FoxUnpopuli

From the Hornby 'Queen of Scots' train pack - R3402. I managed to pick one up for £200 - some places advertise it cheaper, but not in stock (or not online.)

Clever live frog setup, would work well on something like Z or T gauge (if it doesn't already.)

Wonderful. 813 was a King's Cross loco, renumbered in May 1946, and there's a photo of it on an express freight running north from Finsbury Park in Tuffrey's V2 book. 813 had a plain stovepipe chimney and a U-shaped smoke deflector surrounding the rear of it - don't know if that was unique, but it was certainly unusual.

What brand are these servo-based point motors?

I love the new thread name. I have a potentially really dumb question though... ... I watched the Hornby-Dublo Minories YT vid (and some others from the same person) and I was slightly confused. Why do trains approach and depart on both up and down lines under the bridge... ? Is this a normal/authentic operating practice? I would have thought that unless absolutely necessary, trains 'keep left' both ways - and this actually forms part of the challenge of operating the station. Is this particular case 'rule one' - the operator just playing trains?

Absolutely beautiful.

He's right, and he's wrong. And in some places, he's really wrong. (Someone wrong on the internet, say it ain't so!) Here's my take on it, from basic scientific and materials principles. TL;DR; If you're just going clean and not treat afterwards, use a contact cleaner with an anti-corrosion residue (like CRC or Inox.) But, have you considered using graphite as a conductive and anti-corrosive barrier? TRY NOT TO USE ANYTHING ABRASIVE AT ALL, INCLUDING EMERY CLOTH! Don't use emery cloth, for all gods' sakes. If you need to clean paint off the tracks, just get a piece of wood with a quick spray of your chosen contact cleaner. The soft, fibrous nature of wood will clean the track without (much) abrasion, and you can apply a bit more mechanical force. Nickel silver does oxidise quite well, ostensibly because it contains a fair bit of zinc. Ergo, if you clean the track, it will get 'dirty' (or unconductive) again. The question isn't how much oxide/dirt there is, but how much of the surface creates a conduction path when it's cleaned. The more pitted and scratched the surface is, when you clean it, you can't get the dirt/oxide out of the pits, so your conductivity goes down. Use emery cloth, and you're just creating macro-sized grooves and pits into which all your dirt and oxide collects and it gets harder and harder to get out. Don't do it, kids. Contact cleaners come in all sorts, some better than others. Yes, IPA may not be the best, but that's not because it contains water, it's because it's really good at cleaning the oxide layer off... which means the oxide layer forms afterwards really consistently - compare it to watching an oxide layer form on aluminium after you clean it off with liquid mercury (I'm sure you can find a Youtube of that.) So... how might you get to the point where you don't have to clean your tracks? Well, our Aussie friend told you how you might do it: make a conduction path. So, if you can coat your track in something conductive that doesn't oxidise immediately after it has been cleaned... Graphite: https://www.nmra.org/sites/default/files/sr201802_tooltips.pdf Olivia's Trains do graphite sticks but any soft artist's or woodworker's pencil will do the job. The big downside is that graphite is a lubricant, so if you have gradients, you're in for trouble - so consider it carefully. (Michael Edge says it's not a big deal: "I know all the theoretical arguments about lubrication and difficulty with gradients but my new layout (Wentworth Junction) has 1 in 40 gradients and there's no trouble. Admittedly the trains on the visible part are all banked but there's an equivalent gradient up out of the fiddle yard going the other way and most of the locos have no difficulty lifting 60 wagons in this direction. Never mind the theory - just try it.") You should only be using just enough of it to fill the pores of the metal rail. In theory, your cleaning regimen afterwards is simply a light wipe every so often with a dry cloth, and if you detect poor performance, then get out your contact cleaner (and IPA would be fine) and then re-graphite it again afterwards before that nasty oxygen has a chance to attack the cleaned surface. If you do just want to clean, then after you've done so, simply run a clean dry cloth around as much as you can bear. This polishes the surface - you're trying to provide as smooth a finish as possible so the pits are small and the oxide layer on the top surface is as thin as possible. If you already have scratched track, then try T-cut or Jewellers rouge - as fine an abrasive compound as you can, and then clean it off after with conrtact cleaner or IPA. Again, you're attempting to make the surface as polished as possible. Good luck!

