webbcompound

Are you sure you want everyone on here to know about this? And if so shouldn't you have waited till after the evening watershed?

And then, to Scotland's eternal shame there is this. The Trump Tartan

I once saw a man eating pike in a restaurant in France Euh, ben, j'vais justement attraper mon portmanteau

How you handle in or out of system traffic might depend on what sort of traffic you envisage.

well I said unless you are modelling Sodor, which of course is an island so I meant it to stand for island systems, which let us be honest are not commonplace, and will usually operate with quite limited stock. As for narrow guage, well the layout in question isn't. It is standard guage, with fairly mainline looking stock, and narrow guage railways are a different animal (which in layout terms is often unfortuately a rabbit). Branch lines and short lines are of course quite limited but by definition they branch off the main line, so are not closed systems and so some kind of exchange facility is required. Industrial railways are pretty limited as they involve moving a product from its origin to a trans-shipment point or single consumer, so operationally they are fairly minimal.

and that is the point. whilst enjoyable to trundle about on, and good fun, this bears no relation to a real-world railway, (unless on Sodor) because it is a closed system. All the railways I know have traffic coming and going from distant parts, and without that it isn't the same. That is why, whatever the size of the layout, there has to be a fiddle yard or equivalent to represent the "rest of the world". Of course the problem arises when you want to exhibit, as fiddle yards are not part of the carefully constructed fantasy world (although exhibitionists must make up a minority of railway model/toy train enthusiasts), but at home the fiddle yard is just storage.

Lovely Loco, and excellent lamps, but re the early lamps these look to be the same as LNWR lamps, which are now available from Modelu

Price and value. The Coal tank is nice, and though expensive, it seems to be a completely accurate model. Also for sale a Scale 1 New York Central Commodore Vanderbilt loco plus carriages for £4000. Unfortunately the carriages are NYC coaches, when they should be Pullman sleepers, as this loco only worked the 20th Century Limited and the paint scheme is post 1939, at which point Commodore Vanderbilt was rebuilt with different streamlining.. That is a lot of money for something not right at all.

I see the double track goes down to single to cross the bridge. Perhaps (because nothing is ever that straightforward on Discworld), the tracks should be interlaced thus allowing for the maintenance and construction costs of double track, whilst benefitting from the traffic restricting effect of single track.

I'm working on the operational side of a just-pre WW2 layout I have under construction. the layout is essentially just the dead end half of a terminal station. Incoming trains have a loco, then a bunch of head end cars (express refrigerator, cans, newspapers, mail, baggage), then the passenger cars. Outgoing trains are propelled in by an off-scene shifter, passengers are loaded, then the train is drawn out by an off-scene loco. It is the incoming trains I am trying to get a handle on. The tracks are in pairs with release crossovers, so the loco can be drawn forward and then reversed over the adjacent track for servicing. I've read that baggage cars will be loaded/unloaded on the passenger platform, so do head end reefers and milk cars get out the same way as the loco but drawn by a shifter? I can't see them just sitting there waiting while the baggage is sorted out. The passenger cars are obviously taken away by an off-scene shifter for cleaning and turning for the return journey. So any thoughts on the sequence for dealing with the incoming train?

But Ankh-Morpork isn't in the UK is it. Things "bleed" over thaumaturgically from all sorts of places, including the US, where bogie coaches are almost as old as railways themselves

Of course nothing beat Major Major Major Major in Catch22

Any suggestions for rattle can paint for stainless steel finish? I want to paint locos and cars as stainless steel, but (obviously) need one that is OK with decals as well as some overpainting. Needs to be readily available in UK.

About your bogie/verandah coaches I was thinking what a pity it was that all those nice variously short Athearn and Roundhouse made Overton clerestory bogies are in HO scale. Then I did some measuring. I have no Overton's but I do have a car produced by Riv arossi to an early design (with enclosed vestibules). A Hornby GWR clerestory coach has sides 25mm high, and is 32mm wide. The Rivarossi car has sides 27mm high (this includes a 2mm sill which is usually plated/boarded over as part of the side in US vehicles, and 35mm wide. So it looks likely that the Overton stuff is likely to be quite useable.

