Harlequin

"What are you looking at?" "You didn't want to use this warm damp compost you just put here, did you?"

No, but I'll give it a try! You may have solved two problems at once: What to do with the annual courgette glut and how to satisfy the cats endless appetite cheaply and healthily.

Ah, I see. Fair enough - and it makes more sense with the revised FY you show above. Sounds good. (The station looks a lot better without that bay!)

Has he got them close-coupled and are his track radii small?

I think the goods yard is too fiddly - too many short sidings with unnatural wiggles to fit them in. The "bay" siding makes the main line platform shorter than it could be. If the goods yard were just two or three long sidings it would be much more usable and more interesting to shunt. @Chimer is right that the double track into the tunnel on the right is weird: The inner track is really a headshunt for the goods yard but it's connected to the FY. At a small station like this, as Chris has said above, it's unlikely that a headshunt would have been provided but sometimes they were and in the model it would allow you to shunt the yard while something circulates on the main line. So you can justify it but then it seems odd to build a double track tunnel to accommodate a headshunt. You could maybe say that it was originally double track and the line has since been singled and that side retained as a headshunt...? But I agree with Chris that it would be simpler and more typical to keep it single track all round with no headshunt. And the facing siding bottom left niggles me for the same reasons. It's not typical in the prototype and has to be specially justified. Obviously you need to maximise the use of the space in this plan so you could: Where the end curves are hidden and the tunnel mouth is reasonably within the scenic area, move the curves as close to the edges as possible to maximise the length of the station and the FY. Add a thin extension to the front of the baseboard(s) to give you more options. You could place a platform (with station building) for the outside loop on it or use it to widen the oval or add a siding. BTW: How are you going to get at the FY? The photo on the first page shows panels fixed to the back and sides of the baseboards.

It's somewhere in a parallel universe that happens to have the name "Helston".

Yes. Why can they not be bothered to do a decent render of their CAD? It’s really easy and they’ve had ages to do something that would promote the model much better than this carp. It shows a lax attitude that probably permeates everything they do.

A bit like this, then: I only issue three commands here: Whistle, Lift the regulator, Close the regulator.

New lamps and lenses:

Hi all, I've been slowly working on one of these kits with the aim of making a generic 1930s GWR station building. It's gone together really nicely and I'm coming to the end of the build with only a few minor issues to fix before detailing. (At least, I thought that was the case before I took photos to post here. The camera is a harsh critic!) I have followed the "GWR Structure Colours" book closely to get the colour scheme right but I'm making use of the latitude that was allowed/applied in the prototype in a few places. (Roof not painted yet.) There are some gaps to fill on the corners of the building: Given that this is a laser-cut ply kit, what sort of filler would you recommend, folks? Polyfilla? DIY wood filler? Or something more specialised? I would like to fix a representative set of timetables and advertising posters to the walls. They will ideally fit in the poster frames supplied as part of the kit. That means they need to be thin. Who makes the best GWR 1930s posters in your experience?

I always used a tiny dot of superglue when I was fitting the Modelu self-adhesive lenses, because I didn't trust the adhesive and because half the time I'd left the adhesive on the backing anyway! Having said that, the last batch of lamps I got from Modelu had a different type of lens. Maybe they realised those self-adhesive ones were problematic. P.S. Great shots from inside the scene, John!

End loading banks were provided at many stations. They're just a normal part of the infrastructure so they don't get special mentions. I don't think they had a specific purpose - they are just for general access to load/unload low trolley wagons or van or wagons that open at the end. (End loading at Fairford is provided on a short kick-back spur from the goods loop, which angles slightly but still requires the rear corner of the signal box to be cut away to provide access!) All drawings in "Branch Line Termini" are 4mm scale.

You will have to program whatever decoder you use to control the loco's functions.

Ignorance. And when self-proclaimed experts get basic stuff like this wrong you have to wonder what else they got wrong...

As you say, usual stuff. Look for 4mm depot plans around 6ft 10ins long and scale up. There must be hundreds.

Watlington isn't mentioned in the allocations table for the SRMs or the service listings for 1911 in Lewis.

As far as I can tell, the Lewis SRM book doesn't say anything about special facilities away from the main sheds. It does confirm that in 1911 No.96 was shedded at Helston (there were earlier allocations to Helston) and that it ran this weekday service: Helston, Gwinear Road, Redruth, Camborne, Truro, Camborne, Redruth, Penzance, Redruth, Gwinear Road, Helston (and Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays added one final return trip Gwinear Road, Helston). Lewis also doesn't say anything conclusive about coaling the SRMs. Either shovelling coal onto the floor or using sacks to transfer coal into the bunker. A while back there was talk on here about short platforms that can be seen in some photos that were obviously not for passengers and the thought was that they were designed for coaling SRMs - possibly using large wicker baskets. Thinking about that, I have a vague recollection that you thought there was something odd about the coaling facilities at Helston - am I right??? Could that have been changed to suit the SRM as well? Maybe the change of the shed connection from the run round loop to the platform line could also be partly explained by the need for the SRM to run in there for coaling?

Yep, I agree. The instructions look like a very conservative update of the previous code 75 version. They could at least have provided separate DCC and DC instructions. I don’t think that would have been too confusing.

The discussion here is specifically about unifrog slips and whether they can be laid with metal joiners before you have decided whether to power the frogs or not. The big advantage of unifrog turnouts is that they can be laid in that way and I’m a bit suspicious of Peco’s diagram above because it doesn’t show the electrical breaks within the part which are fundamental to the unifrog concept.

Tonight on Channel 4 at 8PM: George Clark's Remarkable Renovations Series 3 Ep 5. "It's full steam ahead in Gloucestershire, as Marcus and Kathryn convert a derelict railway goods shed. Can they transform it into their dream family home?"

Here's Bruno watching a tattered butterfly that was trapped in the greenhouse: He's mellowing out gradually. When I picked him up today he actually relaxed and purred!

The first Dapol large prairies gave some people problems because the rear pony truck was too highly sprung and didn't have enough travel. So it tended to lift the drivers off the track and that was amplified on track that wasn't perfectly level. Dapol say they have fixed this for the next batch, which includes the old square drop-ended 31xx that would be perfect for hauling M&C toplights if it has good traction this time. But will they paint the black parts black or grey on this new batch???...

Yes, BUT... If you rely on the track joiners to transmit power around the entire layout it might be unreliable because they might be loose, they might tarnish. It's recommended to have a few power feeds in strategic locations. Because the layout will be DC if you ever want to run a second loco you will need a way to isolate one while you run the other. Yes. Yes.

That's a backwards step, I think, but hey it's a step in the process. The formation at the bottom doesn't look realistic. The sidings are still too short. The tracks bottom right are too close together so that long vehicles will hit each other. The platforms are a bit odd because the island gives you two platform faces so what does the third, inner one do? When you say "fold line" are you thinking about the two boards being hinged in some way? Have a look at "GW Adventure" in my track plans album because it's similar to what you're trying to do and might give you some ideas. There's a tree-line ridge along the centre to create two different scenes and give trains somewhere to go to and come from, as someone talked about above. It could be done in Code75 but not bullhead because it uses curved and short turnouts.

Sorry but I don't understand what you're driving at. The frogs are isolated in the double-slips in the same way and are the only parts that need to change "polarity". All the outgoing rails are permanently wired. Obviously if the frogs are wired up and switched they will be at different "polarities" to the some of the adjacent rails but the routes set by the points will have the correct "polarity" throughout. This is getting a bit Off Topic and DCB's notes about wiring up Unifrog turnouts for DC might confuse the OP.