t-b-g

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the real Dunkirk. At low tide, seeing the wrecks of the vessels still there in the sand all these years later and knowing we were standing in the place where so many died was very moving. It is such a serene, peaceful place now and there are a few good places to visit, which have been made into museums. Well worth a visit if anybody is interested in such things.

What you do get in ballasting is a slight variation in the colour of the stones. There may be exceptions but even a load of stone from the same quarry won't necessarily be exactly the same colour. When I do ballasting nowadays, I either use a ballast that has that variation or make my own by mixing one or more different ballast colours. You also get dark and light areas, which you can see in your photo. The area in the 4ft and between the tracks ahead of the loco is a bit darker than around the slow lines. Commercial ballasts often have too even a colour and too even a shape and size and it can take a bit of work to make them more natural looking with a bit of mixing. So having a degree of variation in the colours of the stones and in the overall shade of the ballast in different areas can add a good degree of realism. Edit to add a snap to illustrate my latest efforts. This is supposed to be grotty ash ballast in a terminus rather than a high speed main line.

I had the great pleasure of visiting Lime Street at its home base a while ago, with a couple of friends. I many respects, I got much more out of that visit than I did seeing the layout in that environment than I did seeing it at shows. There is so much superb modelling that I was able to appreciate and enjoy "close up" that you just can't see at normal exhibition viewing distances. We were there for a few hours and the layout wasn't even fired up and running but it didn't matter. There is just so much to enjoy just looking at it as a static model and chatting about the techniques and methods used to create it.

Most of my buildings are from plasticard. In this case, it is embossed brick on a thicker shell. The brickwork is Slater's embossed English Bond, which is correct for many railway companies, including the LD&ECR. I don't know whereabouts in the world you are but I will be doing a demo on building construction at EXPO EM in May, at Bracknell. I will have the buildings with me and I will be demonstrating my construction methods. Regards Tony

I agree entirely Jol and I have seen and heard similar things. The best demonstrators get that balance just right. You need to be able to spot the right person to open up a dialogue with. You also need to be showing methods that encourage people to have a go when they get home, rather than "look how clever I am" techniques that are so complex you have to be a well practised expert to get them to work. Some of my favourites are simple tips like making a nice tiled roof for a building, or doing the glazing bars on a window. Another is showing people just how quick and easy it can be to file up rails to make a crossing nose or a blade. Such things can make the difference between somebody having a go at making buildings or points or never trying. It is immensely satisfying if you see the same person a while later and they are now confident at carrying out the work. That has happened more than once to me. I never have any delusions about actually completing much modelling at such a show. The best I do is to come away with a few filed up bits of rail, if I haven't given them away. I really enjoy doing demos but it took me several years to learn how to do it in a way that I think suits the situation of an exhibition. It is a skill that needs to be developed and honed, like so many others. My next trip out will be at EXPO EM in May, where I will be doing a demo on making buildings.

I have told this tale on RMWeb before but many years ago, I was at a show in Doncaster with a layout. A mum and dad were looking on with a girl, probably around 8 or 9 years of age. The girl piped up with "My grandad drove the Mallard". I said that I knew the names of some of the people who had driven Mallard and if she told me her grandad's name, I might have heard of him. "Joe Duddington" was the answer. So especially around the right parts of the country, I never treated such claims as suspicious again!

As a regular Demo stand volunteer at shows, although I have cut back to just a couple of shows in the last few years, the idea that you should proactively approach everybody walking by is a bit of a non starter. It comes across as a bit desperate and pushy to me. My approach is to be doing "something" practical but to keep an eye out and spot anybody pausing or showing a bit of interest. Then a "Morning/Afternoon. Are you interested in xyz?" is a good opener. Having a few part built and finished models on show, to show the various stages of the work, perhaps with a visual display such as some photos or a laptop with a video draws people in too. Just sitting at a desk with some leaflets may be a nice easy weekend for the people behind the desk but it doesn't add much to the show.

I have a vague recollection of seeing a photo of an 08 with a shunter's truck attached to it at Doncaster. The wagon type was different as it was a former brake van chassis, which still had the concrete blocks on the ends. It is ages since I saw the photo and I can't remember where I saw it but you needn't feel that it is totally wrong to have an 08 with a shunter's wagon/match truck attached.

That is looking very promising. You have really captured the layout of the station nicely.

As if! You must have been tucked away in a corner somewhere as I went round all the different floors and levels and still missed you. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Tony

Back home from a super day out at the show. Lots of chatting and catching up and some lovely layouts. I managed to miss Trerice completely and remembered that I wanted to look it up when I was half way home. Sorry Jerry!

Yes, the Automatic Crispin survives. In a non working condition. It may stay that way or one day I may try to get it up and running. Having operated Buckingham for over 10 years without it, I don't see it as necessary or even desirable but it would perhaps be nice to be able to demonstrate it to people who come to see the layout. It was developed to work the fiddle yard when Peter found himself without other operators and he wasn't keen on sending trains to himself using block bells and instruments. So it became a second "virtual" operator. It ran the fiddle yard, receiving and sending bell codes and setting the correct points in the fiddle yard. This was based on the clock, which drove an acetate roll with the timetable on it, with brass wipers making contacts through holes cut in the acetate. We find that the timetable has places where trains have to be run at faster than scale speeds to keep up with the clock and other places where there are long gaps between trains. I could put a speed controlled motor in the clock but we find it more relaxing and enjoyable to work the timetable as a sequence, allowing other operators adequate time for all the shunting moves. The idea of an automated layout with a series of trains following each other around a circuit is my idea of model railway operating hell! I appreciate that some folk are happy to build a layout and just watch trains run round but that would bore me silly.

