whart57

That would be the junction of the line to Sheerness.

I'm not an expert on double track junctions, but I'm guessing there are trade-offs in terms of signalling and track complexity. It may even be that empty stock doesn't run from the Ramsgate direction directly but either runs to Herne Bay and reverses there, possibly doing a revenue service run as a connecting service from a London train, or there is a refuge siding provided to reverse in. In manual signalling days there was a Reculvers signal box in real life breaking the section between Herne Bay and Birchington into two blocks.

Well not exactly like that, there would need to be crossovers to get trains running onto the correct lines. The reasoning for a spur to Ramsgate is that that is where the loco sheds - in steam days - and EMU stabling was. So for empty stock movement

I can't resist interfering 😁 In my scenario the non-electrified line to Canterbury via Grove Ferry is single track, so I've made that your simplest in and out from the top line of the fiddle yard to Platform 1. Platform 0 is for parcels and side loading freight and the factory siding is on a kick-back. Incoming freight though is from one of the Faversham lines in the fiddle yard and has to route over two points to reach its unloading point. Platforms 2 and 3 are your London services via Faversham. However the line is double track so outgoing trains should swap over to the right running line. But you could imagine some carriage stabling sidings a bit down the line which involve a short distance of wrong line running as well. Finally, if you have room it might be nice to have a disused platform 4 with the track lifted just as a scenic feature. A not unheard of feature of the 1980s if I recall. An extra touch might be to have retaining walls along part of the outside of platforms 1 and 4 to suggest an overall roof was once in place but has been removed for safety reasons.

I bow to others regarding actual type, but I'm presuming Thumpers or Tadpole units.

The real Ashford Hastings was a DMU

The London Victoria via Canterbury service is a long way over SR electrified lines for non-electrified stock. How about your day service being Reculver to Hastings? Linking the Canterbury West to Reculver and the Ashford to Hastings via Rye DMU services by the relatively short link over the electrified tracks between Canterbury and Ashford might be a better use of shift times and DMU running times than a short shuttle service. You could explain this away by suggesting it allows some Ramsgate to Charing Cross services to run non-stop between Canterbury and Ashford as the Reculver-Hastings service acts as the stopper for Chartham, Chilham and Wye.

Does this look a bit better?

I think you need to have a third platform. What if you put the factory sidings on a kick back? Something like this: If you're tight on space you can lose the scissors that lets all incoming and outgoing trains use either of platforms 1&2. Pretend its offstage. Platform 3 is for the ex SER line trains, and as it would be the quietest platform it is also used to access your Zanussi distribution centre.

Hi Ray, good to see the Reculver idea getting an airing. Just for the benefit of anyone coming new to this, here is a link to the imaginary Reculver story I put together

Saturday was a good day. More than 300 people through the door, among them a lot of families. Our club has a pretty good junior section giving juniors - and their dads - a chance to help build a small layout using the sort of track and stock that can be got pretty cheaply from second hand stalls at shows, something quite important in this era of tight family finances. So hopefully a few will come back on Wednesdays to get involved. But Maenamburi was there, a lot of people came to look and talk about what I was trying to achieve, including a number of people who had worked or lived in SE Asia as expats. Some nice comments about my attempts at reproducing tropical vegetation. I learnt quite a bit about my layout, most of it good. I started out with some derailment issues which I tracked down to a couple of sluggish points - tie bars not quite going over. Making sure the switch blades had gone over completely by poking them with a dental pick before attempting reverse a four coach train through the turn-out got me through the day, but a more permanent solution should be possible before the next outing. The two locos and the 158 set ended up being good runners. A day's work did them a power of good. At the end of the day they were responsive and achieved good slow running, even though a cotton bud soaked in IPA and wiped over the track kept coming up black. I had enough running to get through this sort of low level show, but for a real show I need a fiddle yard so trains can actually leave the stage. Shunting the carriages between platform and carriage sidings works as a show, particularly when the Kadee couplers are properly set and remote uncoupling works, but without being able to depart for destinations elsewhere - or arrive from same - the exercise has a certain futility. But to complete this report, a link to the club's Facebook page and a couple of pics taken by a fellow club member. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=817305247090428&set=pcb.817313387089614

Open Day on Saturday, less than 48 hours away. Although I've not been updating this I have been working hard on getting ready. However what I've been doing doesn't lend itself to nice pictures. I've been doing a lot of testing and troubleshooting, and while doing so figured out on some minimal wiring changes that will make the layout operable after backsliding from DCC to DC. I hope to get a few isolators installed this afternoon so I can park locos. The other major task is to have built a complete set of legs to hold the layout. A misunderstanding between me and the Exhibition Manager at the club had led to me to believe I would have some six foot long tables to put the layout on. What the EM actually meant was if I really needed them he would try and get some from another church. So with less than three weeks to go I had to craft some legs. Fortunately some bargains from the centre aisle at Lidl meant I had some useful power tools to speed the job along, and as I had already designed some very successful supports for HMRC's Chesworth layout, I had a good solid design to work from. Oh yes, the first phase of the club's 00 Finescale layout is also at the Open Day. Fortunately the team working on this has grown since last year so my absence on things Thai has been less noticeable.

You'd have to ballast most of the layout though. Seriously though, the New Romney branch - Dungeness being a branch off a branch - would be a good choice for the SECR loco collector given that Ashford works used the branch for running in turns.

