Nick C

Made worse by most modern housing estates deliberately being built without enough parking - there is one near my parents with the usual one or two spaces per house, despite being in a village with three buses a week - so every house has at least two cars...

I reckon a yellow one weathered like the above, to your excellent standards, would look fantastic. Complete with the traffic cone, obviously...

Have you seen @makeitminiature's videos on his interlocking - he explains it pretty well. Calculating the locking requirements isn't too complex as long as you don't have anything nasty like conditional locking etc. The first step is to write down a list of the actual locking requirements - known as a locking table: Lever | Released by | Locks Normal | Locks Both Ways | Releases | 1 | 2 | | | | 2 | | 3, 12, 5 | | 1 | 3 | | 2 | | | 4 | | | 3 | [8, 9]w/3R| ... Note that there's often less needed than you think - for example, in this case 2 doesn't need to lock any other signal levers as 8/9 are locked by 3 being normal, and 10/20 by 5 being normal - so all the conflicting moves are accounted for. I've over-complicated this example too - you could have 4 only locking 3 reverse (as there's no signalled moves from the platform to the down line), in which case you wouldn't need the conditional locking on 8/9. Once you've got that you can then think about the dog chart (the actual diagram of the physical locking bars, tappets and dogs).

That's no excuse, as the lights were flashing and the boom moving before he entered the crossing...

What, like this? https://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/24012619.tank-outside-wickes-man-fumes-poor-quality-kitchen/ An Abbot self-propelled gun to be exact, and it stayed there over a month...

Unless you're at the A34->A303 eastbound junction, which I think has been mentioned on here before - very sharp bend into really short slip, and no visibility either way. That's one where, when I'm already on the main road, I tend to move over into lane 2 on approach if it's safe to do so, so that there's room for anyone coming up the slip to merge in.

It doesn't seem to be enforced at all, at least not on residential streets. The Highway code says not to park within 10m of a junction, but that doesn't seem to stop people... And on a related one - We saw a delivery van while out for our walk at lunchtime, who had just stopped in the middle of the road, between two lines of parked cars. There was a suitable gap he could have parked in no more than two car lengths in front of him, or a church car park a similar distance behind.

In a lot of places it's difficult, if not impossible, to avoid cutting the corner - especially with the number of parked cars around on many residential roads these days (illegal itself so close to a junction, of course, but as @cctransuk says, such is life...). The important thing is to do so slowly and safely so there's no risk of collision. There's a lot of "It's my right of way" type attitude (often when it isn't...), but sometimes it's better to wait for the other car to go first anyway, then you've got more room to manoeuvre...

Both Bognor and Littlehampton (to keep with the Brighton/Saxby theme) actually had the facing crossover as the outer one, and both were signalled for arrivals into any platform. They also had vast numbers of discs, often selected by the lie of the points - 28 at Littlehampton, compared with 9 after the SR resignalling!

If you do need FPLs on 3A* and 14A, they'd probably both be worked of the same lever - both to save equipment and as there wouldn't be room for a full locking bar between them. I agree with @Compound2632 that the right-hand end of the slip would be a crossover on lever 3. *A refers to the end closest to the signalbox for crossovers, with B for the other. In this case both ends of 3 will be about the same distance, but I'm referring to the one currently labelled 3! As for the worked distant into a terminal platform - Seaford, Bognor and Littlehampton all had them, according to the Pryer diagrams.

Not at all - four survived into BR ownership and the last one lasted until 1956. Rails did do a version in BR livery.

They are utterly stunning Chris, well done!

Generally it's signals in order of approach - so distant - outer home - home - starter - advanced (or whichever subset of those you've got) for trains passing the box left-to-right, and the opposite for right-to-left trains. Can you share a track plan?

What'd really help these days would be a clear, consistent and integrated website of all upcoming closures - rather than each council, and national highways, doing their own thing - and having them talk to each other so you don't get roadworks on a diversionary route from some other roadworks...

or when they have "Road closed here 20:00-06:00" - but don't have anything on the other carriageway, so that when you go down in the morning, you don't see anything to tell you that you won't be able to get back up in the evening...

Basically slavery in all but name...

H&A models, Cheltenham Model Centre and Digitrains are all listed here: https://www.phoenix-paints.co.uk/store-finder

Good luck Jim! Hopefully having both a target and and exercise partner will help you to get motivated. I've just started a new exercise regime too, for the opposite reason (I need to gain muscle mass/strength and stamina - so mostly resistance work rather than cardio)

It was good to see Beijiao at Alton, the first time I've seen it in the flesh. The banked train was pretty impressive (having read this thread I knew to wait around for it!), as was the 15?-car passenger set on the main line. The orange backscene really works well too, gives a proper feel of filthy industrial pollution...

I'm sure @KNP just photoshops in those bits of 'room' just to make us think he's posting photos of a model...

LSWR Wagon brown was the same shade subsequently used by the SR. Precision do it, I'm sure there are others: https://www.phoenix-paints.co.uk/products/paint-products/precisionrailway/pregroup/lswrpregroup/14p91

TOPS class 98 is used for any steam locos that have run on the mainline since the early 70s, with the third digit being the power classification and the last two usually the last two digits of the cabside number - 98238 is the number allocated to 16xx pannier 1638

08238 surely? 98238 is a pannier tank...

If no-one recorded it, no-one can prove you wrong...

Very sharp scalpel blade, and cut rather then chop - i.e. multiple gentle strokes of the blade rather then trying to force it through in one go?