the Ugleigh Dogs show is equally famous.

Father in Law's railway shed is 23 ft 6" X 7ft 6" usable size, It is OO and about 16ft X 2 ft is hidden sidings under a station board most of the upper surface has tracks and there are windows at the ends and in the side door adjacent to the lifting section. Generally the blinds are down but its not entirely dark and the lifting section is generally in daylight from the gap between blind and wall. The lifting section track often needs cleaning with a track rubber,to stop trains stuttering. the main top surface occasionally gets cleaned with a track rubber to stop trains stuttering and the underneath section never gets cleaned from one decade to the next apart from an occasional towed track cleaning rubber on the main lines. My loft layout with no windows seldom needed the track cleaned, It just seems there is a link between sunlight/ daylight and track getting dirty,

That narrows down the options, If it was to become a "Habitable Room" it would be different. Common sense suggests that you would need decent ventilation if you store a working car in a building, ( Building regulation probably disagree ) What you do need is a walk in door rather than open the whole Vehicle door to limit the heat loss entering and leaving. Shutters to block the window would be good, or a really good black out blind, keeping the layout dark helps keep the track clean. I personally feel cavity wall insulation is a waste of effort, it's fine when new but long term at least air does not get waterlogged and it is a good insulator. With hopefully a brick or block inner skin and concrete floor you have something solid to attach the layout to, my purpose built wooden shed needs jacking up every now and again and flexes which means adjusting baseboard heights to stop coaches rolling away on the "Level" bits. But don't assume the floor is level, it probably is, within 1% 1 in 100 but that 1% changes a 1 in 50 grade to 1 in 33 or 1 in 66. Carpets and cars don't really mix so make sure you can roll it up when you garage the car, Laminate flooring does not take the weight of a car well either. I am working on plans for putting a test track in my garage so we can run out 2010 era 00 Scottish stock. Awkward bit to plan is the lifting sections to allow a car in without extensive dismantling and where to move the tools etc to..

The guy needs actual physical help not armchair advice. He wants someone to FIT the point motors, Its line 3 of the original post. There must be someone in Birmingham who can give him a hand surely.

The problem as I see it is that in the 1950s when Hornby Dublo were going strong modellers bought OO locos to pull trains. They were expensive, nearly £5 so few could afford many locos, many had only two, an 0-6-2 tank and a Pacific and only a tiny number (if any) were displayed by the new owners in display cabinets. Now perhaps 30% are kept pristine in their original packages, 30% displayed in display cabinets many 30% spend time on shed on permanent layouts yet seldom or never haul trains (like mine) and the rest are used for hauling trains. Which they are not much good at if my Un -rebuilt Merchant Navy is anything to go by. So it doesn't make sense to check every loco before dispatch when maybe 60% never get run and 50% are probably fine and 50% of owners will fix the fault themselves so fixing maybe 10% when returned is a better business proposition than checking 100% and fixing half of them. Hornby is there to make money, the trains are incidental

Is there any back scene or similar hiding the storage loops. It looks like someone has drawn the storage and is fitting everything else around it and trying to fill every square inch with track. The radius of the return loops would fit a smaller board see doodle For me this iteration does notwork at all there is no way from the station to the storage loops anticlockwise The station could use an overall roof to hide the curve. There doesn't look to be much room for a backscene and it would hide a big chunk of the layout. see doodle I was going to add a drawing of my 6ft 4" X 4ft 6" "Bed" layout which has a terminus, continuous run storage and return loop, albeit with 1st radius and 3 levels, but is just about impossible to draw in Anyrail. We built it on the spare bed to stop relatives deciding to spend the night at our place! Still not finished after almost 20 years. Portable it is not.

I have my doubts whether this plan can be built. The tracks are too close to the edge for sensible operation especially at the top and left hand end. It sort of needs a siding deleted and the whole shoved up and sideways. All these software programs have uses for checking curves and point work fit the available space, but that is the second phase after imagineering the plan in your mind and possibly on a note pad, table cloth , back of your hand, in a beach what ever to get a broad impression. Final stage track laying will again vary from the software as you shift tracks to get the best "Look"

By the time you sort out the bits, photograph them, list them, pack them and take them to the post office it's about 20/30 minutes per item, Economic madness based on minimum wage but when you get that magic £10 inc postage job lot and get £50 plus postage for some of the items it's a nice warm feeling. But you won't get rich any time soon.

The Playcraft motor is very powerful and smooth running, they came with 9volt battery powered power units. It should spin very easily, but it is very high geared . The gear train is very crude and odd with crown wheels on vertical shafts through bogie pivots and pinions engaging crown wheels with spur gear trains to the axles. They can run very stiffly, especially the middle cross shaft on the bogies. They also wear like fury. I would check the bogies for free movement and lubricate as required Properly set up the Playcraft runs as well as any Hornby flywheel fitted loco, in fact the flywheel effect is a bit excessive if you want to stop in a precise place. Its a shame the loco looks nothing like a class 21 or anything else really.

