Dungrange

I guess the question is how many people ever put 50p in the slot when it was working? You'd need 234 people shelling out 50p to cover that cost. If there was just a couple of children per day, then you'd be looking at five months to recover that expenditure and the layout would probably need some further work (and expense) before the initial repair cost was covered. How much value did children get for the 50p? Would they think it is worth it? A few years ago we were on holiday in Yorkshire and my daughter, who was about four or five at the time, really, really wanted to go on a ride on 'thing' outside an amusement arcade. I've always considered such rides to be a waste of money, but we were on holiday and this one was only 50p, so I agreed. However, instead of putting the 50p in the slot I gave it to her to do. She hesitated, looked at the slot and looked at the 50p piece. I had to point out where it went and explained that it only started when she pushed the coin in the slot. She continued to think, then asked me if she could just keep the 50p! In the end she never operated that ride that she really, really wanted to go on, because she concluded that she'd rather buy something else with that money and the 50p went straight into her pocket and we continued down the street.

I'm not sure that I agree with you - I wouldn't consider the statement below as being critical. It simply acknowledges that a reply was received the next business day.

Sadly, I don't think so. Their website also no longer in existence - https://dexterscove.com/index.html I get server IP address could not be found. It's been like that for months.

You might like to have a look through the modelling section of the Great Eastern Railway Society's website, which does contain some suggestions on lineside and infrastructure. https://www.gersociety.org.uk/index.php/home/modelling https://www.gersociety.org.uk/images/stories/documents/Modelling_the_railways_of_East_Anglia_in_4mm_Scale_Issue_8_February_2021_final.pdf (assuming you are modelling in 4mm scale). Obviously not everything will be relevant to your time period as it includes items for those interested in something more recent that the pre-grouping era.

@T140V - Welcome to RMWeb The quoted radii is the centreline radius. Tracksetta templates are not available for the Set Track geometry. If you want curves to the Set Track geometry, then these are available pre-curved and ready to lay without the need for buying Tracksetta templates. Tracksetta templates are intended to be used with flexible track so that you can lay smooth larger radii arrangements and these go up in increments of 3" or 6", which differs from Set Track track centres (67mm). You can use both in a layout if you want. It's quite common for people to use flexible track with gentler flowing curves in the 'scenic area' and then use Set Track curves at the ends of layouts to fit their plans into the space available. Just try to avoid first radius if you plan to use newer or larger locomotives and stock, since most aren't designed to go round first radius curves.

If people keep suggesting it, then Hornby will keep making it.

I'll be following this thread, but to start you off https://www.powsides.co.uk/product.php/ger_open_wagons/?k=:::794648:0 - GER Open wagons https://www.powsides.co.uk/product.php/ger_ventilated_vans/?k=:::794649:0 - GER ventilated vans I haven't used either of these yet, but need to buy a pack of the later to renumber my Oxford rail vans.

CV3 and CV4 should be the ones to control acceleration and deceleration on all DCC decoders, so I'm assuming it is CV4 that you want to reduce.

That's the reason why the website states June / July 2023. If the PCBs are being fitted now, then shipping will be in a couple of weeks and it takes four to six weeks to move a consignment from China to the UK (depending on which route the ship they are ultimately loaded on takes) and then there may be a week to clear customs in the UK (depending on how busy they are) and then at least a week for Revolution to get through posting out all the models. Those who ordered first (and paid in full) will likely get their model first.

What version of the Lenz LH90 do you have? The User Manual for version 3.6 states that you can access to 29 Functions (F0 and F1 to F28) - see https://www.dccconcepts.com/manual/lenz-owners-manual-lh90-throttle-handset/ (section 1.2). If it's an older version and doesn't support the required number of functions, then I presume you should be able to change the function mapping to allow you to access the functions that you want (and leave the less important ones on higher function numbers).

Looking at the options, it looks to me as though it's whatever livery the preserved versions carry.

I don't know for sure, but they look a bit like the loads that were made by Duha. I don't know if they are still available in the UK, but they were in the past: places like Hattons stocked them. However, I can't see that particular load in their current range (the ones near the bottom of the page as closest. https://www.duha-modely.cz/en/steel-and-their-products.html

