Wright writes.....

[APOLLO]

I liked the Borchester layouts of Frank Dyer so much I use the Borchester name for my OO loft layout - same area too -- North Notts. What mostly inspired me is the superb mag "Model Railways" for September 1980, which dedicates the whole magazine to this layout. If anything deserves a reprint / posting on the web this does, all 26 pages of it complete with a few full page colour photos.

 

I also have the Model Railway Journal No 27 (1988) which has an 18 page article on Franks old layout titled "The life and lessons of The Borchesters, again a superb article.

 

My layout is a 6 track roundy (4 low level passenger & 2 high level goods). It's large through terminal (Victoria - GN GC Joint) with just along main line platforms (Exchange GN) and a small through terminus (Central GC) All Borchester - Shades of Manchester Victoria / Exchange, Kings Cross and other lesser places (Laisterdyke !!!). A short branch leads to an even higher level terminus (Langwith Market Place) and, of course, a tatty dirty filthy 8' long gas works - a beautiful English sylvan country scene it is - NOT !!

 

Big layouts with lots of action - Eastern region - that's what I wanted all my life & that's what I've built.  Like Tony I dislike shunting - my goods sidings are like sceniced fiddle yards without the fiddle - all trains run as block trains, occasional sets are split & exchanged along with locos in the through yard. Passenger trains are few and far between up at Langwith, mainly parcels trains here, however the main lines are very busy with passenger trains off the GC (Marylebone - Sheffield) & the GN (Grantham - Nottingham- Doncaster). Time frame is around 1966 so early blue diesels & blue / grey stock runs along with many green diesels and the last of ER / LM steam (though some are just a tad "out of date". Anyway that's my OO train set !!

 

Brit15

[Chamby]

I suggest there is a law that sometimes comes into effect with model railways: the level of viewer enjoyment of a model railway is inversely proportional to the level of operator engagement. The more preoccupied the operators become with intricate manoeuvres, the less action there is going on for Joe Public.

 

Not always true, but often the case!

 

Phil.

[Lecorbusier]

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I must be something of an oddity    You see, I find  - if well done - that I thoroughly enjoy  pretty much all genres of layout. I love watching mainline trains charge past a la Shap... with through station or not. Then again I have thoroughly enjoyed watching branch lines such as Clutton. I have spent much time at layouts like St Merryn .... but also really appreciate well conceived Cameo layouts like Trerice. I have just plucked these particular examples from the air ... there are many many others irrespective of gauge or scale ... a number of which I have enjoyed watching on you tube. All have points of operational interest and because of the excellence of the modelling, much to study in between train movements.

 

Maybe I'm just strange   

[mullie]

Boring layouts......diesel depots

 

This one has been invited to Ally Pally.

100_5466.JPG

100_5488.JPG

100_5459.JPG

100_5460.JPG

It is called Pig Lane (Western Region)

 

How's this for a fuelling point, loosely based on the one at Upwell on the tramway. Pretty much everything apart from the hut is scratch built.

 

 

 

Martyn

[Jol Wilkinson]

Boring layouts......diesel depots

 

 

Totally agree Clive.

 

I find any loco shed, TMD, etc. boring, as I do with small "shunting" layouts. even the most exquisitely modelled. But then we all have different interests and even large ECML layouts don't really do it for me. The WCML in any period, on the other hand!

 

Jol 

[Clive Mortimore]

How's this for a fuelling point, loosely based on the one at Upwell on the tramway. Pretty much everything apart from the hut is scratch built.

 

IMG_20190104_155211141.jpg

 

IMG_20190104_155305113.jpg

 

Martyn

Hi Martyn

 

The stock for a change is RTR on the Pig and the track is Peco. The buildings are in the main scratchbuilt, apart from the GWR hut and the GWR water tower, why reinvent the wheel. The two fuel pumps are typical WR style as are the fuel tanker discharge points, scratch and all the figures are handbuilt. I still have to build some GWR yard lamps. Then practice weathering. It made a change from making ER based depot buildings and equipment.