Minories Colonel: Close up of the throat: Considered for my Shed layout: Not entirely in the spirit of the original, but a throat is a throat and Minories is a nice one.

Well, that sucked. All 1000 Saturns sold out in less than 3 minutes.

More doodling. I'm aware this doesn't fulfil some of the original requirements - the triangle or external links. This was me trying to make an internal layout with storage in a more conventional way, while still retaining the signature turntable. The initial seed was using Minories point work to create the three platform format. Next, however, I realised it flipped the whole layout - which is the point all the other requirements went out of the window. I messed around with the throat and surrounding pointwork until I had: The ability to remove empty coaching stock/goods to storage from any platform in only one operation to clear the throat Stabling (and servicing) for 10 small-medium and 3 large locomotives And a close up of the throat: I think there's some fun maneouvers to be had here. Stock from Platforms 1 & 2 can be moved to storage while a train arrives into or departs from Platform 3 if necessary. I've no idea if it's prototypical, but the throat itself (as mentioned) is a compacted and expanded Minories layout. The shed has inlet and outlet crossovers. The inlet is the engine storage stub on the Minories layout, the crossover at SX is a conventional shed outlet, further up track. SX provides a long headshunt for movement and marshalling of ash trains or coal empties. It could go to an industrial or dock area, trains from which would have to move to SE before depatch onto the up line - but goods arriving for that area would have to be backed/shunted onto the up line clear of the (SX) outlet cross over before begin moved into SE - an awkward move. Shed operations could be almost completely independent of the station, turntable movements aside. This shed could despatch light locos onto the up line very easily, or queue locomotives ready for any stock movements loading the platforms ready for despatch. Open question: if all three platforms were loaded ready for despatch, would the signalbox release three engines together onto the up line, then have them backing onto their consists one by one?

A replacement motor is between £2 and £8 (Lendons have them at £2, no-one appears to have them in stock.) X6442 is the part number you want in case you don't have the service sheet to hand. Me personally, I'd try a bit of brutality with it. It could have gotten a bit cruddy on the commutator inside. As it's a can motor, you're never quite certain how well it's going to go back together if you try to pry it apart... but you could try to flood it with some aerosol contact cleaner through a mounting hole first. If the can isn't well ventilated, then clearing the carbon dust (and other debris) out might be tricky. I used to run can motors underwater (with a little detergent) which would wash the carbon dust away, but you do need to dry them thoroughly and give them a little oil on the bushings after... so I won't recommend that. Of course, if you buy a spare, you can always pop the current motor open and clean it with a little more finesse. Nice layout, btw, well travelled and maturing well! Your buildings remind me of where I'd got to before school, higher education and a career demoted my modelling. It was fun to remember some of my buildings from their similarities to yours.

Deleted, oops.

Pig has it. Apologies for my inconsistent and incorrect spellings. This was me marking up a plan of Harborne station to see how it might scale. The coloured squares are 1metre in 4mm/ft scale. Chad Valley toy factory and some nice semidetached houses make a fair surrounding. Also the retaining wall behind the turntable looks interesting. Warwickshire Railways has a lot of info: https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/harborne.htm As for location, I live in Dauntsey, and Dauntsey Lock station and the buildings of the village are interesting, but I'm not confined to one carrier. I have LMS and LNER stocks, a little GWR and a singular Southern locomotive... One of the station sheds was going to be a rebuild of Waterloo as if the 1943 Abercrombie plan actually went forward, and the London stations became much more interconnected. What Abercrombie was suggesting could be extended to make many of the London terminii into joint stations. Waterloo could have been a starting out point for all four carriers - and a model of the station and planned surrounding buildings to the south bank would be a fun challenge... later.

