KingEdwardII

There was a video of a USA layout which did exactly this available over a year ago, which someone linked from rmweb. I'm sorry but I can't find that link right now. It was that video that brought my attention to the existence of motors small enough to fit on the axle of a freight wagon (at least at OO scale), with no gears or other drivetrain. This simplifies installation in freight wagons enormously and also gets rid of the friction from the drivetrain. Another benefit of modern technology to our hobby! Even smaller motors are available which I've seen used for automated uncoupling (see Precimodels products). Yours, Mike.

Yes, my memory of mid-1960s Aberystwyth is the slow & stately progression of the loose shunted wagons, often little more than a fast walking pace, followed by the almighty clatter as the loose wagons met some stationary ones in the destination siding. My own layout reminded me of just how freewheeling modern wagons are. Wagons were unaccountably moving off on their own, until I worked out that the floor of the railway room had a slope of almost an inch from one side to the other, which I'd faithfully reproduced on the layout by building all the baseboard supports the same height. Cue some extra woodwork... Yours, Mike.

There have been discussions elsewhere on rmweb about modelling loose shunting, with the idea of motorising wagons and putting DCC decoders on board to control them. It is possible in principle these days with small motors actually sitting on the axles of freight wagon wheels. Not the most powerful of hardware, but it does not need to be, since the main requirement is simply to extend the slowing down of vehicles that are already in motion. The main requirement is not to stop the wagon being hauled/pushed by a loco and then engage the motor to provide drive when the wagon gets separated from the loco. Gradual slowdown to a halt is bread and butter for some loco decoders. Surely a quite expensive bit of modelling, but if you want authenticity, the mountain is there to be climbed. Yours, Mike.

There is no evidence that today's weather is any more severe than that of the past. Indeed, a recent report by the Met Office indicates that the 1980s seem to be significantly stormier than today. Yours, Mike.

Since my DR5000 is fixed permanently in position underneath one of my baseboards, I connected the DR5000 to my house router via an Ethernet cable. My WiFi devices then connect via the regular house WiFi and can talk to both Internet and the DR5000 simultaneously. Works perfectly. Yours, Mike.

I think this is a no-brainer when using the Peco pointwork and it improves the appearance immensely. Especially the case when using under-board mounted point motors. Yours, Mike.

That really is out of the HS2 handbook - but a more-or-less straight 10 mile tunnel from just north of Kendal to just south of Shap village would make a pile of sense - allow high speed running with no hill to climb as well as shaving a couple of miles from the overall journey by avoiding the long deviation north east of Kendal. Resilience to adverse weather another bonus. Something similar should be done for Beattock. Let's stop living with the constraints of 19th century engineering. Yours, Mike.

There is no one set "Advance" fare - the cost of an Advance ticket can and does vary from hour to hour, day to day and week to week. Try using the NR website/app and see for yourself. I have also found that Advance availability can disappear for specific trains even for the same routes & outside the rush hours. I had a real old grouse with SWR trying to book a ticket for a mid afternoon train on a Sunday about this - I could not book the most straightforward journey using Advance for the hour I wanted to travel, while they were available for hours before and hours after. The actual train itself was only 10% full, I noticed on the day itself. Yours, Mike.

When there are deaths involved, I think that this is the first reaction of the police. They won't know where any evidence is likely to turn up, plus they need to protect the folks working on the case. Yours, Mike.

My first guess is that it is somewhere on the Wensleydale Railway, but they have few places with 4 tracks in parallel. There was a Pacer in the background - and they have one. Certainly, I envisage that it was done on some heritage line - you can't see Network Rail giving that kind of access on an operational line. Yours, Mike.

Yes, modern LED lighting is superb and there should be no excuse for insufficient lighting anywhere. Yours, Mike.

Perhaps they should hand over rebuilding of the bridge to one of the preservation groups. They have done magnificent jobs on footbridge reconstruction in numerous locations. Broadway on the GWSR is a great example. Yours, Mike.

Yes, that's the pronunciation by many of the locals. It makes the true Welsh speakers wince, but it is what is used locally. Yours, Mike.

The Hornby one is out of production and is difficult to obtain new. It does have some compromises. I am hoping that the new Dapol one will be equivalent in quality to the Dapol Manor that I have, which is superb. Yours, Mike.

