simon b

Watching those video's does give you another type of train to run, PGA stone hoppers. Perhaps you could use the Kibri loading plant on the siding above the loco shed.

Due to the drop in passenger numbers from covid, enough 196's are surplus to operate the service. Chiltern are operating it on behalf of EWR, but I would expect that a few years down the line they will merge into Chiltern anyway. If it turns out the rumors of the mk5's heading to Chiltern are true, that would free up a few 168's which could also be used to operate the service instead of the 196's. The 175's are rumored to be going "up" in the world.

Tom has beat me to it, but I came up with a very similar idea.

It's refered to as a no2 tunnel, no1 has twin bores for part of its length. A good prototype for use on a layout with its arched roof though.

A while back it was mentioned about tunnels not having more than two tracks, today I discovered Hockley tunnel.

There is alot wrong with the USA, but sadly it does seem that they care far more about this sort of thing than our lot do.

It's a lot beter without the front track, what about having more of the tracks enter the buildings?

Realistically if anyone does the 74 it will be Hornby, they only need to make a retooled body shell as the chassis is already there. It's on my list to do at some point, I've got a 71 here to butcher using the silver fox 74 body shell fitted with the Hornby cabs. Although the 74 is limited to one livery and the southern area of operation, it will still sell out. Many people will just want it to complete their collection, even if nowhere to run it in a prototypical fashion. 20003 could be a bit more of a problem as it was longer than the other two, depends on how accurate you want it to be.

Curved points are your friend to get the maximum length from the loops, use them on the left side of the yard and you could fit a pair of stub end tracks on the righthand side.

Looks great, especially with the rake of green coaches behind. At the risk of a thread divert are there more pics of your layout anywhere?

If you want the upper loops longer you can use curved points to start them sooner, them as Chimer has suggested a few stub ends on the shorter lower loops. I'd loose the 3 way points if it were mine, they are expensive so I only use them if no alternative.

If you start with the center diamond positioned to the left of the board joint, none of the points land on a joint.

If I honest I think this design would work better for the space you have, loose all the stub end sidings and you can make the loops longer. Seems a more flexable design in that the loops can be accessed from either end without blocking both running lines.

Is 8 loops going to be enough? Have a think about how many you need and design it around that number.

Most of the old lima models were like that, worked well.

What about stretching the first plan over 2 boards, then the fiddle yard on the third board? If you stretch it out a bit you can have more warehouses with tracks going in, then that track layout makes more sense.

I'm convinced it's the bogie castings that are warped, not the chassis. Waiting for a reply from rails on what to do with mine.

It would be fun trying to shunt it without jamming yourself up, kind of a puzzle in itself. You could design it so your 60 brings a rake of wagons onto the layout, then the 08 picks them off to get them into the various buildings? If you have your headshunts that short you may find yourself limited to what stock you can run, large bogie ferry vans being a good example. Which tracks go off scene on the plan, just the bottom pair?

Do you need to have every fiddle road capable of reversing trains? I would think that in normal operation only a few multiple units would actually need to change direction, those being traffic out of the bay platform. I would be inclined to keep things simple with just up and down loops, and a center reversing loop between them.

The biggest problem that I can see is none of the headshunts/kickbacks are long enough for what you want to do, unless your planning to shunt a single wagon at a time? Visually the layout looks good but I dont think it will be fun to operate as you have it set out. Can I suggest that you move the through line to the middle of the board at an angle, with tracks coming of towards the front of the layout as well as the rear.

Thanks for posting this fix, I've just put mine on a piece of glass and it has the same problem on both bogies. Looking at which wheels are affected I'd say the bogie castings are twisted, so I'm going to send it back for repair. The worrying thing is that this fault is actually visible in 3 of the pictures on the first page of this thread, seems like a quality control issue?

The sound file for the 71 must be fairly close to what they should sound like, but louder I would imagine. They had 2 booster sets vs the single unit inside the 71, and 6 traction motors vs 4. Apparently when the locos were standing still they made quite a racket with the booster units turning inside the body.

I do think the flow of the pointwork in the second version is better, a much smoother transition. But the bay platform needs to be longer like the first. Or try a pair of bay platforms next to each other with a headshunt?

I like the first of the pair, if you swap the points around you could smooth out the scissors crossing leading into the platforms. Have you thought of shifting the whole station to the left? Start your scissors pointwork just below your green line and let the station follow the corner round,that way you get more of a run at the other end of the station.