The percentages are the gradients (i.e. 2% = 1 in 50) but I think you're correct about the transitions. As it happens, I think you've all scared me away from doing steep slopes in the shed, so a substantial redesign is on the cards. @Harlequin or anyone else - you're welcome to have a crack. I've added the end-to-end comment, which suggests the station would be on one side, and the yard/carriage storage on the other. The loco shed could be on either side. What I want: Town terminus station with three passenger platform faces, 8 carriages + loco each minimum each. Goods/parcels dock which may, or may not, be attached to these platforms; 3 or 4 bogie carriages. Access to up and down directions of the outdoor loop (i.e. exit to top-left or bottom-left.) Locomotive shedding area (roundhouse?) with ashpits/coaling stage/watering. Carriage storage if possible. Goods yard / industry area. Technical guidelines: Ideally min radius 900mm, 762mm acceptable in pointwork and goods/shunting/slow running areas. (Discuss?) Peco Code 75 Streamline (but not Bullhead yet as I like variety in my points!) Switchable DC or DCC (so sectioning ideas appreciated.) General construction will be a variant on American-style L-girder - laminated plywood substrates. End-to-end running between terminus and carriage storage/goods yard (which will serve as fiddle yard) inside building.. Period/area: LNER/LMS joint - somewhere in the Leicestershire/Lincolnshire area 1945-1947, but 1956-1958 as a guest starring period.

@DavidCBroad Turntable: yes, you're right... but it's certainly a talking point, no? I saw Harbourn station and liked it, hence its inclusion. Time will tell if it remains here, but I do take your point it looks odd. Maybe the three goods sidings would not all connect to it - some pointwork to get a single escape road would probably work better. Your 'B' point is great information. Yes, now I see that having the carriage sidings alongside the station means that all Empty Coaching Stock movements have to block the mainline. It looks like there needs to be a large headshunt/escape (i.e. like the 'goods route') accessible from the platforms before the main junction throat of the station. Similarly if the loco stabling is to the station side, then again, as you imply, some other headhunt & access is required to not block everything up (too much.) Thank you for this useful feedback. Now... why is the height of the layout a potential issue? The chipboarded area is the 3440x3440mm (3.6x3.6m external) planform of the room. The open area to the right is a 'garage' for large garden equipment. The shed is built on 750mm groundscews (https://www.groundscrewcentre.co.uk/) - visible clearly in the garage area. I've not put in the wood blocks on top of the screws here, you can see I've used upside-down joist hangers to cap the screw and stop the open screw top digging into the wood. The wood is floor joist material - 195x45mm thick. With the floor being 22mm chip on these 195mm joists, and then there being minimum 100mm-ish clearance to the ground... you can see that this puts any permanent way exiting the shed through the wall effectively a foot higher than anything inside. The garden runs for 60 metres or so off to the left of this shot. This gives me an interesting engineering decision - if I make a high-/eye-level layout inside, the PW is above head height outside... awkward to engineer, but practically quite useful for access around the garden. Conversely, if I make it a 'sensible' level outside, it becomes a little low to be practical inside. Of course, I can put gradients in... at 1-in-100 or so! Estimating a 30 metre run to the next station, that allows me just a 300mm drop. Traditional garden railways sit lower, on brickwork for stability. Very sensible. We shall see if I can engineer a practical solution to my particular elevation problems! I think I'll make something that will sit low and get myself a comfy office chair. I can make some drop down workbenches which will allow me to stand and do stock maintenance, etc, but be clear of the layout so it can still be run if necessary, but be lifted out of the way for 'formal' running sessions. Other possibly interesting things in the photo: the stud walls are stacking up to the left. I've built all the walls and some of the roof trusses now, I can probably put the walls in place this week. Then, just waiting on the steel profile roofing (with skylight sheets) to arrive before I clad the walls and assemble the roof.

