Chris M

My favourite train set of all time. And almost certainly the first example of a factory weathered loco. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/special-auction-services/catalogue-id-srspe10023/lot-4d3382c3-ea86-4683-9d00-a3ff00c25c88

Self service checkouts work fine a lot of the time but I don’t think they work with the weekly supermarket shop, especially when you buy a couple of bottles of wine. I reckon Aldi’s low tech concentration on making the staffed checkout fast is a better approach than self service checkouts. Especially as Asda & co are finding they are selling far more carrots than they actually have in store. Would you believe people are entering carrots for weighed purchases because they are the cheapest item per kilo? On the other side of the coin the library self service kiosks have helped to keep libraries open so I can only see them as a good thing. Having been involved in one such project I calculated that at one small library the staff costs worked out at about £5 for every book loan. Self service has saved this library and kept some, admittedly reduced, employment.

Could be inconvenient. I keep my coat, hat, gloves, house alarm remote, picnic blanket, phone charge lead, small camera etc in my car at the moment. I wouldn't want to have move everything or plan exactly what I was going to do every time I jump in the car. And I want the car to be there ready when I walk outside the house. If I had to wait ten minutes for a car to turn up just to pick grandkids up from school, pop to B&Q, pop to local model shop, take a trip to the SVR or whatever I would get very crotchety indeed.

You could buy a Roundhouse loco (new or secondhand) and, if it doesn't work out, sell it for not much less than you paid for it. Personally I wouldn't mess about with those suggested (in fact I didn't) I would buy a Roundhouse radio control loco (in fact I did). I follow the simple instructions and it just works perfectly, every time. No hassle and looks great too.

Big shows, little shows and middle size shows al have their good points and their place in the circuit. Even a small show takes a lot of organising and is the realisation of a lot of hard work over the preceding year. I'm glad it sounds like the Plymouth show was successful; small affordable shows are very much part of the life blood of the hobby and every bit as important to the total picture as the large ones.

Exeter has layouts from across the country. I will be taking my layout 160 miles to be there.

Regarding driverless cars - can they cope with heavy urban traffic? This question especially applies where large numbers of potentially erratic and sometimes very aggressive city drivers will be mixing it with driverless cars. Will the driverless cars be able to cope with it all? I’m wondering what will power heavy lorries in the future. With current technology you will need a lot of battery weight and space to shift 40 tons 500 miles or more. Technology will of course improve but it has a long way to go. We might see a move towards rail for longer distance in the UK if diesel lorries cease to exist. I would have thought driverless passenger trains would be relativelyeasy in the UK. At the risk of being controversial I see a longer term future for a guard on every train than I do a driver. There is a danger that driverless cars will cause a lot more congestion. If I had a driverless car I would ride in it to work then tell it to go home and collect me at the end of the day rather than pay to park all day in the town centre. This could potentially double the number of commuter journeys.

There is quite a lot of “local” interest with Kingswear, Hemyock and Exemouth on display. My contribution is Little Aller Junction which I call a caricature of the real Aller Junction. Probably going to run 1963 one day and 1968 the other. My new Revolution tank wagons are have been toned down a bit ready for the show Sometimes we add sound, but not all the time. And sometimes (usually when youngsters are watching) we just let em roll..

I can’t feel compassion for anyone knowingly putting themselves in a dangerous situation just to make our environment look more of a mess. I agree it’s a shame they didn’t have the good sense to keep away from dangerous places but that’s about all. I’ve always thought it strange that in this country we have fences all along our railway lines and if someone gets onto the railway through a hole in the fence it is somehow the railways fault. In many other countries, Switzerland and the USA for example, there is usually no fencing at all. Maybe having fencing along the railway just makes getting onto the track more exiting for those who feel the need to challenge society and good sense.

Maybe contenders for the Darwin awards.

Send in Deadwood today

That’s a great railway, thanks for sharing.

I use soundboard on my phone to que sound to a Bluetooth speaker. I have a big speaker under the layout which gives great depth of sound.

