George Leacon

All true Cappy - on GTR Southern, the frequent attachments & detachments are a constant headache, with the units often refusing to couple up, and station staff frequently finding out the jumpers are on the wrong side. South Western Railway avoid all of these dramas.

The new Northern franchise is getting rid of all the Pacers (thankfully!) and bringing in brand new rolling stock for regional services. Meanwhile GTR Southern and South West Trains use 30 year old Class 455s for suburban commuter trains, which are rammed solid every peak without air-con. There's also 40 year old Class 313s running on the East and West Coastway (Brighton to Ashford / Southampton) Lines for fun too. So one would hope you'd agree that rolling stock is a mix across the country, and not exactly "North vs South". But if you prefer to maintain it is thus, that's ok baby, I'll forgive you.

Will the structures & buildings you've created already at least be saved?

It's your railway my Lord, run whatever you want.

Your attention to detail is excellent and really brings it to life - extra marks for including a trap point too!

Looks good Mr B, I too like your proactive stance haha. How secure are the fence posts? Do they have deep foundations? If not, over time they're liable to move out of position. Cheers

What's a turnout? On the 12in:1ft railway we call them "points" ;-) lots of love

Staggering stuff gents.

Looks very good mate, maybe the Mark 3s should be done before the 150 ;-)

Quite simply, supreme.

Rule number 1 Mr GK - study the prototype: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrk2066.htm http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Euston&objid=1997-7409_LMS_9007 http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=Liverpool%20Street&objid=1995-7233_LIVST_FT_227&keywords=goods+yard As others have indicated - goods yards were almost never ballasted to the same high standards as main lines. A good rule of thumb though, is the higher the traffic density and importance of the yard, the better quality the track work. A large marshalling yard, like the second photo, would be well maintained. A sleepy country station yard seeing two or three goods trains a week would receive minimal maintenance at best. As others above have said, ash was the preferred material to actual ballast. Sometimes it would be level with the sleepers, sometimes the track would be simply placed on top of the ash (fully exposing the sleepers), or you could even have both. Apart from (possibly) the entrance / exit lines (aka reception / departure lines) what you want to avoid is the higher grade, main line standard look such as this, with a neat and distinct ballast shoulder: http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/102725528-princess-louise-steam-locomotive-princess-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=R4V%2fQay2ANwpmCZhkZDSEr9hpXpXdRRcciQgi95cbUu6Lpy7KtQaej90B73LkjSX3Uk85RrTmB9R1cGgXH4dEndP%2fmd06vtU3YjE68h9pwE%3d Hope this helps :-) B

That HST looks stunning, worthy of being next to Selena Gomez.

Always good to see a garden railway mate. Have you thought about lineside fencing of some form to stop trains from falling down a sheer drop if they get knocked over?

Those pre-Grouping engines saved and/or given some love in the 50s & 60s were often painted in their pre-Grouping liveries (a LSWR 4-4-0 and GER 0-6-0T spring to mind): so apple green I'd suggest!

Or some rolling stock?

As a general principle: the real engineers designed layouts which ensured the absolute minimum amount of shunting was required to split & assemble the trains; shunting took up masses amount of time and money and was highly inefficient. The Midland Railway (along with many others) did have a hatred of facing points, so reversing trains into the goods yard is the right way to go, but I would have the trailing point giving entry to the GY at the beginning of your sidings (with the exception of the headshunt) so that the amount of hauling and propelling is limited. I suggest looking at some track diagrams from the Peak District goods yards to see how they were layed out. Looking forward to seeing it progress mate :-) Ben

Excellent attention to detail.

Really excellent work, very much like the real thing!

I lived close to the area you're modelling for a ten month period in 2013 - your layout is spot on - excellent work! Ben

Ah yes, that is correct.

Looks like bullhead rail to me - the rails are sitting completely in the chairs and have wooden blocks to stabilise the rail (I can't remember what they are called).

You are quite mad comrade. Best of luck with the forthcoming insults :-D

He'll never win that one ;-)

Network Rail (interest declaration time, I work for them) has dozens of new and upgraded infrastructure projects ongoing all across the kingdom, of a variety of scales. Off the top of my head: Thameslink, Crossrail, Northern Hub, GNGE modernisation, planned electrification of the GWML & MML, rebuilding the Scottish Borders railway, Birmingham New Street rebuilding, Norton Bridge (WCML in Staffordshire) remodelling, and *cough* HS2 *cough*. We who are in the railway industry are lucky that the overall picture is positive, with ever increasing passenger numbers and cross party political support. As noted above, the railways of the late 1960s & through the 1970s followed the same depressing mantra that the UK was afflicted with in every aspect of public life - "managed decline". There are some fantastic models of the BR Corporate Blue Era (have a look for the Bromley North layout by the way, before it is dismantled) but I find them gloomy, a reminder of a dark time, and it seems that a large number of others feel the same. Still, it seems to get modelled more frequently than the more colourful post-privatisation / current railway scene. Ben

Fair argument - would not a banner repeater have sufficed (if they had been introduced at that point in time)? Given the signal has its own identifying number, the implication is that it has its own lever / control switch - if it was a repeater of some sort, I would have thought it would be automated in some form. Or is it a case of different standards due to time period / pre-nationalisation owning company? Ben