[Tony Wright]

If you are considering that kind of layout in the context of having experienced (and had your modelling ethos influenced by) the steam-era main line in action, then that is certainly understandable, because of your personal background and interests.

 

But even at age 60, my memories of the steam era are few and far between. I didn't do much trainspotting and what little I could muster up the enthusiasm to do, was in the early 1970s and, therefore, in the BR corporate blue diesel era (oh, how some of us wish we could re-visit that again!).

 

It's not that I wasn't interested in railways in my youth, quite the reverse, it's just that the act of 'train spotting' and recording numbers etc. held little attraction for me. I much preferred to travel on the trains, visit stations and just watch the railway in action. If I had had a better camera as a teenager, I'd no doubt have a much more interesting personal archive of photographs.

 

My personal interest in railways has gradually changed from being a relatively 'main stream' enthusiast for all things GWR, to getting more and more into the odd and unusual, which include branch lines, out-of-the-way railway places, industrial railways, narrow gauge etc.

 

For a lengthy period, my main interests were in the Somerset & Dorset line, itself a relative 'odd ball'. I never had the space to build a full-size prototype station at home, so it had to be a fictitious scenario for me. 'Engine Wood' was my first exhibition layout and in order to incorporate some operational interest for me (and hopefully exhibition visitors), I made it a crossing place on a single line, with a small goods yard that saw quite a lot of shunting and some exchange traffic with the nearby NCB colliery.

 

It wasn't a prototype location, but I went to quite extreme lengths to give it an aura of prototype authenticity. Apart from modelling appropriate S&D structures and running locomotives with local shed allocations, I also had a full-size signal box diagram commissioned (drawn for me by a genuine S&T engineer at work), which was displayed in front of the layout. I also composed a set of genuine-looking Local Operating Instructions and displayed them alongside the layout information on the 'public' side of the fiddle yard screens. I even commissioned the artist Peter Barnfield, a personal friend, to do a beautiful pencil drawing of the station with a train in the platform - a reduced-size copy of this was also displayed, together with all the historical background information, covering the historical development of the line and it's setting in relation to the real geography of the area.

 

It was notable, then, that many people at shows, especially shows held in the Bath/Somerset/Wiltshire area, would exclaim that they remembered catching a train from that station. One retired driver even told me, in all seriousness, that he remembered the place when he was working!

 

The point with all this is that although I am an enthusiast of the fictitious layout, for me it has to be:

 

- firmly based on actual company practice, using appropriate buildings/structures and locos/rolling stock appropriate to the area/region of BR/local depot etc.

- set in a real location, that you can find on an Ordnance Survey map (but regardless of whether there was an actual railway there or not)

- given a detailed and plausible historical back-story (composing this side of things is almost as much fun as building the layout!)

 

The most convincing 'lies' are certainly those with an element of truth in them.

 

Back in the day, before we decided it was costing too much to host, I had my own website, with details of three of my layouts posted up on them. I will admit now to being rather shy when it came to admitting that these real locations (which sometimes had fictitious names) didn't actually have a railway running through them. At the time, I just wanted to see how many would spot the subterfuge.

 

Well, some did spot it, and some didn't.

 

Apart from those who claimed to have caught a train from there, I've had people come up to me and tell me they 'took the wife and the dog' out for a walk, to look for the remains of 'Engine Wood'.

 

I've had the Clerk to a local parish council in Somerset e-mail me, informing that the council were just finalising a book on their village on the Somerset Levels and had now just found my website, read the blurb about 'Bleakhouse Road' and felt that they should now include a chapter on the old railway (I tried to let them down gently, but never heard back from them when I 'fessed-up').

 

When it came to 'Callow Lane', my (still unfinished) goods yard in South Gloucestershire, based on Midland practice, I made up the usual fictitious account, albeit based again on a real place near Coalpit Heath. I was convinced that there had never been a railway there, nothing was mentioned in my books nor was anything shown on the Ian Allan Pre-Grouping atlas. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I perused a copy of 'The Midland in Gloucestershire', when I found that there really had been a goods-only line to the supposed location of my layout. It was just a map, though, I've never been able to find any photographs of 'New Engine Yard' (real name), so 'Callow Lane' (fictitious name) has been built as a fictitious 'might-have-been' layout.

