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I had the same problem with bearings in the Brassmasters W irons. I was advised by a certain Roy Jackson that if I got Markits bearings, they have a deeper hole for the axle to go in. It seems that all bearings are not alike and other makes have a shallower hole, which is what caused the problem. The information on the CLAG site backs this up but at least I can confirm that the combination of Brassmasters W irons and Markits bearings works. At least it did a few years ago when I did mine, manufacturing new batches of bearings may have altered things over the years. New bearings and problem solved, although the solution outlined above has also cured it, new bearings may be the simpler option for future builds. Tony

I have similar questions running through my mind with Buckingham. Peter Denny was continually changing and adding to the layout. The last thing he did, which was still in progress when he died, was to replace the original trees with "sea moss" ones. I had a long chat with Denny family about what I should or shouldn't do and their answer was " Do what Dad would have done". This means that if an item wears out or requires repairs, I am at my own discretion as to what needs to be done. I am lucky in that most things on Buckingham were made from bits and pieces of scrap material and most of the construction techniques have been explained in detail. So if, for example, a fence made from old cereal packets falls apart, as several have, I can easily replace them with new ones made from cereal packets. I will probably continue with the tree upgrades, either putting new foliage on the old trees or perhaps replacing them with "sea moss". They really have suffered over the years and many are little more than stumpy twigs now. There are a couple of locos that I have actually repainted, mainly because the original paint was worn through to bare metal through years of handling and the lettering had almost vanished. They have been hand painted and lined, rather than using a spray and transfers and the lettering has been done to match how they looked on photos of 50 years ago. The liveries are not correct for GCR and one loco doesn't even carry a number but I have recreated them as he liveried them. A few signals are damaged and I am working through them, hopefully creating "splints" from thin brass shim, which can be stuck over breaks in wooden posts. Perhaps the biggest project has been the rewiring of Grandborough Junction, now nearly completed. This has been done using all the original controls but with a highly simplified and more logical wiring arrangement. We have, at last, been able to have a running session with trains going from the fiddle yard to Grandborough and back. In the last couple of weeks our attention has turned to Buckingham and I am pleased to say that about 80% of it still works with the original wiring, so my plan is to keep the original wiring there as long as we can trace the fault in the other 20%, which may just be one wire adrift somewhere. I don't understand the wiring, which is highly complex and unconventional but if it works, I will leave well alone. The baseboard join between Buckingham and Grandborough was connected this evening and although the track needs some attention I am hoping that it won't be too long before trains are running all the way through from the fiddle yard to Buckingham. Despite the hours of effort and considerable expense involved in building the shed, I still feel highly honoured to be able to spend my time and effort on getting my all time favourite layout back up and running again. What I won't be doing is carrying out any major alterations to the layout, the stock or the timetable. The track plan is now frozen as it is and I don't intend to add any new stock or even replace what is there unless I really have to. One or two locos may get new mechanisms but I will keep the old ones, so that they can be put back if it ever gets to the stage where the layout ceases to be deemed capable of being operational. If that ever happens, I am not expecting it to be during my custodianship but many years in the future! Tony

No way! It is a big engine pulling a long train and it is still on the rails.......... (Said with tongue well in cheek - I have seen a train like that in P4 once) Tony

It is probably a scene that would work very nicely in 2mm. Plenty of room for the surroundings without compression. I was at Warley, although I was on duty behind a layout and didn't get to see much. But St Ives in Gauge 3 sounds very impressive, especially if done to scale. It was the GWJ special that set me off daydreaming, plus a couple of visits to St Ives many years ago. That seagull was dive bombing in 1979! Tony Tony

It is a lovely place. If I was a GWR modeller, I would be highly tempted to model St Ives as it was maybe 100 years ago. The overall scene of the station nestling along the shore, with some of those lovely building behind would make a brilliant scenic model and the operation of what is really a minor terminus (although with a long platform!) was considerably more interesting than a lot of other branch lines. The locos were quite interesting too, before the Prairie tanks pretty much monopolised the service. Has anybody ever done St Ives as a model? Tony

Not quite HO Martin. I use 4mm scale components, laid out to an approximately 3.5mm plan. Perhaps I am using OO/HO track, as advertised by Peco for many years. Your last paragraph sums up exactly what I a getting at, disguising the gauge by using scale components at adjusted spacings. I am also not against better looking track for RTL in OO. I am just not convinced that replacing the present HO influenced Peco points with a nearer 4mm scale equivalent will actually help. The Peco points have quite noticably underscale sleepers for 4mm. If those sleepers were replaced with ones to correct 4mm widths, based on a shorter than scale sleeper length (starting at 8') and a slightly narrower than scale spacing (approximately to HO standards), you get OO to look as good (to me) as it possibly can. My posting was designed to throw a positive suggestion into the thread for discussion and for people to think about. It was in no way intended as negative or to send the discussion down a "dead end". Kenton is quite right about such discussions usually going nowhere. Unless there is some sort of agreement at this stage, as to what makes OO track look better, then there is no hope of producing any, so this has to be the time to thrash out some form of broad agreement that has some level of support. I have, at least, put a positive and (hopefully) reasoned suggestion forward. If people don't like it, that is fine by me. If RTL points were available in a large range of shapes and sizes, which look like the ones I know I can make, then my days of building OO points would be over. If a range of OO points with true 4mm sleeper spacings came out, it could stay on the shelf for me, as Martin says (and I have also been saying) it almost certainly wouldn't look right. Tony

