36C

just thought I'd chip in alongside PoT, as I've also been helping to bring this Island to life in some small manner, particularly with the County of Eastwich, and the lines mapped out thus far in that area are mostly of my own devising a brief bit of geographical context, the county as a whole is rich in peat and coal deposits, which have classically formed some of the primary industries in the region, with these most concentrated in the twin peninsulas of Castrum Head and the Mostad Peninsula. The neck of the Mostad peninsula, known locally as The Drifts is not entirely stable ground, laying extremely close to sea level in a sort of shallow valley, and can best be described as a saltwater delta or even a bayou akin to those found in the southern United States, there are a few scant settlements in this region, but they can be described as little more than loose communes of stilted shacks built in relatively close proximity to each other. As can be expected this makes reaching the Mostad peninsula a less than simple task. Two lines directly cross this region in piers; the standard gauge County Eastwich Railway mainline to Sigda Ind, and the 2ft 6in gauge Sigda Ind Railway. another 2ft 6in gauge railway, the North-Haven, Laudark & Prestad Railway, avoids much of this region by skirting the Northern edge and proceeding up the northwest coast of the peninsula. after WW2 a project would be undertaken to convert these wooden peirs into stone causways, much like The Cob on the Ffestiniog, and at the same time provision for a main road accompanying the standard gauge line was also provided, finally connecting Mostad with the rest of the country without requiring the use of the railways alone. Eastwich is notable in having an expansive network of narrow gauge lines crisscrossing the county, particularly in the two peninsulas where these lines for the longest time were the primary means of traveling from town to town beyond seldom maintained unofficial pathways. The history can be summed up as follows in the 1700s a number of archaic wagonways of varying gauges sprung up coinciding with the industrial revolution, with gauges varying from 2ft to 3ft 6in. As the mid 1800s rolled around many of these wagonways became brought under the control of a number of private concerns through a series of separated mergers, around this time many of the companies took note that the combined networks were expansive enough to interlink, and so as these wagonway mergers occurred work was also undertaken to standardise to a gauge of 2ft 6in. just to recap, the companies that came about as a result of this were as follows: The Laureyda Railway (Dark Blue, Castrum Peninsula) The North-Haven Bay and Lusager Railway (Orange, Castrum Peninsula) The North-Haven, Laudark, and Prestad Railway (Blue, Mostad peninsula) The East Mostad Railway (Red, Mostad Peninsula) The Hofyorness Cableway (Brown, Mostad Peninsula): this line is a very notable exception in deriving power in much the same way as cable powered trams, with trains propelled by control vehicles marshalled at either end of the train. The Sigda Ind Railroad (dark Blue, Mostad peninsula): heavy influence by an American oil mogul lead to a decidedly North American flavour to the rolling stock on this line the County Eastwich railway (denoted through thick green lines and dotted purple lines) the Nestad Military Railway: (Orange, Mostad Peninsula): Tumms Equivalent to Longmoor. in addition there in an 18in industrial line constructed to serve the industries on Ogs Lump. though I'll note that this did not signify any degree of friendliness from ANY of the new companies, and if anything an environment of fierce competition and hostility would develop until reaching a head that I'll get in to later. the County Eastwich railway does require delving into on a deeper level, it started out as a 6ft line, though conversion to standard gauge would follow in due course, in the 1870s it would become subject to a buy out by the North Eastern Railway, which would go on to heavily influence its locomotive fleet with additional batches of NER locomotive designs also being built for the CER. In the 1880s it would undertake the decision to build a heavy duty 2ft 6in gauge line to not only better link the Mostad and Castrum lines, but also increase their reach as far south on the western coast of Eastwich as Stovavik where a large purpose built interchange yard would be constructed. This wasn't to be just some simple back water feeder line, it was designed from the outset as a full mainline, albeit running on narrow gauge track, with full signalling and timetables along with the introduction of transporter wagons to allow standard gauge rolling stock to be carried well beyond the reach of the main SG network. This coastal route was built in stages, with the Laureyda Railway reached and the entire northern Eastwich narrow gauge network linked together in 1901, extended again to meet up with the CER's secondary standard gauge terminus at Olenneyri in 1907, with the first train officially reaching Stovavik in April of 1913, just in time to see the beginning of the Great War. the Great War would prove to be the powder keg that would set off a long standing tension between the many narrow gauge companies, particularly in the isolated Mostad peninsula. Up until this point the companies had ran to their own timetables and relations ranged from cold indifference to outright hostility, with incidents of not just tools or fuel being stolen from the sheds of opposing companies, but sometimes wagons, coaches, and even in a few rare cases locomotives would be commandeered and quickly repainted, in many cases the retaliatory actions of the affected company simply being to steal different but equivalent items out of spite rather than seek legal action, in fact the entire situation was exacerbated by the fact that the NHL&PR was secretly funded by coastal smuggling operations in the area, and was quick to resort to utilising similar tactics on its railway front. this would all come to a head in 1915 after a rail disaster at Mostad Ogs, which I'll describe breifly as two separate termini built on the same patch of land with their own separate servicing facilities and yards and linked by a single diamond crossing at the throat, in which a breakdown in communication lead to two passenger trains colliding at the throat of the joint terminus, and subsequently employees from both the NHL&PR and the EMR descended from the nearby railway buildings intent on finding the blame for the accident through an all out brawl whilst many dazed and injured passengers were left to look on in bewilderment. By this point the Tumm Government was well and truly aware of just what had been going on, and its solution was as effective as it was vindictive. In no uncertain terms it gave the Country Eastwich Railway permission to use its sheer clout to perform a hostile takeover of the two offending companies, followed by a series of further buyouts of the remaining companies in quick succession, at the same time purging the employees seen as the largest perpetrators of hostilities between the companies. simultaneously the Tumm government loaned the use of trainees from the Nestad Military Railway to oversee operations on the offending companies until such a time as new staff could be employed to refill the ranks. The result of all of this was that by the end of WW1 the entire narrow gauge network had fallen under the control of the County Eastwich Railway, who now had the monumental task ahead of trying to rationalise this newly expanded fleet, a task which was made even more difficult due to the company coming under the control of the newly amalgamated LNER on the mainland and deciding the spin off the narrow gauge operations from its own organisation, thus the standard gauge remained as the CER, whilst the new seperated network became the Eastwich & Peninsula Narrow Gauge Railway, or simply E&P on rolling stock. the County Eastwich Railway would remain under LNER control, with the motive power solution simply being to send over redundant pre-grouping designs to the CER network to meet whatever motive power needs were particularly pressing at the time, as the already cash strapped LNER didn't particularly have the capital to justify entirely seperate new locomotive batches, until 1939 when the CER would be brought under the control of the nationalised Isle of Tumm Railways. the E&P would find itself struggling through much of the 20s and continuing into the 30s as the Great Depression hit, with its motive power scheme simply being to build new locomotives for the ex-CER mainline and trickle down redundant, yet still usable, classes to the other parts of the network, before it too would become nationalised in 1939, merging with the 2ft 6in third rail electrified Isle Of Tumm Central Narrow Gauge Railway to become simply the Isle of Tumm Narrow Gauge Railways, denoted on rolling stock as the simple initials of TNG. I'm taking the decision to end the outline here to save dumping all of the information at once, and in the next large post I shall delve into the Isle of Tumm Central NGR along with the Nationalised TNG.