 

Hoisted by my own petard, perhaps?

 

This is the most superb thread - a belated Happy New Year to everyone on it!

What a splendid post; more, please..................

 

It always amuses me when folk 'believe' what they're watching on a layout, even if it's fictitious. 'I know someone who used to live in that station' they'll say, even though it never existed. Perfect 'made-up' modelling, perhaps?

 

It's happened to me, even though Stoke Summit actually existed (it still does in modernised/modified form). A retired signalman (who, he said, used to work in Stoke 'box) praised us, but then opined it was a pity the 'box was in the wrong place. I agreed, saying that because of 'natural' layout necessities (to fit into an exhibition) it was only two thirds the distance it should have been from Stoke Tunnel's south portal (selective compression?). 'Oh no, it's far too far away from the tunnel mouth' he said. 'I used to just walk down from High Dyke farm, over the top of the tunnel mouth and straight into the 'box'. How does one argue with that? He couldn't accept his memory was wrong, even when shown the pictures. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

As one of the recent Borchester team I can answer this. Everything on BM was there for a reason, it wasn't until we reproduced one of Frank Dyers timetables and worked to it that I really appreciated what it was all about. It was so methodical that it changed the perception of how you operate a layout from turn the controller and away you go to being signalman first, bell code exchange with either fiddleyard, set the points, set the signals, set the electrics and away you go. Because you were running in a numbered sequence aside from operator error you wouldn't clash with one of the other operators, indeed you could see 3 locos moving at the same time just with DC. We used a mix of modified RTR and kit built stock, although it was a terminus, aside from the locals most were through trains running through from the ECML to the Sheffield direction, it was marvelous operating some of these PDK or DJH Thompson pacifics, to be on the layout they had to be reliable and operate smoothly and they were, they only had to pull 6 coaches at the most, but this was the split consist coming from Grantham so explains the story, You'd then find that 4 coaches would go forward in the Sheffield direction and the other 2 would be shunted into the carriage siding. Later when the train returned the 2 carriages would be shunted out of the carriage siding by the departure loco and backed onto and coupled up to the 4 already in the platform and away you go. It explains why BM didn't have to be a large town because of the function it fulfilled. Interesting to operate, too right, we had a perfect excuse to shunt stock around, how often do you see that. We mainly used an 08 as the station shunter, it should have been a Drewry 04 but we could not rely on the model(s) we had to be reliable, you slowly pull the stock out of the station up to the shunting limit and then reverse them into another platform across all that arrival/departure pointwork, smoothly, without derailment etc. It could be hard work thought, just the concentration. I'm sure that certain people such as Lord Bytham would come up deliberately for a chat just to knock you off your thoughts. I was operating the GN fiddleyard one time and got into a conversation, a train was about to depart and the senses returned, the wrong train had been set-up?

A couple of times I was lucky enough to be a guest operator of Stoke, once was at Didcot, not sure of the other exhibition but I got into trouble because I slowed a train down for a chat with the signalman, the main reason was that somebody wanted to photograph the model, but hey ho, a bit of a devil really because I did it again about 10 minutes later. You buy the likes of BRM over the years and see the loco articles and there it is in front of you on the end of your controller, it gives a different perspective, aside from the appearance of the locos they do what it said in the article, certainly showed me what my B'mann A1 could be doing but nowhere near as good as a DJH A1. Also helped out with Biggleswade at Sunderland, the latter had its board problems but would be my preference over SS and just over BM in fact. Like Little Bytham, a lovely bit of station modelling.

You really helped us out at Didcot Charlie - was it 19 years ago this year? 

 

Stoke Summit was an absolute doddle to drive (deliberately so), but to operate it for nine consecutive days, with only a crew of three for five of them, was a bit arduous. Thus, what a great help you were. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and on the subsequent occasions.