It's Horsham club Open Day this coming weekend - Saturday April 6. The club's 00 Finescale layout, Chesworth, will be there, showing off the progress made on the Holbrook station section. (As will your blogger's own Maenamburi layout, based on the State Railway of Thailand). The Dog and Bacon pub is nearly complete, it just needs the pub sign and some vegetables in the garden. Apparently back in the 1940s and 50s the owner of the cottages sold beans and other veg to locals and passers by. This picture, taken on a club night, shows a couple of day trippers have called in for lunch in their Oxford Diecast motors. A travelling crane has also turned up in the goods yard, not sure why, except that one of our members had an itch to scratch-build the K&ESR crane. The information came from the magazine of the Colonel Stephens Society plus some computer manipulation of the two published photos of the crane. The model was mainly scratchbuilt out of Plastikard but riding on Parkside chassis. The chassis needed to be cut and shut for the much shorter wheelbase of these vehicles. Other bits are etched gears and fine chain sourced out on the internet. The Open Day is, as I said, Saturday April 6, and doors open from 10 am to 4 pm. The venue is the St Leonards Church Hall, Cambridge Rd, Horsham RH13 5ED. Street parking is available in the streets around though I should point out that this is a residential area and local residents are also parking their cars in the street.

Hi, You asked me to report if it was happening again and send you a screenshot. The reason I haven't got back to you yet is that for some reason I only get that advert when I go on to rmweb from my smartphone. I get the same videos of model railways on my computer but without that ad, though I do get others that I would classify as acceptably generic advertising. The problem is that I'm not so smart on my smartphone and I don't know how to take a screenshot. It might be something in the settings being different, but as regards browsing history, my smartphone browsing is pretty straightforward - rmweb, the Isthmian League website and the Guardian newspaper. Other apps I use regularly Network Rail's timetables and Google Maps. Occasionally I look things up using DuckDuckGo, but they are all one offs. My computer browsing is more eclectic, I view all of those plus Amazon, many other model shops on line, Screwfix, M&S and other clothes shops plus other social media websites. So make of that what you will.

So would I. Facebook recently suggested my niece as a "friend". As she was family I contacted her to explain personally that I don't - ever - sign up people on Facebook as "friends" and she should not see it as a rejection if I didn't. Turns out she hasn't used Facebook for years and she certainly didn't make a friends request. I now regard friend requests as scam attempts.

Many railways used the term "coal engine" for an obsolescent goods loco fit only for the slowest mineral traffic. The South Eastern even used the term in their livery definitions, namely that "coal engines" were painted black with no lining and minimal lettering.

Not really possible, the bridge at Arnhem was in a built up area. The nearest open ground was marshy, that was what held up XXX Corps, and the Luftwaffe occupied the next best bit of flat ground.

It was apparently never considered that as Arnhem was only a few miles from the German border that that would stiffen German morale. It became a defence of the Fatherland.

You are probably right that the British military leadership was too heavily committed to the flawed Market Garden plan to consider a change in emphasis. Even aerial reconnaissance photos confirming the presence of German armour near the Arnhem drop zones didn't cause a rethink. Nor did the fact that even if the First Airborne had managed to hold the Arnhem bridge until XXX Corps arrived, the British still had to cross the Ijssel river in order to hit the road into Germany. Something that took the Canadians a week in April 1945 against Germans about to surrender. What Montgomery and Eisenhower didn't know though was how close the Germans in the Netherlands were to collapse in September 1944. There was a brief window of opportunity to advance north from Antwerp and watch the Occupation regime panic and run East. Moving up to Breda would also have cut off the German forces on Beveland and Walcheren. It seemed such a no-brainer that the Dutch government in exile believed it had happened and broadcast that fact over the BBC. However, the German commanders restored order, Market Garden went ahead and the rest is history. Which unfortunately included the famine in the Netherlands and another eight months of Nazis winkling out Jews in hiding.

Antwerp without clear use of the Scheldt was of little value. However capturing the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland was surely classic airborne troops stuff. Drop in behind the fortified positions, secure beach heads and get in the support from ground forces.

Unusually the Dutch language version of this article contains less information than the English translation, but the place it was found might give a clue as to why it was there and why it was buried. The Noordkasteel was part of the nineteenth century defensive works around Antwerp harbour which were de-commissioned at the end of the century to expand the docks. Presumably the developments in artillery during the nineteenth century had rendered the fortifications obsolete. The wall and an underground magazine were not demolished then though. In 1944 however the Allied advance from Normandy was so rapid once the troops had broken through the coastal defences that the Germans were in panic mode. It's quite possible that something like a container was dug in to provide some form of pillbox along an existing defensive line, the underground magazine - which was apparently dynamited in the 1950s - would have been useful in WW2. As it happened, a combination of British troops and Belgian resistance fighters managed to capture Antwerp and its docks without too much heavy fighting, and it has been suggested that Montgomery should have reacted by cancelling Market Garden, which was just about to go, and refocussing on reopening Antwerp's deep water harbour to ease the Allies' supply problems. Most supplies were still coming in at the Mulberry harbours on the Normandy beaches, and as the saying has it, soldiers win battles, logistics win wars.

This morning I was rather surprised to be presented with a pop up video of pro-Israel propaganda when I logged on to rmweb. I accept that adverts are needed to pay for the service rmweb provides but surely there is appropriate and inappropriate advertising. And a fake news propaganda job seems very inappropriate to me.

If you want a Minories style terminus then have you considered Enkhuizen? This is the terminus of a line from Amsterdam which these days is operated by double deck EMUs but in earlier years had double deck carriages in push pull formation with a 1700 providing the power. Go back a dozen years or so and there is a YouTube video of a rush hour service formed of Plan V EMUs, the traditional hondekop type. For more variety you could employ a bit of modellers license and have the Sprinter service from Alkmaar to Hoorn extended to Enkhuizen. It should be possible to figure out the trackplan from Google Maps satellite view.

I'm guessing that the ship on the pic you linked to is the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, the flagship of the Holland-America line and the premier vessel sailing between Rotterdam and New York - well actually New Jersey. The loco I am guessing is a generic American one.