Pacific231G

Oops. I did of course mean to type "... the late and much missed ExpoNG". I am very much looking forward to ExpoEM which is one of my favourite exhibitions even though I model in H0 and H0m.

Indeed and that's really my point. If the purpose of the show is to attract as many paying punters as possible then running trains for them has to be the priority. If the purpose is more to showcase the hobby to anyone who might be interested and to share the layout with other modellers (or would be modellers) then being able to chat to visitors is not a nice to have but becomes essential. Running it, while still important, is not then the only priority and you can even do things like letting a responsible visitor (often a youngster) have a go themselves. One of my fondest exhibition memories is of operating a French themed layout at a show in Paris and chatting to a local who regretted not having space in his apartment for a layout. I explained to him what an Inglenook Sidings was (not the layout I was with) and saw his eyes light up. Though I'll never know if that really did plant a seed it's not something I'd have been able to do if I'd felt obliged to operate the layout non stop and that's probably why I generally prefer specialist shows to general exhibitions. (On the other hand though French exhibitors tended to go to the other extreme and do very little actual operation but just run a train round and round or up and down the layout. seeing us actually shunting train seemed a real novelty though that's less true now than it used to be)

I can't help thinking that part of the problem is the over-reliance many clubs have on their annual show to fund their activities rather than it being a showcase for the hobby or to attract new members. The only other amateur activity I can think of where the public pays for the members' hobby is amateur drama but, even there, the income from ticket sales usually just pays for the costs of the production itself rather than for the group's other activities (if there are any) such as room hire for weekly meetings etc. paid for from subs. This dependence on exhibitions for a club's own running costs doesn't seem to apply in other countries (and I've helped with layouts at several shows in France). I don't think it applies either to the specialist model railway societies in this country where the annual subs generally cover the society's running costs and an annual show (if there is one) is as much about being a get together and a showcase for their branch of the hobby as "putting on a show for the public". If the purpose of a show is simply to attract enough visitors to turn a profit for the club then there are far less opportunities to share interests with and socialise with fellow modellers . Not being able to discuss a layout with its builder because they're too busy keeping something running for the public is something you don't really experience at shows in other countries nor at those like ExpoEM, Globalrail, or the late and much missed ExpoEM. ExpoNG

It's only a couple of miles from Ealing Studios (which were the BBC's Television Film Studios for many years) and runs between two fairly quiet roads so ideal for a location shoot. I can't think of anywhere else round there where you could have found that combination of busy main line and footbridge in a fairly quiet urban area.

According to the Independent- it's all up for our hobby. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cheshire-nec-b2478343.html I understand that there was a similar article in the Torygraph. I think though that rumours of the demise of railway modelling are greatly (wildly in fact) exaggerated. I actually wonder though what proportion of active modellers ever were in local clubs. I'm in the 009 Society and the French Railways Society and the Wealden Railway Group but, apart from a brief period in the MRC many years ago, I've never been in a typical-with-a-clubroom and weekly meetings type society mainly because my particular interests are fairly specialist. They are catered for by specialist national societies, one of which I am very active in, but not by any of the local clubs round here.

OT Sounds good until you look at the the London UndergrounD which seems to have given up on the idea on the so-called Circle line. It should probably now be called the Hammersmith, Edgeware Road, City and Edgeware Road Yet Again Line. Thinks: if the subsurface "Underground" lines (Metropollitan, Hammersmith and Circle Lines) were in Germany, would they be an S Bahn or a Ü Bahn? In any case those lines haven't been the same since the abandonment of the District's through trains from Ealing (and even Windsor) to Southend, the Metropolitan Railway's Pullmans services and its plan to run from Oxford to Paris!

So what sort of chips are being fitted to Bachmann's 009 locos which have sound (even when run on DC) ? They're surely not larger than SG TT locos.