 

What I'd have done with Borchester Market, were the situation reversed is anyone's guess. Just hide, I reckon!

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[60526]

Oh those exhibitors today have got it easy, drive into hall 4 at the NEC and offload, set-up and then go and park, you had better explain how SS got set-up at Didcot, I seem to remember help breaking it down onto a GW crocodile, how did it get to your van?

[micknich2003]

Talking of "I have been there" layouts I made the attached "Gilbert Lane" twenty or more years ago and I took to work with me a box of BW prints. Mid-morning one of the signal fitters/linemen came into the signalbox and looked at all the pictures and proudly declared "I've been there".  In a way he had, every piece of the model was from "Somewhere in Hull", though the name Gilbert Lane was purely fictitious. Photo, Tony Wright.

[St Enodoc]

If you are considering that kind of layout in the context of having experienced (and had your modelling ethos influenced by) the steam-era main line in action, then that is certainly understandable, because of your personal background and interests.

 

But even at age 60, my memories of the steam era are few and far between. I didn't do much trainspotting and what little I could muster up the enthusiasm to do, was in the early 1970s and, therefore, in the BR corporate blue diesel era (oh, how some of us wish we could re-visit that again!).

 

It's not that I wasn't interested in railways in my youth, quite the reverse, it's just that the act of 'train spotting' and recording numbers etc. held little attraction for me. I much preferred to travel on the trains, visit stations and just watch the railway in action. If I had had a better camera as a teenager, I'd no doubt have a much more interesting personal archive of photographs.

 

My personal interest in railways has gradually changed from being a relatively 'main stream' enthusiast for all things GWR, to getting more and more into the odd and unusual, which include branch lines, out-of-the-way railway places, industrial railways, narrow gauge etc.

 

For a lengthy period, my main interests were in the Somerset & Dorset line, itself a relative 'odd ball'. I never had the space to build a full-size prototype station at home, so it had to be a fictitious scenario for me. 'Engine Wood' was my first exhibition layout and in order to incorporate some operational interest for me (and hopefully exhibition visitors), I made it a crossing place on a single line, with a small goods yard that saw quite a lot of shunting and some exchange traffic with the nearby NCB colliery.

 

It wasn't a prototype location, but I went to quite extreme lengths to give it an aura of prototype authenticity. Apart from modelling appropriate S&D structures and running locomotives with local shed allocations, I also had a full-size signal box diagram commissioned (drawn for me by a genuine S&T engineer at work), which was displayed in front of the layout. I also composed a set of genuine-looking Local Operating Instructions and displayed them alongside the layout information on the 'public' side of the fiddle yard screens. I even commissioned the artist Peter Barnfield, a personal friend, to do a beautiful pencil drawing of the station with a train in the platform - a reduced-size copy of this was also displayed, together with all the historical background information, covering the historical development of the line and it's setting in relation to the real geography of the area.

 

It was notable, then, that many people at shows, especially shows held in the Bath/Somerset/Wiltshire area, would exclaim that they remembered catching a train from that station. One retired driver even told me, in all seriousness, that he remembered the place when he was working!

 

The point with all this is that although I am an enthusiast of the fictitious layout, for me it has to be:

 

- firmly based on actual company practice, using appropriate buildings/structures and locos/rolling stock appropriate to the area/region of BR/local depot etc.

- set in a real location, that you can find on an Ordnance Survey map (but regardless of whether there was an actual railway there or not)

- given a detailed and plausible historical back-story (composing this side of things is almost as much fun as building the layout!)

 

The most convincing 'lies' are certainly those with an element of truth in them.

 

Back in the day, before we decided it was costing too much to host, I had my own website, with details of three of my layouts posted up on them. I will admit now to being rather shy when it came to admitting that these real locations (which sometimes had fictitious names) didn't actually have a railway running through them. At the time, I just wanted to see how many would spot the subterfuge.

 

Well, some did spot it, and some didn't.

 

Apart from those who claimed to have caught a train from there, I've had people come up to me and tell me they 'took the wife and the dog' out for a walk, to look for the remains of 'Engine Wood'.