Its amazing a Mainline chassis has lasted long enough to burn out as mine all slipped their wheels out of quarter 25 years ago. I think there are several variations of the Bachmann 56XX chassis, probably made in different factories. Is yours NEM pocket style with the wedge fitting. I am pretty sure mine have ordinary Mainline screw fitting couplings. Do you have a picture from underneath? It might help with the query

Quite a challenge to model that livery. Better than the boring green IMHO

The A1A plastic axle with moulded gear fits the NON Insulated Triang wheels There is a larger axle used on cheap 0-4-0 chassis which fit the insulated wheels if you bash out the bushes. Definitely does not look right. Might need MTK sideframes mounted higher up the bogie to get it right. Axles out of line with axle boxes is common. See Mainline /Hornby Collett tenders up to 2010 approx

The H/D crane gets round 15" radius curves with its non flanged centre wheels. I have 2 neither to hand at present but I'm pretty sure the wheel holder is rivetted to the cast chassis so removing and more awkwardly refitting the wheels is not easy. You can grip the axle force it hard left and force off the left hand wheel and change it and vice versa but I think changing to metal rim flanged wheels will require drilling out the rivets as will shortening the axles so they limit side play and stop the wheels touching and shorting on the outside frame and on the metal inside frame, you coule use washers but I wouldn't. It's so much hassle that I have neve changed either of mine despite changing the handles for gears etc.

@RobinofLoxley You are down to 1st radius on the lower return loop if the O P is correct and the loops are limited to 450 mill which is 18" in American. The square 15 from left 3 from bottom is critical , if you can build over it you can build it albeit with 1st radius or delete the 2nd track if not the plan is a non starter. I'm struggling to understand the shape of the available space

I don't see room for a double track oval. To be honest a double track oval is a lot more prototypical than a figure eight, you can do most real train things on a double track oval with two crossovers and a siding. Even Minories is a bit far fetched. It was a portable showcase for Hornby Dublo and Triang Tank engines and suburban coaches dating form about 1958. Its never been bettered but the operation with a different loco taking trains back out is a bit niche, Liverpool street (Broad Street?) and Moorgate are the only places I know of where this happened. It would be useful to have the sizes of the available area as it looks ideal for pair of helixes.

The biggest issue I have with model turntables apart from they are generally far too big , is they move too stiffly I keep plotting how to make a decent motorised table but then again my hand operated cut down Dapol table is a model of a hand operated table so maybe a powered one would be less realistic. Current plan revolves (Pun intended) around some Ford Escort wheel bearings I acquired, Present terminus one is a 75 or 80 ft Triang and as I don't have anything bigger than a Duchess to turn another 65 ft like the middle station will suffice

I can see Beet etc being moved in railway company owned i5 and 7 plank "Coal" wagons but how would the wagon hire have worked using P.O wagons which were privately owned, and maintained. prior to pooling in Sept 1939. In the absence of photos I would stick to Company owned wagons, these were pooled earlier than P.O wagons and often strayed far from home. I understand the Great Eastern area retained quite a lot of old wagons including wooden frame wagons for seasonal traffic. I have always worked on the basis of the only legitimate load for PO coal wagons is pit props.

Looks like the speed model turntables revolve, Like someone used a speeded up clock.

Basically the end of a turntable revolves at walking pace, say 3 mph, I will work that out in RPM when I have a spare lifetime Timing YouTube videos the York outdoor TT seems to take 6 blokes about 3 min for 180 degrees. The Didcot table 3 mins for 2 blokes to crank round The NRM about 80 seconds, Ferryhill 80 and Pickering about 65 secs , Some TTs used vacuum power to turn, I think NRM is electric. Starting and stopping are problems, especially stopping and several attempts to engage the locks were quite common, What modern RTR especially DCC can't match is the precision with which they place a 66ft long 57ft WB V2 loco on what looks like a 6oft table

If you fit a TT single start worm to one end of the armature and a standard2 start to the other the power bogie with knurled wheels make a wonderful rail cleaner/grinder

Is this a plastic axle chassis like the Hymek and A1A or metal axle like the dock shunter /Transcon. The Dock shunter takes Romford Markits wheels on the "Triang" conversion knurled centre axles, 14/15/16 mm. Just fill in the spokes with araldite or similar. The plastic axle type are more difficult as I think ( could be wrong) the gear is smaller than the Dock Shunter, X04 Nellie/Polly/ Connie axle gear. There may not be enough clearance for 14/15mm wheels but the problem is finding a wheel thick enough to fit snugly on the plastic axle. I have opened out Jackson coach wheels to fit the plastic axles but they are too thin where they fit on the axles and they don't go on straight and /or work loose. There are some brass wheels intended for plastic axles from H0 US Locos around 15mm ish, I have some in my scrap box but no idea if they fit the Triang plastic axles, I believe the Triang plastic axle is the same diameter on the end as the 1970 era metal axle, For example you can fit two Hymek wheels on a metal axle if 3 rail is your thing,

Fizzog and words like Cropodist (Bloke who crops yer toenails) and Loyer (lawyer/liar) are sadly disappearing from country areas as house prices start to look like mobile phone numbers and only those with a public school received pronunciation eck-sent can afford to live in Country areas

A few nails and a decent file will soon create some decent buffer heads, especially if you have a lathe. You would be hard put to make anything worse than the Lima buffers The usual mistake with MK1s is that the buffers are modelled in the extended position whereas they are retracted when Corridor Mk1s are coupled to other BR standard corridor coaches and use the buckeye coupler for buffing and as draw gear. The buffers are only extended when coupling to stock without buckeye couplers I close coupled several Lima Mk 1s with Peco couplings and some with mainline ones by moving the couplings inward so the corridor connections almost touched when propelling around 2ft radius curves. The improvement in appearance was dramatic but sadly the pics on RM Web disappeared a while ago and I can't find them on my many discarded computers and SD cards