Indeed. That was the point I was trying to make (though it was less the bodies than the chassis under them that was incorrect ). I don't think many modellers would accept that now given the advances in RTR but, at that time, it meant that a wider range of locos were available to anyone adopting the then new scale without having to wait for Tri-ang to release them. I've still got the 3F, along with a couple of Tri-ang wagons and they're pretty crude but I can remember building a Ks white-metal pannier tank body for my 3F chassis (I didn't make a very good job of it as I recall but others did) There were also a fair number of aftermarket manufacturers such as Bilteezi (for whom it was fairly simple to rescale their printed card building kits) In the end, I'm not sure if it was really the smaller size of N gauge that killed TT-3 as generally assumed or simply that better quality models from Arnold than Tri-ang's TT-3 simply made the new scale that much more appealing

A good proportion of those in my local Tesco are leaning slightly from being backed into!

That's true and I think there were quite long delays in some of them actually getting into the dealers' hands (though the first private TT-3 layout did appear in RM in September 1957. I think one difference between 1957 and now, is that most modellers were far more willing to simply bung a different body on the 0-6-0 chassis and ignore the wheel spacing etc. EAMES had a 94xx pannier tank out by May that used the Tri-ang Chassis though it was £10 (£9/17/6) compared with 29/6 for the Tri-ang 3F and 56/11 for the Tri-ang TT-3 Castle when it was offered in the first quarter of 1958. By that August however W&H, who had detailing parts in 3mm scale soon after the scale's launch, were offering, among other handbuilt TT-3 locos, a Nickel Silver and Brass TT-3 J50 using their own much finer chassis with a Romford "Terrier" motor for £11/8/6 unpainted ( a very good looking model looking a whole lot better than the EAMES Pannier with its Tri-ang chassis).

What rotten luck Fezza. I'm guessing that layout building won't be your priority for a while and hope you can get your home back in shape without too much drama. It's good to know that you're already looking at options and I'm minded to recall Cyril Freezer's suggested modular development of Minories with separate sections for a small urban MPD, goods yard, and sections of main line able to be put together in several permutations.

Fortunately, Tesco's bollards arent made of Berkshire Concrete! Standard car parking spaces are now too small as even relaively small cars have tended to get wider (My Focus is wider than my Mondeo was and I went from that to a Focus (not the current one) because Mondeos just got too large for London.

One of the photos in the book shows it on a pair of rails but I think they are just that - a couple of unconnected lengths of rail put down just for the photograph. There is another genuinely ng loco on the Madder Valley but this is dummy built of wood that was used as a scenic feature on a quarry that was a corner feature on the second version of the layout but that disappeared in the final version. It was accompanied by three skip wagons and all seem to be to 8mm gauge (i.e. 2 ft gauge in 4mm scale) For as long as I've known the Madder Valley, all four vehicles have been on the brickworks' inclined plane. This made sense for the wagons but always seemed a bit daft for the loco- and, looking at his photos, it was never placed there by John Ahern. So, like the working NG loco, we're thinking about where best on the layout to position it.

I had the same problem when one of the updates to my iPhone made it compress photos in HEIF, which my PC doesn't read, rather than jpeg. I was able to change the compression back to jpg in settings so you may be able to do the same though that won't help with any photos already stored in that format. There are also conversion apps available for the PC such as Pixillion that are free for non-commercial use.

If you use foamboard to form proper engineering structures such as box, I or T girders they are immensely strong. My H0 layout uses foamboard for the surface and the points are operated by point levers arranged along the front of the board and connected to the tie bars by wire in tube. The levers are screwed to smallish pieces of thin ply glied to the baseboard surface and have never given any problem in about fifteen years. The good thing about using foamboard is that it's very easy to add additional cross members made from it and simply glued to the bottom of the baseboard surface. If you find one in the way of a point motor simply replacing it doesn't involve any carpentry.