 

I've had the Clerk to a local parish council in Somerset e-mail me, informing that the council were just finalising a book on their village on the Somerset Levels and had now just found my website, read the blurb about 'Bleakhouse Road' and felt that they should now include a chapter on the old railway (I tried to let them down gently, but never heard back from them when I 'fessed-up').

 

When it came to 'Callow Lane', my (still unfinished) goods yard in South Gloucestershire, based on Midland practice, I made up the usual fictitious account, albeit based again on a real place near Coalpit Heath. I was convinced that there had never been a railway there, nothing was mentioned in my books nor was anything shown on the Ian Allan Pre-Grouping atlas. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I perused a copy of 'The Midland in Gloucestershire', when I found that there really had been a goods-only line to the supposed location of my layout. It was just a map, though, I've never been able to find any photographs of 'New Engine Yard' (real name), so 'Callow Lane' (fictitious name) has been built as a fictitious 'might-have-been' layout.

 

Hoisted by my own petard, perhaps?

 

This is the most superb thread - a belated Happy New Year to everyone on it!

I particularly liked your faked-up tickets CK.

[DougN]

Tony, have to say I really enjoyed the video of the LNER 1938 running day. As it is months ago it does think how lucky we all to have had you join us here in Australia for the convention... even though you think my wheels are too far apart! The modelling was exemplary in the video.

 

I do have a strange question which I have yet to research properly and that is the roof colours of the LNER stock.., should it be white or grey... or were they white until they went grey!

[Markeg]

Hi Doug,

 

I think you answered the question with the last phrase.

 

"or were they white until they went grey!" 

 

Mark

[St Enodoc]

It does now! 2* & 4* prices.

Tim

Tim, just thinking that 2* and 4* designations weren't around in the 1930s. My guess (and it is of course only a guess) is that the two prices referred to "Regular" and "Super" grades of fuel and that this would be shown below the prices rather than the word "Gallon".

 

Edit: this website might be of interest:

 

https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/00-app1/gar-pet.htm

Edited January 5, 2019 by St Enodoc

[nerron]

Tim, just thinking that 2* and 4* designations weren't around in the 1930s. My guess (and it is of course only a guess) is that the two prices referred to "Regular" and "Super" grades of fuel and that this would be shown below the prices rather than the word "Gallon".

 

Edit: this website might be of interest:

 

https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/00-app1/gar-pet.htm

Or perhaps Standard and Super.This is my memory of Oz in the 50s.

Edited January 5, 2019 by nerron

[Tony Wright]

Oh those exhibitors today have got it easy, drive into hall 4 at the NEC and offload, set-up and then go and park, you had better explain how SS got set-up at Didcot, I seem to remember help breaking it down onto a GW crocodile, how did it get to your van?

It was one of those rare occasions, Charlie, when a model railway was transported from its place of arrival to the exhibition hall, by real train! 

 

We had to cross the real railway in the hire van to reach the hard-standing area on the Didcot site, then, in absolutely p!ssing-down rain, we loaded the whole trainset on to a GWR low wagon (a 'Lowmac'?), whereupon the resident diesel shunter propelled the lot into the trainshed, where we unloaded at our leisure. The process was repeated in reverse nine days later.  

[Tony Wright]

Tony, have to say I really enjoyed the video of the LNER 1938 running day. As it is months ago it does think how lucky we all to have had you join us here in Australia for the convention... even though you think my wheels are too far apart! The modelling was exemplary in the video.

 

I do have a strange question which I have yet to research properly and that is the roof colours of the LNER stock.., should it be white or grey... or were they white until they went grey!

Good morning Doug,

 

It was my pleasure to be a participant in your excellent convention. And, your wheels are not too far apart; they're exactly the right distance. It's mine which are too narrow! 

 

Roof colours on LNER carriages? As far as I know, white lead when brand new or just shopped. Then, after a few journeys, grey; then after more, dark grey and after even more, black. 

 

I have to say, models with white roofs look entirely unnatural to me. 