I don't know how you arrive at this figure. KGX to Retford is about 1h30 and even the Northern trains from Retford to Sheffield take less than 45mins. The distance from Retford to Sheffield is just under 30 miles, so it should be possible to do better than that. I'd expect an express-style service to take just over 2 hours to Sheffield via Retford. As always, it depends on how many stops they plan. Yours, Mike.

Indeed - and just at the time when they are starting to face ever increasing competition in the OO space. Dapol, Accurascale, Rapido, etc., are now producing high quality models with an increasing range. I note that all my most recent purchases are from these rivals rather than Hornby. Yours, Mike.

Some preservation lines put a lot of effort into restoring goods wagons and running goods trains. So there would be every reason to model them. Of course, these are typically exhibition trains and don't carry actual freight. But it can call for an eclectic mix of stock. However, preservation lines do also run quite a lot of engineering trains using much more workaday wagons and motive power. They have to look after their infrastructure just as much as the mainlines. Yours, Mike.

Oak trees have a horrible tendency to shed large limbs without warning. A bungalow just along our road had its roof rearranged by one last year. A neighbouring property with a pair of even larger trees in their garden near their house then decided that prevention was much better than cure and had both of them felled, for replacement with some smaller less threatening versions. Yours, Mike.

But it's that complication that makes the layout interesting and varied to operate. I view such complication as a challenge and well worth pursuing. Yours, Mike.

I don't think that is true - and we have been discussing real world locations that had branch bays of this kind. They were used in cases where it was necessary to operate branch trains without occupying main line through tracks, which would be the case where the main line tracks were very busy. Places like Yatton and Witham are classic cases of this. What is notable about locations like these is that they did allow for passenger trains either to use the branch bay or to use the mainline platforms, depending on their destination/origin. Wells had some services that ended at either Yatton or Witham. Wells also had some through services to Bristol TM and Frome. Yours, Mike.

Yup, that is the way I have my branch junction from my double track main line - a fairly short distance and then the pair of lines leading to the branch merge into a single track, as shown in the photos above. It gives a pleasing sweep to the junction That is possible, but it then precludes any passenger trains going direct from the main line to the branch and vice-versa. That was not the case at places like Yatton and Witham, where there were a number of through services to the branch that made no use of the bay platform at all. I agree. You can either include a trailing crossover, or else make use of the branch junction to reverse a goods train from the down main line in order to access the up side goods yard, if done as a double junction. Yours, Mike.

Indeed. Add in the ingredient of a level crossing right next to one of the stations crossing one of the main roads that used to infuriate the locals. The range of goods moved was also interesting. Many local quarries (one still going today), oil/petrol (there was a depot in East Somerset yard), a paper mill, milk, strawberries in season. From WWII there was also a large government food store added to East Somerset yard with associated sidings. The weird arrangement of the GWR branch line slicing right through the S&DJR yard is worthy of a model in its own right - the box controlling that is truly complex for such a small place. Yours, Mike.

No, but there will be more interest where the junction is right off the end of the platforms - and there are prototypes for this. At Yatton, both junctions are right off the ends of the platforms - off both the up side and down side at the west end of the station. Notable that each branch gets a bay platform and both can operate without fouling the main lines. The other end of the Cheddar Valley branch at Witham also has the junction close to the station, with a bay for the branch. Here though, branch goods traffic had to cross the double track main line to get to the goods yard. Yours, Mike.

That simply depends on where the town gasworks was located. Even a small town like Wells in Somerset had a gasworks and it had a very fine gasometer. This was located at the edge of the East Somerset goods yard, a little distance from GWR Tucker Street station. Yours, Mike.

When I hard wired a decoder into my older Hornby County 4-6-0, I got decoder wire & shrinkwrap from DCC Concepts. They are showing £3.95 for 6m of any one of a range of colours, £4.95 for 6m of twin Red/Black, or £29.95 for an assorted pack with a range of colours. 32g. All in stock as far as I can tell. https://www.dccconcepts.com/product-category/decoders-and-installation/dccconcepts-decoder-wire-and-special-fine-wire/ Yours, Mike.