martin_wynne

Just to mention that if you go the plug track route you never need to thread chairs onto rail. Or to chamfer the end of the rail. The rail drops into the chair, and is clipped in place by inserting the loose jaw: Martin.

@MikuMatt81 Hi, You haven't lost the plot, and all is not lost. 🙂 You just need to think in terms of industrial turnouts, and get into Templot. Industrial turnouts are very often flat-bottom, but not always. You can find plenty of very short bullhead turnouts in old industrial sidings. The Peco Set-Track turnouts are very close to a 9ft-1:3.75 bullhead turnout, having a model radius of 18 inches in 00 gauge. Here I have overlaid one in Templot on the Peco plan which you posted: If you get into 3D printing that would be very easy to build. Templot can create all the files you need to create this on 3D printers, and the filing jigs needed to make the rail parts: See about Plug Track at: https://85a.uk/templot/club/ Martin.

@Wayne Kinney Hi Philip, Just to clarify that there is no connection between Wayne Kinney and myself. We are not two of anything. Wayne is trading as the proprietor of BritishFinescale and supplier of the Finetrax kits. Templot software is my hobby project available for use by anyone free of charge. I am not trading commercially. Martin.

It's worth changing the base map to "Bright":

Try: https://bustimes.org/map Covers all bus companies with GPS trackers. Tracks buses moving -- and the colour of each one. Updates about every 60 seconds. Click on a bus to see a picture of it, registration number, where it has been all day, the date of the last oil change, ... Martin.

Hi, That is referring to turnouts. The present discussion is about slips. For diamond-crossings and slips, the overall size is controlled by just 2 things -- the crossing angle and the track gauge. The type of switch used within a slip does not change its overall size. It changes the internal radius of the slip road, and the space available for the K-crossing check rails, but it does not change the overall size of the slip. That becomes obvious when you remember that a slip is simply a modified diamond-crossing. A diamond-crossing does not have a switch of any type or size. cheers, Martin.

This is an OPTION in Templot. You can set it to whatever you want: I get a bit irritated when folks say Templot does this, or Templot does that. Templot is a workshop TOOL -- it does whatever you set it to do. cheers, Martin.

Hi Rich, The switch size doesn't make any difference to the overall size of the slip which is governed only by the crossing angle and the track gauge. If you used the make slip function in Templot, a 1:7 slip will have B-type switches. It doesn't matter whether you start from an A-7 turnout or a B-7 turnout, the 1:7 slip will have B-type switches. I believe Wayne uses the same Templot designs for the Finetrax kits. The kits are supplied with suitable machined switch blades, so there is no actual need to be concerned with the size of the switch. The only way to create a 1:7 slip with A-type switches would be to create it yourself in Templot using multiple partial templates, instead of using the make slip function. It would still fit in the same overall size footprint as a 1:7 slip with B-type blades. cheers, Martin.

Well there's me. I would call it a retaining wall. It's definitely not enough to block the flow of this topic. 🙂 Martin.

If the base is above the water level, it seems not to serve much purpose? Or maybe this is an "add a caption" competition? This is the Whacky Signs topic. 🙂 "Hilly footpath to lake." "Cut strawberries in half and place on top of Weetabix." Martin.

If the dams didn't block a watercourse the Elan Valley reservoirs would take a very long time to fill up! The correct term for an earth mound or embankment to retain water in a storage reservoir, as at Bartley, is a bund, not a dam: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bund The word dam means to block or stop something. There was nothing to be blocked or stopped at Bartley when they built the reservoir. If that's what they call the earth mound, they are the ones talking rubbish. 🙂 Here's the bund around the reservoir at Trimpley, well-known to passengers on the Severn Valley Railway, which runs alongside it. With not a whacky sign in sight. This topic drift needs damming up. 🙂 cheers, Martin.

Bartley is a reservoir, not a dam. Its inflow is from the Elan Aqueduct, not by blocking a watercourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartley_Reservoir It's Bill Oddie country. Martin.

No there isn't. The dams are 70 miles away in the middle of Wales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_aqueduct Martin.

A more likely candidate might be the North & West line, which runs right past the Woofferton transmitter site. It's known to affect the railway, see: https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/11054498.bbc-radio-transmitter-disrupts-trains-between-leominster-and-ludlow/ At one time it was broadcasting Voice Of America on short-wave to Europe. Over the years there have been local mutterings about strange foreign language interference with radio and tv reception, conspiracy theories about what is really going on there, dangers to health from mobile phones, etc. Martin.