rogerzilla

If you take the front couplings off tender locos, as I do, the slower loco has to go at the front. I have two Hornby Kings (James II and Henry II; I mean to renumber Henry as William III as an in-joke). Even though the models are otherwise identical, Jim is a bit faster than Billy. I'm not sure how many trains would have needed two Kings, but that's another question!

If you use normal insulfrog points, there is no special wiring except for using plastic fishplates (aka IRJs) in the middle of any crossovers between ovals. Then wire each oval to its own controller. The sidings will only be powered when the points are set into them. If a train straddles a crossover and picks up current from two controllers, it doesn't matter - it still works. You can use a bus and droppers for more reliability as the layout ages, but mine works fine after 9 years with one feed per oval.

Very tempted by the LNER one. I have the old Hornby model (I painted the injector brass colour as the red seems to be a preservation thing) but it's quite crude.

The recent SVR diesel gala was wall-to-wall with blue hydraulics. Personally I like Warships in green with SYP, but where was the maroon - surely the classic colour for Warships and Westerns? And Hymeks had quite a nice bespoke green livery, a bit like Deltics.

The Chapel-en-le-Frith disaster could almost certainly have been avoided if the banker had been coupled, but that wasn't the normal practice there - it was just used to give trains a shove over Dove Holes. The steam leak occurred on the way up, so in theory the banker could have been warned to stop pushing, and the train stopped, before the summit, but the train engine whistle relied on the broken steam pipe. It really was a cursed series of events.

Oh good. There are rather a lot of blue preserved diesels at the moment (presumably because the owners or the target market remember them like that). I grew up with BR Blue and didn't like it except for the later Large Logo version. It was always dull and dirty. HSTs were the exception, as they seemed to be cleaned more often, but HST livery was halfway to Large Logo anyway.

There's an amusing passage in Lothar-Günther Buchheim's novel "Das Boot" where the very bored U-boat crew start measuring everything in "jets": nautical distances, cups of coffee, absolutely everything. Somehow it works.

I bought an N gauge Dapol class 22 last week. No photos at all, but it was like new and runs as it should. I may have been lucky, but the three or four used items I've had from Hattons have been perfect. I've had less luck with brand new items, not just from Hattons, many of which have been DOA!

AIUI the Deming Cycle and all the other TQM stuff came out of wartime "Operational Research", which is still a discipline, if a rather dry one for non-statisticians. I used to sit next to a massive OR fan who was a member of the OR Society and everything.

According to the HS1 chief, the reasons HS1 was under budget and on time were: - Using proven TGV Nord infrastructure design, unchanged - Lower design speed, makes a huge difference to curve radius, noise abatement, etc - They never revealed the total budget during the project to avoid a feeding frenzy from contractors. HS2 forgot all these lessons.

Shame D1000 wasn't kept for the National Collection, in desert sand with the cast lion emblems.

Watch Von Ryan's Express (1965)? Not just because it's a ripping yarn or because Frank Sinatra stars: it's a train enthusiast's dream. From Wikipedia: "The Ferrovie dello Stato/Italian State Railway closely cooperated on the production, as reflected in the film's closing acknowledgment credit, providing a complete train headed by the specially-bulled up FS Class 735.236. The train which the Nazis commandeer to pursue the escaping POWs is headed by a Franco-Crosti boiler-fitted Class 743." The Crosti-boilered SS train seems to run really well, unlike a Crosti 9F.

We had to abandon plans to visit today due to one of the cats going AWOL since Wednesday. He predictably reappeared last night, too late for us to set off for the hotel. Hope it was well-attended!

The original Britannia design, based on LNER practice, I think, had a new flaw in that it was very difficult for fitters to check the tightness of the fasteners due to the location of the bolt heads. So they didn't bother. The design was tweaked later to make inspection and maintenance easier.

On paper, a Nova 3 is ludicrously overpowered for most routes. However, I don't know to what extent twiddling its thumbs at part load on flatter routes would impact efficiency, compared to a typical DMU. Some modern DMUs also have a lot of power per coach.

I saw 60009 at Didcot after it had run down from York, and it was definitely grimy. No rust or water stains, but a thin layer of soot on everything, especially along the top of the boiler. So light weathering, soot only, is appropriate, but nothing that indicates neglect.

We're there on Sunday so that's great news. I was sad when 2857 bowed out at the end of last year.

What are the latest chances of the freshly overhauled 28xx running this weekend? It was a "hope" in the railway press.

If it's any consolation, the prototype had a reputation for spreading the track, broken axles, and other issues arising from the long coupled wheelbase. Some say this was a rumour started by the Thompson camp to justify the rebuild. The 9F, of course, has flangeless middle wheels so it's more of a 2-4-2-4 in terms of taking curves.

From a purely selfish modeller's point of view, the loss of the Nova 3 is sad because they were among the most interesting modern trains. Obviously you can still model them, but only for a short defined period of history. It also means Accurascale can't re-use the tooling for different liveries over the coming years.

It's also a cheap ticket from Oxford Parkway, which makes it worth a 40 minute drive for me rather than paying the laughable GWR fare from Swindon. Does seem to attract late night drunks, though.

Went for a quick one-dayer today. Very busy and they'd put an extra relief train on at 0940 from Kidders. Only gripe is that the volunteer catering arrangements aren't all there - no buffet on the train, as the caterer hadn't made it in, and Bewdley tea shop was closed too.

Reverse curves are prone to cause derailments or sticking unless the vehicles can straighten out before taking the opposing curve. I don't know the physics behind it. (Edit: on the 1:1 railway, buffer locking is an issue with close reverse curves and although that is rarely going to happen with tension-lock OO couplers, there are limits with the smaller types now used). Crossovers are "accidental" reverse curves which is why some vehicles derail easily over them, unless you use express points to give a gentle transition.

Does anyone know what radius he's using for that reverse curve where everything prone to sticking gets stuck? Not sure it has the requisite coach length of straight between the curves, either.

That's a reasonable way to do it as long as the plungers don't stick, which they often do.