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I am not admitting to being behind schedule with the construction but I am pleased to report that today, the vast majority of the layout had some wires attached and the first trains ran up and down both main lines and into Platform 3 and the goods siding/loading bank. Just the other two platforms and the fiddle yard to wire up and we might even have a working layout. The control system is a straight copy of Buckingham in that nearly all the electrics are done through the signals, so there are virtually no section switches to remember. I say virtually as either the up or down main line can be switched to a second controller to allow parallel moves or for something to be isolated. This will allow a train to come up to the home signal and be held. I also hope to rig up the facility for a loco trapped at the buffer stops to be able to follow a departing train up the platform. Again, that is a copy of the arrangements on Buckingham. It is the first time I have had the chance to apply these wiring methods since I have had Buckingham and it will be interesting to see how it works in practice but first impressions are very positive.

I am not sure that the sound chip and speaker have yet been invented that can recreate the sound of "Big Jim" storming out of Keighley. I think Pete55 triggered this one by scratchbuilding his own 4mm model.

Well spotted, although they are cocktail sticks rather than matchsticks so at least they are round. As Peter Denny once said to me "We don't run it"!

These are my home made tweak on the S & W. Made from the same top E guitar wire as the AJ and with no remote uncouple and push facility, as well as being single ended they are almost 100% successful. With a couple of electromagnets down a siding, they work superbly. I have other layouts with permanent magnets fitted and they are OK but once in a while you get something uncoupling when you don't want it to. I have a few wagons with a hook at each end and carriage rakes have a hook at each end, so locos only have the bar, which is at the lower end of the buffer beam as suggested. They are very quick to make, using a split pin as a dropper. I didn't build the LNWR brake van kit, so don't blame me for the slightly scruffy work on the underframe!

I would like to think that the people who have visited Buckingham don't go away feeling disappointed. The vast majority ask if they can come again and the lovely comments in my "Visitor's Book" suggest that the old layout still has an appeal to many. I wouldn't swap it for any other layout ever built by anybody! The attached snap was taken just now. Everything in the photo is between 50 and 76 years old.

You are doing a superb job with the layout Andy. It isn't easy doing a major rebuild but still keeping the character of the layout intact but you are achieving just that. I once experimented with AJ couplings on an EM layout with short, small radius points and curves and I really struggled with them. The sideplay of wheels in track on 18.2mm EM and the overhang of even short wagons on the curves (especially on reverse curves) caused them to either miss when trying to couple, or to uncouple themselves when propelling. I hope you have better luck but I just thought I should pass on my experiences to forewarn you. I am hoping my new layout, using large radius curves and 18mm gauge, solves these problems for me but that is no help to you! Best wishes with the project. Tony Gee

Very nice. I like the idea of mounting the eccentrics on a brass tube with a grub screw. I have been working on this lot for a 7mm GCR 11B (LNER D9) and that is an idea I may well pinch!

Looking at a colour that has been photographed or scanned and then put up on a screen to view is not, in my view, a good way of viewing colours. I have a small pot of genuine LNER "Grass Green" and a flake of genuine LNER Garter Blue paint plus a pot of genuine buffer beam Vermillion. I also have a colour "swatch" painted in the green. I have tried scanning it and photographing it to show people what the green should look like and what appears on the screen and what I am holding in my hand are two quite different colours. We also have the problem that the paints and samples I have are now many decades old and may have changed, although they have been stored in the dark, well wrapped up and away from any light. Blue, in particular, is a colour that tends to fade badly, as evidenced by the variation on colours on BR diesels during the blue period. So the colour a blue loco goes out of the paintshop may well not be the same colour it would be a year later. The colour photos of A4s are very likely when they had been in traffic for a while so my show a faded version of the blue colour, plus you have all the problems with older colour photos to add to the changes when scanning and showing on a screen. What I will say is that my sample, which is a tiny chip that I inherited (I don't know where it came from originally), is quite a dark colour, which surprised me somewhat. It is almost the "Oxford Blue" used by the LNER for departmental stock, road vehicles etc. So I am not convinced that it is right. Looking at the three model paints illustrated, I would suggest that the sample No 2 might be best for an ex works brand new loco and 1 and 3 represent it after a while in traffic, showing a bit of fading. The comments about "Deltic" are interesting. I have told the tale before but we had a Bachmann model running on Roy Jackson's Retford layout when there was a visit from Retford Model Railway Club (Bassetlaw Society). Two or three people were saying that the model was too dark a blue but one chap stood up for Bachmann and said that the blue on the model was what he remembered when he saw it coming out of the works when it was brand new. It ran on the WCML for a while then went to the ECML. The Retford locals saw it after the blue faded, so to them the model was too dark. Both were quite right!