I'd agree that's probably the biggest challenge most clubs face. The lease on the clubroom of the Edinburgh and Lothians MRC ran out in late 2016 and the property was subsequently sold in early 2018 with us as sitting tenants (but without a lease) - we didn't know until the sale was completed. Our new landlord has not asked us to leave and is content that we continue to pay rent each month under the terms that we had agreed with our previous landlord all of 10 years ago. Whilst it means that our current rent is now below market value, it also means that we have no security of tenure - ie we could be kicked out at relatively short notice. Ideally, we would move somewhere else, but our problem is finding somewhere that is affordable (ie think number of members times the amount each is willing to contribute to the rent each year). Over the last five or so years, we haven't found somewhere we could afford. Somewhere central / convenient / with good public transport links is always unaffordable - ie always £10,000 + per annum. Our best chance of finding somewhere at a cost that our current membership could meet is by looking at a less desirable location - ie somewhere with poor transport links for those without a car. The problem we have is that there are several of our existing members without their own transport and moving say 10 miles from our current location would result in the loss of not only most of those without their own transport, but also for those who currently travel a bit to our existing clubroom and the club meetings have been moved in the 'wrong' direction. We would then have the problem of fewer members to pay the reduced rent. For us the search goes on. I did speak to a member of a relatively new Scottish club at a show a few years ago and was told that they found their first clubroom (which is smaller than they would have liked) after a search of over two years having considered places all over Central Scotland (think of an area that is around 1,500 square miles)! How do you define 'your area'? If I'm not mistaken, Stocksbridge is only 10 miles from Sheffield. To me, you therefore already have a club that is in 'your area'. The Edinburgh and Lothians MRC has members who live both 20 miles to the west of Edinburgh and 20 miles to the east. I live about six miles from our clubroom. I'd expect the membership of the Sheffield club to cover a similar sized catchment, so perhaps one of their members already lives in the Stocksbridge/Deepcar area. What is the population of the Stocksbridge/ Deepcar area? I think we're talking about 14,000 people - that's not a lot. The E&LMRC has around 25 members at the moment from a city with a population of 450,000. There is one other club that's about 10 miles from us (with a smaller membership) and I think there is about three groups without clubrooms who have some members living in Edinburgh, so perhaps 50 people in 500,000 who want to be part of a model railway club. There is no guarantee that there is more than a couple of fellow modellers living in Stocksbridge/Deepcar who would be interested in joining a club if one existed. Try an advert in the local free paper and see if anyone responds. If they do - you could arrange to meet up in the pub. When I was a teenager, I would have liked to attend a local model railway club, but there wasn't one in the town I lived in and that had a population of almost 50,000. For me, the nearest club would have been about 40 miles away, which is the reason why I was 22 before I joined a model railway club. Even ignoring the problem you would have with clubrooms, attracting new members is not easy. I'd say we tend to get a couple of new members joining us each year, but we also lose a couple in that same time frame (for various reasons), which means on the whole, our membership is usually fairly static - growing a membership is not easy. We'll get several new people coming along each year, but at least half never join - as a club we don't meet their expectations. What do you think the membership of your area / group would look like? Our club members are a wide range of ages (circa 21 - 82), with a broad range of interests (contemporary and pre-grouping, Scottish and European prototypes, mainline and industrial) and several gauges - N, 00, O, H0, 009, H0e and O-16.5 at the moment. I had a gentleman enquire about membership at the last exhibition that we attended, but he was only interested in O gauge. If that was all we did, then he's have signed up, but he wasn't really interested in helping out with any layout that didn't meet his interests - such people are of little value to us. I think the two most common ways for new clubs to form is either a splinter group from an existing club or people who have a shared interest (eg modelling the pre-grouping period in P4, or North American railways) and are willing to travel some distance to connect with people with exactly the same interest and work on a shared project. I know of one Scottish club that formed a couple of decades ago where the majority of the founding members had been members of another club (which I was previously a member of). I think if I was you, I'd be joining the Sheffield club and see how you get on. By all means place that advert in the local free paper to gauge interest for something else, but for now, I'd think joining the Sheffield club would be the best option open to you. Good luck with finding what you are looking for.

Of course there is a difference between owning and operating model wagons. Not too many layouts are large enough to accommodate 250 wagons in the scenic area, so we need to trim that number down to what can appear on a layout at any one time. Obviously we may be able to get by with just 25 Diagram 1666 wagons (one tenth of the prototype ratio), but with regards a gunpowder van, you can't have a tenth of a wagon, so we need to buy one. Obviously in terms of the stock that we own, this is not in proportion, but that doesn't matter, as long as when we come to operate the layout each of our 25 Diagram 1666 wagons make 10 appearances in the scenic area before the Gunpowder van makes another appearance, and the same approach can be applied to any 'special' wagon. 'Special' wagons should only be used now and again to provide the ad-hoc variety observed in the prototype.

So that means there is a need for wagons belonging to the CLC, M&GNJR and the S&DJR for traffic originating at stations in these areas. Yes, I've noticed that the GE seemed to pay the GN on completion of the GN&GE Joint route, because a greater proportion of the route mileage had been built by the GNR. As far as maintenance was concerned, the Great Northern seemed to take responsibility for the northern parts and the Great Eastern was responsible for the maintenance of the southern section, thus dividing the operating cost. For 'foreign' workings across the joint (ie goods conveyed in another companies wagons where the only payment would have been for the distance traversed), I'd expect the revenue to be split between the two companies based on the number of services they ran (ie the company providing the haulage should get more). For traffic originating at stations along the line, where part of the revenue would come from the wagon hire, I presume that the wagon used could belong to either company and whilst it would seem to make more sense to use a Great Eastern wagon when operating into Great Eastern territory (prior to pooling), so that it didn't need to be returned, I guess they may just have used whichever company's wagon was available (particularly at the smaller stations on the route).

