Dungrange

It definitely doesn't to me. I think that the link you provided is quite clear. When using three numeric digits, such as 4-6-4, it implies a standard locomotive with four unpowered leading wheels, six driving wheels and then four unpowered trailing wheels. The fact that these trailing axles are able to move independently is immaterial in Whyte Notation. When using four numeric digits such as 4-6-2-2 this always implies either a simple articulated locomotive like a Mallet or a Duplex and the Hush Hush is neither of these. That is, the four number format implies two separate sets of driving wheels, which in the case of a 4-6-2-2 would be one set of cylinders driving six wheels and a second set of cylinders driving a single wheel behind that. I don't think any locomotive actually had that wheel arrangement. When using five numeric digits such as 2-8-8-8-2 this implies a Triplex with three separate sets of cylinders driving three separate sets of driving wheels. A Quadruplex and Quintuplex were proposed, which would have been six and seven numbers separated by hyphens under Whyte Notation. The common theme is that all of the numbers between the first digit and the last digit references a set of powered driving wheels. The only instance under Whyte Notation where non powered wheels are not grouped together as a single number is when referencing articulated locomotives like the Garratt where a plus sign is used to separate two separate sets of unpowered wheels. The presence of the plus sign in the 2-6-2+2-6-2 notation differentiates the Garratt from the proposed Quadruplex. That is 2-6-2-2-6-2 would be a Quadruplex with four sets of cylinders, whereas 2-6-2+2-6-2 is a Garratt with only two sets of driving wheels. My conclusion is therefore that the Hush Hush is definitely not a 4-6-2-2. My own preference is simply to refer to Hush Hush as 4-6-4, but if there is a need to split the two rear axles, the only way this can be done under Whyte Notation would be to use a plus sign. That therefore leaves possible contenders as 4-6-2+2 or alternatively either 4-6-2+2-0-0 or perhaps more correctly 4-6-2+0-0-2 since the last axle is still trailing rather than leading (which is what 4-6-2+2-0-0 implies). Who'd have thought describing a locomotive could be so complicated.

I note that the E-bay listing states that the product is "New: A brand-new, unused, unopened and undamaged item". However, the listing describes the model as 'sound fitted' whilst Bachmann's description is that the model is just DCC Ready. Therefore, if the model is going to be sound fitted, who is doing the installation and why? What sound chip do they intend using? If the model is not sound fitted, then it's cheaper to pick it up elsewhere. I think I'd give it a miss.

It shown on the Bachmann website as 'awaiting', but the E-bay listing could simply be someone who has a pre-order elsewhere and will send it on when it arrives (ie it is not available for immediate dispatch). https://www.Bachmann.co.uk/product/class-47-7-47711-'greyfriars-bobby'-br-blue-(large-logo)/31-665

Thanks - that seems pretty accurate for a 00 'load'. Interestingly, the Wikipedia page, gives the width as 2.2 m (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV107_Scimitar) but the British Army's website gives the width as 2.24 m (https://www.army.mod.uk/equipment/reconnaissance-vehicles/), so I suppose we could argue that the accuracy depends on the source of the prototype dimension. Either way, it seems close enough for our purposes and I note according the the Wikipedia page, that each close reconnaissance squadron seems to contain eight FV107 Scimitars, which is just enough to fill my four KFA Warflats.

which perhaps indicates that they are not actually 1:72 scale as advertised. According to this website http://theminiaturespage.com/ref/scales.html 20mm scale is actually 1:80.5. Therefore the models can't be both 1:80.5 and 1:72, but if we split the difference it would appear that they may be reasonably close to 1:76 scale as Paul's photographs indicate. I think the problem is that the war gaming scales seem to be defined as 15 mm, 20 mm and 25 mm, which are nominally 1:107, 1:80.5 and 1:64 respectively. Therefore any model between say 1:72 and 1:90 could arguably be classed as 20 mm scale simply because it is closer to 1:80.5 than it is to either 15 mm or 25 mm scales. Obviously if the S&S Models are close to 1:76, then they may make a suitable load for my new KFA Warflats, which have just arrived from Trains4U.

