BWsTrains

Slightly over-weight to run up from Exmouth Jct into Upper Hembury I'm afraid.

The first photo is quite like the one by Peter Gray from "West Country Railways" as posted on my topic here https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/173620-upper-hembury-east-devon-a-gwr-sr-branch-line/?do=findComment&comment=5297368 in fact you could have a great game of "Spot the differences" between the two. In the finest tradition of Railway modelling one has a bus the other not! Your post is taken from a slightly changed position, I guess any day looks much like another on a sleepy Branch Line. Yours has large Prairie 5573 , the photo from the book is Small Prairie 4561.

No. There'll always be an evil minority, it's giving them an uncontrolled voice I'm protesting. Facebook policy is the issue, $$$$ driven.

IMO this migration to using such sites which are associated in any way with the horrific transmission of graphic violence is a big negative for our society. Supporting them is endorsing them It may not have made news there but in OZ it stoked a wave of sectarian violence which erupted after Facebook and X transmitted video of the event. I'll have nothing to do with them.

Which brings a whole new twist to the oldie about "Fast women and Slow Horses", not that I'm implying anything about either.

More than a week has passed, lots of fascinating and demanding Bridge played, movies, some gardening, a long overdue visit to Traverser Graham and not much modelling to speak of. I did come away from Graham's place with lots of goodies, mostly garden produce (thx) but also a Mark I prototype sensor to add to my traverser. The issue is that visibility of the Traverser / layout boundary is highly restricted and a near miss over Christmas where a wagon was almost pulled apart because it was not fully one side or the other. Graham suggested that a detector could be set up to alert when the boundary is blocked. Mark I The definitive example of a prototype which highlights all the things you don't need! Partly my fault as I'd failed to remind Graham of the three track span involved. Then we didn't account for the sensor being triggered during every on/off movement. The built-in buzzer quickly told me that was a no no. As per this from Wikipedia Otherwise, Mark I showed promise. It uses an IR LED and a IR sensor from an old piece of hi-fi kit. Presently the LED is powered from the IC and has a very short range. Mark II will be more powerful in order to span the 15cm gap. Also, it will have the sensor removed from the project board to facilitate placement in line with the gap. The alert will be a Green LED which will flash whenever there is a blockage. This can be located in the structure where any flashing can catch my attention without being intrusive to normal viewing during normal traverser workings (I hope!). Alternatively, I might even run a line the 2m to the Traverser control panel where a blockage would alert by flashing in front of me. In a further behind the scenes improvement, I've added in a power saving control so that all items plugged in to mains don't remain on if I forget to switch off at the wall panel. Our State Govt was running an energy saving initiative ages ago and were supplying these for free. I had a spare kicking around awaiting the proverbial rainy day, of which we've had a great many recently!

Thursday/ Friday I think, according to the link. Steam options are shown. FWIW, I couldn't choose a station, this is such a wonderful railway filled with the strongest memories from my childhood.

Now I'm confused. I thought the A and B in A5 B7 of these Turnouts and Slips referred to switch size as per this table: https://85a.uk/templot/companion/real_track.php If you change the Switch Size in Templot using "Template" then "Switch Settings" an A5 is extended when you change it to B5. Isn't that what The Fatadder is asking about? What am I missing here?

Paul. Sadly, your video and the photo are the closest I'll ever get to seeing this layout. Still 'tis better than nowt, superb! Thx very much for sharing, it's the next best thing. Colin

Ah! An old favourite of mine. See here for lots of helpful input about the coaches, kits and their background: http://www.gwr.org.uk/proratio.html I used this Topic (thx @Mikkel) to kit bash various base Ratio models into stock for my Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Railway project but revisiting it to add some GWR stock on UH is an interesting idea for rainy days ahead. The kits are OK, albeit dated; upgrade sides from Shirescenes an option. Beware Pre-owned kits, the plastic in the one I bought was clearly inferior (Ratio 610 IIRC, bought because new stock was not available during COVID times). All kits appear to be available now. Later addition. As referred to in a later post to this one, the following link http://www.gwr.org.uk/prot36.html explains the background regarding the old vs new Ratio kits and much else besides.

Love it, the detail on the base of the stink pipe is superb.

Thx, Sadly the high cost of postage severely restricts my purchases from the UK these days and typically I try to consolidate my orders, not easy when it's smaller suppliers. Having lifted / relaid the problem items now and fully resolved my wiring and insulation gap issues I decided to go with the small PECO joiners as per @St Enodoc 's suggestion to isolate the single slip. TBH I fall more into the big picture than fine detail camp so the Exactoscale would have been nice to have but not enough to go to great trouble. I appreciate it's not the same for everyone but I'm content with enjoying the look and feel of my layout at a macro level now it's assembled with decent trackwork throughout. Colin

Sadly it's all a tad far for a trip from Australia!

I see what you mean about the double slip with the webbing being continuous rather than stepped as on the turnouts. A further option might be to install a replacement strip outside the existing ones before cutting them out. If you intend to not glue down immediately it will be better to support the last three sleepers than have them loose from the rest of the base. As a final point, the single slip is configured like a simple turnout with the webbing offset on the outside to provide clearance for the pin.

Those pin heads look significantly more pronounced than the ones in all the new style kits I've built (my early ones were with cast frogs and pre-soldered switch rail pins). IIRC pin heads on my kits sat near flush under the tiebar, I've certainly had no sticking due to them. I've one A5 I can easily lift tomorrow and I'll attach a photo. My single slip is back in situ and NOT coming out again.