When many of the early 4 wheeled, close coupled sets were put into service, they didn't have continuous brakes. Some sets relied entirely on the brakes in the two specific brake carriages at the ends of the set and the intermediate carriages had no brakes at all. A couple of the sets I have built are like that. On some railways, the brake carriages had welded spoke wheels (known to modellers as split spoke) and the intermediate carriages with no brakes had wooden disc wheels. All interesting details to consider when modelling such things.

A couple of sets of 4 wheelers built by me for a layout set in the late Victorian period. There are 6 GER carriages built from David Eveleigh etches and 10 close coupled District Railway carriages made from etches commissioned from Worsley Works. The DR ones are illustrated on their home layout and the GER ones are on test in Pl3 at Grandborough Junction before they were delivered.

Most of my own layouts have been fictional ones, based on what might have happened if different decisions had been made at certain times. I find it gives me a freedom that copying a prototype in an accurate form never can. Nobody can ever say "That never ran there", or "You haven't got that in the right place, it should be nearer the other building". My current project is based on "What if" the Sheffield District Railway carried on with its original plan to build its own terminus in Sheffield. In reality, the abandoned the scheme when they obtained running powers into Sheffield Midland but I have read that they got as far as starting work on the first platform. So I am finishing the job for them. I find these "alternative history" schemes most interesting.

MS&LR drawings are available on oldpway.info. They are quite distinctive and have a number of unusual features such as various sleeper widths and check rails only 4 sleepers long.

In the great "what if" world of model railways, not building a layout because the real thing wouldn't have happened would cull some real classics from our history. The GCR never considered a line to Buckingham for one. If you are happy to rewrite such things, you can overcome all such objections. How about the MS&LR deciding to build a line to Leeds either instead of, or before the London Extension?

Stealing a real plan and using it in a fictional location is an excellent way of making such a place look believable. You can always shorten or reduce the number of long sidings to allow it to fit your available space but if you keep the pointwork and signals on the main lines as the real thing is, it is a very good way to plan a layout as far as I am concerned. I always plan my layouts with the signalling as part of the design. You are quite right, if it is difficult to signal, it is probably not a realistic plan to start with.

I would agree with that completely. I would just avoid anything that looks like the London Extension. I wouldn't say that there is really anything that would be a truly specific to identify an earlier MS&LR or GCR track layout. Other than the line to London they were pretty generic. For a through station, I always think a loop accessed by a crossover using a trailing single slip is a fairly common and very typical arrangement and the MS&LR had plenty like that. Back in the day, facing points were avoided as much as possible and I would try to avoid including them unless necessary.

My thoughts too. Measure the height of the track to the top of the rail, add 12mm and that is a good height for pre-grouping times. Not all railways had platforms the same height as other companies and not all railways had all their own platforms at the same height and there are individual platforms with several different heights down their length but 12mm above rail top gives a very acceptable result.

That reminds me of an episode of the comedy series "The Goodies" where discrimination against people of short stature, in this case jockeys, was mocked as "apart height".

Extra practice won't help Tony. We run Buckingham every week and we still get things wrong. We don't strive for perfection in the operation of the layout. We just try to have fun and the odd cock up only gives us something to laugh about. The consequences of any mistakes are of no great significance, unlike any on the real railway.