See the FAQ on their website - https://www.ultrascale.uk/node/9#02 I'd have assumed that by 00 Finescale, they meant track built to the Double O Gauge Association (DOGA) Finescale standard - http://www.doubleogauge.com/standards/finescaletrack.htm. Note that this has narrower flange-way gaps than commercial 00 turnouts (which are close to the DOGA intermediate standard). DOGA Finescale track would normally be used with wheelsets that have a back-to-back distance of 14.8 mm (as opposed to 14.4 mm for R-T-R / intermediate standard wheelsets). My reading would therefore be that for 'Finescale 00', they are supplying EM profile wheels, with the back-to-back dimension reduced to 14.8 mm, so that the wheelsets will operate without issues through track built to DOGA Finescale standards (which is effectively EM - 1.7 mm). It should work okay on commercial 00 turnouts, but the slightly wider back to back (if it is set at 14.8mm) would mean that the check rails in turnouts wouldn't actually do the job they are there for - to ensure that wheel flange cannot strike the nose of the common crossing. You may therefore have to adjust the back-to-back dimension if you have issues in turnouts.

The 'twack' that you get with a solenoid is, as I understand it, largely from the coils of the solenoid rather than the spring in the turnout. Therefore, the snap / click will be reduced with a slow motion point motor even if the springs are left in place. If you remove the spring, then you are relying on the motor to hold the points closed, but you will get the slowest motion. Performance with the springs left in place will be a function of how stiff the operating wire is relative to the springiness of the spring. The more rigid the operating wire, the less impact the spring will have on the slow motion, so the less need their should be to remove it.

I'm confused - first you say that 'have' to modify the point (ie it is imperative - or not optional) and now you are saying it is 'optional'. Which of these two opinions of yours is correct? If it's the second, then clearly the original statement is incorrect. Simple.

Either a local preservation society or model railway club. I'm always willing to accept donations on behalf of my own club, and I'm sure there will be one near you to.

I'm not sure, but I think the PIKE lettering may be included on Modelmasters 4M4867, which was originally produced as CT4 by Cambrian for their kits, which includes the SPA. https://modelmaster.uk/4mm-british-railways-wagons-1965-1990s/728-4m4867-ex-cambrian-kits-sheet-ct4-for-engineers-wagons-reprinting-due-november-2020.html Unfortunately, I can't find an image of the transfer set to confirm, so you'd need to confirm with them before ordering.

According to the terms and conditions on their website, Finetrax is not a VAT registered business, which implies that their turnover is still low - maybe 5,000 turnout kits produced per annum. Of course what that means is that as the range is expanded, presumably turnover will increase, hit the magic £85,000 threshold at which the business will have to register for VAT and the prices for their kits will rise 20% overnight. Therefore the price differential between Finetrax and Peco will reduce significantly. Add in the cost of the additional staff necessary to produce, package and dispatch the larger range and the cost differential will reduce further. If they scale up their CV10 turnouts to 00, then I'll give them a try, but with a 'range' that includes just a single B7 turnout in 00, I don't really see them as a serious competitor to Peco, but they do offer a choice for those who want something more accurate than the Peco geometry.

I think the assumption is that there will be a dock shunter, which will sit in the head shunt. A train will arrive from the mainline with the mainline locomotive becoming trapped at the buffers at the end of the arrival road (blue). The dockside shunter would then transfer the wagons from the arrival / departure road (blue) to the dock siding (red) (possibly in two halves) and this would then allow the mainline locomotive to move to the stabling point (ie yellow siding). The dock shunter would then transfer the wagons back from the dock siding (red) to the departure road (blue) and when completed, the shunter would return to the head shunt and the mainline locomotive would leave the stabling point to couple up to the train ready for departure. As I said, it is possible to stable the mainline locomotive at the end of the head shunt, but only after it's been released by the local shunter, at which point it gets in the way of the transfer of wagons from the dock siding pre-departure. That's why I'd leave it as @JN has shown.

Whilst I agree that the train locomotive could sit in the head shunt, the head shunt as shown is significantly shorter than either the arrival / departure road (blue) or the dock siding (red), so it looks like the transfer of wagons between these two tracks may involve splitting the train and transferring each half separately. As such, the presence of a locomotive at the end of the head shunt may not be ideal. I'd therefore keep the extra stabling siding (yellow) as @JN has shown it. That's a concern that I share. It looks very much as though each train that is operated will have to be removed from the layout in order to run the next train, which isn't particularly appealing in my eyes. I feel that there really is a need for some storage space somewhere.

I haven't been asked to pay for mine yet! I assume that you're still working through the list of pre-orders sending out e-mails looking for payment?

This proposal has already been discussed in another thread.

