Harlequin

Head of the Welsh Mafia: Dai Corleone 😆

If the quad tracks are arranged Up Slow, Up Fast, Down Fast, Down Slow, then the station layout and the fiddle yard layout are a bit easier. You can avoid one set of crossovers on entry/exit to the fiddle yard if the storage loops are themselves crossovers. The downside of that is that you can't then use them to allow circulating trains to run through so you need separate running lines passing through the FY and that means reducing the number of loops. But it still may be worth doing if the entrance/exit pointwork gets too big - that's the sort of compromise I mentioned earlier. I've done this before with double track layout but never with quad track. I'll try to do a schematic. Edit: Here it is: Red and Blue are the main running lines. The storage loops are Green. You can see that a train can leave from any storage loop and get onto the correct running line in either direction. The red and blue crossovers are needed to allow the Slow outer lines to connect to the storage loops. They could be part of the scene and so are outside the grey dashed fiddle yard box. The black crossovers allow trains to enter the storage loops and because they are facing and connecting Down Fast to Up Fast they are less likely to be prototypical and so are inside the fiddle yard box. Note that slow trains have to cross the fast lines to enter or exit the storage loops - but that is unavoidable. Normally I would have trailed the storage loops directly into the running lines (the fast running lines in this case) but this in this version the loops connect into a single line that then trails into the running line, for less interference with main line running.

Everyone, meet "Laddie": He's an Abyssinian of uncertain origins. He has the golden sandy colour with ticking of a "usual" but also some stripes that suggest there's a bit of tabby in him. He's very friendly and talkative but he's a big unit and he lived on the mean streets of Cardiff for a few months. You can see he's the sort of cat who can look after himself. I can't call him "Laddie" forever, though. He needs a suitable name. "Jones"? "Ponsonby"? "Taffy"? "Denzil"? Maybe something more leonine? Any good suggestions?

Your experience doesn't seem to tally with other people's. Doesn't the diecast boiler count for anything? And the chunky diecast weight in the tender? It's not a lightweight loco! Did you see the video of an Accurascale Manor hauling goodness knows how many coaches (30?) on an outdoor layout? Why is your Manor so different to that? How many wagons in your mixed goods?

Don’t do anything to the unifrog turnouts! They are already set up how you want straight out of the packet. That’s the whole point (hoho) of unifrog.

There are retired well off people entering the market with very little rolling stock, and eager to buy the new models, at the same time as people who've been buying for years are thinking twice about new purchases. I'm sure the manufacturers have considered all that in their market research.

Ah, yes. I forgot about that and my suggestion used two curved turnouts. Double slips also inject straightness where you really want curves. Have you considered using British FInescale turnouts? They are kits that use Code 75 bullhead rail and are quite easy to put together by all accounts. One big advantage is that although the turnouts are supplied as straight they can be flexed to become curved fairly readily.

@Jabee I may have missed something but I don't think you've said which of the three lines would be the main fast lines and which would be the relief line? Having the third line bi-directional is very unusual in the real world, AFAIK, and will cause more problems on entry and exit to the fiddle yard. I think you have the room to do 4 tracks all the way around, if you want, and then the running direction of each could be fixed, which would make the station and the FY easier to set out. The four tracks would be close through the station but could become separated, and even run at slightly different levels, to break down the impact in the countryside. The FY entry and exit could be made more manageable by limiting the connections between the running lines and the storage loops. Have a look at "East Mumbleton" in my track plans album. That is a 4-track "race-course" for watching the trains run and repeatedly pass each other. It was made easier by not having a fiddle yard.

This kind of pointwork is a very good reason for not having 4 running tracks - or not having an everything-joins-to-everything fiddleyard. Some compromise will probably be needed.

That's very sad for anyone interested in authenticity. Thank goodness for the multiplicity of manufacturers in the market who take different views!

There is.

Here's an idea for a relatively quiet station but with operating potential. The private siding is off the main line. Building in front to deliberately hide the wagons but could be on the other side. To deliver wagons you have to run round in the station. Long run round loop. (There isn’t enough room for loop beyond platform.) Uses the spurs off the run round to do useful jobs: Cattle pens and loading bank. Small goods shed for visual balance. Simple long goods siding where you would allocate slots for company wagons. Shunting should be interesting. If you add much more then things do start to feel cramped, IMHO.

