James Parker

Thanks 5944 and Andy, - I must check against my copy of 'a pictorial record of Great Western Coaches!

Re Andreas' question about underlay, for the layout I am currently building I used 0.8mm cork and stuck the trackplan (printed on thick-ish - 200gsm - paper) on top. I would NOT do that again. Basically the sandwich was two 'squishy' and there are several places where I struggled to get good vertical alignment between adjacent track sections. Most of my track joints are 'overlapped' - the base and the rails split at different places - the overlapped joints are fine but just a few at the end of the more complex track formations are not overlapped and these caused trouble. With some fiddling I have made it work, but its an exercise I wont repeat. Others may of course have had better luck.

DG couplings - delay latch fouled by buffer beam I tried to fit my first DG coupling yesterday only to find that, if set up using the jig, the delay latch was fouled by the buffer beam. Taking some measurements on the jig, the delay latch hinge ends up 2mm to the rear of the front of the buffers whereas buffers on my B set are a shade under 2mm long and the buffer beam is bowed out. Obviously I can easily fix this by moving the coupling 'forward' a bit, albeit ar the expense of an increased separation between the stock, or by notching the buffer beam, but are there any pearls of wisdom I should be aware of regarding locating DGs?

Thanks for all the answers, it makes me realise how much I don't know. There is a story for Helston (on the Helston branch website I think) that one technique for running round passenger stock, when the run round loop was full with wagons, was to push the coaches back out of the station up the incline, put the brake on, withdraw the loco into the loco shed and then let the coaches run down the hill back into the station under gravity controlling them with the brake. The engine could then simply be reversed out of the loco shed onto the front of the coaches. Presumably this was done, if at all, without passengers onboard. Its a great story, I have no idea if its true, and nor have I any idea how to model it (in 2mm finescale) other than the obvious one of building a coach with a fully driven bogie, which seems a bit excessive. It would make a nice trick for a model though!

PS. I built my points using easitrak, gluing the sleepers to 10thou plasticard, with the printed out templot plan underneath the plasticard. This is made up on a sheet of glass. The plasticard stays with the point and is glued to the baseboard, all of which improves the robustness no end. During construction you can just see through the plasticard sufficiently to follow the plan, occasionally referring to a separate printout where things are a bit 'busy', or holding the glass up to the light so that it shines through (Ok ideally this should be done on a light table - but I don't have one) I have done pcb point construction in the distant past (and I still use it for track in my fiddle yard) but the appearance of easitrak is so much better. I would personally say that constructing points from scratch in easitrak is roughly the same difficulty as constructing them from pcb sleepers, but that depends of course on your soldering skills as compared to your skills with threading miniscule chairs onto rail where its barely possible to tell which is the right way up! For me it was making the crossings and 'planing' the switches that were the most difficult part, and that's the same whether you use PCB or easitrak. Sadly none of my crossings were available pre-built from the shop (I needed 1:8 and 1:10 whereas the shop sells 1:6, 7 and 9); a wider range of milled crossings would be a real bonus, but I quite understand why its not economical to produce them.

Mike, Im a newbie relative to many of those posting here, but I have had experience of fitting points to a prototype plan (Helston GWR if you are interested - has just 8 turnouts five of which are curved on both roads and two of which more or less merge into each other). What I did was start with a 1:40 plan I picked up from somewhere which, for good measure, I also overlaid onto the OS 6inch map (which you clearly have) so I could cross check them. I then scanned the the plan to a jpeg and imported it as a background into Templot. It was the first time I had ever used Templot and its not an easy tool, however the videos on the 2mm Youtube channel (which weren't available at the time) look good. To start with its quite easy to get the crossing angle from the plan (or the 6in OS map) by simply measuring it, which gives you a good start. Once you have that its a lot of messing around with curve radii to get the alignments to work. This is a bit tedious but Id much rather be messing around with curve radii on a computer than building and rebuilding points which look right, but when you actually come to butt them up, don't quite align properly. To be honest I really couldn't imagine getting things to fit properly even on the relatively relaxed geometry that is Helston without Templot (or some similar tool) so its definitely IMHO the way to go if you want to come close to matching what appears to be a very complex geometry without having ugly kinks where transitions between components aren't quite properly aligned. A trick I found useful with a series of points where both roads are curved was first to draw them as overlaid pieces of curved track. This helps work you to visualise the alignments between the various sections first and also shows up where the plan is probably wrong. Whether you then build a point over the top or change the curve into a point is up to you (I did a mixture). It took many, many hours and several false starts to get a flow of curve that I was happy with and which was sufficiently close to overlaying the plan that I felt reasonably confident that it matched the prototype, but the effort was well worth it and, as I say, far better than building points which then don't align properly with each other when placed on the track plan.

