PAL

I can't for the life of me bring any photos up on Paul Bartlett's site. I've used it in the fairly distant past without any trouble. I can get to the site all right and bring up "headings" pages but whatever I click on, the photos refuse to come up. Is it my computer? Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Many thanks to all supplying priceless shunting gen but partic to Johnster and 34 for such detailed stuff. Definitely worth filing away. The general consensus appears to be that there's not much in it between Bachmann's 3 panniers. But Spikey raises another question - does the controller you use make a real difference to slow running - and might it be that some locos behave better with particular controllers? Straying from my original question but not too far, I have another one. Hornby's 08 diesel appears to represent the gold standard when it comes to shunting operations. I was sceptical, and rather resented forking out so much money. But I see now how right prevailing opinion is. But why is it such a wonderful performer? Other locos have 5-pole motors and - like the Bachmann panniers - pickups on all 6 wheels. I can see that the gearing is very high - or is it low, I can never work it out - compared to any other loco I've known. Is that it?

Thanks to further contributors. Not being a close follower of the ads, I didn't realise that only the 64xx is available at the moment. Can I assume that if I wait long enough, the 57xx and the 87xx will reappear? I found members' observations on shunting speed very interesting and - tho it's slightly off-topic - would like to hear more. It's beyond me but someone somewhere must have worked out prototypical shunting speeds scaled down to the various gauges. I have Kadees and my rule-of-thumb speed is one that will work the couplings! Further thoughts on the relative performances of the three Bachmann Panniers still most welcome.

Many thanks to contributors so far. Perhaps I should clarify further; the layout is basic DC; and my intention is to buy new. Further contributions most welcome.

I'm thinking of buying a Bachmann Pannier for ultra-slow-running shunting on a layout that's all points and no long runs. I've already got a 64xx; it's all right, but not as good a crawler as my MR Sentinel or Hornby 08. Of the three classes of Pannier that Bachmann do - 57xx, 64xx, 87xx - I was wondering if there are any differences in slow-running ability. I believe they came on the market over a period of decades, which perhaps might indicate that the latest one - the 87xx I believe - would be the best runner from my point of view. Have the motors or drive mechanisms changed for the better - or worse? Or is it just pot-luck - a matter of which individual example is taken off the shelf at the shop irrespective of class? I guess there'll be members out there with the experience and knowledge to make comparisons, and I'd greatly value your thoughts before I lay out the wonga.

Many thanks to all respondents for intelligent suggestions. The culprit was in fact one of the wheels that I'd not pressed fully home on to its spline after messing about with the quartering. It had just enough wobble at higher speeds to jam the whole mechanism.

Has anyone had a drive mechanism jam up on them for no apparent reason? This is a Bachmann 00 64xx, good runner, quite new, well run-in, wheels well quartered at least to my eye. When I took off the undercarriage and re-set the wheels all was well again, but I'm wondering what might have caused it, and whether it's likely to happen again.

My thanks - and seasonal compliments - to all correspondents. I love this forum. I don't post a problem here very often, but when I do, I can always guarantee getting not just one but a range of alternative solutions to try out. boxbrownie: that filiament pen seems a VERY interesting little gizmo indeed, with, I imagine, considerable modelling potential. Have you used it in modelling? Has anyone else had any experience with one?

This problem may well have been dealt with as I imagine it's quite common, but I've had no luck with searching. The front mounting screw on my Bachmann 00 gauge 64xx now revolves uselessly in its socket, refusing to tighten. I assume I've stripped the plastic thread in the socket on the body. What remedies would members suggest?

Thanks so much to contributors. Chris & Bill: at last a use for that vile blister pack plastic that draws the blood of the unwary and you have to attack with a Stanley knife. Of course like all great ideas it's only obvious when someone else points it out! Rick: cornflake card sounds a good compromise between thickness and non-sag. It occurred to me that perhaps a coating of shellac might stiffen it even more. Any other ideas from members would be most welcome.

I've gone for the yawning hole rather than the smaller neater slot when fitting Peco PL10s to a 6mm ply baseboard. I have, with much fiddling, fitted two halves of thin card around the body of each motor to fill in the gap. The trouble is, they sag into the hole. On the other hand, if I substitute something thicker, it will lift the whole toe of the point that much further off the deck, which besides looking odd - I want eye-level viewing height - would possibly affect smooth running on what is an ultra- slow-speed shunting layout. What would members advise?

Have you had a look at Iain Rice's 'Shelf Layouts for Model Railroads'? Written for the American market with Rice's prose weirdly Americanised, and over half of it devoted to American layout schemes. But as you'd expect from him, it's full of interesting ideas, and worth getting hold of. I'm particularly taken with his extension of his lightbox idea, with lights mounted above the layout on another set of brackets.

If your preferred cutting method is a razor saw, the only aggravation factor is having to hold the damn track still while you cut it. It used to bring me out in a light sweat and make my finger-ends and arm ache. But it's easy-peasy with a simple jig which will take you less that half an hour to make. Get a scrap piece of softwood, say 4in x 4in x 1/2 inch. With a tenon or other stiff-bladed saw cut two parallel grooves down the middle of one of the 4in faces wide and deep enough to hold both rails fairly tightly. Across the same face,at right angles to the two grooves you've just cut, saw two more in parallel, this time 1/4in-3/8in apart, say 1/4 in deep. Chop out the wood between this second pair of cuts with a thin chisel or if you haven't got one, you can gouge it out less tidily but well enough with a Stanley knife. Then you clip the length of rail into the first pair of grooves so that your intended cut is over your saw-pit, the channel you made between the second pair.

Thanks to all contributors so far, particularly to Carl1962 for tracking down those Ahern plans at myhobbystore. What a wonderful resource this site is! Bertiedog and Chubber; I've sent you personal messages to which I very much hope you'll reply in due course if you come up with anything. I take Doug's point; you can work out out dimensions well enough from Ahern's sketches alone (magnificent Ahern warehouse, by the way). I should confess that my reasons for wanting to get hold of the plans themselves are as sentimental as they are practical. To my shame I confess I've never made the pilgrimage to Pendon to see Ahern's masterpiece before it falls to bits. But I like to think his spirit is in his sketches and plans too. If there are books on railway modelling that deserve the status of classics it is surely Ahern's three little volumes. The one on Buildings was published just as war broke out, and is just as up-to-date today as then in terms of creative imagination, ingenuity in the use of materials and a concern for accurate reproduction of the real world. To my mind Ahern's buildings are brilliantly chosen to give the absolutely authentic look of Britain in the middle decades of the 20th century, when visually it hardly changed at all due to the Depression and the war and its aftermath. And he writes so well. I think his achievement is all the greater because he had to make everything from chuckouts and odds and ends because of wartime shortages. The only item he seems to have actually bought was Merco brickpaper. Further contributions to this thread would be most welcome.

Many members following this forum will know John Ahern's Miniature Building Construction. He provides a lot of scale plans throughout the book. The actual scales are all to hell, varying from one example to another, presumably because the publisher got the printer to reduce the images to save space on the page. Even so, you can still work out the dimensions you need. However, at the end of the book Ahern has an appendix of several pages of his sketches, but sketches only, of more wonderful examples. You can sort of guess the dimensions from the sketches, but in a note Ahern says that the publisher, Percival Marshall, sold plans of all these items. All long gone of course, decades ago. I look on the net from time to time in vain hope that copies of these plans might turn up, but without success. Can any member help?