KingEdwardII

The next question to ask is "what kind of branch line?" A small branch line just serving local travel needs would be unlikely to have much in the way of MK1 coaches. Larger branch lines with longer distance trains would have had MK1s. Here I am thinking of branches such as those to Aberystwyth and to Minehead. Both of those would have longer services ("Cambrian Coast Express" etc) and there are photos of MK1 formations for those services in the 1950s. However, these are not typical "branch line" trains and are quite long (7 coaches or more). Shorter branch lines often had non-corridor stock of uncertain origins ;-), with trains 2 or 3 coaches long. Yours, Mike.

Aberystwyth station looked pretty sad a few years ago. It was always a rather grand building and the ironwork on the platform canopies was classic Victorian decoration, but it had been neglected for years. Now, it has been spruced up and a new use found for the abandoned platforms 4 & 5 with a very sympathetic adaptation. The rerouting of the Devils Bridge line to terminate in the old platforms 1 & 2 area also means that many more people get to see the station. Yours, Mike.

I don't remember many of those while travelling to/from Cambridge in those years. From KGX, it was pretty well always an EMU to Royston and then a change to a DMU for the rest of the journey. A big contrast with the loco hauled services from Cambridge to Liverpool Street. Yours, Mike.

Bribery CAN win you friends...

I would imagine so, since the weekday traffic would hardly justify longer trains of this sort. I mostly find DMUs in the later photos of places on the line to Barnstaple (post 1970), just as today. Quite a contrast with Newquay where there are loads of photos with Warships, Westerns, Peaks, Class 47s and so on. However, the strange thing is that modern records of passenger numbers for these stations tell a different story. Newquay recorded about 130K passenger entries/exits in 22/23, while Barnstaple recorded almost 537K in the same year. Barnstaple has a steady 1 train per hour schedule to/from Exeter, while Newquay has a much sparser service (~every 2 hours) with most services terminating ar Par and needing a change to get to Plymouth. So these days, it seems that Barnstaple is much more heavily used... Yours, Mike.

That line retained loco hauled services on summer Saturdays while the line to Ilfracombe survived, but once that closed in 1970, DMUs ruled the roost. I think Newquay is a place where loco hauled trains survived much longer. Newquay has always had a proportion of longer distance trains, including HSTs and IETs in more recent times. There has also been significant freight on that branch. There are a lot of photos on the Cornwall Railway Society site. Yours, Mike.

Extraordinary to see my stomping ground of the 1970s being dragged into the 21st century. I shall have to go on a celebratory trip once the electric trains are in service, although I no longer have family living in the Cardiff area - but I do have some still in Aberdare. Many thanks for the photos. Yours, Mike.

Hmm. The length of a branch line train could vary a lot even on one branch - 1, 2, 3, 4 coaches are all visible in photos of the 1950s and 1960s (& I'm going to ignore summer Saturdays trains on branches with holiday traffic!!). Even well into the '60s a classic configuration on ex-GWR lines was the 2 coach B set - not usually MK1s - although I can see examples of 2 coach trains with at least 1 MK1 included. I suspect that the average branch line was not top of the list to receive the latest coaching stock... As time went by, loco hauled passenger trains on branches gradually dwindled with replacement by DMUs, for those that didn't get closed. So, it really depends on the kind of branch you're modelling and the era. Yours, Mike.

I installed and wired my 30+ point motors from underneath my boards without much hassle. The main thing is to provide yourself with a good means of support so that you are relatively close to the underside of the boards rather than stretching from the floor. Cushions from an old sofa are one idea... I agree about the need to do all the pre-drilling of holes for the point motors before the turnouts are installed. Yours, Mike.

I can imagine a small oil depot, but in my experience, refineries are inevitably rather large. Yours, Mike

Well done for being prepared to stand there in those conditions - reminds me of my mile long trudge to school in the rain back in the '70s! Definitely. It's a huge step forward. Fantastic to see. Yours, Mike.

A much more obvious place to spend this kind of money in Scotland is in the borders - extending the existing line from Tweedbank to places like Kelso and Hawick. Lots more people and a practically short journey time to Edinburgh. Yours, Mike.