 

In the next (March) issue of BRM, Little Bytham will be seen in 1958 guise, in the mag and on a DVD.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Edited January 5, 2019 by Tony Wright

[Chamby]

Re: LNER coach roof colours, I think I have read somewhere that they were outshopped in white lead until WW2, thereafter grey. Similarly, the east coast Pullman stock.

 

However the Thompson coaches released by Bachmann last year have white roofs, which would suggest otherwise.

 

Whatever, as Tony suggests, the white discoloured quickly with soot, so weathered grey is a safe bet!

 

Phil.

[Jon4470]

LNER roof colour

 

My understanding is that the LNER painted the roofs with white lead paint. The weathering of these had two components. One of these was the ash deposit from the loco. This meant that weathering by this means was uneven - it depended on where the coach was in relation to the loco. The other component was caused by the white lead reacting with the atmosphere and turning more grey over time. This was a more consistent type of colour change. The end result, as Tony said, was white turned to light grey, dark grey etc.

Hence a train would often have a variety of roof colours that depended on position in the train and last paint date.

 

I’m not sure if the roof colour was changed to grey during WW2 - it would make sense as a camouflage measure.

 

Jon

 

PS I should give credit to the many contributors whose knowledge I trust for the above information

[bbishop]

I suggest there is a law that sometimes comes into effect with model railways: the level of viewer enjoyment of a model railway is inversely proportional to the level of operator engagement. The more preoccupied the operators become with intricate manoeuvres, the less action there is going on for Joe Public.

 

Not always true, but often the case!

 

Phil.

 

Phil,

 

Very true.  There is a world of difference between an "operators layout" and an "exhibition layout".  So Jamie designed Lancaster Green Ayre as an operators layout, including shunting the electric set to / from Morecambe and the Castle station.  But at Warley, to Jamie's chagrin, we ran the layout as a roundy roundy until the crowds reduced.  We could only do the fun things in the last hour.  The punters wanted to look at a succession of pre-grouping trains (given there were 90 layouts to be got round in 9 hours) so that is what we presented to them. 

 

I have designed Höchstädt mark 2 to present a succession of trains.  But I will allow the fiddle yard operators some latitude in making up the trains.  Also some down trains will cross over to the up platform line in order to be overtaken by a fast train - something interesting for the operator, which won't impact upon the presentation to the public.

 

Bill

[Wibble]

Or perhaps Standard and Super.This is my memory of Oz in the 50s.

I'd go with Regular and Super

[t-b-g]

Phil,

 

Very true. There is a world of difference between an "operators layout" and an "exhibition layout". So Jamie designed Lancaster Green Ayre as an operators layout, including shunting the electric set to / from Morecambe and the Castle station. But at Warley, to Jamie's chagrin, we ran the layout as a roundy roundy until the crowds reduced. We could only do the fun things in the last hour. The punters wanted to look at a succession of pre-grouping trains (given there were 90 layouts to be got round in 9 hours) so that is what we presented to them.

 

I have designed Höchstädt mark 2 to present a succession of trains. But I will allow the fiddle yard operators some latitude in making up the trains. Also some down trains will cross over to the up platform line in order to be overtaken by a fast train - something interesting for the operator, which won't impact upon the presentation to the public.

 

Bill

It was at Warley show that I was most surprised at the crowds we had round Leighton Buzzard. 90 layouts to see but several people watched a tiny branch terminus for more than an hour and quite a few came back, having been round the show, saying the little layout was the most interesting to watch because of the operation.

 

I think the secret is in explaining what is going on. We had an operator on the front and the controls are all visible, plus we had a copy of the sequence on view. So the operator could engage with the public and almost give a running commentary. "The next train in is the goods, so I need to make sure that the run round and the access to the cattle dock are both clear". If youngsters were around, we would get them to choose which wagons went in which order in the train, or ask them which item we should move first.

 

There was also an element of the next move not being the obvious one. So we wouldn't finish shunting the goods and then run a passenger train. The bell would ring and the shunting would pause until the passenger had come in.

