Ray H

I reckon that our local postal service is awaiting the building of a new Light Railway around here! The delivery delays that we seem to be experiencing certainly don't appear to show their road based motor vehicles in good light, but I digress (although you can probably take it from that, that the adhesive brick papers that I ordered several days ago still haven't arrived 😒). I think that I'll go with the name changes previously mentioned viz: the halt will become Fulwell and the terminus will become Mixbury. The remaining question then is, does the light railway thus become the W (for Westbury [Crossing]) & M (for Mixbury) or do I call it the W & A (for Ardley, which was the originally planned terminus)? When the money ran out and lines stopped short of their originally intended terminus, did those lines change their name to reflect the truncation or did they stick with using the originally intended terminus in the line's name?

Indeed he did and I was his manager for a significant part of that time. 😒

Indeed it was. One of my office colleagues was originally married to his secretary but I didn't appreciate then exactly who he was so I never managed to wrangle an invite.

Thanks. I still need to sort out fixing the backscene sheets as the top right corner of the lower picture shows another place where the double sided tape hasn't stuck. I managed to tack one full sheet back in place yesterday with a few minute splodges of hot glue along the top edge. I was originally going to use superglue blobs to hold the backscene but two of the three bottles that I'd been using until a couple days ago suddenly glued themselves shut and then a fair bit of the (then) unopened minute tube of the stuff went everywhere when I screwed the cap down to break the seal - 😒 Can't do much today as the garage is now full of furniture in preparation for the carpet cleaning later this morning.

And now with roof & lean-to. And with the tree moved The roof is only lightly tacked in place for the time being - I obviously need to stick it in a few other places judging be the bow in the front edge. I'll add the windows in due course. The adhesive brick papers were ordered today and should be here by the weekend.

It might just be worth taking the back off the unit and gently pressing the Integrated Circuit - the thing with loads of legs - to make sure it is seated properly. Other than that, cleaning the membrane and the buttons is about all you can do (I think). I suppose you could drop NCE an email explaining your scenario and see what they say.

We mustn't lose sight of the fact that in the last 40 or so years, what was previously openable, removable and the like, quickly got locks, marks and other things to show if they'd been tampered with once security was upgraded from hardly any to virtually all. Thus what was probably possible as late as the 1970s, very quickly became all but or actually impossible soon after.

Your extracts and links make interesting reading, thanks for them. I've made a start on the mocked-up building:- The doors are made from coffee stirrers - nothing looks like wood, other than wood (or should that be coal 😄 ). There will be a lean-to roof over much of the front, mainly to keep the weather away from the two doors, and there'll be a tiled/slate roof on the building - any resemblance to Scalescenes OO kit TO24a is not surprising as I scaled up that kit to get an idea of size. As a recent convert to O gauge, I still find buildings seem very large compared to OO ones.

I'd never taken too much notice of the physical geography of the area and probably wouldn't have done so had it not been for the mention above of Lenborough, somewhere I'd not heard of previously even though it isn't too far from where I now live. A look on dear old Google's map of the area reveals that both Gawcott & Lenborough are much nearer to Buckingham than Westbury is, but Gawcott never had a BR station whereas Westbury did. Time for a rethink? I'd settled on Gawcott & Westbury for the layout purely because having acquired the Terrier loco named Portishead, I didn't feel inclined to deface the loco's side tanks and remove the GWR totem. I'm still not inclined to do so but think I need to look again at the Light Railway's route. I favour retaining Westbury (Crossing) as the BR interchange but am now looking at the LR striking out in a south-westerly direction therefrom. The little halt that has, so far, been called Tingewick could become Fulwell and the terminus changes from Gawcott to Mixbury. (And so the revised story goes) The LR had originally been designed to continue on to Cottisford & Hardwick to meet up with the G W & G C joint at Ardley between King's Sutton & Bicester but the pennies ran out (as they frequently appears to have done) and the LR got no further than Mixbury. And Portishead? It only arrived a few days ago and hasn't yet been repainted 😄 . The real loco was broken up in 1954 so it isn't pushing things too far to think it came to the LR around the time that the BR railcars existed and were, in my world, working in the Buckingham area (and why the Class 121 is still looking very new.

Now that's an idea. Presumably I could get away with a fairly non-descript building with (at most) two floors. I knew boot & shoe making was rife in the Northampton area, I didn't realise that it came further south. I could do away with the building's exterior loading platform I was considering and, instead, have a large sliding door (or two) adjacent to the track edge and extend the building's roof over the track to keep the worst of the weather out. Reading the attached summary from Nearholmer alerts me to the need to provide for the postal traffic to/from Buckingham (via Westbury) which gives me a time not only for the first BR train but also for the LR train to connect therewith in order for the mail to get to Gawcott on time. Then there's the further delivery around 2.30pm and despatch at 6.30pm. It also looks like there might be a reasonable amount of farm related carryings with 6 in both Gawcott & Lenborough. Another point of interest is the existence of Gawcott's four pubs: Red Lion, Crown, Royal Oak & New Inn. Presumably only the more affluent residents of Gawcott are listed in the above otherwise I can't see the taverns doing much trade! Maybe Messrs. Bloxham & Healey, Boot & Shoe makers (to the nobility?) joined together and became the occupants of the (yet to be designed/built) building at Gawcott 😃.