You are right, 41 is the signal allowing a shunting move from the bay onto the main line. The signal on the bracket would have been for a train departing from the bay, rather than for a shunting move.

A couple of my friends, one in his 50s and another in his early 70s, have both decided that the point motors on their layouts will be mounted along the front edge of the baseboard with a wire in tube going to the point itself. They both decided to ensure ease of access for repairs or replacements at the building stage as insurance for when they are less nimble. Neither layout is easily portable.

That dates back to LDECR times, when the bay was in use and was available for passenger trains. The LH signal was the starter for the bay. The bay was later taken out of use and the signalling altered. You can see the remains of the other doll of the bracket on the signalling diagrams. I can't recall the dates when these changes happened. The signal in the photo is an LDECR bracket, with somersault arms. I have been looking for a decent photo of one of them for a while, so thanks for posting it!

You would either use 9 to cross over between the main lines or 9 and 11 to cross from the main line into the sidings. 13 and 14 are interesting. In real life, slips didn't necessarily have all 4 blades connected and moving together. On this slip, 11 moves all 4 blades at one end and 13 and 14 move a single pair of blades each at the other end. This gets tricky on a model especially using a ready to lay commercial product. Unless you are insisting on representing the prototype with 100% accuracy, I would suggest ignoring the fact that the real thing had independently working blades and just use one lever rather than two.

I usually lay one stock rail, the straight one, or the straightest one on a curved turnout. Then I lay the V with a gauge to the stock rail. Then I lay the second stock rail with a gauge at the V and another where the blades end. Having tried lots of different approaches building many hundreds of points, it is the way I find easiest and most convenient.

I agree about the delicacy of AJ couplings and I wouldn't use them in 00 as there is just too much slop in the wheel and track standards for the couplings to line up with the required degree of accuracy but it isn't right yo say that they don't have a delayed uncoupling function. They do. The couplings drop on an electromagnet and come up "wrong side" so you can push and leave vehicles where you want. My preference is for a home made fine wire S&W. Unobtrusive, reliable and easy to make. The locos just have a bar across. It isn't universal in that my wagons are single ended for added reliability and turning them on a turntable fiddle yard or reverse loop can make things tricky but in the right situation on the right layout, they are as near 100% effective as I have seen. There is no delayed uncoupling, although that could be added by soldering an extra wire on top to prevent the hook re-engaging. I just haven't found the extra work worthwhile.

Thanks for the kind words. The colour scheme for the box is the LDECR colour scheme. Although my layout is set just after the GCR takeover, they haven't got around to repainting the buildings yet. I may yet get the urge to backdate the layout to before 1907, so I have my bases covered. The signals are LDECR pattern somersault types too. The GCR replaced those with lower quadrant ones but I don't know when. If you look at the signalboxes on the preserved GCR at Loughborough, you will see the two most common GCR colour scemes. There us a rather garish but very distinctive ( to my eyes anyway!) two tone green livery or a brown and cream. My recollection is that they were originally brown and cream, changed to the green around 1910 and possibly back to brown and cream after a few years. I have seen details and dates somewhere but can't remember where.

I will also post a shot of the pointwork. It shows the improved appearance of EM quite well.

My layout is a fictional terminus based on the Sheffield District Railway. In real life, they had a goods station at Attercliffe in Sheffield and they had started to build a passenger station nearby when they obtained running powers into Sheffield Midland. In return, the Midland was given running powers onto the LDECR. My period is just after 1907, when the GCR took over the LDECR, allowing me GCR, LDECR and MR liveries. The idea is that the passenger station was built before the running powers were agreed and lack of capacity at Sheffield Midland led to both companies using my station instead of Sheffield Midland. I am mainly a GCR/LDECR fan but I recently acquired a quantity of lovely MR stock, so the joint running became attractive. The MR used to run to Edwinstowe using their running powers, which ended there, hence the terminating trains. Pretty much everything is kit or scratchbuilt. The only building finished so far is the signal box, based on features from several LDECR boxes. I attach snaps of one of my MR trains plus the signal box.

That end had a single slip too. I didn't mention it as it looked as though you had drawn it as a slip at that end. Edwinstowe is a good example of railway practice from that period of avoiding facing points whenever possible. The extra signalling and need for facing point locks plus the fact that they were regarded as less than ideal by the railway inspectors of the day meant that they were not used unless unavoidable by most companies.

My model is 4mm scale. The layout is being built to a rather unusual gauge, using the original 18mm EM gauge, instead of the modern 18.2mm. I am not 100% sure how the back platform was used but there were services that used to terminate at Edwinstowe. So the trains would have to arrive in the main platform. To clear the main lines, my guess would be that the stock would then be shunted to the back platform, where it could depart from for its return journey. So if the stock was there for a while, the main lines were kept clear.

Those clarify it nicely. There is no signal for coming off the main line directly into the back platform, which you would need if there was any use of a direct access. I am attaching a snap of a building I am working on that is based on the one at Edwinstowe. As my model is a fictional terminus, the two bays of the refreshment room have been omitted. The building was a bit too long as it was. There is a nice drawing of the building and some photos online, if you search for the website of the Edwinstowe Historical Society and look under Local History, then under Transport.

It is a station I have looked at once or twice myself but I just don't have the room to do it justice. You have altered one bit of the plan, which has a knock on effect for the signalling. The lower platform, marked "back platform" on the diagram, could not be accessed directly by a train arriving from the right hand end. The access was via a single slip so trains could not run directly into the back platform. Quite a few trains terminated at Edwinstowe back in the day, so it would have been useful to run round and shunt into the back platform to keep the main lines clear. What period will your layout be? In later days, the passenger traffic was quite dull and uninteresting but in pre-grouping times, you had a mix of Midland and LDECR or after 1907 GCR services and there was much more going on.