Pacific231G

Thansk foir this Keef Though it's listed, it doesn't appear to be available for viewing yet- there is no hyperlink though there is for the other editions listed-. I think though that the final Tx was today so it should be avaialable very soon. It's well worth seeing

What you have missed, but Ian Futers didn't because he modelled it, is the old three platform terminus at Fort William with just two points. Although it originally had a releasing crossover between the two "bay" platforms, that largely fell out of use once the Mallaig extension turned the terminus into a reversing junction and it was taken out in the 1950s. The terminus was actually too intensively worked for a run-round to be of much use as, several times a day, trains from Mallaig and Glasgow crossed there often followed by a summer relief train. To add to the fun, sleepers and dining cars from Glasgow generally terminated at Fort Williiam with the rest of the train going forward to Mallaig but sometimes with an observation car attached (and vice-versa in the opposite direction). There was at one time even a summer only embryonic motorail type service that ferried accompanied cars between Fort William and Mallaig to avoid the "single lane with passing places" A road between them. Tail loads of fish vans were also not infrequent and there was often work for not one but two station pilots. I've watched the operation there during a couple of family holidays in the 1960s and it was fascinating. Nothing much happened for several hours then all hell broke loose when trains arrived one after the other from both glasgow and Mallaig. It is an interesting irony that small branch line termini almost invariably required a run-round loop when trains were loco hauled but busy main line and suburban termini very often did not-an irony not lost of Cyril Freezer when he designed Minories! One of the most interesting layouts that I've operated was Giles Barnabe's On16.5 Puerto Paseo which, in about five feet, included a three platform terminus at the end of a single track main line with a two road goods yard and a kickback to the local docks . These two images show the whole scenic part of the layout. The turntable was solely to turn the railway's single ended railcars. Puerto Paseo didn't have a releasing crossover but, with a well thought out operating sequence that took about an hour to work through, I found that I could enjoy operating several sequences (taking it in turns) during an exhibiton day without losing interest. Here are three more images, just because I really like this small layout and its operational potential.

BBC News Channel is currently showing a fascinating edition of The Travel Show - "Germans and their Railways-a Love Story". It's based on their young reporter exploring Germany with a "Deutschland Ticket" - which gives access to the country's regional rail network for I think 47€ a month (You have to subscribe to get the ticlet and, if visiting as a tourist, remember to cancel before you pay for the next month) . It includes the Alexanderplatz station on the Berlin U-Bahn, which was a ghost station during the Berlin Wall period as it was in East Berlin on a West Berlin line that passed through a bit of East Berlin. Also, the Wuppertal Schwebenbahn and its new museum that's just opened and, most interesting of all for me, the Lorenbahn that serves islands on the north coast that regualrly flood and on which locals run their own homebuilt railcars (the railway is actually owned by the government agency that protects the coast from erosion) Unfortunately visitors aren't supposed to ride on them unless staying with someone on the islands (in this case the owner of a B&B) The programme is inevitably a bit superficial but nevertheless very interesting and well shot. It's on the BBC News channel I think once more today and once tomorrow before the next edition appears.

Which series of The Sweeny had the shot in the opening titles of the pedestrian overpass (long since dismantled) over Shepherds Bush?

There's no sensible comparison between an aircraft or road vehicle and a train. The chances of a collision or derailment while on a train are minute compared with a road vehicle which is also likely to swerve or brake heavily to avoid an accident. While an air accident is probably equally unikely, at least on a scheduled flight, the chances of heavy turbulence, a violent manouevre , a heavy landing or an aborted take-off are fairly common- that's why one is required to wear one's seatbelt during take off and landing and advised to while seated throughout the flight. Seat belts in cars had a massive effect on fatalities and "life changing" injuries. On trains, any benefit would be very close to zero but the cost would not be.

Anyone remember the acronym SIDE?* I know what it means (electrical engineering was part of my OND though we knew it as Magic) but I don't know why I can still recall it. I think it was in one of those OU programmes, something about HV electrical work, that I sometimes ended up putting out on BBC-2. but that was over forty-five years ago. Clearly it was a very good acronym. * Switch off. Isolate, Dump, Earth.

Energex is the is the electricity distributor for South East Queensland. I wouldn't want to argue with this particular arachnid about whose meter it is either. "Some funnel-web species deliver a bite so toxic that it can kill an adult human within 15 minutes." I'm always rather amazed that there are any Australians still alive.

A logical impossibilty of course. A cat can't be a thief because they already own everything including us.

I agree about carrying out all the relevant operations properly but I do compress the time required for things like coupling & uncoupling, passengers boarding and alighting, and brake tests. At an exhibution, If nothing at all happens for a whole minute while the imaginary brake test is suposedly carried out or for two minutes to give the imaginary passengers time to open the imaginary doors, then everyone else watching will probably walk away.

I've only just seen these Big Jim but thanks for posting them. The only time I mamaged to travel on that stretch of line was during that same Chiltern Railways diversion in 2012. I got the Central Line from Perivale to W. Ruislip then the Chiltern to Paddington. Since they cut the line approaching OOC, the Greenford Branch has been a lot less interesting though we had some excitement before Easter when the late Adrian Shooters' new battery electrics sets were being tested. How soon they come into service is anyone's guess buit the branch is being used as the test location for these trains that GWR intend to use on most of their shorter branch lines . They are in any case a bit out of era for this layout unless WCML applies rule 1.