It’s about whatever suits your needs. I have an end to end single track branch with three stations and a roundy roundy quadruple track to two tracks with no station at all N. I like both for different reasons but it has to be said the single track branch is far more absorbing to operate. At the other end of the scale I have a garden railway which is a roundy roundy with a terminus type storage siding that can be entered from either direction so sometimes I let trains go round and round and sometimes I run it end to end. I see it as the best of both worlds. The garden does provide the chance to run long trains.

The GWR had this peculiar habit of putting the pilot loco behind the train loco (not at the back of the train) rather than simply coupling it in front. It think the principle being that the driver of the main train loco should always be the one in charge of running the train. There are photos of class 22s sitting behind steam locos when the steam loco was the main loco for the train. I’m told the practice ceased pretty quickly as they found it wasn’t good for the diesel to be coupled right behind a tender of a steam loco. I think the front of the diesel caught anything that fell from the tender which you wouldn’t want, especially if you were the driver of the diesel.

Although it looks terrible on the drawings I must confess it had not noticed the coupling mount when running my trains. Now you have pointed it out I do notice them! I don’t think they look too noticeable on current models unless you look directly and closely from front on. The mount on the Castle is further back and not very noticeable at all. Maybe moving the coupling back was one reason for the amount of clear air between the bogie and the frames. Guess you can’t win with something like this. Having looked at my locos on the track I’ve changed my mind and I would be happy to have the coupling mount on the bogie but as far back as possible. Oh carp - I’ve lost the vac pipe off my Grange Must give these locos a dusting. 28xx looks fine from normal viewing angle even though it has incorrect lamp. But looks horrible from head on but I never see them this close and from this angle when running trains.

Tricky one. I remove the front coupling unless I want to double head. In addition to double heading over the Devon banks and the running tender first on the Kingswear branch there was also the practice of running up to five express locos coupled together from Newton Abbot shed down to Paignton. There is mitigation in that Great Western practice was to put the pilot loco behind the train loco so the king would normally be at the front. Although I would like to double head my king it has to be said that the coupling housing will seriously damage the look of the front end even with the coupling removed. So I would vote for a removeable housing if technically possible at a reasonable cost to the project. If not then no front coupling.

No, I decided analogue suited my needs better for this layout basically because I prefer to just select a track and turn the control knob. My layout is much simpler and smaller than Banbury

I’ll just be running Hydraulics, plus a Brush 4.

And the F units in action. Set sound to very loud before playing.

Three more EMDs out in the garden. If you think this is an odd mix let me explain. The Quinton Line I saw a short line somewhere in the USA. It gets by running freight and it’s income is supplemented by tourist trains. Here we see the luxury tourist passenger train being held while the recently restored to Rock Island livery GP40 hauls a log train through. The SD70 awaiting its next turn of duty is on loan from the UP who have lots of these in store at the moment and are only too happy to lease a few out. So, all perfectly believable!

Taunton Show looks like being quite an N gauge fest this year with Banbury, Marsh Chipping, Midford, Stapleforth St Stephens Knuddelstein and my Little Aller Junction. I feel very honoured to be in such company and am really looking forward to this show.

More photos can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/48235702@N06/albums/72157627464817118/with/8039557853/ Its interesting to follow the career of a coach. I always liked 8750HA, a Harrington Legionnaire on a Bedford Val chassis with a Leyland (or maybe AEC) engine. I travelled to Rome in 1965 on this coach and saw the pope give his Easter blessing. I spent a lot of the journey sitting on the engine cover just inside the coach - just imagine anyone doing that nowadays. https://flic.kr/p/dfqAEW https://flic.kr/p/832EqH https://goo.gl/images/TgFrwM http://www.travellerhomes.co.uk/pictures/3675_700w.jpg Although scrapped in the 1990s the rear axle lives on in another coach.

Although based in Smethwick these coaches went across to Europe on private hire tours even as far back as the early 1950s - I think the first would have been to Italy in 1952 or 1953. Usually one or two trips each year. High Savoy 1967 No date or location on this but it is almost certainly somewhere in Switzerland and clearly in the early 1950s

A few photos of coaches from various times