Harlequin

You could expand your junction station idea a bit like this: The branch has its own run round loop. This was very common and means branch activities don't affect main line running. The loop is trapped at the country end by a stub siding (which could be longer if it had a useful purpose). The spur at the town end of the loop could be used for end loading? Two long goods sidings that both have useful vehicle access. Both platforms are lengthened by the area shown with dashed outlines. The station building has to move a bit closer to the road. Smooth curves in the branch line run into the bay platform and a nice gentle curve on the end of the platform itself. Extra spacing between branch line and main line. The signalbox is in a new suggested position. The pink section eases the setrack curve to bring the two main running lines closer together where they pass through the station. That helps make things look a bit better and makes the crossover shorter.

I think you’re getting advice about two things: how to make a good train set with play value and how to make a good model railway with some correct railway practices and features. The two things are somewhat conflicting and that’s why the design hasn’t resolved itself yet.

For longer trains you could isolate the pink section and feed it through your auto-reverser:

You're going to need a DCC Stink Generator under the baseboard... 😆

I was thinking of Tiverton but of course Junction also has a bay platform for the branch. Wellington (Salop) had a facing bay platform for the Much Wenlock branch with inclined kickback siding for gravity run round.

I think the admins can change it if you ask them. Whoops sorry, Welchester already said that - and he knows because he used to be a bishop!

Off the top of my head, mainline junction stations with branch bays: Didcot Newbury Exeter St. David's Whitland Tiverton Newton Abbot Bourne End Kemble There are a lot more, I'm sure. It seems to be a common pattern and you can understand why - it avoids all the difficulties that you described above and allows branch trains to connect to main line trains without holding up operations.

Can I ask the OP, why is your user name @GWRSwindon when your focus has always been the GCR?

Exactly. That's probably good enough at 4mm scale!

Possibly silvery grey wood and fluffy green and cream visible between the slats. I think I read somewhere that the Cornish called Cauliflowers "Broccoli" and the "broccoli traffic" was, in fact, cauliflowers being sent up to London... Or did I dream that? Could CAD something up for printing...

The downsides, though, are that it's operationally very simple, there's no real reason to run goods services at all and the historical details only have to be as correct as the preservationists could get them. A model of a preserved railway is almost a model of a model...

The Error 200 thing was probably just a glitch with RMweb - I saw a few other people having different problems around the same time. To use the curved turnout you have to make the inner track have the radius of the curved turnout minus your spacing so that it remains parallel. That does mean that both tracks curvature is opening up but that's not bad thing because it helps transition from straight to the very tight R2 and R3 curves. Then one more thing: because the radii have become greater the whole corner curve probably needs to move down but that should be fine because there's a bit of room around the 5/6 and 9/10 crossovers and they could both be smoother by having one end in the corner curves. Note what folks are saying about track spacing: You need to use setrack spacing (67mm) in the corners to avoid bogie vehicles crashing into each other because of the outswing at the ends and the overhang in the middle. Setrack radii R2 and R3 are naturally 67mm apart. But that spacing looks a bit silly on the straights and won't help with your Streamline crossovers because Streamline's natural spacing is 51mm (2in). So you either have to use Setrack spacing everywhere or transition between the spacings as you approach and leave the corners.

It's an SL-E87, which you already mentioned.

That was the problem with Hornby, though: They could make high quality GWR/WR models when they wanted to but it didn't happen often enough. The good stuff was subsumed by trainsets, gimmicks, lazy reworking of old models and an obsession with the LNER! I used the past tense because I hope that's going to change now!

I must admit I am starting to have doubts about YouChoos. Some of their sounds are not as good as I'd hope and the projects could be cleverer. For example, the Manor project has a very wheezy chuff sound that really doesn't live up to the prototype's reputation for having a good bark and being the loudest steam engine in Britain. The braking sound is really loud and sharp, more like an emergency stop, and we really ought to get the firebox doors opening (the light turning on) before shovelling starts and closing some time afterwards, like other projects do. (Setting aside that sometimes the doors should open and close for each shovelful in some cases.) I'm starting to look further afield but the other suppliers often aren't up to scratch either. 😞

Sounds like there might be a market opportunity here that Wayne @ BritishFinescale might be able to fill and profit from. He has done turnouts in the "OO-SF" (16.2mm) gauge in 4mm scale which has a similar purpose.

Hi Cliff, The curved turnout should help a little bit - and it might be worth using it to squeeze every last inch of platform length you can. Here are three turnouts coming off an R3 curve to create a platform loop: The two brown ones are Peco Streamline Medium radius (best to avoid using Setrack in your main running lines if you can). You can see that the naive solution (left) will give you the shortest platform length. It also looks wrong and introduces a wiggle (called a "reverse curve") that might cause derailments. By changing the right hand turnout for a left hander (middle) you can see you'll get more platform length and both routes through the turnout are smoother. Going one step further and using a Streamline curved left hand turnout (right, green) gains a little bit more platform length. Remember that you can cut track in the real world to make it do what you want.

Neal's post shows the decoder inside the tender body. Do you mean how is it fixed there? In Neal's case, I'm not sure. Black tack? I do something similar. I think it's important to make sure the diaphragm is free to move and to give the sound a clear path out to avoid the bumble-bee-in-a-matchbox sound. I always remove the coal load, cut away the top of the tender and fit a coal-load speaker grille. That has the added advantage that there's more room for the speaker and the bigger the speaker the better (on the whole). Always go for a decoder with 16-bit sound samples if you can - they are audibly better than 8-bit. Here's one of mine:

Tintern is described in Volume 4 of "An Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations". Trackplan, signalling plan, 4 photos and separate plan of the line crossing the bridge, through the tunnel and the old wireworks private siding.

It's a lovely little station plan, with the island platform and the very quirky goods yard. From the map @Fair Oak Junction posted, the distance between the two home signalposts works out as ~1035 feet. That's 4.14m in 4mm scale but some compression is almost always needed. How much space have you got? It would be great if you could include the bridge over the river but maybe that's getting a bit ambitious. I'm looking forward to seeing the plans.

Did Hornby make a full fat Hall, Neal? Edit: I think Colin is saying there was a good Hornby Hall 6-7 years ago but was that a full detail version? Colin? Or is Bachmann the only option if we want a reasonably modern detailed version? Further Edit: I found this about the problems with the Bachmann Halls: A little further down the thread it seems that Hattons didn't respond to the recall and continued to sell the problem versions that they had in stock...

Sorry, I can't help with the perspective correction in Designer because it's a bought-in module. It was supplied through Magix but we have now split away from them, thank goodness!

Some Bachmann Halls had some sort of error at the front end that Bachmann fixed. Not sure what it was. Bachmann also make a “Modified Hall” from the Hawksworth era so be careful when buying.

My final opinion: It's awful. Build it if you want to learn why it's awful but make sure you can re-use the track in a better plan afterwards. If you're truly interested in the hobby then spend some time understanding the basics of how the real railway worked, or works, and study other layout plans (not the rubbish on freetrackplans).

I agree it's interesting but do we have to go over the same ground ad nauseum? Most of the "Hornby froth" is based on what they have done in the past, but we know that their management has changed and they are starting to do things differently! Now is surely the time to wait to see what they do next and judge them on future actions.