[It's Alive!]

This is quite inspiring. I've always wanted to built a layout based on the Rev. W. Awdry's Ffarquhar layout. I even once went as far as designing a single-garage sized layout that included Elsbridge and Anopha Quarry.

[In The Beginning...]

A couple of curved points will help you make a decent-length run-around.

[Home brew handheld controller (DC)]

Is there a drawing which shows how to make this circuit on a piece of copper strip-board (veroboard)? I'm interested in making one of these.

[Automatic couplings - weighing up the cost of conversion?]

You don't have to convert everything at once. Have a few wagons with one type of coupling at each end until you have converted all of them over. At least then you will still be able to run all of your rolling stock, even if you have to have a match-truck in between.

 

There is precedence for this too, though not in England. The Standard-gauge New South Wales Government Railways went on a program of converting from 3-link hook drawgear to automatic couplings that ended up taking some 40 years. There were vehicles with hook drawgear and buffers, vehicles with automatic couplings and buffers and then other with automatic couplings and no buffers. It was possible to couple a vehicle with buffers and automatic couplings to another with hook draw gear and buffers using a "transition link" (a D-shackle with a couple of links which would attack to the automatic coupling) I have a photo somewhere of a locomotive hauling 3 trucks and a carriage and two of the trucks were there to act as match-trucks!

[Father Dougals track plan]

Have you thought about having a sector-plate fiddle-yard? You could squeeze a little more room into the run-around loop by eliminating one point at the fiddle-yard end. Better still, you could model the V-crossing (frog) of the point but not the point blades to suggest the presence of a point, but have it hidden behind some scenery. (A picture here would be worth a thousand words if I could find one to illustrate what I mean.)