Hello James. I haven't started a thread for it. I have started one or two threads on projects over the years but then things don't get finished, or I get distracted by something else I am working on and progress becomes so slow that I am almost too embarrassed to post anything. I started a thread on my model of Valour several years ago and the loco still isn't finished, with the original plan to convert a Ks B2, which became a scratchbuild, which became a part kit build when etches became available for big chunks of the loco. It just needs painting now but I have been plucking up the nerve to have a go for a couple of years now. I quite like it in shiny metal anyway! I am a bit wary of posting details of what I do on RMWeb nowadays. There seem to be one or two folk around who see the posting of any photos as an invitation for them to be critical. I am usually more than aware of any shortcomings in my work and I don't need or want "helpful" criticism drawing attention to any faults to the rest of the RMWeb community. I am my own harshest critic by some distance but I just find it annoying when others want to join in with spotting faults, no matter how well meaning they are. So I limit it to the odd photo here or there, usually of something under construction, which seems less likely to garner a "This is what you got wrong" comment. I spent a happy few hours today working on a canopy covering some seats for the island platform, based on Langwith Junction/Shirebrook North and a loco coaling stage based on one at Tuxford. Neither are exact copies but are based on what can be gleaned from the photos on the web and in books. The layout will be seen in public as a "work in progress" at EXPO EM at Wakefield in August (not long left now!) if anybody wants to see where I am up to.

I had an hour or so to kill at one of my old trainspotter haunts a few years ago. Stainforth and Hatfield. It was never a really smart sort of place but in the 70s it had things like buildings, a signal box, a lovely waiting room with a fire in the grate, semaphores and yards on both sides of the line that were still shunted by goods and coal trains. Now it has a bus shelter, high security fencing and a camera overlooking the scene instead of a signalman and the station staff. I mentioned it before on RM Web on a thread about modelling the modern scene and was "shouted down" by people telling me how wrong I am to regard the present day railways as anything other than interesting and well worth modelling. So there are some folk out there who genuinely believe that the modern railway scene is a good subject to model.

That is very kind of you and I agree about the importance of the layout in the history of the hobby. I am not sure how you measure such things, or even if you should but it is one of a tiny number of layouts that significantly influenced the hobby and continues to do so. My new layout is having a control system based closely on Buckingham, although I am using modern switches rather than brass pins and home made wipers. I sometimes get queries from people asking questions about aspects of the layout that modellers want to include in their modelling and at least one layout based very closely on Buckingham is being built. I don't think there was any danger of Buckingham being lost to the modelling world. Several people and groups were interested in taking it on and I was just the lucky sod who ended up with it. I like to think that I was a good choice to have it and I can be certain that nobody else could possibly appreciate it and care about it more than I do. It has been a two way relationship in that I have experienced many benefits from having Buckingham, which more than compensate for the work and time I put in.

I find myself thinking about a couple of layouts that I have some involvement with. One is a model of a real place and the other a fictional layout but both began life with other modellers. Firstly, the late Roy Jackson's Retford, now in Sandra's safe hands. Sandra had no great plan to model Retford one day but thought the layout worth saving and finishing. It proved possible to do this with no need to dismantle or move it. Buckingham could well be one of those layouts described by Tony W, complete with thread worked signals. It is true, some aspects of it are a bit dated and if I was building a layout, I wouldn't use many of the techniques from the 1940s and 50s that are evident. Yet it satisfies the only criteria that really matters. It gives me (and others) a huge amount of satisfaction and enjoyment. So we see past the dyed sawdust grass and the broken down cereal box cardboard fences and enjoy it for what it is. Part of the history and fabric of the hobby and still a great layout ( the most enjoyable I know) to sit and operate. I may replace the fences one day but if I do, I shall make the new ones from cardboard rather than use bought plastic ones. Working on an old layout and trying to keep it running has presented me with a whole range of new challenges and experiences. It is quite unlike building my own models but every bit as enjoyable and rewarding.

Having mentioned my take on Minories a while back, with my truncated version with 5 points, some progress has been made and as the thread has come to life again, it seemed a good place to show what has happened so far. All the track is down and I am just finishing off the platforms. The main station building is under way too. What was the loco spur on the original but is a loading dock on mine extends behind the rear platform, which will have a fence along the back edge to separate the loading facilities from the passenger station.

The difference between flanges and flangeless driving wheels is much more obvious in the coarser scales than it is on something like P4, S7 or indeed the prototype. P4 flanges are so small I have to give a close look to see if they are there at all. When the wheels that do have flanges have rather big ones, along with a bright metal finish, it does become a much more obvious feature.

Just because I am not commenting or contributing doesn't mean I am not following what you are up to! You seem to be making very good progress with the layout.