Flying Pig

I get rather tired of the Waah! that Flying Scotsman attracts. It's the only A3 that made it into preservation and without it we'd have none of Gresley's original Pacifics (insert arguments about it's not an A1 here).

Fortunately this one was sold out or I might have been tempted.

You might be interested in this old thread:

I've read claims by Hunter pilots that they used that effect to fake supersonic overflight of US bases. The Hunter would go supersonic in a dive, but was firmly subsonic in level flight.

I'm not sure Hornby understand it either. This (below) looks ominously like they're looking at new rabbit holes to dart down. They really should have learned that lesson by now. From the reactions it has attracted, the Black Five is clearly a mess - if they'd just designed it like the Princess Royal it would have been fine and probably cheaper to develop and produce. I don't know why they feel they need to chase novelty.

Yes possibly, but designing a tender isn't rocket science and Hornby generally do it very well. It's not as if the Stanier type is particularly small either.

They used to pass just south of me in North Wilts and if conditions were right I could follow them westbound all the way to the turn onto a southwesterly heading down the Bristol Channel. It was particularly dramatic just after a late autumn sunset if a Concorde was leaving a sunlit contrail.

If you follow the Rock Family Trees histories of Napier and Paxman, by the mid 70s they almost were. It was all Poached Paxman Diesels in a White Wine Sauce at that point, before the inevitable split.

I'm not crazy about the tender underframe - diecasting certainly seems to be a rabbit hole in this case and I don't think the result is as good as on earlier all-plastic models, certainly not as crisp, which I think will show up in normal use. There also seems to be less daylight than there should be through the frame cutouts. They had a good Stanier 4000 gallon tender underframe with the Princess and all they needed were some 9 ton bodies to go on top.

Or indeed whether they are able to gain anything from the course. In this case I suspect it will be like sending a dachshund to a 100m hurdles workshop.

Two years, suspended, and a two year disqualification, amongst other stocking fillers, apparently. I like the requirement to complete an "accredited thinking skills programme" within 20 days. https://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/news/thames-valley/news/2024/april/15-04-2024/man-sentenced-for-dangerous-driving-and-child-neglect--m40/

But it should. In the future we will have holographic soundscapes from arrays of speakers attached to the layout that yield all the correct sounds for the listener's position and stop neatly just beyond viewing distance. At last it will be possible to correctly simulate the doppler effect of a Deltic passing at speed and the etched hens on Wansbeck Road will be able to cluck. Even better the same technology will be mandatory for all domestic and automotive sound systems, so we won't have to share the listening choices of people who think WOB WOB repeated endlessly at maximum volume over frantic shouting is music.

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.4&lat=53.79543&lon=-1.55675&layers=168&b=1&o=100 https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/LNERDiagrams.htm (look for Leeds 'A') From the concourse to the scissors crossing 340m (~2.8m at1:120); to the River Aire 460m (~3.8m). Still quite a lot of compression needed, I think. Some of the pointwork will need to be built or redesigned to use proprietary items. Probably better to design an "inspired by" layout with some of the features of Leeds Central.

Largely due to the availability of cleaners. I don't believe the tales of Polish refugees at Top Shed. I think he had a secret gang of Oompa Loompas that the Home Office didn't know about.

I visited the Calne show today and was much struck by how good recent rtr looks when running on a decently built layout, even in out-of-the-box condition. Many of the things that offend the eye in the huge close-ups we see online just aren't a factor at the fabled normal viewing distance.

I unexpectedly saw one of these in the flesh at the Calne show and the trader briefly ran it up and down for me. The lamps did not look excessively large, although the lenses on the front ones are bigger than they should be; there's a white lamp at the rear of the tender and that seems to have a smaller lens. When running on DC the lamps light up warm yellow, which isn't very convincing and is much too bright; the tender lamp lights in reverse. The unoccupied lamp irons looked quite fine and I couldn't see any sign of light bleed if that is an issue people are worried about (the trader told me the lamps are LEDs, but I thought Hornby were using a light pipe system). They seemed to be fine enough that you wouldn't want to be changing them frequently. I could see a single ejector pin mark near the top corner of the frame extension, but it is less obvious than on the sample and I had to peer to see it. The paint on the smokebox door hinge pin has been tidied up considerably since the sample.

Nope, sorry. Keep it simple - ditch the loco shed and the kickback. The former adds no play value as it would only be occupied overnight and might well be out of use by the OP's period. The kickback,siding doesn't really fit the board and serves to highlight the board edge. As an aside, I like the crossed sidings pattern, but the diamond crossing is tricky to wire for live frog as if the points are set for both sidings, the frog polarities are undetermined (so ok with insulfrog or if you can implement some kind of point interlocking). There should be plenty of shunting fun with two railway sidings and one private siding.

And if it isn't and it bothers you, you can change it. I assume you can put empty lamp irons in every position if you wish, though that's wrong at the front of a train as well. So, you can have a stopped clock as supplied, which is occasionally right; you can push the hands into the correct position; or you can have a clock with no hands at all. The choice is yours.

I'll be interested to see what people receive. I think we're still looking at the sample photos of 5200 and the lenses seem to have a lot of moulding flash around them. That may be improved on the delivered models. And doesn't the front headcode on 5200 indicate "through freight", which seems perfectly appropriate for a Black Five?

Go and look at @Harlequin's plan and how it flows and see if you can replicate that - I think it uses curved points. I posted a version reduced to a single siding at the front as per your recent iterations. As to the shed, this is always a point of discussion when BLTs come up. As I understand it from previous threads, the purpose of a shed was usually to house the passenger engine overnight so that it could work the first train as an Up service in the morning. That avoided having to run an empty service down the branch first thing. Only in exceptional cases would a shunter be outstationed at a BLT as usually the goods engine would do the major shunting and your station is a pretty simple one. If you look at the disused stations page on Newport Pagnell linked above, it was a station at the end of a short branch with a loco shed that closed in 1955 (apparently while the branch was still being worked by steam - see the 1959 picture of an LMS driving trailer). So the site of a demolished shed is an option for your period too.

It gets a better view on the outside of the curve and also means you can see the front of the model.

Yes - noted above. When you only have 12" of width something has to give.

Really better off without it imo. Also, you don't need a tunnel or bridge to close the scene - some buildings or even trees would do fine - so the level crossing shouldn't be a problem.

I note you have chosen to support engineering solutions to carbon reduction. Would you please also consider supporting projects that promote restoration and regeneration of landscapes and ecosystems? Healthy living environments sink carbon and also protect wildlife and people's livelihoods, vital in areas like the Sahel.

Phil has achieved an attractive flow, which is a good foundation before we start debating the number of sidings. Here's the single siding version I mentioned above, in the variant with loading bank and keeping the private siding. This is a cramped site and the model is inevitably going to be more CJF than Pendon in style if operation is to be interesting, but I'm guessing that matches the approach of the rest of the layout.