No need for hope. It does still exist! Unlike John Ahern's other working locos based on NG prototypes, it is not adapted (by adjusting the scale etc). to run alongside SG stock on 16.5mm gauge but is genuinely NG to 4mm scale. My notes say that it is 11mm gauge but I've not yet measured it myself. Without any NG track for it to run on it is a slightly awkward beast for the Madder Valley but we like to display all of Ahern's models so it has tended to be positioned on the dockside- as if having been shipped in. My photos of it were just for reference so not very artistic.I suspect that it has never been run exept perhaps for initial testing as we have no evidence that Ahern ever got any further with his plan for an NG feeder and there is no sign of any other rolling stock.

That looks to be the original 1948 edition. I have a similarly bound (and falling apart in the same way) copy of Miniature Building Construction (fortunately I also have a later print with better binding) though my earliest edition of Miniature Locomotive Construction is the 1956 revision. The odd thing about that this "revised" edition still has the same diagram of "some British motors for "00" and "H0" even though the range of available motors must have moved on by then. Looking at chapter XVI on Narrow Gauge I've realised that the 10-12mm gauge freelance loco he describes (with photos) is the very one that tends to look a little lost on the Madder Valley Railway with no track to run on (so often hangs around the docks) It was intended for a narrow gauge feeder that John Ahern never actually built. I think he actually built it to 10mm gauge but I'll check next time I'm there and if it's 12mm gauge we can test run it.

When I wired my H0m layout, I decided to avoid my usual explosion in a pasta factory by giving each of the five set of points its own terminal block for both the motor and frog switching with properly colour coded wires etc. The net result was ......... an even larger explosion in a pasta factory and plenty more opportunities for wires to work lose from their screw terminals! Oh well! At least all my layouts have been on portable boards so I never have to work from below and I'm sticking to that. BTW I understand that both Frank Dyer and Perer Denny were in the habit of including mains wiring with everything else under their baseboards. NOoo!!

Hi Tim It wasn't intended to be a rule - when it comes to artistic impression and preference that would be absurd. Copenhagen Fields is an extraordinary piece of work (as too is the Vale Scene at Pendon though I know that some have reservations about it) and I wouldn't criticise it at all. (and I did enjoy seeing the new tube station complete with working lift at the MRC mini exhibition) N scale does also seem to lend itself to railway panoramas and a panorama, especially if it is very well detailed, is always fascinating. With Copenhagen Fields there is of course far more to look at than the railways themselves- London basically! However, I don't believe that a more typical railway scene modelled to exact scale is necessarily superior to a well observed impression making judicious use of compression and even simplification. One has only to think of the Buckingham Branch which is a surprisingly compact layout.

That sounds like an excellent project, will it be an impression of a station or simply a stretch of mainline in a typically Brummie urban setting? I do see a difference between fully "Retro" modelling which does seem to be about emulating model railways of a past age such as HD and simply using whatever feels appropriate to create the look and feel of a real scene (there was nothing "retro" about Monet and Manet!), and if a model feels and looks right, whatever its level of detailing, then it is right. What for me spoils a model at typical viewing distances isn't lack of detail but far more things like deep flanges, excessively wide tyres and large gaps between the corridor connections of coaches. Though ths may be a controversial view in some circles I actually find that an absolutely to scale model of a real location never feels right as a modelled scene. I think this has a lot to do with the size and viewing angles of models versus the real thing and how our eyes and brain interpret what they are seeing and edit out the spaces between the interesting bits. We are used to seeing the real thing from close to ground level and from as close as three or four metres but, dependin on scale, we typically look at a modelled scene from the equivalent of perhaps forty metres away. For the same reason I find that aerial photos of railways (unless the secenry is the point of the photograph) are rarely as attractive as those taken from closer up. With a model of a railway I think what we are doing is trying to give the impression of a lineside view but from a different viewpoint so a lot of our foreshortening and using much tighter (up to a point) pointwork than protypical is actually artistically desirable.

