Ray H

Would it be possible to either paint the rail ends at baseboard joins or brush something reasonably thick - like gel superglue or epoxy - on to the ends so that if the rails did expand there was a layer of insulation between them? In theory only doing this to the rails on one board of a matching pair should achieve them same result.

I'm retired and I still keep getting asked that question from SWIMBO 🙄

I hadn't got anything black, so this is the kind of thing I was thinking about in ordinary card. I think it looks better.

A couple of months back - 21 September - I showed a couple of images of the new (lighter weight) drop in sections across the Garage (to house) doorway. Later the same day Jim posted an image of the "bridge" at Rugby which I quite liked. Today, whilst I'm still in the modernising/wrecking the scenery mode, I upscaled and printed a couple of the Scalescenes OO engineering blue brick sheets to O gauge and added them to a shaped facia that I've now fixed to garage side face of the lower drop in section to see what it looks like. I've purposely not edited either image which show the BR track and the end of the exchange siding. Ultimately there would be handrails and coping stones added to the side wall(s). I was/am hoping to get away with just having the facia because the section can then sit on the adjacent (to the right) curved track bed baseboard without impacting upon the fixed track below. However, having now seen it in situ, I feel that (perhaps) the drop in section needs something additional to distract from the items in the utility room behind it. That said, there won't be too many people who look at the bridge from the angle that I took the upper image from. I wonder if I can get away with simply fixing some black paper onto the back of the arch cut-outs? The wall at the rear of the section shewn will be faced with the blue brick and coping stones to disguise the bare plywood. The current plan is to treat the upper section in a similar way.

Progress so far. The backscene is complete with, now, just a single mismatched join which will be behind the factory. I've cut a piece of hanging basket liner to (more or less) fit the corner - its just laid loose at present to cover the bare board. Ignore the blue MDF in the lower foreground which is an odd offcut that'll be replaced in due course.

I dismantled the old hinged access flap and recovered the track, plywood and strengthening softwood. The rest has just been collected by the bin men. I couldn't cover the whole of the corner using just a single piece of the recovered plywood but there was enough plywood if I used two pieces of the same recovered plywood piece. The picture shows the result although, fortunately, it doesn't show the number of plywood pieces used to make the template because the corner and surrounding walls etc were anything but square. 🙄 We talked about moving the (inclined) track a bit further away from the backscene in order to use a tree to address the mismatch in the backscene seen a couple of posts back. The idea was to replace the grassed embankment between the BR platform and the LR overbridge with a retaining wall because the grassed embankment would become too steep. I think that I've solved the backscene problem by remodelling the corner because the previous backscene sheets won't cover the increased wall length. However, I have grown to like the ides of the retaining wall so, whilst the track bed won't change, the embankment will go. Consequently, I took the opportunity whilst everywhere was in a mess to rip out the embankment and put the remnants of the embankment in the bin. All ( ? ) I need to do now is to work out how to support the retaining wall (and what to make it out of !). I've been working on some Arduino related stuff for the club layout recently and had left the test bed - which is mounted on some plywood - on the work bench in case I need to re-visit it in the near future. The small drawer unit seen in the 22nd October image above was removed from the wall as part of the corner works and placed on the work bench alongside the Arduino test bed pending it finding a new home. Unfortunately. the presence of the test bed limited work bench depth whilst I was dismantling the old access flap with the consequence that, in one blinding flash, the content of a considerable number of the 24 plastic drawers from the drawer unit suddenly found themselves spread over the limited remaining space on the work bench and the garage floor which was, at that time still covered in sawdust leftover from cutting bits for the new backboards. I've already managed to separate the drawers' content from the sawdust but still have to sort and return that content into the appropriate drawers. On the plus side, I have at least managed to find a new home for the drawer unit and it is already fixed in place.

I've finally made a start on the alteration. The previous printed backscene might be re-usable somewhere but not here because of the way it had been re-modelled (i.e. cut) to suit what was there before. I got this far and then had to start demolishing the old/original hinged access flap to recover plywood of a suitable size to go in the corner. At close of play today I'd managed to lift the track. Virtually all that remains on the flap that isn't plywood (or screws) will be binned. I also need to raise a couple of surface mounted mains sockets and their pattresses on the wall to the right in the above image. This is in an effort to keep all the backscene sheets to the same depth rather than having to cut out pieces at the top of the sheets to suit the miscellaneous odds and ends that were previously screwed to the wall - some of which can be seen in the picture in the previous post.

Didn't the Duette come with in built thermal fuses?

I've heard it said that using the Momentum button on a PowerCab can upset even the best set CV values with the general advice being to never use it. I'd suggest resetting the decoder - CV8 = 8 is the normal way - and trying again if you have used the Momentum button.

Peak hour services (only) set to resume between Bletchley & Bedford on 20 November by all accounts with full service restored early in the new year. I wonder what their definition of early is? Buses will continue during off-peak periods for the time being.

But I bet the signal didn't change 😀

Could the loco shed stay as the base for numerous locos which would arrive and depart light engine whilst serving other local areas?