The best solution has probably been suggested but for information the modern solution for voltage control is Step down voltage converters: Quite cheap, small, very efficient, adjustable. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buck-Converter/s?k=Buck+Converter

If you allow the track to get close to the backscene then it's difficult to disguise the join between the ground and the sky behind it. The only real options are a brick wall or a tall wooden fence. Would those things fit in your proposed location? A BLT in a restricted space like this always tends towards a standard plan. The temptation to add bays and kickbacks is hard to resist but if you wanted to evoke a really quiet rural location on an impecunious railway less is definitely more. You could simplify it right down to just platform, run round loop, goods siding and maybe a small spur somewhere for a cattle dock. (The goods shed doesn't have to be a big fancy over-the-rails type - just a tin shed on a wooden platform beside the goods siding would be enough.) If you did that then the trackplan would have room to breath.

The even more irritating truth is that they are satisfying demand from us, the customers. They only make what they think they can sell, after all. So sadly it appears that there is greater demand for esoteric novelties than workhorses, at the moment. In the GWR arena The Great Bear could, I suppose, be characterised as a "novelty workhorse" but I think it would have very limited appeal because of its restricted route availability, short lifetime as a 4-6-2 and even Churchward didn't like it.

Remember what a hash Heljan made of the 47XX… We should maybe consider ourselves lucky! 😉

Here's a photo showing the new GWR locomotive green of Caldicot Castle compared to others: From left to right: Lode Star (most recent version) Caldicot Castle Tintagel Castle (older version) You might spot another disappointing omission from Caldicot: No top lamp iron. Should be on top of the smokebox on this model but nothing there nor on the smokebox door... Edit: The brass beading on the splashers is present but is much finer than on previous models. That's great but when you look closely the beading on the front corner of the cab has not been picked out as brass strip, as it should have been.

Someone at the Beeb realised the original picture was not quite right - they've changed it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspernstraße_station

I received Caldicot Castle today! Haven't had time to run it yet but it does have a very different rendition of loco green than previous castles and the oil pipe cover is missing, as we feared. The loco box is larger than usual with black foam around the "ice cube". That was inside a slightly bigger Hornby box with foam ends and that was inside an even bigger box from Derails with foam corners and a lot of shredded newspaper (and a packet of biscuits). No chance of this loco being damaged in transit! 😃 I'll check out the new 21-pin decoder socket in the tender later.

You've got two methods of alignment, the clips and the slot in the surface. Might be simpler to avoid the slot, just set the "cassette table" at the level of the bottom of the slot. Then it's really easy to slide cassettes around to make up the train at the front. The less often you have to lift cassettes the safer their contents! The cassette table surface can be made from an offcut of kitchen work surface or a melamine-faced shelf board, for example, to help the cassettes slide around more easily.

I broadly agree but I think there is a bit of a market for a newly tooled Castle: Returnees to the hobby who are seeing the latest "Hi-Fi" models from Dapol, Rapido, Accurascale, etc. would much rather buy a Castle up to those standards than shell out £200 for a 13 year old tooling from Hornby. (Especially when H leave off fundamental details that were on every class member and have been on every previous iteration of the model except this newest one...) This year, the Centenary year of the Castles, would have been a great marketing opportunity but sadly it has been missed.

Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party but if you're going to be drilling lots of holes for screws that implies you are going to be driving in a lot of screws, right? So wouldn't a little drill/driver be more appropriate than a Dremel style tool? They usually have torque adjustment so that you can drive screws just tight enough without grinding out the tops and they have a nice pistol grip that's much easier to hold and push than a Dremel.

😞 Perhaps this is something that @Tony Wright could mention, being the forthright reviewer that he is.

Yes, very odd. The blisters seem to be separate parts on my existing Castles (and Stars and Kings) so we can hope that it's an omission unique to this particular model... Either a manufacturing error in an early sample or perhaps it's fallen off?