I'm slowly working my way towards a working wagon (or in your case, coach) turntable. I think the answer is to restrict it to a "live" route and a "dummy" route, with the turntable only turning backwards and forwards through 90 degrees. Since your turntables would be next to platforms you could rig a poking device to propel the coach forwards once turned. If you have arrival and departure roads you could have a slight slope from the arrival road to the departure road so once "poked" the coach would roll onto the other line's turntable

Well no. Lots of people are appaled that a man who claims responsibility for directing the national strategy broke so many of the rules they put in place, and that the majority of the population have followed obediently is only part of it. Lying about it to cover it up, claiming people who reported it were lying, his wife publishing in the Spectator a piece which makes it look as if they never left London, these are all things we do not want our government to be involved in. Exceptionalist pusilanimity is the reason he should be removed. He cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the nation, yet he appears to remain at the heart of government.

On another board I was pointed at this list https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WTQYRT74WhpXmGqFLOfK3uFqEHdLkjBBfzLCPSL4cao/edit May not be completely accurate, but it is exhaustive and a good starting point for research if anyone is interested in passenger stuff

Anyone know the prototype road(s) for these Rivarossi HO head end cars sold painted for NYC? The baggage car is 73' (71' body)and the baggage/RPO is 70' (67'6" body) (photos from Anglo-American Model Railways shop where I bought them)

This is a very impressive and inspiring approach. So impressive I have decided I would try something similar myself, but probably a passenger terminal, rather than through, a fictional Chicago, although with trains that did run, just not into the same station, which will have to be called Chicago Grand Central Union Station to cover all the bases. Date range 1937-41.

No need to muck about with badly designed fake steam punk when the real thing actually existed. I'm working towards this one in a different (non pre-grouping) life (warning: colourised picture)

Thanks for all comments. Yes research is ongoing. Principally Pennsy through the PRRHS, but also NYC and IC. The Illinois Central appears to be the least accessible. Their historical siociety has just folded and merged membership with the Monticello Museum, which means that it is more focussed on volunteering there than anything else. When it comes to (ish) factual questions like this I'm trying to avoid buying expensive books from the US, although this is ultimately unavoidable. Regarding cars the Bachmann P70 looks pretty reasonable, and since it will need repainting into early brighter Tuscan I can buy any road that is reasonably priced second hand. Surprisingly the older Roundhouse and Model Power Harrimans seem a pretty reasonable starting point for bashing quite a lot of IC heavyweight stock. Anything newly manufactured is frighteningly expensive.

Thanks guys. Excellent info. I have found consists for the "name" trains that might appear, but was completely at a loss for the locals and commuter stuff. As and when things begin to be constructed I will post here. Looks like there will be lots of kitbashing and scratchbuilding to get accurate consists, which will be interesting as it looks as if most of the specialist suppliers of kits and bits have folded or become deceased.

I'm used to UK practice, where each independent section of a train needed a guard, either in a seperate van, or in a special compartment in a passenger/brake carriage, either at the rear or in the middle of the train, but I'm not clear what US practice in the steam era was (specifically 30s 40s). It is clear that a combine, which looks like a UK passenger/brake, is mostly just a passenger and baggage car, and in lots of cases sits at the head end of a train; and I know that "head end" cars such as express reefers could also be tagged onto the tail end if they needed to be detached en-route. So are there any rules, or general practice, about what types of cars are allowed/required at the tail end of a passenger consist? I'm aware of observation cars, but cleary they weren't carried on every train, and they don't usually have any kind of "guard" function. The usual solution of looking at photos is hampered by the fact that very few photos are of tail ends, unless they feature an observation car.

As the West Norfolk was earlier being confused with a vaguely similarly named US railroad I thought it might be time for the Company to join the big league and streamline one of its' blue ribbon passenger trains. Mainly because I saw this streamlined 2-4-0 being tested on the Chemins de fer del'Etat 1884-5 and thought it ticked all the boxes.

a bit of a sweeping statement there Mr Northroader.