Upminster Depot?

Is the LED on the front of the PCP illuminated? Could the decoder be inserted the wrong way round?

The only signal that I think would be appropriate would be one located at the toe of the point leading off the layout towards the fiddle yard. A double disc - one above the other - should suffice with the top disc clearing for trains towards the fiddle yard and the other disc being clear at all other times. Another option would be two arms on a post with either both being short/shunt arms or, perhaps, with the upper one being of a more conventional size and the lower one a shorter/shunt arm. Again, the upper arm would clear for the link to the fiddle yard, the lower arm left clear at all other times, possibly with the exception, of when a train is arriving from the fiddle yard.

You wouldn't necessarily need any signals if the area is freight only. The possible exception could be the link to the main line and that would depend on how close the main line is to the area modelled.

Is Varsityjim possibly unaware of the single track sections at each end of the line between Bletchley and Bedford?

Take a look here - dcc controlled Peco turntable project - which uses a stepper motor.

That would work even better as far as tph is concerned, adding the extra two platforms could provide a faster journey for some locals though.

Another idea could be to re-model one of the intermediate stations between Bletchley and Bedford so that it has four platforms. All trains would call with the fast overtaking the slow. It is difficult to plot this out without knowing the run times of the fast trains but I think it would have the effect of increasing the TPH figure, probably enough to facilitate at least one freight path per cycle. Skip stopping is another idea to effectively increase line capacity but it does mean that travel between some adjacent stations (if there is any) might not possible but that could possibly be overcome by having a different skip pattern in each direction such that people could get to the station they want by a change of direction at specific stations - skip stopping doesn't necessarily mean missing out alternate stations. I wonder how long it will be before the single line sections between Bedford and Bletchley start to affect the maximum service level/punctuality?

A thesaurus or a stove . . . . ? Hat, coat, gone.

We shouldn't forget freight capacity - OK overnight but there'll be a need for day time paths as well. Is it worth looking at 2 trains per hour instead of every 30 minutes - say a 20 + 40 minute interval?

I see from the TV news that the National Audit Office are going to investigate the scheme funding.

Here's the backscene mismatch referred to above:- I hadn't realised how minimal the greenery had become relative to the inclined trackbed on the right hand backscene sheet. However, it does look as though the two sheets should be adjacent to each other. All the sheets are mounted horizontally so I'm wondering whether I can play around with the joins on previous sheets (to the right) to artificially lift the top of the greenery to match the lefthand sheet. There would be consequent mismatches further down but nowhere near as much as there is now and because it would be lower down the sheet it should be easier to disguise.

We've just got home following a cruise to Canada and back - said cruise being part of the reason the thread's been a bit quiet of late. I found one railway station - definitely an open plan type, with little other than track and a few platform lights - where the only platforms that I could find were numbered 4 & 5 ! Apparently their train service was decimated following Covid and they now only have one train a week! At least that's better than another place we visited where we found a 4 car EMU berthed on a bit of track. Upon enquiring of one of the locals I was informed that their last train was about 10 years ago and the next isn't expected for another 3 years ! There was a mega storm all those years ago that cause havoc to the railway - including numerous washouts - which the Canadian government were unhappy to fund the repairs. Sounds like they've now changed their minds about the repairs - which must have been major if it'll take 3 years to fix. Meanwhile, back at home . . . . . . I've been thinking too much whilst I was away 🙄. I seem to be happy with the idea of dressing the Drop In Sections as "bridges" like those in Jim's post above. The question is whether to make the adornments using the 3D printer (for which I still need to spend numerous hours coming to terms with the software) or to wake up the Silhouette from its long term slumbers (and try to remember how its software work) and use that instead - the reason for needing one or the other is to create the voussoir/keystone of the arches. And another thing! Jim and I had previously discussed making some minor changes to the top end of the inclined track (near where our domestic gas pipe is located). I ran out of printed backscene sheets in this area and used what I had to hand with the result that there is a mismatch between the two sheets used here. Jim's suggestion was to move the track sufficiently far enough away from the garage wall to plant a tree that would disguise the mismatched backscene sheet join. I haven't totally ruled Jim's idea out but I'm also wondering whether to replace the couple of infill sheets - there's another mismatch behind the as yet unfinished factory at Mixbury - with newly purchased sheets that overcome the present mismatch. I could then push the back board further into the corner - relocating the nest of small drawers that cause the back board to be cut down a bit - to add a bit of scenery (or another private siding) between track edge and backscene - rather than have the backscene right up to the track edge all the way along the incline. The aforementioned factory would still be need to hide a mismatch at the other end of the sheets. And as if that wasn't enough . . . . I seem to have talked myself into replacing the NCE Mini-Panel and to few accessory decoders installed many years ago with Arduino based kit on the club layout. This will involve persuading the Arduino to generate a few dcc commands - with more learning for me to do - that will be required to set-up a few locos on the layout that operate almost automatically over a section of the layout. This was something else that I ended up thinking about whilst away! Perhaps I'll give up going on holiday if all this extra work or similar is the result.