It has been interesting to observe the heritage railways initially start by reviving existing lines, locos and rolling stock and then extend to the re-creation of the same. Many later lines are complete rebuilds, such as Swanage and the GWSR, where the originals had been completely removed. Efforts such as the re-creation of Broadway station and the building of Tornado and Lady of Legend are huge efforts for amateurs to undertake - as have been restorations to working order of wrecks such as my own favourite King Edward II. I think that it is valuable to restore items to working order, although I can agree that some historic originals might be best left as they are, with modern replicas being created to show what they would have looked like in working order. Equally, it is invaluable to have re-creations of past structures, such as the houses at Butser or the crannog at Loch Tay. Only by having such constructions "in the flesh" can we really appreciate how our ancestors lived. The big arguments surround the compromises that get made - working items in particular have to conform to modern regulations and this means that they often must be modified from the original. Even simple things like the track on restored lines is now often unhistoric concrete sleepered flat bottom rail - because that is the cost effective solution in the modern age. Lots of tricky choices! Yours, Mike.

Hell, there has been a lot of effort expended on the recreation of some ancient buildings, such as at Butser Ancient Farm. And it is most certainly experimental, since there are only faint traces of many of the originals on which to base the new works. Railway preservation/recreation is largely based on solid evidence that is immediately to hand. Yours, Mike.

The 8116 could be fed from the accessory bus for both signal and power. There is good reason not to feed it from track power, since if you get a short which trips the track power, this would also disable the 8116 and so also the point motors. If the short was caused e.g. by running a train through an incorrectly set turnout, this would make it harder to correct the problem. You can also feed the 8116 power from a separate power supply (e.g. 12V DC) - bear in mind that this power is used to actually drive the MP1 motors, so needs to provide enough current to drive them. However, the MP1s only draw around 150mA while operating and switch off at the end of travel, so do not place a large burden on the power supply (in contrast to solenoid motors). Yours, Mike.

The 3 wires which power the MP1 should come from the 8116 decoder. If you are providing frog power through the switch in the MP1, then this switch should be fed track power. Yours, Mike.

Forget expense - the whole darned hillside is disappearing into the sea there. It would be a King Canute exercise to try and stop that, no matter how much money was thrown at it. Time to give up and rebuild elsewhere. Yours, Mike.

Just as on the real railways, this varies enourmously - the key question is what length trains do you want to accommodate? Loco + 4 coaches? Loco + 10 coaches? 3 car DMU? 10 car HST? etc etc Folk with restricted space for modelling inevitably have to choose shorter trains, since that is all that will fit. You don't sound like you're in that position, so you could aim to run longer trains and so require longer platforms. On my layout, I have loco plus up to 7 coaches and have built my platforms accordingly. Yours, Mike.

As someone who travels up from the southwest and faces the problem of having to connect to Eurostar across the obstacle course of central London, my initial reaction was "oh no, not even further to travel". However, inspecting some timetables reveals that Waterloo to Stratford on the Jubilee takes about the same time as Waterloo to St Pancras - and it has the major benefit of not requiring a change of tube lines. However, I still think that the real solution to connecting from the southwest to Eurostar @ St Pancras would be to lay on a train service from Clapham Junction to St Pancras. Stratford would also require a change of train to get to Kings Cross, St Pancras and Euston for onward journeys to the Midlands and the North. Yours, Mike.

A pain in the neck.

Not for the first time does a journalist prove to be an absolute numpty when it comes to maths. Their reading comprehension is scarcely any better either. Yours, Mike

St Pancras was not particularly swift even before Brexit changed the immigration checks - there still were immigration checks since UK was not part of Schengen. The security stuff is often just as bad if not worse than the immigration checks. I always allow a healthy amount of time at St Pancras when doing journeys to Paris or Brussels. Yours, Mike.

I can't see such a service taking less than 5 1/2 hours. Against 1 3/4 hours by air. Can't see many takers if the rail fare is higher than the plane fare, as is very likely to be the case. Yours, Mike.

Ahem, funnily enough it was the railways themselves that changed this during the Victorian period. Railways enabled low-cost transportation of heavy materials like bricks and the development of large scale production in a few favoured locations. Bricks could come from Bedford, Peterborough and so on by the million. And of course, the railways were also consumers of vast numbers of bricks too. Not to say that there was not local production, rather that imported materials became much more significant. Also, mechanisation of the production processes tended to favour the larger concerns. Yours, Mike.

That is surely a weird thing to see anywhere other than on a preserved line in recent times. Yours, Mike.