what's the progress on this project? I for one am very interested in the prospect of printing one out in parts to make a D9 in 7mm scale

If you model the London underground surface lines, take this, separate the announcements and have them play on shuffle at random. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kaNc_j8eE given the language used it's probably best confined to the home layout to amuse visiting friends, rather than implimented on an exhibition layout during a family friendly show

The things we believe in - Orden Ogan

the mention of dice brings to mind some of the humorous stories I heard from those playing DND, where the rolled number on a D20 dice from 1 to 20 signifies the level of success in a given roll, rolling a 1 usually ends you up in an equally misfortunate and humorous situation. "Operator rolls a nat-1: the class 55 waiting to roll off shed to join its train suffers a crankcase failure and chucks a piston head through the roof of the loco, which sails over the yard and eventually comes to rest in the inspectors office, roughly in the space his desk used to occupy"

I think people buy inaccurate new releases for the same reason that Lima/Hornby-Railroad tollings still tend to crop up on this forum fairly frequently, because more often than not they still offer a very decent foundation for applying aftermarket detailing components and other modifications. and in the end you finish with something unique and highly personal that you can be proud to show to your fellow modellers, rather than simply taking it out of the box and plonking it on the track from new. I very recently bought two Lima locos, a 31 and a 37 for the combined price of £70, certainly not going to complain when a single brand new equivalent would be worth more than the price of both. my intention right from the start was to obtain them with the expressed purpose of detailing and improving them to suit my own needs as a first major modelling project. I don't quite have the funds yet to take the next step so they'll have to remain in their rather nice Transrail liveries for the time, but in time they will receive Hornby-Railroad chassis as upgrades and have their bodies extensively detailed and repainted.