There was a complete description of Holywell Town and its operation in BRJ no 40 (1992) and it would indeed make a very good micro-layout. Trains were limited to a two coach motor train for passengers (max speed 20MPH) and for goods, three loaded or five empty wagons with a 20 ton brake van at each end. The loco was always at the downhill end of every train and for descending goods trains the side brakes on every wagon had to be secured and the handbrake on the brake van next to the engine applied before heading downhill. The shunter or goods guard worked the brake in the other brake van during the descent which was limited to 10 MPH (this is in the 1916 Appendix so may have changed later) There were two ground frames at Holywell Town, one at each end of the loop. They were released by the train staff so shunting of the goods yard from the loop could only take place with the trap points at its lower end open. Goods trains always worked to and from the loop and on the main (platform) line there was only room for a locomotive between the end buffers and the upper loop points (which were protected with a FPL even though no passenger coach would ever have got that far). No wagons were allowed to be left on the running line outside the loop to eliminate any chance of runaways. The main line gradient was 1:260 in the station area from the heel of the upper loop turnout to the overbridge and 1:27 below that all the way (apart from a short section of 1:31 about half a mile from the junction) down to Holywell Junction . I can't be sure but the goods yard looks to have been flat beyond the trap points and only appears to be elevated because of the drop in the main line. There was a notice under the bridge "Goods trains to stop to pin down brakes" but they wouldn't really have started by then. If it was properly equipped with trap points and the two ground frames- unlocked by a single key representing the staff and Annett's Key so only one could be open at any time- this could make a rather interesting development of Inglenook Sidings with quite a lot to do if it was run strictly to the rulebook. Very frustratingly the NLS OS map collection only has the 25 inch map of the area for 1910 before the LNWR reopened the line (which had been a mineral tramway) This shows it as "Old Railway" but it looks more like the LNWR had done the civil enginnering work by then but hadn't yet laid the track. However, there is a detailed plan here though it doesn't show the two trap points. https://content-eu.invisioncic.com/y320084/monthly_2023_01/HolywellTown.jpg.69e019e2d92177ed0ec25058afec3b37.jpg This was in a post by Bécasse last January and the red box scales as 3m x 1m in 4mm scale. (https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/177063-can-you-produce-a-signal-box-diagram-when-you-only-have-a-layout-plan-and-no-photos/?do=findComment&comment=5071080

So is Tornado a full size working model of an LNER A1 Pacific or an actual Peppercorn Pacific? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_2P2mFT_ac

I've probably said this before but I see a world of difference between a showcase model complete in every detail and a model that conveys an impression of the real thing (which may or may not be very highly detailed) . A good example of this are the ship models traditionally presented to owners by the yards. They were superbly detailed, probably down to the last rivet, but you'd never feel that you were looking at the real thing. This model does though (at least it does for me) Especially when seen like this Though in many ways simplified and definitely not a showcase model, it feels to me like the hardworking coasters whose engine rooms we used to visit in Plymouth's Millbay Docks when I was a cadet there in a way that a ship in a glass case never could. The same was true of the model of a King that used to - and maybe still does- grace the main up platform at Bristol TM. You could put a coin in its case to make it work and it was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship (built I think by Swindon apprentices) but it didn't really give the impression of the real thing that a train running on say the Buckingham Branch does.

We do use RTR locos on operating days (usually four each year) to augment John Ahern's locos (most of which still run incredibly well given their age) but hide them when the MVR is presented as a static display . The other rolling stock was all built by John Ahern so just about everything you see was his work. Thanks to considerable efforts by other members of the team I joined a couple of year ago, every inch of track on the layout is now usable and we test it all during maintenance sessions though it does require very regular TLC. Though it has inspired several 00n3 layouts, the MVR is indeed a standard gauge layout (albeit 00) though it does include a number of narrow gauge locos (60 cm to 3ft gauge) built to various scales that simply looked right. I like to imagine that thay are standard gauge versions of the narrow gauge locos they were based on built by the same manufacturers and, given John Ahern's ability to create a convincing world, they just seem to fit. If you didn't know they were based on narrow gauge rather than SG light railway locos it wouldn't be obvious.