I don't see where they'd be located, so I'd probably just e-mail them at service@Bachmann-europe.co.uk That would seem to be the e-mail address that you'd need to order spare parts, but presumably you'd want a copy of the service sheet to know what you are ordering. https://www.Bachmann.co.uk/page/service-request

I'm no expert on the subject, but I'd assume that the angle of the tracks in the roundhouse is dependent on the diameter (or technically the circumference) of the turntable. If you have a large diameter turntable, then the angle between the roads can be less than if you have a smaller diameter turntable. This then leads to how close the roundhouse is to the turntable. The front of the building will have a pier between each track, so the smaller the angle between tracks, the further the roundhouse would need to be located from the turntable. I think you therefore need to do what the real railway companies would have done and just see what fits best. I don't think there is a 'right' answer to angle between tracks. It's simply whatever was necessary to allow the desired facilities to be built on the land available.

How about an NCE BD20? https://ncedcc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201254549-BD20-Block-Detector It's not the cheapest if you have multiple tracks that you want detection on, but since it sounds as though you only want one track rather than eight or 16, it seems like a potential contender (if the on-off switch isn't what you want).

I don't think Simon was suggesting that you have a cattle dock or thinking you were planning on one, but was trying to highlight that the 'foot print' of a modern station is generally much smaller than it may have been in the past. The former goods yard and cattle sidings would have become a car park or sold off as development land. Therefore, since there would be less track in your time period, it would fit into a smaller baseboard width. I think your desire for all the boards to be the same width is driven by your stated desire for symmetry, however, there is a general concern that an operating well that is just two foot wide is a bit cramped and therefore the suggestion to make it bigger, if possible. If you could make the boards either end longer (eg 2' * 2'6" or even 3') then that would be better, but if the layout can't be more than six foot wide, then narrower baseboards would be the only way of making the operating well wider.

True scale track spacing would actually be a minimum of 45 mm centre to centre, so you are correct: 50 mm is too wide and the tracks should be placed closer together if you want to be really prototypical. However, mainline stock is designed to negotiate a five chain radius curve 'dead slow' - ie at a speed of less than 5 mph. A chain is 66 feet long, which means that in model form, that equates to a radius of 1.32 m (52"). All railway track laid at a radius of less than 10 chains, would be continuously check railed, which most of the network isn't, so if you want to replicate true scale curves on a double track line, then you need to be working with radii greater than 2.64 m (8' 8"). Sadly none of us have the space for such generous prototypical curves. That therefore means that we need to increase the spacing between tracks to be greater than that of the prototype to accommodate the stock that we wish to run simply because it will overhang on a curve more than it does on the prototype. Peco chose a 2" (50.8 mm) spacing for their streamline range as a suitable compromise based on the assumption that modellers could probably accommodate curves of perhaps three foot radius and with a three foot radius curve and tracks 2" apart, you should be able to run two trains at the same time round the curves. However, if you drop down to set track radii, then the overhang of a coach, DMU or bogie wagon becomes greater still and therefore the 2" streamline spacing is no longer enough. That is why the set track spacing is greater - 67 mm. The difference in spacing between first, second, third and fourth radius curves is based on being able to run stock on first and second radius curves without collision, which means that it's wider than is strictly necessary between third and fourth radius. However, since you are working with flexitrack, there is no need to be constrained to trying to replicate third and fourth radius set track curves. You should be able to just place down a piece of track and set it to whatever radius you want and then you should be able to offset a second track from that at whatever spacing you want. In my case, my starting point was to adopt a radius of 762 mm for the inside track simply because I have a 30" Tracksetta, which will be used to help me lay the track. I'll then offset the rest of the track from that. I'll be using 2" track centres in storage loops (which are straight), but increasing the distance slightly on the curves at either end simply because I'll be running a lot of long bogie stock.

I'm not sure that I understand your logic here. You have 90 degree curves, so unless your stock is un-prototypically long, then each of your bogie coaches and wagons will have all wheels on the curve at some point. I'd recommend the inclusion of a short straight between two curves of opposite hand (ie a reverse curve) where the purpose is to avoid buffer lock on the transition from one curve to the other, but I don't think it would provide any benefit to what you are trying to do when the two curves are of the same hand. If it was me, I'd get rid of the short straights and try to incorporate as large radii curves at the ends as you can manage. As has already been highlighted, the 2" (50.8 mm) track spacing for Peco streamline is based on having closer to scale curves than the Set Track geometry, which requires a 67 mm spacing between first and second radius curves. From my own experiments, if you're planning to operate Class 158 units, Mark 3 coaches or large bogie wagons like Heljan's Cargowaggons, I think you need to either get the end radii up to something like 762 mm (2' 6") or you need to start increasing the track spacing to something larger than 51 mm. For my own layout, I'm planning to increase the spacing to about 55 mm on my circa 30" curves. I don't think that's strictly necessary, but I'm aiming for around 5 mm clearance just to make sure my trains don't touch. If you adopt the standard streamline spacing with curves of less than 30", you are likely to encounter issues with some combinations of modern stock.

