Stephen 28

Any plans to re-introduce the LNER CCT which you used to do in 7mm a few years back?

The Chinese made basic Hornby chassis can be spotted due to having blackened wheels and the bodies have nicer decoration. A quick rummage on auction sites shows they appear around the £15 to £20 mark. The Dapol/Hornby ex L&Y pug has a lower geared chassis and they are plentiful second hand.

On 04/04/2020 at 13:56, Bochi said:

It's a shame that the main Jubilee model is the old split chassis number which I believe is a pain to fit out for DCC. It's a class that's well overdue an updated version. 

Bachmann brought out a newly tooled Jubilee a few years back, covers the short firebox locos but may be possible to fit an old long Firefox body on the new dcc friendly chassis?

One thing on your plan that troubles me, if you curved the Dumfries siding round between the main line and the branch, you wouldn't need any gradients, your boards would be simpler, and your locos will pull longer trains.  Just a thought.  

Beautifully painted figures Ian

What does it look like with the borrowed goods shed sitting parallel to the road, adjacent to the boundary fence?  It would probably still require a smaller building but you could keep both sidings, perhaps cutting one shorter than the otherwith an end loading dock on it.

You could try epoxy-ing the motor in place using the defunct motor mount to set the height etc.

Split frame every time, the added friction caused by wiper pickups, and the faff of setting them up in N/2mm just aren't worth it. 

I know you weren't keen to offer this as a kit but I would love to buy two etches for the version you have just built if that were possible Nigel? Carlisle always had one or two of these dotting about on all sorts of jobs.

Mr Nearholmer, if I may be so bold, push the boat out a good long way and purchase two left hand points, using the second to give a short, kick back siding, possibly serving a cattle or end loading dock or both. At once rural and more interesting for wagon shuffling.

2P looking good Nigel

Emphatically, a decent vice is required. Quite expensive, but worth every penny. http://www.cooksongold.com/Jewellery-Tools/Precision-Bench-Vice-prcode-997-1080

I could not produce my engines without a similar version.

Tim

Cooksons have a free postage offer on this weekend. I have just ordered one of these vices using it. (No connection other than as a customer).

Having had a good look at the Gresleys at Glasgow show,overall I am very impressed - they look the part. There is one aspect that does however strike me as wrong, the drop lights are far too shallow, appearing almost square whereas on the real coaches they are much deeper vertically, almost as deep as the main pane in the toilet window.

Anyone have any views on this?

Looks good so far. Once you get enough rails laid to test the various routes, do so exhaustively, and don't convince yourself that good enough will do. With such a key piece of track it needs to be as near to perfect as you can get it otherwise it will be a source of derailments and frustration on the layout.

 

This promises to be an impressive layout, I look forward to your progress reports.

Andy,any progress on Yoker in the last twelve months?

If you want something more in depth this should cover it.

A good base text on track building and the basic forming of vees etc is this one, available second hand for around a tenner.

Whilst waiting for family to arrive I thought I would post the remaining pictures I took yesterday, saved for today.....

1132.JPG

1133.JPG

1134.JPG

1135.JPG

Straight from the camera with no editing.....

The first picture in your post is remarkable, I am still not convinced it is a model, wonderful stuff.

A platform on the curve would need generous clearances, to avoid it getting whacked by long coaches, but since it would be on the side hidden from view by the train, the big gaps that will result shouldn't cause offence - what they eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over!

Mr Holmes has also been strongly advocating the platform on the curve, and he has a very long record of being right in everything he says, so.......

Any further opinions?

Rather than a curved platform, what about a straight one serving the inside line only, positioned roughly where the name "Birlstone" appears on your plan? This could either link to the main platform via a footbridge (appeals visually) or be treated as a separate station entirely - anything from a sort of Waterloo East/Kings Cross Thameslink to a Crewe counterpoint to Birlstone's Euston?

Ambassador, with these moguls you are spoiling us! (With apologies to manufacturers of posh chocs)

Definite echoes of the Charmouth branch with that pic of the Spam-Can and Mogul. Very nice.

I have at last got round to finishing off my L&Y Radial Tank, with the last few bits of boiler furniture.

This one started life as the final test build (out of several) for Nigel Hunt's kit, and has been "almost finished" for ages.

After N Brass produced the cast chimney earlier this summer, I was spurred into making a dome and safety valves to go with it.

Once I've painted it, I can make a start on the Belpaire boiler and long bunker versions...

Where is the drool button when you need it? That looks very nice indeed.

A cracking piece promoting 2fs, the pictures are brilliant too. I particularly like the view from the buffers with the Manor.

Here, then, is Brandon, on the Great Eastern Ely-Thetford line.

 

We can see the transition from the chaired bullhead running lines to the non-chaired sidings, which are presumably spiked FB/Vignoles.

 

Where is the trap point? What would stop the covered van moving into conflict with the approaching train? Aside from the siding point, what would stop it reaching the point on the mainline?

 

Here, again, is Marks Tey, c.1900. A more substantial station. Can I discern a trap point between the running lines and the yard where marked?

Because there is a full turnout within the ridings, leading to a headshunt or kick back siding, this would provide all the protection required. As others have said, these two turnouts would operate as a crossover, interlocked with the signalling, so vehicles would eithe be confined to the sidings or free to access the running line but not both at the same time.

 

Edited for auto incorrect

If it inspires you, then why not?

I always return to a late 70s “coffee table” book, the “Encyclopaedia of Model Railways”. Mine is under the imprint of Marks and Spencer’s, but I think it was available without “The St. Michael...” prefix to the title. This had input from, inter alia, CJF and David Jenkinson, but has some lovely exploded diagrams showing one how to go about building things. General editor was Terry Allen, and copies are available cheaply on-line.

Plus, it introduced me to Robert Hegge’s wonderful 1:48 interurbans, but that is for a different part of the forum...

Yes a wonderful book which introduced me as a six or seven year old to Buckingham, the Sherwood section and many others. These have influenced my modelling interests consciously or sub consciously ever since. My original copy fell to pieces through being read so I bought a replacement (for my son) a few years ago and it is a wonderfully nostalgic read.

Pretty good progress in a couple of hours today: fiddle-yard tracks cut to length and laid. No need to be too fussy about sleeper-spacing here, but the curves on the lifting-section are deemed 'scenic', so what you see here is only loose, pending sleeper-threading, underlay etc.

Good to see rapid progress being made. Are there going to be more fiddle/storage tracks in front of those three? If not do the extended cross members serve some other function?