rodshaw

I like it. Plenty action possible, and the loco will only be dealing with trailing point spurs so no run-round needed.

Reminds me one day a couple of months ago a sparrowhawk did a landing on our fence not three yards away from where I was sitting looking out of the window. Of course by the time I'd gone to fetch my wife it had gone. But - almost everything apart from dunnocks and woodpigeons seems to have disappeared from our garden of late. The feeders are hardly touched, and no goldfinches, any kind of tit, even robins, for a while now.

Reminds me of a couple of Lance Mindheim's shelf layouts which have figured in Model Railroader, featuring some of the industries you mention. I'm sure he modelled some of the exact locations in the video.

This gives you a better idea of relative size.

American TT is about 2.5mm to the foot, or 1:120, the same as European TT, and HO is 1:87. So American TT is only 72.5% the length of HO, or only just over 50% the area, or 38% the volume. I love it. British TT is actually closer to HO than it is to American or European TT. Having said which, the difference in size is greatly exaggerated in my photo because the HO is in the foreground and the lens was pretty much at its widest angle.

Having a bit of a play...I think it could be a goer. No scenics as yet, but I'm inclined towards covering a fair bit of the track with paving.

I had to do a bit more work than expected on this GP9 chassis. First I had to take the two chassis halves apart (easily done by undoing two screws with an Allen key) in order to cut the capacitor off from under the motor. Then I had to get the chassis back together (a bit more tricky because the cardans kept falling out and the pickup wires needed seating back in grooves cut into the insides of the chassis halves). Finally I had to file some grooves into the top of the chassis to carry the lighting wires, because the chassis is a very tight fit inside the Lionel body - I also had to file away some of the plastic window and lens edges to get it to fit. Then to fit the decoder, no real problem here but the chassis wiring is 'wrong way round' for DCC, i.e. black and red where they should be orange and grey and vice versa. Finally I had to cut/file away some of those lugs on the truck sides in order to get the truck sideframes to fit. I contemplated making some more realistic-looking fuel tank sides but in the end I just used the original tank cut in two halves. The loco is non-sound but like my other non-sound locos it can be synchronised with two MRC diesel sounders under the layout. The couplers are Kadee 705s. I had a nightmare moment when, everything assembled, I ran it with a few freight cars and it kept bobbling or even stopping over my turnouts. As it happened I'd got a small blob of epoxy stuck to the underside of the truck housing, just enough to raise it up when crossing over a turnout rail. Phew! Looking at prototype pictures of BM 1723, it looks as if it was repainted in the 1960s or 1970s maybe, to pretty much all blue without the black cab, front and rear. Also, it had those protruding grilles coming out of the roof about halfway down. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/Locopi ... x?id=59382 (That's not to say I'm going to ruin mine by painting or hacking it).

I can't see mention of magazines being exempt anywhere here. I don't think the domestic exemption applies to imports from outside the UK or EU. For example, try this duty calculator and be sure to specify magazines: https://customsdutyfree.com/duty-calculator/

A problem possibly of my own making and not related to Covid delays or Parcelforce but earlier this year I ordered three Model Railroader back issues from the US. A couple of weeks later a card was dropped through my door saying I had to pay VAT and a Royal Mail handling fee. MR had posted all three mags together and the total value was over the VAT threshold. I decided not to pay and emailed MR to say they should expect the mags to be returned from UK customs. If so, could they give me a refund or post them again but individually. They were very good about it and offered to pay the VAT and handling fee as well as giving me electronic copies. The paper copies had by now been returned to them and I was happy with the electronic ones anyway so I told them to forget it. But just beware if you order more than one mag at a time - it doesn't take much to go over the VAT threshold.

The loco can either push two cars onto sidings S1 or S3 via fiddle yard track F1, or pull two cars onto the lead track via fiddle yard track F2 and then push them onto siding S2. My original idea was to have the fiddle yard as a one-track 'sector plate' pivoting between the two sets of sidings, but I got lazy and used the turnout instead. I may go back to the idea of a sector plate, or possibly a two-track fiddle yard, if the present design proves restrictive. I suppose I could also install a crossover between siding S3 and the lead track, which would give me a run-round loop for the loco. Two locos would be a bit of a luxury on a layout like this but they'd work, one pulling and one pushing from the fiddle yard. It's DCC so this would be no problem. I'm still finding it odd adjusting back to these HO monsters after my immersion in TT - but my grandson says he prefers the bigger trains and luckily I have just enough room to have both layouts set up together and switch back and forth!

The spur you mention is no longer than the fiddle yard, they are both 24in. The fiddle yard maybe looks shorter because of the turnout in the middle, which admittedly makes it a bit more inconvenient for placing stock. And switching from the other spur would be impossible. There would be no way to get a train from it onto the tracks above it.