I can't swear to it after so many years but I'm 99.9% sure that it was easy to get between the eastbound platform - about a car's length back from the main stairway - and the complex above as it was something that was used when arriving/leaving work. I don't recall any supervision/overseeing of that exit but as it only lead into offices rather than to the street, I doubt too many members of the public tried to exit that way. Security then was a lot, lot more lax the than even a few years later. I started work at SJP in 1967 and would have arrived westbound and departed eastbound at least until the Victoria line was opened to Victoria whereupon I went home via Victoria with a change at Oxford Circus because I could get a seat from there rather than trust my luck at Mile End. I think but am nowhere near as certain that there was an exit in a similar place off the westbound platform, again into the complex. Another structure that disappeared around the same time as Electric Railway House was York Mansion(s), all swept away to be replaced with more modern office because (as I understood it) the then deputy (?) Chairman decided that LTE didn't need all the office space and could gain from renting (the replacement buildings) out, which is what it did. There was still an internal connection between the old and new on several floors and, in due course, the tenant of a large part of the replacement building was - you've guessed it - LTE (or whatever they were called by then). Another building and part of the complex was Wing-Over-Station. This escaped the rebuild and, to the best of my knowledge, still exists today. At one time it was the home for the bus scheduling team and the Publicity department.

What about the extra staff costs for anything outside the current timetable? I'm specifically thinking of the loco crew(s). Stretching the run time stretches the crew time, means (possibly) extra cost especially if any retardation takes the engine crew out of their permitted hours per week.

That's a thought, Jim. One option that I hadn't considered for the Gawcott factory (or whatever) and its surrounding area was to raise the wall sockets above the backscene so that they don't need to be hidden thus: Some people may call me a hoarder (amongst other things) but it sometimes works to my benefit. By pure chance the first piece of backscene offcut that I happened upon when I started looking was the very piece that I'd previously had to cut out where the sockets previously were. I'd had to trim what was left on the main sheet subsequent to the first cut so there is a slight gap around the infill which the two trees on the left in the above image are doing their best to disguise. I hadn't realised that the heel end of the point leading to the siding that I planned to straighten had a slight curve (to the right) in it. Luckily, home-made points built using PCB sleepers can be a blessing at times and this was one of those times. A bit of attention with the soldering iron and voila! By another piece of luck I also found the remains of the cork sheet that was trimmed to suit the siding's original alignment. I didn't quite cut the new piece I wanted to the correct size so there's about a 5mm gap between the two pieces but that can be infilled where needed in due course. Now to see what I can mock up as a building.

Thanks Don and apologies for the delayed acknowledgement. I was away for a couple of weeks and was then unable to pick-up all the updates that I'd missed whilst away. And so to an update . . . . . . . . Firstly, the excuse for not posting recently (other than the holidays 😃). I think I've finally (for the time being at least) resolved the various Arduino problems on the club layout so the bench is clear at last. Secondly, my preferred local modelling shop's website is being overhauled and is not currently available so I can't see if they have the few things I currently want in stock - I also keep forgetting to phone them at a time when they're open 🙄 My love of doing anything but the extremely basic scenic work has been mentioned before which is a further reason for no updates. Anyway, I took Peter Denny's two books on the Buckingham branch to read on holiday and that has stirred my mojo slightly. The opposite end of Gawcott to the loco shed currently looks like this: but what the above picture hides is this . . . The mains sockets and, just visible in the corner - top right in the image - is a mismatch between the backscene sheets. My present thinking is to straighten the siding nearest the backscene - the trees are just resting! - and add a removable low relief structure that is: high enough to hide the sockets and the various wires, and, is deep enough to hide the backscene mismatch, and, is compact enough to retain the rural atmosphere of the area, and, is blessed with a trackside external loading platform. The single storey Skytrex low relief north light structures are too low to hide the sockets whilst I think that the two floor version would be a bit over powering in a rural area. The jury is still out on other options but scratch built isn't out of the question. Meanwhile, on the other side of the garage . . . . . There is this. which morphs into this if you angle the mobile phone's camera appropriately. Here, I can live with the plugs & wires just visible in the upper picture but the steepness of the embankment leading from the BR track up to the LR track has never looked right to me. That may or may not be because of the really noticeable "hump" just below the top. Recently, I've also been wondering if it would be possible to disguise at least part of the incline so that any LR trains on it are not fully visible all the time. A couple of largish bushes and or a suitably placed tree or two might do the trick (and I don't think moving the backscene forward with the incline behind it would look acceptable). And so my present thinking is to replace the present embankment with a wall that has a parapet on top that should disguise the lower part of a LR train (i.e. the wheels). A truly vertical wall would then leave enough space along side the LR track for some substantial bushes (height wise) and possibly a tree or two. However, I'm not fully convinced that a wall whether vertical wall or one with a slight backward lean would be appropriate for the area. I have ruled out arches and because significant vegetation would surely find it hard to take root, a rock face - I don't think that there are too many substantial rocky outcrops around the Westbury area! Maybe I need to find an excuse to play with an Arduino again 😃,

Would an option be to remove the door opening devices on the inside of the door and limit how far down the door's window can be lowered - perhaps wide enough for just a hand and a camera? I suspect some of the trouble in the past was through doors not been properly closed. Could each door be fitted with a "door properly closed" detector and either, by coach or by complete train have an indicator on the outside of the coach that would remain illuminated if a door was not properly closed? How much of a problem would it be for the guard (or other member of the train crew) to walk along the train at the end of the journey and open the doors? Perhaps someone could do likewise at intermediate stations if required.

