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Some more photos from yesterdays running session: Anthony Manor seen approaching Henley-on-Thames with the c23 clerestory 3rd carriage: Plus two photos of Grange class 4-6-0 6860 on the approaches to Henley-on-Thames. I couldn't decide which one I prefer: Both speakers are the same size squeezed into the small Collett tender. I am of the view that the bigger size speaker will offer the better sound. When I posted the image of the Manor and its new speaker onto Facebook, someone said I should have gone for a slimmer version from Roads and Rails..... interesting thought, it would have been easier to get in, but I still cant get my head round the logic..... Anyway, I am happy with my large Youchoos speaker.

The last desperate gambit of a former model company to stay afloat was to try and copyright locomotive designs. If anything it probably helped the company on its way south, blowing whatever residual goodwill they had and making it look an even bigger clownshow.

I see they have corrected the whiskers on the 121 which makes a big difference to the appearance. I don't really want 2 but I might be tempted to get another and sell one chassis since my old one ran well and then swap bodies for different periods. I could live with generic dark grey seats.

Morning ( here) John. Thank you. Rest assured, we'll be updating the thread for those unable to get to us today. The Sheep is up and like most of our exhibitors, will be leaving shortly. Rob

A friend at my last school took me to the doorway of a room in their house... To get there you went down a corridor something like 15ft long, each side was totally shelved floor to ceiling, each shelf was stacked with LPs thousands of them , all classical. The doorway led to a specially built room , a hifi in the middle of one wall, several very large speakers and an armchair in the middle of the room. His dad's music room no one else was "officially" allowed in. The room was hugely expensive, not only was it specially acoustically designed, when digging the foundations historically important ruins were found beneath, so the whole room was built on a bridge over the ruins. Me still got my 1980 jvc deck, no idea if it still works, I haven't attempted to run it in years.

Any update/progress with these models please?

I actually set aside an hour this evening for a running session, no maintenance allowed, which was curtailed by problems after about 35 minutes. Ran an originating Up goods with a Crab, Up through goods with an 8F 48475, . Terminating Down goods with Hagley Hall, down through passenger with a Hymek, Up Passenger and Parcels with 47XX blocking P1 for half an hour loading parcels, Up XP with Devizes Castle. Down XP with Glos Rgt Castle stopping at P3 and taking Manobier Castle as pilot up bank, Pilot detached outside terminus to save platform space , Up Goods with 9F had caught the XP Being held outside the station by East Box while the pilot was attached to the XP before stopping on the through road before taking 81XX banker up Bank. 14XX ran auto train down main line to Middleton Basset and return. 81XX and Tender first Manobier Castle returned coupled together, 81XX to Banker siding, Castle to MPD, Hall goods shunted by 77XX Goods yard pilot and 77XX Down yard pilot to release Hall to loco spur, 77XX removed breakdown crane from road 2 to breakdown siding on Up side and return. 4566 carriage pilot came across to return brake van to Marshalling yard and return to Up side. finally Castle Sir Edward Elgar hauled Up XP from terminus which de railed on the upper lift out which has warped. Working a bit like a one armed paper hanger, using 5 different controllers, often driving two train at once and two locos on one train off one controller I ended up with a lot of shunting to do and only 25% of the locos on the layout actually moved. Despite being an oval no train went right round more than once. Nothing ran on the branch as it was raining! And this is DC Just wondering how others operate

Sky Pilot . . . . . .. ERIC BURDON AND THE ANIMALS

We've had 2 sheds, both of the tin variety. One came with our last house and was used mainly for garden storage (and bicycles). The one at the trailer was all gardeny stuff. Went to GBTS today as visitor. Saw many old friends. Stayed for 1 1/2 hours. Won't say more for fear of awl. Traffic on the way home was horrible but we left the expressway and went through town.

I tend to agree with DCB. As USB wall warts are now essentially free, and will happily power pretty much anything other than traction current and solenoid point motors, with far less waste heat to worry about, I cant think of many good reasons to use anything else for accessory power on a new build.

I have never had any luck with fold up chassis but that looks like an absolute B***** with two folds needing to be made simultaneously front and rear with a gap between. I would use a very stout 12" steel ruler clamped to the brass sheet to make the bend around. The second side bend is going to be really awkward. It's very pretty but is it a basis for a working loco?

Rails currently has several Dapol class 73s going at a little over half price, at £89.50 (U.K. price). I need more class 73s like I need a hole in my head (it is there somewhere!), but I succumbed to temptation and ordered two from the later released batch, so there should be none of the electrical gremlins of the earlier releases. I have LL blue 73 126 and Executive 73 136 on the way now. The actual price for me here in Australia worked out at roughly £89 each - less VAT but with postage added.

