tiggermann

Thanks for all who replied, fyi the signal box (essentially a covered ground frame as the starting signal was removed after it was built) is back beyond the top of the picture - I haven't shown the whole picture as I don't want to infringe someone's copyright! So the pair of rods on the right are coming away from signal box. Thanks for the suggestion that these were for a facing point lock. I've checked in "GWR Signalling Practice" (Smith) and can see in Fig 57 how this works. I don't have a photo of the point under question so don't know whether there was a cover over it. Now my problem is working out why the other points in the station which clearly have a facing point lock only have a single rod!!

Hi I'm modelling a GWR branch terminus on the end of a single track branch line. Loosely based on Watlington, I have a good collection of reference material about the branch line and GWR practices. I'm putting in some non-working point rodding. While most of the design is very clear from the photographs and makes sense, there's one area that's got me scratching my head. At the first point on the entrance from the branch line, the photos clearly show 2 point rods. There is only a single point beyond here so I would expect only one! Unfortunately none of the photos I have show where the second one connects to. Can anyone suggest what's going on?

Let me put something positive into this thread. I live in New Zealand and model GWR/SR/WR. A few years ago, I acquired some Southern Pride Bulleid coaches from an auction locally. I built some of them (still got a couple to go!). I wanted to get some more so I could build up an 'Atlantic Coast' set. I sent an enquiry from the website and David Lewis from SP replied and couldn't be more helpful. He let me know what Bulleid coaches he could supply and I placed an order over by email so he could reserve them. He came back and gave me a shipping cost based on the items required. Yes I had to send him a cheque and he sent the items as soon as the cheque cleared, advising me on the same day. It may not be the same service as many of the online retailers but you get something quite different at what I think is a very reasonable price indeed. I deal with a number of suppliers around the world and while the majority are great, there are one or two who could learn from someone like David Lewis.

Thanks everybody for your input and advice. Looks like the overall view is to try it out with the AR-1 (as we've got one already) and see how we get on. Going to take a while to do this but I'll let the forum know how we get on!

My model railway club has a modular exhibition layout that has 2 tracks (Up and Down) from end to end. The current set up has 2 sliding transversers to catch the trains at each end. When we run this at exhibitions, we find there's a lot of issues. We need 5 operators just to keep trains flowing ( 2 at each end - 1 to manually change engines/brake vans, 1 to coordinate the receipt and dispatch of trains plus another in the middle operating the large station model.) We also find that the constant handling of stock under pressure causes damage. As members provide the stock, we need to improve things. The layout is fully DCC and uses exclusively Digitrax kit. It's got a full DCC set-up including block detection, power districts, automatic signals and point control with live frogs. What I'm thinking about is to build a balloon track for each end. This will join the Up to the Down track so a train can travel directly from one to the other without any handling. To create operational interest at an exhibition, I propose to put a number of points in the balloon loop so we can store trains and release different ones. Before embarking on building the first one, there's a number of questions I have. Will I require an auto-reverser for this set-up? (We already have a spare Digitrax AR-1 and there's spare power districts on the PM422 that could be used if suuitable). If I have an auto-reverser, what will be the impact on other trains already sitting in the balloon loop - will they suddenly also reverse direction or change direction when next started? Anything else I might be missing? The objective is to reduce the number of operators required - I believe using this approach could mean that just 1 or 2 could keep the trains running. It also would reducr greatly any handling issues. I appreciate there's other ways to 'skin this cat'. Sector plates might help but wouldn't reduce the number of operators below 3.