The Great Bear

Superb

ditto

A great shame that your exquisite work will no longer be seen here; will try to follow your new blog. All the best Jon

Mine (from Liverpool) the same - poor, and returned and as now not in stock refunded. In any case if I understand Book of Castles correctly Wellington whilst the right shed for my layout, Stafford Rd, did not get the Hawksworth tender til 1948 and only one or two other potential candidates. No great loss as it turns out.

Picking a modellable mainline prototype is covered well in my opinion in Ian Rice's "Mainlines In Modest Spaces" (probably my favourite model railway book, the chapter on Bodmin Road been especially evocative), much of the points above covered. Season of course comes into it too, for many locations modelling out of summer helps a lot.

The bank holiday weekend was productive. Mrs Bear went away on a spa weekend, Mr Bear spent it in the shed. Some details like the brackets aren't an exact match for the original and I have had to improvise - using ones from York Modelmaking. The Lions heads I got from Cornwall Model Boats, again not an exact match but look pretty close (not helped by my dodgy painting) along with the walnut corning used for the top edge of the canopy. The valence I got from LCut Creative. The lamps are from DCC Concepts. There's a few small bits and touch ups left to do, but very nearly ready to be put in place.

I'm now focusing on the station area, starting with the platforms and the Up side (the outside of the layout) shelter. Before cracking on with the canopy and roof I thought a few minutes add some detail to the building interior would be worthwhile. Not sure how much of it will be visible eventually but better to do just in case. Not especially grand or neat work but better than nothing. More updates on this building soon. By the way, thanks for the "likes" and kind comments on the scenic work to date: reassuring and encouraging for me. Cheers Jon

Until I read this I hadn't notice the missing building or bridge! Having now noticed, I have to say I tend to agree with your view of waiting to see it in all its glory. Personally I'd rather it featured in BRM. I'm finding nowadays I prefer the pictures in that. Chris Nevard's pictures, whilst of course excellent, to MY eyes do have a certain look about them, with increased colour saturation and maybe contrast (Edit - my wording changed). Maybe, being of a relatively tender age, I have never seen a real working steam railway I tend to think of that in black and white/sepia/muted colours so something in eye popping Technicolor jars with my preconceptions. Also, not sure who's point of view that was, but IMHO you can never have too much GWR (or BR(W) as an acceptable substitute.) ANOTB has of course already featured in MI4 in some exalted company anyway and not looking at all out of place...so you needn't be modest about whether your layout is worth showcasing at some point again. Look forward to you adding the missing features in due course. Jon

Having done a bit of a tidy up, here's something that's been missing from my posts for a while - a train: Signal construction paused for a while, whilst I move on to adding scenery to the other areas.

1947 would be perfect, thanks Mike. (Aside from general curiosity , reason for query is that inspired by article on Churston in MRJ I thought I'd do bit more work on a running order for the layout and thought start of box shift might be good place to start.)

As shown in the layout thread I'm slowly getting on with making the signals. Some from the SRS signal diagram I can see have track circuit diamonds and there are codes like 2T and 2AT. These I think relate to the lever of the signal or point and the A is for circuit in advance (in direction of travel) of that signal, is that the correct? Is there any equipment one would see trackside related to the circuits, discernable in 4mm scale? Also, completely different question: when might a signal box shift for box like Kidlington start and how long a shift, 12 hours? Thanks Jon

The Star though (I presume) was new body on the existing Castle chassis in the range for a few years while the C1 is brand new - that's what I meant by more R&D costs - though I haven't clue what split is in cost between loco body/chassis, tender body/chassis

Having paid £150 for a "design clever" Steam museum Lode Star, given the quality of the model Stationmaster has described and the R&D cost in this new model, £180 for an NRM C1 seems entirely reasonable to me.

How about something like this? (Doing another "easy" signal in between getting to grips with the more complex - for me - ones.) That was 12'6" above rail, perhaps could be a tad lower still?

