Harlequin

Yes, I like both Moor Street and Cheltenham St James. Just pointing out that if the goal is some roundy-round running with some shunting a through station is in many ways a better fit. N gauge makes a return loop much easier to do space-wise than OO but it's just a bit awkward to fit into the scenic parts of a plan. However, if it's in the off-scene area then it's much easier.

On the face of it you'd think 8 thrusts per revolution would make for a smoother ride - although maybe not because it would mean thrusts were not equalised across the frame. I think the practical problem is that the valve timing events offset at 1/8ths would require twice as many return cranks and possibly some separate outside valve gear if rocker arms from the inside were too complicated to set up. Remember that on the GWR four cylinder locos the outside cylinder valves are worked by rocker arms from the inside so their timing is simply the inverse of one of the inside valves.

Four cylinder and two cylinder GWR locos have the same number of chuffs per revolution. Sound projects are often out of sync at first. They can't account for all the loco/gearing combinations they will be used with and in this case it may have been set up for the old batch 1 Moguls where the gear ratio was different. (Sometimes sound project designers simply don't understand the chuffs per revolution of the prototype.)

All GWR engines do it, at least all those with crosshead driven vaccuum pumps. It's a pressure relief valve and should "spit" rather than knock or tap. When it's very loud @The Stationmaster will tell you that it needs some attention. 😉 You can hear it on this video on various engines including 5322. Edit: There should be two "spits" per wheel revolution and your chuff sync is way out - far too may chuffs (and spits) per revolution.

If you want a roundy round then a through station is easier to accommodate than a terminus. It means there's much less need for a return loop, which is space-consuming and usually has to be non-scenic. A through station can still have terminal bays and a goods yard that has to be shunted in exactly the same way.

Exactly. The way to get a warm, dry, stable, energy efficient structure is to have the framing and the structural shell inside the insulation layer and a breather membrane outside of that. (Although I would avoid petrochemical-derived insulation as far as possible.)

I made a shed in my garden to my own design. I designed it to be easy to build, with internal surfaces that I could join things to, well sealed and well insulated. I bought the raw materials from a builder's merchant and put it all together myself apart from pouring the concrete pad and sealing the roof with fibreglass. It wasn't difficult and the result is a really sturdy little building. I then filled it with tools and a workbench rather than a railway... What a mistake! You could do the same, Graham, and all the tools you need to build the shed are the same ones you need to build a railway - so can be more easily justified! (Apart from the nail gun which is a great thing to play with use but only really needed for major building work.)

Building a loco or any engineering structure in CAD is very satisfying in itself and you learn how they were put together and how they worked in some depth. 3D resin printers are getting better and better all the time. Good ones don't break the bank and print much better detail than the methods employed by Shapeways (at the least methods offered for model railway prints). There's still the problem of painting and lining the models to overcome but technology will undoubtedly come along to do that at home too.

Good decision about the goods shed, IMHO. My suggestion would be to ignore the coal sidings and either handle coal in the yard on the goods shed side or pretend that coal is handled at the Malvern Road yard instead. You haven't got room to do them justice and making them kickback would change the station operations significantly. What does the rest of the layout look like? To service a station like this you'll need a capacious fiddle yard. Does the FY continue on straight or does the track turn 90° to reach it?

I got my sound fitted No. 97 "back from the menders" today. The accessories bag is definitely the one I had originally and the loco had the address I'd programmed into it so I extrapolate from that that it really is the same model that I returned due to her developing a "limp" when turning right. A quick run shows that I don't see the limp where the whole body sporadically lifted up when turning right but now the motion obviously has a stiff point in it. Every wheel rotation goes through a point where it slows down then speeds up again, whether turning or running on a straight. And the sound file follows. I'm a bit disappointed but I'll see if there's anything I can do to make it smoother over the next few days.

To quote Douglas Adams: The two philosophers gaped at him. “Bloody hell,” said Majikthise, “now that is what I call thinking. Here, Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?” “Dunno,” said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper; “think our brains must be too highly trained, Majikthise.”

The flyover bridges of the design you found were a nice feature - something you can do in N when you've got plenty of space and something that allows trains to cross in more interesting ways. Shame to lose them. The station is called "Camps Junction" but the two junctions are both a long way away, splitting and rejoining the mainline for no obvious purpose because both branches follow basically the same route. The "branchline station" appears to be on the main line...? It seems a bit odd to have a double track main line passing immediately behind a major station, with no interaction between the two (but I bet that does happen somewhere in the real world). How do passengers get to your island platform with so many tracks either side? Edit: The dumbell format does restrict what you can do a bit and causes the potential reach issues. If you could run some of the tracks completely around the space with a duck-under, lifting section or gate to access the operating well, then I think a layout would flow better with more open curves, easier reach and a more comfortable operating space.