I do use cleaning blocks but those sold by DOGA which seem far less abrasive than the Peco track rubbers. I use IPA sparinngly to clean between switch and stock rails. Something that Pendon uses that may be helpful is the rough side of a small piece of hardboard. For the Dartmoor and Vale scenes this is mounted on a skeleton bogie wagon using a weighted holder to keep presure on the rail but I've used my own, cut from a piece of hardboard, as a hand tool on my own layout to give the track a final polish.

I'm glad to see that's still on the late Carl Arendt's site. It was I who sent it to him having discovered it while exploring the remains of the line that ran between Fecamp and Dieppe. These are the photos I took of it at the time (a couple of which are on the carendt site) The former level crossing keeper's cottage the line ran across the road here but had been tarmacced pver. This was the view from the other end the yard was shunted using a powered capstan - quite common around small rail connected silos- with a couple of unpowered ones - including this one - for directing or reversing the hauilage cable. This was my plan of the site (scaled in feet for 1:87 scale) This is the same but with dimensions added from the rough sketch and pacing out of the yard I did when I visited it and measurements taken from Google Earth and IGN . The line marked as dismantled was the start of the station's passing loop. Finally, this was my suggested Microlayout based on it The yard was shunted using an electric capstan but I've seen similar silos - perhaps a little larger- with an old locotracteur, often a Moyse, apparently rotting away but actully used in the brief periods when the silos got busy. There used to be a lot of these small local silos in France and they kept a lot of secondary lines in business until the 1990s, decades after they lost their passenger services. They did though have a nasty habit of blowing up (grain dust, like many other small particles in aerosol, can be explosive) so were replaced with fewer much larger silos. The way this was worked would have been that the two points connecting the yard to the SNCF line were opened by the crew of the SNCF pick-up goods who picked up and dropped wagons as apprpriate. The points were then padlocked shut and the silo staff could shunt their private sidings to their hearts content as wagons were loaded or unloaded one by one. The station's LM (Limite de Manouevres - shunt limit) sign was just before the level crossing but that must have been passed when shunting to or from the private sidings.

My tongue was firmly in my cheek but don't worry. the GWR (or possibly the South Devon Railway) used the plan a couple of generations before John Allen. If you look at Ashburton's track plan it was, apart from the locos shed road, a timesaver! In its American form, with just a coupler of freight cars in each siding, timesaver always seemed to me very contrived -which of course it was- it was a pure shunting puzzle and not intended to be in any way realsitic. Ingelnook Sidings, on the other hand could be a small rural goods yard. I have found though that if you add a run round loop and another siding facing the other way you get an awful lot of far less contrived shunting. This was what I came up with in five feet but I did some experiments and found that, with small radius points and a small tank loco, it could be crammed into 4ft 6ins which is only about three or four inches longer than a 5-3-3 Inglenook using the same European H0 wagons.

Stevey, I think you may have just re-invented John Allen's "Timesaver". https://gdlines.org/GDLines/Timesaver.html Which is not altogether surpring as there are only so many ways to arrange five points (though as Timesaver was designed for 40ft American cars, you'd probablyy need to semi permanently couple wagons in pairs to make the puzzle work. I agree about making the front edge of the layout a quayside, possibly with an inch of "water" and just a couple of small boats. You can fit a layout with a run round loop into four feett. as Paul Gittins did it with his Enigma Engineering layout (BRM Nowember 2006) and in P4 to boot using two foot radius points. The fiddle yard to the right is optional with a level crossing gate closed during shunting . The sidings and headshunts will each take two wagons (limited in the case of the sidings by the wagon turntable and some rusting wagon wheels on the other siding . The run round is limited to three wagons (it will take four but that makes the puzzle too easy) I've drawn it using Peco short Streamline points and it clearly fits. The layout has six wagons on its visible section (the fiddle yard allows them to be changed) . "Enigma Engineering" followed his H0 "Peforia Narrows" (Continental Modeller Oct 2003) which had the same double crossover layout and was 5ft 6ins by 9ins with the same siding and loop capacities but for 40ft freight cars and no fiddle yard. With six cars on the layout the puzzle was set in much the same way as Inglenook Sidings by randomly dealing six "destination" cards (including the departure track and then the six freight car cards to be shunted into them. Enigma Engineering was opeated in much the same way but with the additional complicatiion of a brake van to be on the rear of trains arriving from the fiddle yard and departing to it. I think this arrangement, with two of the sidings facing in opposite directions, gives more interesting operation than Inglenook and it was used by Peter Denny for the first version of Leighton Buzzar (Linslade). With a little extra length it can also accomodate a passenger station.

With that much space to work with and assuming a mainline set up, I wouldn't limit yourself to four coach trains which IMHO aren't really convincing as expresses. Visually, in 00 or H0, five coaches seems to just do it but I'd plan on a platform long enough to take at least a six coach train plus loco. It doesn't matter if trains are shorter than the platforms- that's pretty normal- but you might kick yuorself for not allowing for anything longer. The steam era expresses I remember as a teenager at Oxford were very typically eight coaches long - apart from the longer summer Saturday intergionals- so I think six would be a reasonable contraction. Obviously, the longer the platforms the less open main line running you'll get. It does also seem to be the case that the smaller the scale the less compression you can get away with. At normal layout viewing distances I find four coach expresses fairly convincing in O scale but not in 00/H0 and in N even a six coach train can look a bit short.