I'm not sure that there are many who don't care if they are exploited. I'd say the issue is that they don't know what they can do about it. They simply accept that from the limited choice of jobs open to them, they have to pick one and they will go for the one that they feel exploits them the least or gives them something that they value (eg the working hours). In some cases it's Hobson's Choice. The problem is that those in power, who could make changes to reduce exploitation, often don't understand the problems faced by those at the bottom of society, and many of the issues can be complex. For example, zero hours contracts: are they good or bad? My own employer uses these occasionally, but only where I'd say it benefits both parties: typically final year students during term time. We've usually employed them as a full time intern over the summer and offered them a full time graduate position later, but may offer them a zero hours contract during their final year. That means sometimes they may be in one or even two days a week, but coming up to exams or writing up their dissertation, they are free to say they need to concentrate on their studies. I therefore think such contracts have advantages, but equally I can see how some employers can exploit people using them to avoid offering a decent package and they are obviously of little value if you have a family to support. Personally, I think our tax system needs a fairly radical overhaul.

That's very much locomotive and stock dependent. Diesel locomotives can typically haul trains up gradients better than some steam locomotives, so the era you are modelling is relevant. However, that's only a generalisation. Also, how free running your rolling stock is will influence whether a particular locomotive can pull a particular rake of coaches or wagons up the incline. In general, I'd say a 2% gradient is a desirable target and 3% is the maximum I would consider, but remember that you will need to allow transitions between level and gradient at the top and bottom of your incline, so it's a little more complicated than that simplistic calculator implies. If you've taken the 'run' to be the total distance that you have available for your incline, and then you transition into and out if it, that calculator will give you the average incline, but the maximum will be greater.

Agreed - that was a consequence of one of the Liberal Democrats election pledges back in 2010, which was implemented when we had a Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government. That is, the personal allowance increased at significantly more than the growth in average earnings over the period 2010 to 2015. I think the figure of £10,000 for 2014/15 was the Liberal Democrat election pledge in 2010. In more recent years the rate of growth in the personal allowance has slowed again. Okay, in those circumstances, yes, I agree that benefit entitlement is dependent on savings. However, savings are irrelevant in terms of the income tax threshold that you referred to, which is the same for everyone bar a few at the very top of the income scale who have six figure salaries. Therefore, savings are not relevant to whether or not you'd be taxed on a part time job in B&Q (other than the interest received on these savings). However, it would influence whether or not you were entitled to any government benefits in addition to your income from that part-time employment (which may be paid as part of that income). I wouldn't like to have to live on £700 per month, so I'd definitely consider £8,400 per annum to be a low wage. I agree. One thing that I hadn't realised until my wife took her current job, is that under pension auto-enrolment, the amount that an employee and employer has to contribute to their staff pension is a percentage of salary in excess of the Lower Earnings Limit for National Insurance. That means that the less generous employers deduct £6,240 from salary before calculating their contribution. Thankfully my employer pays a contribution based on my whole salary. However, obviously if you can keep pay below that level, you don't need to make any pension contributions. I agree that there is need to make work pay, which means increasing pay rates and reducing taxation on those at the lower end of society, but that's straying into politics!

I very much doubt you were able to stretch over a four foot wide layout unless you are exceptionally tall and the layout was fairly low. How far you can stretch depends on both your size and the height of the layout. For a layout that is at chest height, I can stretch about 650 mm (around two feet and two inches), that being the distance between my arm pit and the centre of my hand. That is the furthest from the baseboard edge at which I would be able to, say, clean the track. However, if the layout is lower, such that I am able to bend at the waist, I can stretch about 850 mm (just short of three feet). Whilst I could probably retrieve a derailed coach from the back of a three foot wide baseboard, I wouldn't be able to clean the rails if the track was that far from the baseboard edge. Someone a bit taller than me (I'm only five foot eight inches tall) can probably reach over a three foot wide baseboard, but I think that would be close to the limit for most people. I assume if anything derailed on the far side of your father's layout, you were probably able to retrieve it from one or other of the edges, so your maximum stretch would have been three feet. Anyway, it doesn't seem like you'll have an issue if you stick to a central operating well and two foot wide baseboards, although I do agree with some of the other comments that a wider operating well would be preferable. I would certainly fit in one two foot wide, but having mocked it up (ie standing between the batons that will support my 610 mm wide baseboards), it feels a little constrained.