Some weight needs to be embodied in the model for decent pulling power. So perhaps the chassis is more suited to being CNC milled out of metal than 3D Printed. The shapes shown above don't look too complicated for a desktop milling machine.

Really? That's a new one on me! Who are "They" and do they own shares in cat shampoo? 😉 I've never washed any of mine and they've never been smelly but they have been known to jump into the pond by mistake. They made it pretty clear that it was not an experience they wanted to repeat in any form.

It's an MS450.

https://www.rapidonline.com/rapid-slotted-mass-set-with-hanger-brass-500g-52-0083 There's also a 1kg version: https://www.rapidonline.com/rapid-slotted-mass-set-with-hanger-brass-1000g-52-0082

It does after you've mapped the outputs appropriately, which is of course the first thing you would do. But you're right, that process can be difficult and it would help if manufacturers published the functions of their locos in a standardised format along with the "DCC Ready" moniker. BTW: If you're going to do anything more than driving, setting loco addresses and setting accel/deceleration values then using something like JMRI is highly recommended. Otherwise, setting CVs by number is like performing keyhole surgery in the dark.

That exactly illustrates the problem with built-in decoders - someone would always be unhappy with them.

Er, but everyone's definition of "good enough" is different. For me, "Good enough" means Zimo. Could you get a licence to fit Zimo decoders as standard? If some revolutionary new decoder came out that rapidly became the new minimum "good enough" standard then locos with built-in decoders could become albatrosses for their owners. (And any held in stock, too.) A sensible approach that would cover all bases would be to build in a simple decoder but also provide a socket and a means of switching the built-in one out of circuit.

Decoders are not yet at the stage where they're all "good enough" for the average user. Some brands are definitely better at certain tasks than others (and some are unfortunately still rubbish). There's also the question of the ability to change the decoder at home if it fails or if a newer better version is released. (For instance sound playback being upgraded from 8bit to 16bit.) Can't speak for others about the price difference but some would surely see it as another unwanted and annoying technological overhead.

We all have our preferred brands of decoder. How would you ensure that a model was fitted with the brand we want? That's what "DCC Ready" is for.

Is the black actually black this time? Sorry, I had to have a little dig. We will only know if these models are OK when we have them in our own hands.

Think about the railway in a scene, not just some track on a board. Double track around the outside of the baseboards leaves no room for any scenery outside the tracks so it's really difficult to make it look natural - you'll always see the "edge of the world". Leave room for roads and houses, fields, trees, rivers as well as the railway scenery like station buildings, water towers, signal boxes, etc... Facing points in main lines. They were avoided as far as possible on steam/early diesel railways. Complex junctions with diamond crossings connecting the outer circuit to your inner loop. Things like that probably happened in the real world but they would have been very unusual and wouldn't have looked anything like what Setrack forces you to do. (If you were using Streamline you'd have more options.) Wiggles. Try to keep it all as smoooth as possible especially on the main lines. Use the corner curves to start your crossovers, don't wait for the curve to straighten out and then have points that turn outwards again - that's classic trainset stuff. Platform length. Not long enough to look right and any train that’s three coaches or longer (I guess) won't fit without looking silly. Loop around the goods shed with short spur beyond. Fine for processing vans efficiently in the real world but the vans would have been moved by hand with pinch bars. Locos were usually not allowed to run through goods sheds (although it did happen). That makes a loop like that difficult to use realistically in a model. You also need to provide road vehicles access to the goods shed. That can actually be across the loop track at a push but it was most common to keep the road and rail vehicles separate for simplicity and safety.

Hi Dan, It's a classic trainset but it's not realistic. It's very hard for us to comment on trainsets because by definition they can be anything you like. So, if you like it, build it. If you want a more realistic model railway then I suggest you look at some model railway plans and read some books about designing model railways before continuing.

The A/S Manor smokebox has a matt finish which makes it look lighter. The Dapol Mogul's smokebox has the same satin finish as the rest of the black areas on that model and similar to the non-smokebox areas of the A/S Manor - and similar to 99% of GWR loco models we've ever seen. Dapol would be very foolish indeed to try to replicate the different surface finish of the A/S Manor smokebox by greying down their standard satin finish over the entire model - and I don't think that's what they've done. I think they've either chosen to use grey for some other reason that's difficult to understand or it's a factory mistake.