Very good points. Test track: good idea, and entirely doable. One of the models I do want to do is the Lickey incline (at 1-in-37ish) - and model it faithfully with banking locomotives. Logically, if I wanted 1-in-40 inside, I'd have to bank that too. So, sounds like 1-in-100 is more sensible if I want to do them at all. I do want to model Bournville shed* and have started on a decent locomotive roster for it, with some Saltley and Bromsgrove residents and some occasional Bristol and Birmingham visitors. As for basic operation, yes, your points are well made. But... I would like to shy away from 'fiddle yards'... simply because in theory, I'll have enough room and locations for stock to realistically move from A to B to C and thus have transient homes. If I need somewhere to store stuff first (not an incorrect assumption) then perhaps what I should be thinking about is modelling a marshalling yard with some carriage sidings on the left-hand side, and a loco shed on the other. Father and I have discussed him modelling a proper hump-shunting yard, and we've done a fair bit of research to this end. It would about as complex to operate as the real things were dangerous, but it's a challenge we'd like to try. But for this - no. Just sidings. Maybe this first venture boils down to: 'Functional and self-contained' versus 'a part of a larger layout'. No reason that the former couldn't develop into the latter later? * and Bournville's Cadbury factory, later.

Click pic for 3440x3440pixels. I can supply the .any file to anyone interested.

Hi Phil! Nice to see you here, many thanks. To answer your questions: Single 762mm standard door width, hinged in the centre to the left side, opening inwards. At least, that's the plan at the moment. It could open outwards, as it would open into a 'garage area' of the same shed (overall size of the building is 3.6x6m.) If it opens outwards, however, we can't leave anything in the way in the garage area. Yes, the door jamb means the width is 900mm at the north edge, I could have gone 900mm all around but I pushed for 1m. I'm quite lanky and the layout will be relatively low (for reasons that will become obvious when I post photos of the shed.) Time will tell if I've made a boo-boo, and things can always change or be rebuilt. Track elevations are marked on the image if you click on it (it's quite large - actually 1pixel per mm) but at the bridge the runs curving northwards from the station are at 90mm (should be, but I see they're at 80mm - good spot) and the highest part of the southbound lines are about 10mm - so 80mm rail to rail was the design. The station area is flat at 80mm, and the goods area on the left-hand/west side is flat at ~33mm. Everything otherwise ramps up and down to suit. Elevation changes are a challenge I want to model - everyone seems to shy away from them for the most part unless they're deliberately trying to achieve a multilevel layout. I want to do it to replicate a landscape where someone built a railway!

Good tip - and yes, I bought Anyrail as I liked it It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. I have used 45mm centres for parallel tracks, widening to Peco's standard 50mm at pointwork as required. I just about nailed the platform edges by eyeball, but yes, the roadbed highlights a couple of clashes. I think the platform size is adequate, I'm sure there are prototypical design minimums... and they can be found here on RMWeb somewhere.

