Nearholmer

Its a real pity that battery technology made so little progress during the first wave of electric road vehicles, while i.c. rapidly overtook it, because there was brief period c1095-10 when battery-electric was a serious contender against i.c.. Indeed I think there may actually have been a very short period within that when there were more battery-electric vehicles on the road than i.c.. If anyone wants a history of the first wave of EVs, "The Electric Vehicle" by Gils Mom is the one to look for - a bit hard going because it seems to be a direct uplift of an MSc dissertation or Ph

The coach livery is interesting, LSWR/L&Y-ish. Were RVR/KESR coaches really painted like that, or is it just what the colourist had on their palette from last time?

Lifting flaps on curves. Two choices: - put masses and masses of care and effort into getting it right; or, - suffer a life of frustrated disappointment. The number of people with the skills and knowledge to achieve the first are very few (me excluded until recently - after two failed attempts I could probably achive it now); RMWeb is littered with examples of the latter, including one or two very expensive and time-consuming disappointments. Mr Grumpy will know which camp he falls into, I guess.

They were content with very low powers (=speeds) at that stage. The very earliest i.c. powered vehicles were the same, powers <5hp, but provided the transmission didn't turn too much of it into wear, warmth, and whirring-noises, it was all OK, because they were replacing 1hp horses, which got tired and has to have a rest, which these engines didn't. We could save a heck of a lot of fuel if we went "backwards" to slow vehicles of very low power for urban transport especially - the paradigm of rushing at high speeds between traffic-lights or congestion-points is insane.

It works fine on multi-section, dowel and bolted together, I’ve done it even in HOe with code 55 rail; where it all becomes really difficult is on lifting flaps.

Yes!!! Unless you are able to maintain iron-hard fixture of everything against immovable datums (data?), all the clever stuff with curved or angled track is a recipe for annoyance. Why? Because the tiniest movement due to expansion, contraction, or settlement over time causes misalignment. Anything involving wood that has to maintain a +/- 0.5mm tolerance is bound to be tricky.

At some stage, our largest liner, RMS Queen Elizabeth, got confiscated by my mother, because one of us decided that it made a useful dagger when indulging in the sort of temper-fueled hand-to-hand combat that only brothers can have. I got it back some time later, and had to make new funnels for it - I think the first set got snapped off to make it easier to wield!

regarding the terminal station, do try to make sure you can run-round without needing to touch the main line, and ideally try to be able to move a loco between roads and onto a train in the bay without touching the main line - the little trap-neck that Zomboid has provided in his version makes a huge difference to operability.

Presumably some sort of inter-modal vehicle, about to be driven down a ramp onto a rowing boat, transforming the latter into a steam-launch. If you look carefully, it also has hitches to allow a balloon to be tethered to it, the exhaust providing hot gasses, and hence lift, and the wheels somehow being connected to a shaft to drive propellers. Did you know that the Mercedes three-pointed star originated that way? Daimler created it as a symbol to indicate that his engine could drive transport in the air (top point), on land, and on water (the lower two points).

The thing about RCH diagrams is that, although they show very neatly who owned what, they don't show who ran where, so Kew Gardens was on an entirely L&SWR owned line, yet had all those different trains running through it. BTW, I missed the Midland from the list, although their service to Richmond was very short-lived, and I can't recall without checking which of the others it overlapped in time with.

Thanks. So, we can say that they were not far off "light admiralty grey", or "battleship grey". Its a really boring livery by comparison with most of the other not-aluminium ones, isnt it?

Interesting. That wasn't actually the one I was thinking of, which was over near Gillingham IIRC. It wasnt near the railway, and I assume they shuttled stuff to the goods-yard by lorry.

Well Mr Grumpy, looks like you are building my coarse-0 layout in 00! Mine even began with a curved platform on the main, which I decided I didn't like. I’ve had exactly the same conundrum at the station throat as you have (which I resolved by shortening the platform to avoid running-round interfering with circulation on the main), and have a short single-track section, before splitting again, and that bit still doesn’t feel right. Once I get some spare time (home-school during lockdown is keeping me very busy indeed!), I intend to change it so that it forms s

I was thinking a lot longer ago than that. There was also a soup and tinned-fruit factory at the back of the Medway towns, I can’t remember exactly where, which sent goods by rail to Scotland.

If we are talking pre-grouping, the modest station at Kew Gardens must take a biscuit: LSWR; NLR; GWR; District; and Met. passenger services. Which ones were operating, and to/from where, varied over time, but there were periods when all five companies served this two-platform wayside station. The suburbs south and south west of London were rich territory if you include goods and coal, because of the number of through trains from the MR, GNR, etc., some by agreement, some by running powers. LNWR and GER passenger trains to Croydon are interesting too.