That I fear is something that will become increasingly impossible as those that had at least a basic understanding of how everything fitted into the overall picture that was the British railway are gradually becoming thinner on the ground and once they're gone it'll take one hell of a lot to recapture. It amazes me that there are a large number of people who don't realise that government monies come from a large chunk of the population and not out of some miracle supply that has no limits. We need to learn that if we want hospitals and people to staff them, schools in good conditions and a supply of people who we'd have liked to have had when we were young to teach us and (as this is a thread on a railway centred forum) we'd better include railways (and any other form of transport that can be knitted together with rail to provide the population of the country with what they deserve) and . . . . If it costs another 2p in the pound or whatever on Income tax, then so be it. After all, there's no such thing as a free lunch. There comes a time when although you'd like to cut a bit more out of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. (insert words of your choice) . . . . there just isn't any more to cut and keep it working. And to wrap things up . . . Why can't we devise things that are the modern day equivalent of semaphore signalling (for example) that largely has a life span far, far exceeding the modern day stuff and doesn't need replacing every other day (or whatever) because some of the components available when it was designed/built/introduced is only made for a further few years and doesn't have a suitable replacement once it goes out of production thereby requiring another large lump of expenditure to replace something that probably only lasted a fraction of the time that what it replaced lasted.

I'd have thought that you might want to have some kind of detection in the area of the fiddle yard points otherwise you won't know for certain that a train has moved clear of the pointwork it has just traversed. Likewise, would you not want something similar to confirm that an arriving train hasn't stopped foul of the point at the far end of the siding it is using. How many trains do you plan to have on the layout at any one time? Don't forget that if you want to reverse a train in the fiddle yard you'll need both a reversing siding clear in which to reverse the train as well as, presumably, the siding from which the train started and the siding where the train will end up having reversed. You could do this with just using the reversing sidings but that would limit the scope for reversing more than two other trains. Don't forget that one of the reversing sidings will probably be used for the branch train. Will you get enough enjoyment out of what looks like two plain tracks (and bidirectional branch) through the station? The crossover that links the branch to the anti clockwise circuit can presumably only be used by trains travelling in an anti-clockwise direction. Is that your intention? Is the crossover really necessary if not?

The server crashed over a year ago - maybe more than that - and whilst the text could be saved many of the images were lost.

To steam trains?

Previously (and of late) I had assumed that the only people to make money out of the privatisation were accountants and legal people. I had overlooked that the ROSCOs had also made the extra buck (or several). Off topic slightly (and apologies for doing so) is re-nationalisation or similar any kind of option? How would widely diverse TOC pay scales for similar jobs be absorbed without the understandable cries of unfairness from those grades having to face a pay cut to bring everyone back to a single pay scale per grade? Likewise, the ROSCOs. How much would it cost to bring all the rolling stock back under a single umbrella? Would either or both of the above become a price too high to pay for a unified railway system? In the last 30+ years we have seen the gradual disappearance of the all round railway person - those that had gained all round knowledge of how the business (and its various departments) functioned. That knowledge (and associated experience) wasn't gained in a few years. What would be the cost in time and money of restoring that desperately needed skill?

I too thought it was a good view. Let's hope it initiates serious thinking by somebody somewhere who has the ear of some politicians.

I never seem to get the "time" option to work correctly. I must admit that it could be me as the matter in the op hasn't happened since. I suspect there could be an element of rounding to whole hours involved whereby 2 hr & 59 mins is shown ae 2 hrs that changes to 3 hrs from 3 hrs and 0 mins.

I frequently leave my RMweb window open when I leave the computer for a while putting said (windows 10) computer to sleep whilst I'm away. Previously, when I returned to the computer and awoke it, the RMweb window is there. I refresh the window and start at the top pf the window to see which threads have been updated in my absence. I can be away from the computer - where I'm using Chrome - for several hours and have never noticed being short changed in the time period that I've been absent for. I've left the computer a couple of times today and have only been able to recall threads from the previous 2 hours, even though I thought I'd been away much longer than that. I've tried loading more but I'm told there's no more to view. I'll pay more attention to how long I am away over the next few days and update this post accordingly. Has anyone else noticed this?

Birch plywood is recommended by a lot of modellers although it is quite pricy. Have you considered laser cut (to size) MDF although that's no good out of doors?

Possibly, the transmitter in the door bell moves slightly off frequency when the battery power drops and jams the frequency that the key fobs use. Is there an option to change the door bell frequency?