 

You have to be the sort of person who enjoys that sort of operating to get the best out of it. Many people are just not interested in such things and I fully respect that. I can always tell when a layout is being run by an operator or somebody who just wants somewhere to run their trains. I enjoy watching the first type more but I enjoy watching both.

Edited January 5, 2019 by t-b-g

[johnarcher]

Tim, just thinking that 2* and 4* designations weren't around in the 1930s. My guess (and it is of course only a guess) is that the two prices referred to "Regular" and "Super" grades of fuel and that this would be shown below the prices rather than the word "Gallon".

 

Edit: this website might be of interest:

 

https://www.igg.org.uk/rail/00-app1/gar-pet.htm

Did 'regular' already mean 'normal' or 'standard' then, or still mainly mean 'at equal intervals'?  I know I'm getting old (all right, got), but the first meaning still sounds wrong to me. Am I that far out of date?

I reckon regular petrol is petrol you buy once a week, every week, same day, same time. Or, at most, the 'normal' petrol for you, because you buy it regularly - habitually.

Edited January 5, 2019 by johnarcher

[jamie92208]

Phil,

 

Very true.  There is a world of difference between an "operators layout" and an "exhibition layout".  So Jamie designed Lancaster Green Ayre as an operators layout, including shunting the electric set to / from Morecambe and the Castle station.  But at Warley, to Jamie's chagrin, we ran the layout as a roundy roundy until the crowds reduced.  We could only do the fun things in the last hour.  The punters wanted to look at a succession of pre-grouping trains (given there were 90 layouts to be got round in 9 hours) so that is what we presented to them. 

 

I have designed Höchstädt mark 2 to present a succession of trains.  But I will allow the fiddle yard operators some latitude in making up the trains.  Also some down trains will cross over to the up platform line in order to be overtaken by a fast train - something interesting for the operator, which won't impact upon the presentation to the public.

 

Bill

What attracts the crowds at shows is a difficult thing to pin down. Long Preston was designed with quite a bit of operating potential that allowed for the operation of multiple light engines (This was at the bottom of the long drag). To allow this there was an upper level loco shed and turntable in the fiddle yard with the necessary point work to allow the locos to be turned and then placed on the front of the next down train. There was also operating potential in the goods yard, the cattle dock and the exchange sidings to the narrow gauge. The narrow gauge came about as initially I didn't have enough stock to keep a succession of main line trains running and the narrow gauge was to allow something to be run. In practice two factors turned it into a roundy,roundy with static stock in the yards. The first was my trackwork, which wasn't good enough, and the other was that we found that on average punters would walk away between 20 and 30 seconds after a main line train cleared the scenic section. I did sometimes do some shunting moves but as that stopped main line trains we found that the crowds just left. The narrow gauge did attract some attention, especially after we moved the control panel to the front so that the operator could talk to the punters. This move however nearly caused the team member who had built most of the narrow gauge to leave the group. The main thing that caused interest on the narrow gauge was the occasional runaway down the bank to the underbridge when a home made coupling failed. The wagons would usually end up in the river.

 

As Bill has said, Green Ayre was designed from the start to be more of an operators layout with a variety of shunting and trip moves and the electric units shuttling backwards and forwards between main line trains. As more stock is built then these moves will be done. An operating sequence is being designed and one day that will be run. However it is very unlikely that the layout will ever go back on the road again due to the potential loss of my 7.5tonne driving licence if I have to get a French Licence.

 

 

Jamie

[CF MRC]

I think we’ll stay with gallons for the time being, so as not to confuse the youngsters.

(It was also easy to add 3d & 5d)

 

Tim

Did 'regular' already mean 'normal' or 'standard' then, or still mainly mean 'at equal intervals'?  I know I'm getting old (all right, got), but the first meaning still sounds wrong to me. Am I that far out of date?

I reckon regular petrol is petrol you buy once a week, every week, same day, same time. Or, at most, the 'normal' petrol for you, because you buy it regularly - habitually.

I think we’ll stay with gallons for the time being, so as not to confuse the youngsters.

(It was also easy to add 3d & 5d)

 

Tim