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forum/148-modelling-real-locations/

Did joint line partners always compete with each other for goods traffic from stations on their joint lines? As an example, if a consignment needed to be transferred from Lincoln (on the Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint line) to Ely (or anywhere else that was only served by the Great Eastern Railway), would this have automatically been taken all the way by the Great Eastern Railway, or would there have been competition for the conveyance of the load for the first part of the journey - eg Great Northern haulage to March and then Great Eastern for the remainder of the journey? Also, how would this have worked with the joint companies such as the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Company, which I understand had it's own rolling stock. Would a load being conveyed from somewhere on the M&GNJR network not served by the Great Eastern Railway (let's say Melton Constable) to somewhere in exclusive Great Eastern Railway territory always be conveyed in M&GNJR wagons, or would the Midland Railway and Great Northern Railway compete with one another? In this example the first leg of the journey could be from, say, Melton Constable to South Lynn, where it would be transferred to Kings Lynn for onward passage across Great Eastern Railway lines.

I believe that shipping from China normally takes something like four to six weeks and there is then the time taken to clear customs. When I spoke to one of the Revolution Trains representatives at Model Rail Scotland at the end of February, I was told that the models had been manufactured but the factory was waiting for a semiconductor component for the lighting board. The models can't therefore be dispatched until the electronics are fitted. Given supply chain issues in the world, there's not much Revolution Trains can do but wait patiently like the rest of us, apart from keep the website updated once they know more.

I don't use an NCE Powercab, but the NCE helpdesk does highlight that you'll get this error unless you are in Program Track Mode / Service Mode. However, that doesn't explain why you can neither read CVs or get a locomotive to move. https://ncedcc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202353705-Cannot-Read-CV Since you've tried more than one locomotive, it points to either a problem with the NCE Powercab, a set-up issue, or user error. On the Model Railroader forum, there is someone who describes a similar problem to you, which seemed to be caused by the cable setup. They state that "after re-reading the set up instructions several times I realized the coiled power cord was hooked up to the PowerCab, not the flat cable. Once I switched the cables it worked fine." It might be worth checking your set up. https://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/744/t/289531.aspx

Looks like you have quite a fleet there. I know how you feel - the first model railway club that went along to presented the same problem for me. I was 22 and I think the youngest existing member of the club was in his 50s - about the same age as my father was at the time. At least half of the membership were retired. I went along a couple of times, but I never joined. It didn't really feel right. However, not all groups are like that. The Edinburgh and Lothians Miniature Railway club, of which I am currently the secretary, has a good spread of ages at the moment, which I think is fairly healthy. Currently, our youngest member is about 21 and the oldest around 82. I think we have at least two members born in each decade and I feel that I fit somewhere near the average age - I'm now in my early 50s. Because the age range is quite evenly spread, we don't have a younger and an older group, which is quite good. Obviously the best way for us to attract new members is to have some of our younger members running our layouts at exhibitions, which tends to attract interest from people like yourself. I'm assuming you live nowhere near Edinburgh, but I hope that you find a group that suits you close to home.

Has this model been announced - I can't see it on their website?

Okay, so the livery is authentic, but if it was discontinued around 1903 and vans were, I believe, typically repainted every seven or eight years, the chances of one sill carrying this livery 15-16 years later at the end of WW1 is probably slim. Maybe not impossible, but highly unlikely, so I might skip this livery option. This sounds more interesting (even if less colourful). My thoughts were that the Oxford Banana van is a non-ventilated bodyshell on a fitted chassis and the GER ventilated van has an unfitted chassis and a chassis swap would therefore create both types that seem to be at the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway - ie both a non-ventilated unfitted wagon and a fitted ventilated van. The latter wouldn't have to have the same (incorrect) livery, but the question is whether any of the Diagram 72 vans were fitted / non-ventilated. It sounds like I need to invest in Tatlow's volume for the southern region.

I'm not sure that I understand this discussion, but are the bottom two planks not the same colour as the top three planks? If that is the case, then it has to be the light coloured planks, third and fourth from the bottom that must be red, which is what Rapido have modelled. If it was anything else, then it couldn't really be described as a green livery.

The Wikipedia page for the rolling stock used by the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway states that the museum currently owns two Great Eastern Railway Covered Vans that were constructed to Diagram 72 in 1913. These are numbers 11873 and 12404. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stock_of_the_mid-Suffolk_light_railway I was under the impression that Diagram 72 was an unfitted ventilated van that measure 19' over headstocks, yet neither of there examples are both ventilated and unfitted. Number 11873 appears to be a fitted van, and the freight section of the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway website https://www.mslr.org.uk/rolling-stock/freight/ states that "This vehicle wears a special GER livery with red end panels on each side to show it is fitted with automatic brakes". Were some of these Diagram 72 vans fitted when outshopped from 1911 or was this a later addition? Is the livery correct and if so, how many vans would have carried this livery in Great Eastern days? Is it correct that it doesn't appear to carry GE lettering? Number 12404 is unfitted but also doesn't appear to be a ventilated van. Therefore, were the diagram 72 vans a mixture of fitted ventilated vans, unfitted ventilated vans and unfitted and non-ventilated vans?

Perhaps using something like https://shop.train-safe.de/en/TRAIN-SAFE-Vision/? They come in various lengths.