Thanks for all the info and particularly pointing out the 1948 picture, somehow Id missed the lever. It seems a bit odd still, just beyond ('up' the line) is a signalman controlled catch point. I estimate there is enough space for a loco and maybe one waggon between the hand operated point and the catch point. So, as far as I can work out, any reasonable shunting operation will require the signalman to close the catch point and most likely activate the shunt ahead signal on the main line, effectively forcing the main line to be handed over to the engine crew for the duration of the shunting., whereas had one of the sprung points been hand operated instead, shunting could take place entirely within the yard. I think Im showing my ignorance of prototype working practice here!

In case anyone is interested I have just completed my conversion of the Dapol 57xx Pannier to 2FS, largely following the article in the 2mm scale magazine in 2016. Generally the guide in the magazine worked well but I found that electrical pickup was a real issue. After some investigation this was traced to poor electrical contact between the replacement bushes and the chassis. The bushes were a relatively loose push fit in the chassis and evidently this was insufficient reliably to break through the oxide and or other insulating deposit on the alloy of the chassis. I tried to repair the situation initially with electrically conductive adhesive, which turned out to be a waste of money and time, and eventually resorted to soldering a wire to each bush thus connecting them electrically and running this direct to the motor pick up from the chassis, thus effectively bypassing the bush/chassis electrical interface. Its on the top side of the bushes so invisible when the model is on the track. This fixed the problem entirely and the model now runs smoothly, even better (and down to a very slow speed) with 2x470uF tantalums forming a stay-alive. Now I just need to find a way to disguise the tantalums which are visible (currently in their native yellow/orange livery) through the cab side. Black paint is obviously the first measure, but I'm wondering if I can squeeze in a driver, somewhat cruelly bisected, leaning out of the cab!

I am struggling to interpret just one element of the signal box diagram produced by the signalling record society for Helston (GWR). The diagram is here https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwf/S1195.htm (I wont copy it in case of breach of copyright). The turnout which connects the engine loop and the siding (on the left hand side of the diagram) doesn't show a 'normal' position, isn't labelled 'sprung' and doesn't have a corresponding lever in the box. I cant find any evidence in photos of a ground frame nor any reference to one. So the question is, how was this turnout (and shunting operations in general) worked, particularly in the 1956 layout. Its clear how you get (or rather a train gets) to the engine loop but not how the train gets to the siding, goods shed and places beyond. Do I have to infer a ground frame or is there some mechanism, depicted by the symbol which appears on this diagram only for one turnout, which indicates some other means of operation? 'Signal Box Diagrams of the Great Western and Southern Railways (Pryor) has exactly the same symbology but equally no explanation. Doubtless this is therefore obvious to those with a good knowledge of prototype working practice, but sadly not to me. In reality on my (very, very slowly emerging) model, the turnout does of course have a point servo, so I can do what I want, but I'm keen to understand how the prototype would have been worked.

Has Chris (or indeed anyone else) tried the conversion of the Dapol 57xx to 2mm FS? The thread goes cold after Chris spells out the alternatives so its not clear if anyone got it working (My wife bought me one for Christmas - excellent research on her part - but I now have to decide whether to take it back to the shop for an exchange or put it aside for a future conversion after I finish the 45xx Eveleigh chassis I just bought.) James