DanielB - good idea, I may well end up scenicking the fiddle yard. It gives me more options that end. This might be an advantage at a show anyway, changing trains gives people something to watch while nothing is running. Mick - the balsa is 3/4in. or 19mm thick, apart from a short middle section which is about 1/2in. with some foamboard glued underneath. I got it from Balsa Cabin about 16 years ago. I sandwiched it all with thick card from a packing box, then painted and varnished it. It's standing on glued-on balsa feet. Frankly it's a bit of a bodge and looks ghastly, but it's robust enough for what I need and the trains run fine. I could attach a fiddlestick for shows - I even have just enough balsa left - but at home I've run out of space! Anyway my TT layout is booked for shows during 2021 so the earliest I'll be exhibiting this (if I end up finishing it to a good enough standard) will likely be 2022, so plenty time to make one! But boy does that HO look big compared to TT!

Having been absorbed with American TT for the last three years or so, I've been eyeing what's left of my HO scale stock and itching to get it moving again. So to get it up and running, I've made a quick switching plank. Fortuitously I had some spare balsa left over from a previous layout. Balsa is ideal - nice and light but pretty much flat as a pancake and fairly robust. What I had left has made a baseboard just 8 inches wide, in two sections 32in. and 24in. long, joined by a couple of dowels. So total length is 56in, and if you take in the fact that there's no extra fiddle yard, overall it's my shortest yet. The design is nothing special, but it allows for a good bit of switching. I've nominated the track inside the red oblong as a potential fiddle yard. The lead track at front left is also 24in, which will accommodate a loco up to around GP40 length plus two 50ft freight cars, for switching the track at front right. The extra 8in. in between the two 24in. sections is taken up by the pair of turnouts. If I decide to turn it into a proper layout there is room for low-relief industries at back left and at the right in front of the fiddle yard. All in all, just enough for a bit of switching to get those HO trains running again. I'm thinking it may also have a bit of play value for my grandkids. If I decide to give it the full scenic treatment I may add a couple of inches of width to the front, possibly at a lower level, to make a harbour scene, hence the cunning code name.

I don't get MR any more but I like the sound of it. I have in mind to do something similar but even smaller, on a balsa base, with a built-in fiddle yard, just to get the remains of my HO stock up and running again. Only I'm thinking of a whopping two turnouts.

To be more precise, "mm" stands for millimetres to the foot. A wonderfully confusing mix of metric and imperial.

Onto my third Lionel GP9 conversion, this time with a chassis from German company Lok-n-Roll rather than using wheels and drive train parts from Sebnitz. A bit more expensive but less work. A rectangle needs cutting out of the plastic loco frame. I'd sawn halfway through the fuel tank in situ, thinking it was part of the frame moulding, before realising that it just pulls away. It still needs cutting up but now it's off I may actually leave it off and make a more realistic one out of balsa. Then, when test fitting the chassis, I realised I hadn't allowed room for the worm housings at either end so there's a bit more to cut away. It doesn't leave much plastic! The chassis is DC as supplied and I'll be fitting a Zimo non-sound decoder. Contrary to DCC convention, the grey and orange wires of the chassis are soldered to the truck pickups and the red and black ones go to the motor. Must remember to solder the grey and orange wires to the black and red ones of the decoder and vice versa!

Here are a few photos I took in 2013 if they're of any use.

Here's the Wymann website: http://www.wymann.info/ShuntingPuzzles/sw-inglenook.html There's a link to some rules at the bottom.

Keeping two meters apart...

You will probably end up with something just as nice as if you'd planned it down to the last detail.

A female blackbird likes to find bits of stuff for her nest in our back garden, dip them in our bird bath then take them to the nest in a large climber next door. There's also a new brood of house sparrows that absolutely devour the seeds in our feeder. An adult today was taking seeds and feeding them to one of her young on the next branch. There's also a young robin that keeps coming onto the back lawn. (I thought it was a small thrush at first, der). We have very few blue tits around this spring though. And our bird box hasn't been occupied for the second year running. Must try and find a better place for it.

Another day and more switching, this time featuring a Southern Pacific GP9. https://youtu.be/mOfy3EVzBmY

Michael You might be interested in the ttnut forum. Unfortunately it went down for a big upgrade yesterday but should be up and running again in about a week. It's hosted by a chap called Alex Hristov in the US and has a pretty much international flavour. Rod

Here's a 2-minute video showing a bit more switching action at Naples Street: https://youtu.be/wUoV41tM4AU

I suspected as much. Back it goes then.