big jim

toton this morning, whoever put it on the track forgot to put a DCC chip in it as all the lights are lit!

you do the maths!

just bought one of them from trident trains, also some Bachmann businessmen to populate the coach as its going to be a 'modern image' coach im going to add an orange cant rail stripe, modern ohle flashes and do some touching up of detail parts such as electrical boxes etc, i'm also going to paint hi-viz vests on some of the figures, should look good behind my london underground 20!

I was thinking of the maplin strips if i made my own or traintech, not thought of express models, do they do short enough strips though?

I didn't bother with the soldering iron for fear of growing a ridiculous beard but i did pick up a couple of packs of the multi tool cutting discs, they were 2 for £4 iirc. they also had the set with all sorts of different multitool pieces in but i've got most of the bits and bobs in there already from rpevious raids on lidl and aldi but go through cutting discs like crazy so being able to just get those has been spot on

I'll have a look at the warm white ones you can get in maplin, but yours look to have a better more even spacing between the led's As you say it makes all the difference, next question, what figures did you use?

Heads up for anyone out and about in the midlands tomorrow, tonights coal service from bristol to ratcliffe and its empty return to gloucester will be colas' final one for some considirable time From what i believe from another forum the government has changed the tax on imported fuels or something so its been stockpiled and quite simply not as much is needing to be moved around, this not only effects small players like colas with its single train but over the coming weeks and months we will probably see less and less coal being moved from port to powerstation by the likes of schenker, freightliner, gbrf etc Going to be taking my camera tonight for a few shots hopefully The above info is my understanding of the situation, not heard anything official about it

What LED strips did you use waverley? They look spot on, did you use the decoder to dim them or is that how they come

yeah did a couple of years there

a few from my guy in the south west, the railvac to paignton, first 70 along there coming through the station goodrington yard

when i used to go down the cambrian with drs 20s you had to carry an RT3973HAW form (heavy axle weight) for 20306 upwards due to the extra nose tank being fitted, there were a number of bridges you had to slow down over my dads picture of 20084 is quite a catch then!

found this piccie of a class 20 passing through pen-y-ffordd in my collection not noticed it before but it has extra tanks and bodyside grilles on the doors whats all that about then?

ah yes, a blue fold up bike

Yep, phoning round to sort the headlight!! (And i was in a position of safety btw!!) I presume that was you stood on sinfin central platform waiting (hoping) for us to head up towards you?

Sinfin today, didnt bother with the proper camera but got a couple on the phone Sad to see just a single loco sat in derby station yard when you think how busy it used to be! Still at least it was a 56, the colour really suits it After getting fuel we then returned to sinfin only to discover the headlight had failed on the loco, a bit of phoning round found us one from east midlands trains which we picked up while we did the run round Despite appearing dimmer than the LED markers it gave out a surprising amount of light when we passed through meir tunnel on the way back Into crewe and job done

Typical i was in etches park today getting fuel and i took some iphone pics of the blue coaches for you but never thought to get a pic of that yellow well wagon that was parked next them, it had an english electric engine sat on it today! Not the best of pics as i didnt bother with the proper camera today but thay may be of use to you What exactly are they used for and why blue, are they ex railtrack?

some pics from last night, what should have been a straight on the footplate and go job turned into a full blown ballast drop as it wasn't able to be done the previous night due to the ballast being frozen in the wagons we got there and split the train into 2 halves, 10 wagons per portion and we moved them onto the chord ready to drop the ballast as the other driver moved the first half of the train onto the chord myself and the trainee waited for the points to be reset by hand to allow us to enter the line next to him here we are sat under the abomination that is tubbs lane bridge, this lot replaced a foot crossing!! we then drew forward onto the chord and waited for the other train to drop its ballast, you can see how steep it is from this picture, although we didnt struggle up there with 1000 tons behind us! the other train waiting for the groundstaff to fire up the ballaster generators and once activated it began to drop its ballast we then moved to the top of the chord ready to drop our ballast while propelling backwards, much better for pictures last night!! and on the mainline a colas tamper was waiting to tamp the points got the job done and left bicester only 40 late but we had to stand at haddenham again so it was not too much of a problem, i finally arrived back into bescot at 08:00 this morning