I'm building my first shed for the house, this will have to be a general workshop and storage shed (for woodworking mostly - building more sheds) but the eventual goal will be for it to be to house the first of the garden railway 'stations'. At the moment I just would like somewhere to run some locomotives, not quite sure if I have a focus on what's important yet. This isn't my first layout, as I've helped construct and run exhibition layouts before now, but it will be the first in... well, a good long while! The space available is a U inside a ~3.44m/11'3" square, but the layout will eventually pierce the walls, to access the outdoor loop routes 'North' and 'South' (for want of better terms.) Attached is my starter plan, not particularly scientifically laid, with the approximate pierce points through the walls. What I want in the right-hand side of the shed: Town terminus station, with a turntable at the end of the platform used as the pointwork for the runarounds (like Harbourne station.) Three passenger platform faces, 8 carriages + loco each minimum each. Goods/parcels dock which may, or may not, be attached to these platforms; 3 or 4 bogie carriages. Access to up and down directions of the outdoor loop (i.e. exit to top-left or bottom-left.) Locomotive shedding area (roundhouse?) with ashpits/coaling stage/watering. Carriage storage if possible. What I'd like in the left hand side of the shed: Exits to outdoor loop. Goods yard / industry area. Triangle to the loop if it fits. Technical guidelines: Inclines are OK at 1 in 40. There will be superelevation. Ideally min radius 900mm, 762mm acceptable in pointwork and goods/shunting/slow running areas. (Discuss?) Peco Code 75 Streamline (but not Bullhead yet as I like variety in my points!) Switchable DC or DCC (so sectioning ideas appreciated.) General construction will be a variant on American-style L-girder - laminated plywood substrates (hence the capability to superelevate, and have inclines.) Period/area: LNER/LMS joint - somewhere in the Leicestershire/Lincolnshire area 1945-1947, but 1956-1958 as a guest starring period. The station/layout is fictional - but if someone can come up with a real location that ticks some of the boxes (has to have a loco shed) then I'm up for that. A simpler through station on the left with shed/industry junctioned off to the right is also feasible. I've come up with the following, but you may be able to tell I forgot the accesses to the 'south' and added them on very hurriedly this morning. I've included it here and now because I'd like comments before I rebuild it in a slightly more tidy way - hopefully with some improvements for prototypical pointwork at the station throat. The right-hand/station side of layout will be constructed first, and that area will be used as a test-bed for various techniques, as well as locomotive and stock storage for my growing fleet. When the left-hand side is added, it should all combine to work as a layout (just) without the outdoor loop. That said, the layout could be two separated 'straight' layouts with no 'U' inside the shed. A large radius U linking the two could be added outside at the 'south' end later. There is no access to loop across at the 'north' end of the layout. Any help and comments greatly appreciated. I'm not sure I want to accomodate a roundy-roundy inside the space, useful as it might be for running in locomotives, etc. I may have a separate perimeter loop at eye level for doing just this. Cunning and/or elegant solutions will not be pooh-poohed.

A very nice 'shop indeed.

Compare and contrast to https://www.specialistaggregates.com/ if you need bit more volume.

Just a quick note in this thread... not exactly OT, but it's definitely well targetted. I have two complete unbuilt plastic model kits of Formula 1 cars... 1992 Williams Renault FW14B - Hasegawa FS-9 (1:24) (only assembly on this is the top inner front wishbone shrouds are glued to the nosecone halves.) 1998 McLaren Mercedes MP4/13 - Tamiya 20046 (1:20) (Untouched.) Both of them appear difficult to get hold of now. First dibs on these to RMWebbers, I'd prefer to send both together to one of you before I Ebay them. PMs please.

Ooh, fab. Thank you.

I did just have the same thought - at least to pass on what I have - so I'll index the book photos I have in this post, and I have 'Big Four', so I'll include them. Prepare for edits... All with unshaded Gill Sans, unless otherwise noted. LNER 4-6-0's at work 1000 Springbok, dirty green, 12/7/47 1158 & 1159, apple green (ex Vulcan, black cylinders) 5/47 E1051, ex-works black - possible LNER lined red - with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS', 7/2/48 1003 Gazelle, apple green, black cylinders, 29/7/47 1282, apple green, full LNER livery, 5/6/48 (with electric lamps) 1222, apple green, 8/47 61251, apparently lined apple green - with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS', 7/7/48 1123, apple green, 9/3/47 61163 & 61111, both apple green - with 'BRITISH RAILWAYS', 20/7/48 1223, apple green, in charge of 'The Master Cutler' 13/10/47 1112, filthy, but possibly lined black! On freight duty. Summer 1947 The Big Four in Colour 1100, apple green, August 1947 1134, almost ex-works apple green, 1948 Colour-Rail website 1018 apple green 1947 1028 apple green 1/1949 1029 apple green 6/47 1083 black with block lettering, 1948 1119 apple green, yellow buffer letters, 5/47 1154 apple green, 6/1948 1183 apple green 1948 1187 apple green 9/47 1268 apple green 1948 1277 apple green 6/48 61081 apple green, BRITISH RAILWAYS, 1948 61163 apple green, BRITISH RAILWAYS, 20/9/1948 E1299 apple green, BRITISH RAILWAYS, 8/1948 61322 apple green, BRITISH RAILWAYS, 1949 RCTS Online 1042 apple green, with mounts for nameplate, ?? 1119 lined buffer beam implies apple green, ?? 1017 Bushbuck, apple green, 1947