Zomboid

What a mess. Either of them would have been worthy champions, but the situation at the end there was farcical and not becoming of a sport like F1.

The gradients and haulage power of your trains is probably the limiting factor. This sounds like it's an attempt to get longer trains (amongst other things) so you'll have quite a lot of rolling resistance to deal with. You might not need to change consists, but you will need access to retrieve derailments, so you'll need some headroom, and once you've added that to the baseboard construction depth it'll be quite a change in height. You might also want to think about what kind of access you want to the underside of the top baseboard before having to dismantle the whole thing.

Looking on Google maps, there are some bridge abutments where it looks like a rail link would cross the A57, at least. Which is a start.

All of which need money spending to do something about. Meanwhile Manchester to Leeds would seem to take 55 minutes for a bit over 40 miles. I don't know the terrain around there, though I imagine it's not as quick to drive around as it is in the much less geographically spectacular South East, but even so an average speed of about 40mph isn't especially impressive. And that's where you hit the HS2 argument - getting the fast trains out of the way improves the every train that runs in the area and allows some that don't run today to be offered.

Isn't the point of improving the route to unlock the potential that a population centre containing West Yorkshire and Lancashire has? I don't think the distances involved are enough to make much in the way of freight viable without significant intervention to skew the economics (this may come from decarbonisation of road freight, that's still an unknown). But given the size of the population on either side of the Pennines and relative closeness, 20 carriages per hour would seem to be leaving untapped potential passenger traffic there. Unlike HS2, this is one route where speed improvements might well be the point, as even the fastest trains go for a bit of a trundle compared to the ECML/ WCML between York and Manchester. The other aspect is that at present the only electrified connection between the ECML and WCML in England is the North London Line. After leaving London, the next one you come to is at Carstairs, and that's not really good enough.

Rounded arched structures don't tend to be too problematic for electrification because they're taller in the middle where the wires go. It's flatter arches and flat girder structures which tend to be more of a problem, or situations like at Steventon where the wire height has to change rapidly because of the structure. I don't know Standedge, but if it was built to have steam engines running though without suffocating the crew then it's probably not to bad for wires or a conductor beam system. I think it would be a beam in there anyway to avoid nonsense like needing tensioning equipment in such an inaccessible location, rather than clearances.

That thing is so ridiculous that no one would accept it as fictional... And it wasn't a success? Well I never.

Just go all Sanyo Shinkansen style and have most of it in a tunnel. Or head for the Rochdale area, for what looks like a less twisty route into Victoria.

Weren't they pretty successful at exporting? In which case their work may well have been shining, just in places like Sri Lanka and Kenya.

Another case of "we must put the railway back" rather than "we must provide a railway that links the places that people want to go". If a railway between Ryde and Newport is needed, then it shouldn't necessarily be constrained by the decisions which were made 150 years ago.

It does all rather depend now much actually gets wired. If there are only small gaps then replacing the diesels with some batteries ought to be doable. But whatever ends up happening, it won't be live within months.

If you want to run trains any time soon, stick with stuff you can buy off the shelf. Which I guess means OO or possibly EM. If you want to build track and convert rolling stock, go P4. Neither are wrong, but as @Harlequin pointed out, this whole thing started with wanting to get something running. You can change your mind of course, but if you do then make sure it's a consequence of a definite decision to go in a different direction, and not a result of "scope creep".

You'd want to use a specific Garrett boiler though, rather than import the compromises inherent in a fixed chassis locomotive boiler (as well as all the compromises that a Garrett locomotive brings with it, worst of both worlds...).

I've not heard of anyone building it, which is a suprise. It would make for a fantastic model, either pre or post electrification as you say with the mix of trains and relatively compact size. The Waterloo to Reading line doesn't really have much romance to it though, which might go some way to explaining it. Nobody is going to feel nostalgic about the holiday they had in Bracknell.

I think that with the exception of pure shunting puzzles (such as the timesaver), it does boil down to doing real railway things accurately, and with a purpose. For many of us that will mean shunting (partly because this can be achieved in a relatively small space), but running a plain line and obeying signals (which are themselves serving since kind of purpose) is equally a real railway thing with a purpose. The real railway does an awful lot of things though, so there's plenty of scope for different opinions within that, especially when you consider worldwide operations.

Though quite a lot of it actually wasn't. I think in the 1930s they'd done a lot of the Suburban, Brighton, Reading and Portsmouth lines. But Kent outside the (then non existent) M25 didn't get much until the 1950s, and there was nothing at all West of the Portsmouth/ Alton line until steam finished in 1967... I suspect that if it existed my Oxford line would have been electrified around the same time as Portsmouth and Reading were, but I'll hang on to steam for the sake of having locos...