The headcode was/is 6C32, i'm on my way back there to collect it as we speak, i was hoping i was a straight get on, brake test and go but it turns out the train never got emptied today as the ballast was frozen so ive got to empty it tonight (assuming its thawed!) instead Not a happy bunny about that as we now need to split it again and go along the chord Geoff, its now booked an hour later off claydon jn in the morning (which i think will cause problems at risborouh personally) so i should imagine it will just go straight through again

proper camera pics arrival into bicester with the first train, 70806 leading and the first train on the new chord, 70806 propelling 10 autohoppers up it then i bought 70805 on the other line chord with 15 autohoppers at the top of the chord with 70805 and after the job 70806 under tubbs lane bridge waiting to set back onto 70805's train to head back to claydon it made its way back to claydon this morning at 01:00 where i picked it back up after bringing another 20 autoballasters in from hinksey last night and headed back to bescot with it, left claydon at 03:00 and got to haddenham and thame parkway only to look at the schedule and see we were booked to sit there for 2 hours waiting for a possession to be lifted, as it happened it got lifted an hour early so i got a run only to be held at hatton til time so finally arriving into bescot at 08:30 this morning got a couple of good shots though!! and that was it for last nights job, heading back there tonight to bring this mornings train off and take it back to bescot again

Good night last night, even made a bit if history! Started in bescot with a fairly substantial train of 25 loaded autoballasters top and tailed by 70s, there was some concern over the weight but as it happened it was lighter than anticipated (just over 2000 ton and 1500 ft long) Off i set for claydon jn but just as i aproached haddenham i got a call from the box to say the job was cancelled and as they were going to be using the bi-directional line between risborough and bicester i would have to continue south until they decided what they wanted to do with me so we headed to high wycombe where we changed ends Nice to see they have tidied up the sign that was discovered under an advertising hoarding a few years back, they have added the words 'formerly' to it so as not to confuse non locals!! By now we discovered that it was mis-communication and the train was in fact running so off we went north and made our way to claydon jn and ultimately bicester On arrival at bicester we were told that we were dropping ballast on the new chord, this is where we made a little bit of history, we were the first train EVER to use the chord! We split the train into 2, one loco propelling 10 ballasters up the bank on the 'up' line and the other pulling 15 up the down line First we used the propelling set dropping top ballast around the freshly laid track then went onto the other set and drove it up the chord from gavray drive, and boy is it a climb, 1 in 33 at one point i believe! All the way to the top where you cant go any futher!! Just beyond the fence is the connection to the chiltern mainline, probably only 30M away, i believe the up side is attached but the points arent commissioned yet King of the hill!! After we did that i set the train back down the chord where i left my relief to piece it back together ready for me to take back to bescot tonight, but not before i bring another 25 auto's in from hinksey first!

touch wood, ive got 20 odd points on the layout and apart from wiring up a couple wrongly prior to fitting they have worked pretty much straight away through the accessory decoders the only big problem i've had was in the yard where i have had to remove the frog polarity wires from the motors as it was shorting the layout, the reason being the yard has a reverse loop module fitted as it exits and enters on opposite lines (ie up and down) and throwing the polarity of a point within the yard confused the module

Yeah, shinohara, im going to have a look at fitting it this week maybe

got a few hours in the shed earlier, carried on with the points first up i removed the metal fishplate and replaced it with an insulated one, after that i cut a hole in the baseboard to fit the peco pl-10 point motor as recommended by mick (newbryford) to save me struggling trying to fit motors from below i mounted the motor direct to the point using the tabs and wired it up prior to fitting into the hole and fitted in place, gave it a test via the accessory decoder and it worked lovely next i moved to the other set of points, these are on an inclined piece of wood but the points need to be level, cut the hole as before and fitted the points in place, a nice tight fit as you can see i will need to pack the track and points and i filled the gap with plain line i'm going to pack it with plywood rather than the poly risers the point motors ive used are peco low power ones (again as recommended by mick) as i hoped to make the 2 sets of points co-acting, anyway i wired them together via the decoder and they both worked in unison without issue which i'm pleased about, wish i'd known about them when i bought seep motors! one other job was to fit a lenz faceplate nearer the front of the shed also found this train-tech bufferstop light that i forgot i'd bought, looks quite good, will be nice when i get some more for the rest of the various sidings next job will be to wire up the track again beyond the points as i've added the insulating fishplates so there is no power to the track on the station side of the layout

here are the uploads from the proper camera first night was the stormy night down the bicester branch as you can see it was somewhat damp! another one of the 66 in hinksey then the next night it was drier, but a lot colder, unfortunatly i forgot my tripod this week so all these pics are taken from on top of walls, spt's, digger wheel arches, anything i could find really! last night was the coal, 70 on it again, had a run straight through to hatton where once the stratford service left he drew me forward into the platform, dont stop here very often so grabbed a pic while i could and on to landor st where i got off and fought my way home via the partially closed M6! back in tomorrow for 3 days of trains to claydon and bicester