One consequence of this was the appearance of unprototypical TM letters on the sides of model rolling stock.

I have 2 turntables in the basement. A few years ago our Dual decided not to put the arm on the records so I found a local shop that sells turntables. I now have a Pioneer that only has 2 speeds. The other unit is a PA outfit (25 watt with speaker) that i used to use for teaching dancing. It has a Lenco TT with fully variable speeds from below 16 to above 78 with detents at the 4 popular spots. When teaching dancing it is useful to slow the record down a touch until they get the steps. At school, I used to end the dances with Stranger on the Shore slowed down from 45 to 33. I have 6 x 32" shelves of LPs, another of 78s and 45s that I haven't put out because the shelves are too big. These are all under the railway.

... and don't forget the 'wasp' stripe ends on the 08 mentioned in the OP, and likewise for any other small shunters.

With my turntable I lifted it up and the belt drive fell to pieces I obtained a replacement for about a fiver but soundproof wasn't included and three years later it still doesn't work.

The original M4 Severn Bridge was a disaster for South Wales. It enabled the development of industry and warehouse/distribution hubs in the North Bristol area, later developed into Cribb's Causeway, and the imported car distribution network based on Portbury Docks, which were easily able to serve supermarkets and industries in South Wales, to the detriment of jobs in South Waies. It was the death of car imports and exports from Cardiff and Newport. It also promoted the use of Bristol Airport at Lulsgate for South Walians at the expense of Cardiff (Rhoose). Both airports are very badly situated and poorly served by road and public transport, the 'wrong' side of the cities they are named for, and for some years there was talk of a 'Severnside International' airport to replace both of them and tap into traffic from the Midlands as well. An airport built out over the esturary close to the bridges and Severn Tunnel would be very stategically placed at the crossroads of both motorways (Almondsbury) and railways (Bristol Parkway), but it never happened.

In 2024 with 5 volt power supply from USBs an industry standard it makes no sense to power LEDs from a "12 volt" supply Many "12 volt" supplies deliver well over 12 volts off load over 20 in many situations. For anything but blue and white I use 3 volt power supplies and resistors to adjust the brightness. of signal lamps, That way the resistors run cool. dissipating maybe 20% of the load not 90%. I have seen badly scorched card buildings where resistors have run very hot inside them. Heritage White and Blue will not light on 3 volts. Heritage red need about 30% of the current of Heritage Green for similar brightness. If you must use 12 volts step the voltage down through a number of 1amp diodes in series rather than by resistors as it gives a much more stable voltage much less dependent on the number of LEDs in circuit.

I won't, Phil, so you can have mine. Have a great day everyone.

Dad bought a Grundig TK 830 two track tape-recorder (with AUTO-REVERSE!) in the late 50's. Allegedly portable but it was a heavy brute. I figured out how to connect it to the pre-amp of his Bush radiogram so I could record the Top Twenty from FM. I was the the DJ for the DEN Disco in the scout hall run by my scout group. IIRC we had an amplifier that put out 15 watts of raw power. Happy days 😄

I don't think this is usually a good idea. Decoders are different & buying DCC fitted includes the manufacturer's choice of decoder, which can be an unknown (my first fitted loco contained Hornby's original bad decoder which had been discontinued several years previous). Bachmann have changed suppliers & their decoders have been inconsistent as a result. It has not always been possible to simply re-blow these either. The same is true of sound. Manufacturer's have made some poor choices within their sound projects which don't work as well as those from dedicated sound vendors like Legomanbiffo, Paul Chetter or YouChoos.

Safety valve bonnets. I have used the green bit from poppies, with a piece of plastic from the hole punch glued on top, and push in peg board pins, the tall ones, cut down a bit. A "Wood push pins" set from Am@zon come in lots of lovely shapes which could be suitable for boiler mounts, buffers, sand boxes etc, 114 pieces for £9. Brass thumb tacks, plastic peg board pegs, all different types great for modelling and cheap too.

Very nice Philip. The way to do it is to thread the chairs onto the rail and then cut them off the sprue. Regards Lez.

Almost all would be plain blue with yellow ends. A few might still be green with yellow ends, but these would be very rare by the mid 70s (mainly a few 25s, 40s and 47s).

Thanks Keith that certainly looks like one. I've use the more colloquial term 3-way/4-way; am I correct in that these were termed tandem turnouts? If so, how would a tandem that diverged three ways be differentiated from one diverging four ways, in terms of nomenclature?