Thank you, Steve, that's very clear. Great photos of some fantastic work, especially the detail of the forked connection. Parallel pliers duly ordered, sure can think of other usesin the fullness of time. Hopefully can use reasonably neatly. Varying the offset of the holes in the balance arm seems a good trick to have up sleeve, Once again thanks Jon

Steve I have a question, if you don't mind. How do you secure the operating wire from the signal arm to the balance lever and similarly that from lever to servo, having been through the thread that's not clear to me? I'm trying to work out how to do this in 4mm for signals that have two or more balance levers next to each other at base of signal post and make this fixing small and tidy enough so as not to foul the movement of the adjacent levers. Hopefully my terminology is correct and query is intelligible! Thanks Jon

4 months or so, 2 signals complete and a rake of post and wire fence. Only another 9 to go...These were the easy ones and a lot of trial error and some false starts. With the practise my model engineering skills are slowly improving, but it's a case of two steps forward, one and a half back most of the time. Thanks for looking Jon

Alan, I will shortly be doing some lineside fencing and minded to give EZ Line a go. Can you recall what size you used, 0.075mm or 0.15mm? Thanks, Jon

Interesting choice, look forward to seeing this develop. A good mix of building styles/materials with the wooden station, the corrugated iron goods shed and the brick engine shed (abandoned, unless you are going to use further poetic license.)

I really like those aerial shots, they show to good effect the scale of the project, your and your contributors outstanding efforts.

Having done some testing making some signals using MSE components (with varying degrees of frustration) I thought I'd start looking at making some of the simple signals and place them. The plan, being to do ones on the outside along with the scenic work and work my way inward. Luckily the signals on the outside, the up direction, are the more simple ones. (My thinking being if I get the signals in early I only have to detail the cess once rather than make good after drilling holes.) The signal on the right, on the refuge siding will have a goods ring. I have a 3ft arm on it, the running signal is 4ft arm. I'm thinking the signal posts 26ft look too tall, both would look better 1/3 or so shorter, around 18ft. Just feels better to me and looking at the first phot, moves the arm lower so not on the horizon to improve sighting coming under the bridge? Could the goods signal be shorter again, perhaps to differentiate between the two, think that might look better too? Also, here's the 3ft arm with the goods ring resting on it. It seems a bit stumpy to me, maybe be better when eventually painted.

hs2 of course already leverages foreign experience in its design, just not as obvious as the Japanese input - for instance the civils design of C223 Country North is by Capita Symonds Ineco JV - Ineco being Spanish. Nice people and knew their stuff on high speed rail, a lot of good work for instance optimising the track layout in the delta junction-Leeds spur jnc on outside of Birmingham. The rails systems consultant, Parsons Brinkerhoff also utilised German sub-consultant/partner IIRC and I think Atkins had tie up with Systra (French).

Fantastic modelling. As said before, the back scene, seems so real and integrated with the model. Love the photos, especially the low level views and interesting angles like the last one, really gives the feel of being there. Look forward to more Jon

Excellent. Last pic shows the quality of the model really well.

Extensive detailed flood modelling has been undertaken for hs2 and agreed with the EA. Lengths of viaducts, bridge opening, culverts sized so that the railway has no material impact on water levels upstream. In general, the works then do not encroach into floodplain. Where floodplain is encroached into by embankments areas of lowered ground are to be formed to provide compensation for loss of storage in the floodplain. All hs2 design takes into account climate change in accordance with ppg25 for developments, 20% for fluvial flow, 30% for rainfall. Outfalls from the railway drainage or other works are designed to limit outflows in 100 year event to no more than existing. Typically balancing ponds are provided to do this. There was specification requirement for water levels in 1000 year event to be no closer than 1m to rail level, to avoid floodwater contaminating ballast - very onerous and much more than say road drainage. I don't have knowledge of the route in the Chilterns, but based on what I have seen done, the argument hs2 will make flooding worse is complete rubbish and opportunistic scaremongering.