Don't really know where to put this, it's not Minories but it's in the spirit... There's a possibility that I might find myself with a fairly small shed in the not too distant. Just your standard 8x6 (it doesn't exist yet, the old one is falling apart and the contents are likely to end up in the garage, leaving me with the foundations for an 8x6 shed to find a use for, but that's all by the by). So, way up this thread I've talked about this fictional LSWR route from London to Oxford, which would leave the Windsor line just after Datchet, where the Riverside line turns west, forms a triangle and the line goes on to Oxford via Henley and then a big up & down to Benson, and approaches Oxford from the south (I've worked out way more detail than that, but that's for another time, maybe I'll do a thread/ blog post...). It terminates near St Clements/ Magdalen bridge near to where the first, unbuilt GWR station was originally proposed. So, can I fit "Oxford (St Clements)" into an 8x6 shed? Turns out that I can: Shown with a 4' long Denny Cassette thingy (I'd actually build at least 2 to increase capacity), it has 3 platforms, one with a run-round so the slow trains to Henley/ Windsor don't need shunt release, and a carriage siding. I've put a turntable in, but actually I imagine a proper shed would be just down the line at Cowley (where LSWR's main freight yard for Oxford is), so it's hard to justify in reality, though it would reduce loco handling requirements. I think in 4' there'd be a decent chance of a 2-6-0 or 4-4-0, 3 carriages and a 4 wheeled van. 4 coaches might even fit, but I'd be fine with 3. I think it would just about work in the platforms as well with the train and station pilot if not a second train engine able to fit inside the signal/ pointwork. I'd be doing this some time in the 30s, so pre-Bulleid rolling stock, but things like the Schools and N class would be seen in addition to whatever ex LSWR could be sourced. Anyway, chances of this happening in reality are slim, but I was surprised I could get anywhere near in such a piddly shed.

When it comes to shunting/ switching, there is definitely a point where more track = less interest, because you just end up filing everything into it's designated siding, which doesn't require any thought. If you've got 3 industries on a spur, then you need to clear the front ones to get to the back and then put the cars back where they came from. With some types of traffic you might even need to line the wagon doors/ fillers/ whatever up with the equipment that's provided to handle the contents. You may also find that your industry has one filler nozzle and two tank cars to fill, so the job might also involve swapping them over. So @F-UnitMad is right, it's about "car spots" as much as anything else, if you're doing a shunty freight layout/ area.

And here's where I can offer a dissenting voice. Whilst I appreciate to to do many things it's not possible, my ideal layout would not have any kind of fiddle yard. I would rather use the space to do more actual operation rather than manual meddling. It requires a different mindset and doing things like starting the operation just after a train has arrived "on scene", and finishing just before it leaves. Though I realise it wouldn't work at all for a busy city terminus.

I think this is something where if you wait for enough answers, every single aspect of the real railway, and a load of things that are only ever seen on models will be mentioned. Personally I like switching cars to a pre-generated switch list. It gives the exercise some point. I suppose the British version of that would be running to a timetable/ sequence, but i haven't tried that personally.

I'm not saying don't, but we did start this sub-thread with you saying that you wanted something to get on with the minimum of fuss...

The slip works better if it's part of a curved approach (see the diagram I illustrated balloon loops with) as the tightness or otherwise of it doesn't form part of a reverse curve. And of course it's not Minories if it has the slip. I like it though, diamonds and the like are a great way to make a station throat look busy. https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/60091-theory-of-general-minories/&do=findComment&comment=4655234

True, but in its purest form that could get pretty samey. So we add this that and the other to create variety and interest. As @t-b-g says, a days timetable of Hectic rush - Lull - Hectic Rush - evening wind down gives opportunities outside the rush to run long trains, sleeping cars etc. I suspect that I'm most real versions, the lull in the middle of the day wouldn't feature a big engine on a too-long train; nothing at all is more likely. But even today there's examples like the LNER service to/from Bradford which finds its way amongst the suburban EMUs.

I suppose it depends on the nature of the station. If it has a frequent service for commuters then you're not going to block up the throat for every arrival, but it might be tolerable once or twice a day for "The London Train" or similar.

Plenty of time for more iterations then! How much could you go about creating away from the garage? If we're talking a broadly portable layout which gets for all intents and purposes permanently set up in the garage, then there's no need to wait until the car's gone to start building if you can do so in your office/ wherever else. Interesting that after much back and forth, the winning design appears to be a basic Minories with an extended approach. Shows how hard it is to improve upon.