16Brunel

Live streaming?...

The Bigger-than-the-Little-Western-but-not-as-big-as-the-Great-Western Western Railway?

I wholeheartedly agree. My own paper experiment is for a version of the Isle of Wight off the the south-eastern Cornwall coast, like a cross between the IoW and St Michael's Mount. About 3/4 the length/breadth of IoW so 55% area/population, which for my 1925 setting means about 50,000 residents. A small train ferry, effectively a decorated cassette, allows interchange of wagons with the GWR/rest of Britain via Plymouth. Passenger services are in the hands of Adams Radial Tanks, goods have Radial/44xx hybrids (stick a 44xx chassis under a Radial and adjust the splashers & sandboxes to suit), and shunting and a tramway are serviced by J70s. A departmental second-hand LSWR 380-class ("steamroller") is the only tender engine on the system, there to provide the track-laying and breakdown trains with both propulsion and an on-site steam source. It's amazed me how many different areas have to be consider to make the whole thing vaguely logical and coherent, some obvious, others emergent: geography; geology; meteorology; demographics; linguistics; flora and fauna; agriculture; economics; politics; academia (there's an island university); ecclesiastics; architecture; civil/mechanical/marine/electrical/other engineering... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as Yul Brynner said. My current thoughts are about town gas reticulation, ie how far away would a town gasworks supply reach? How many said works required for the island? Size of works vs size of town? Hence how many wagon loads of coal per week/year? And I've managed to return the favour re: the release of 24 British rabbits down here in 1859, which bred so well that a mere 10 years later a haul of 2 million/year trapped/shot had no noticeable impact on their numbers: my island features the Northern Hemisphere's only wild fairy penguin colony. You'll be pleased to note that, while thriving, numbers have yet to reach plague proportions.

I'm also wondering if I've missed something! - S.

It's not the far end of the BM carriage shed that confuses me, it's the kick-back siding sticking out the front of it, alongside the carriage shed access line and parallel to the main line. Rope/horse/pinch bar shunting? Just querying its purpose, beyond view-blocking said main line - Scott

Just wondering what the WNR's policy is regarding engines entering carriage sheds? I know they're usually banned from goods sheds. - Scott

Looking good, Schooner! I can't understand SCARM's aversion to rail-built buffers like Hornby's R083 or Peco's SL-40 (all they offer are the sleeper-built boxes ST-270/SL-41 or hydraulic buffers R394/SL-42). I've taken to using Piko's 55280 (in the PIKO-HO-A palette) to close off the tracks, although the trains ignore them! - Scott

I really like the look of this one - any idea what the scale is (beyond "very small")? - Scott

Good to have you back, James! And 5.5mm to the foot scale is 1:55.4 - just sayin'... - Scott

Agreed. As a Victorian, I'm a bit jealous that NSW has that while none of our S-class survived. Also hope that they can get our baby Garrett G42 back in steam - too good to sit around decorating a siding.

I think we're down to 3, and they're all planned to be gone. All in the $$$ eastern suburbs - we plebs in the outer 'burbs wouldn't tolerate them! - S.

Of course. I was getting "Long Range Express Passenger", thinking it was the XPT replacement... but the letters were out of order! The one at Keon Park is just near me - there's a massive crane on site, and they've just started placing the up-line trackbed bridge sections in place. - Scott

LXRP?

My daughter XPT'd from Melbourne to Sydney back in June (just like her father back in 1994) - wasn't overly impressed with the fairly antiquated train. I looked through the linked project document - tells you how wonderful everything will be, how much money they're throwing at it, but utterly fails to mention when it will happen... - Scott

As an ADD sufferer, this post of yours alone is enough to make my head hurt... I wish you the best of luck with this significant undertaking!