the black knight

only 2 days, a good line up of layouts for this year. TBK

I was chatting with one of the CHMRC member and they were telling me this was going to be at their show this weekend.

hi, sorry for the big gap, been busy. after testing and building a couple of wagons and a high level class 03 chassis kit (i ended up getting this instead of the 9f after hayfield post). I had mixed results with my testing of gauge widening track and after reading a couple of posts on EM vs P4, I've chosen EM. for what im trying to achieve and the limit space i have, EM is close enough for me. thanks all for helping. TBK.

Hi, I've checked the track plan and realising the 9f will go if only using the outer sidings of the inside and outside loops and the 2 outer sidings of the exchange yard without needing to go below 1000mm. all the points on the scenic are about 1000mm-1200mm diverge. it just the fiddle yard. where the point are 750mm diverge. I've drawn some etches of various track widening gauges and I've bought some rail + PCB and a 9f chassis kit. soo I'm waiting for them to arrive. also going to start converting some locos to P4 to test. thanks for the info hayfield. TBK.

putting my mind at rest a bit, reading up again on gauge widening on the scale4 forum and taking info here, as long as i give at least 0.8mm sideplay on the wheels except the ones behind the slide bar and widen accordingly the check rail gap, it should be possible. i think the best i can do is just gonna go for it and buy chassis kit of a 9f and build some points and see if it will work....reliably. thank you all. TBK.

sorry should add the colliery sits above the fiddle yard. TBK.

I've read around the scalefour forums and gauge widening seems mainly on just plain track not points and also side play on the locos, my interest in p4 is aesthetics and challenge of the locos and track (and having CSB on the locos) , i do enjoy the building the stock and watching them go around or shunt. i would like to use 3 link but i have been looking at sprat & winkle. I've had a look at em-sf and it looks a good compromise between the two for looks and reliability. I'm happy to build the track. so i should compromise and go for em+em-sf. the reason for the question is I designed a layout simple twin track Roundy with and 3 lane exchange + small colliery. and i got the curve and points to be about 1000mm minimum on the mainline track but in the fiddle yard + exchange yard i couldn't get them to work unless i dropped down the curve point is 1200mm outer radius and 749mm inner radius ,B switch,V8 frog The space I've got is 14x9 with a train lengths of 9f with 12 20t hopper+ brakevan. 9f would be the biggest loco with others being typical LNER freight locos etc... but i am mainly concentrating on industrial locos. hopefully that explains something. thank you. TBK.

hi all, I've been pondering about modelling P4 for a bit now and tried to read up on it, I've converted a couple of wagons shorts wb and lner 20t plate wagon these are compensated, but my main problem I've designed a layout and I've had to add couple curve point in, and i want to shunt through the points not just pulling, and the inner radius is aprx 700mm. my interest is industrial locos but i want to model a coupe of main line loco the biggest loco is a 9f. I know there problems already there for some locos but is a 9f going to work or with reliability an issues and compromising so much(loco and track). should i just do EM gauge? I'm modelling N.E 50/60s, so quite a few longer wb stock. hopefully someone can understand what I'm saying (sorry). TBK.

its good to see some buildings and scenery on your layout, it's really coming together. I must say it's always interesting watching stock go over the branch line and I see some more rough proper trackwork on your micro layout as well.

just helping a fellow modeller. they are looking nice, actually helped me a quite abit, as im trying a new cad program.