Hello Martin, So your view is that most modellers in OO are happy to accept that their track should look like 4' 1 1/2" gauge and that they shouldn't even try to make it look like standard gauge? That is an interesting idea and one that I hadn't really considered properly. OO has always been a compromise and the only thing that we can do is decide how and where we make adjustments to allow for that. Some of us put the wheels further apart, some fit better wheels to 16.5mm and some are quite happy to accept OO stock just as it comes. When I model in OO I want to do anything I can to disguise the gauge. Still, the different ways that people tackle such things is what makes our hobby so diverse and interesting. I have run 4mm stock, to OO gauge, on what is basically HO track and to me, it just looks better. My eyes are fooled and it doesn't even register to me that the track and stock are to two different scales. I fully accept that others may see it otherwise. All I will say is that I have built track like that for a couple of layouts and the points have been laid and ballasted on the first one and the layout owner is happy with the way it looks. Tony

That is pretty much what I mentioned earlier in the thread, which got pretty much ignored in the discussion. There are enough layouts using currently available products that look very nice indeed. They prove that it is possible to get good results from existing products. Much of the problem is not in the product but the way it is often put down on a baseboard with little thought or imagination and without people taking the time and effort to make it look good. Any new pointwork will be, at most, a small change and it seems to me that you are looking at a large financial input to get a small amount of improvement. Taking that a stage further, if new and improved pointwork was available at a price that people are willing to pay, it will not result in better layouts if the same old ballasting and painting techniques that I see over and over again at shows are still followed. My latest OO points have been built using EM gauge templates shrunken to reduce the 18.2mm to 16.5mm. As such, the sleeper spacings and lengths are more like HO than OO. All the components used, the rail, sleepers and chairs are 4mm scale. They look right, because the ratios and proportions of the rails and sleepers have been maintained. Something like this.... I did experiment with correct 4mm scale sleeper spacings but that resulted in a distinct "Narrow gauge" look because the spaces where the ballast goes are not the right shape for standard gauge track. So I can easily see how a OO track with correct 4mm scale sleeper spacings will not look any better than a good quality HO point. I have built both and seen the difference. Trackwork is one of those areas in modelling where the final result is not down to an odd mm here or there in a sleeper spacing. The success or otherwise is down to the skills of the modeller, in colouring, ballasting and in good alignment and track laying. No amount of "more correct" 4mm sleeper spacing will hide the fact that OO track is to the wrong gauge, Rather it will highlight it. The fact that we use shorter points than most real ones is also only highlighted more if a point has fewer sleepers than it should have for a given track gauge, so I would go for a point with more sleepers to increase the illusion of length, rather than fewer, which is what narrow gauge railways have. So how about pushing for a really good quality British pattern HO point? The eye can be fooled easily and unless there is something to compare it to, it would be almost impossible for anybody to say that it is to the wrong scale. The other good thing about an HO point is that it can be used by anybody modelling British HO and that there will be no argument about which bits have been compromised because it can be a proper scale point (apart from flangeways). Hope that gives some food for thought. Tony

Some British railway companies did have point sleepering that was square on to the crossing nose, rather than to either the main or diverging line. The NER was one and I have seen others but can't remember them. So that arrangement, while not typical British practice, is OK for some British layouts. I am not sure that many British check rails are, or were, 7 sleepers long on a normal point of this sort of size and shape. A few were 4 sleepers long but most that I have seen in my area of knowledge were 5. Tony

I would just like to add my congratulations on your lovely workmanship. Welcome to the world of modelling to earn a crust. I took the plunge myself a while ago and am really enjoying it. I have just been painting some figures for my own layout, (some of the new Stadden Edwardian figures as you have been doing on that thread), after not having done any for quite a few years. I don't think that mine were ever as good as what you are doing but I used to be able to get reasonable results. Now I find that the eyesight ain't what it used to be. Do you have really good eyesight or if you are using some form of enlarger/magnifier, would you mind telling us what it is, as I could be highly tempted? Tony

Thanks for the update. If there are no immediate plans to do anything with Hardwicke, is there any mileage in suggesting some sort of arrangement that some of the original locos and stock might appear at a show where Borchester is being exhibited? That would be a re-union worth going to see! Tony

Wells was a lovely show for Leghton Buzzard. Two of Peter Denny's sons, Crispin and Stephen, were on the operating team. The quality of running on the layout was the best yet and the two sons reckoned that it is probably running even better than it did when their father had it, which was a very nice comment to hear! I saw Hardwicke at the MRJ show all those years ago. It is another layout full of proper railway atmosphere. Are there any plans to exhibit that? It would be nice to see the original Borchester locos and stock working again. Tony

Nope! that is all pure Denny, as dismantled by the bearded man of Thorne! The daft thing is that all that is under Grandborough Junction yet the layout works well with none of it connected. I think most of it is for the Automatic Crispin or for the clever bit which switches the whole layout from single handed to multiple handed operating with just one push button. It baffles me, that is for sure! I was hoping he would help me put it back together again but as you know, he doesn't get out much and has only been once. Best wishes, Tony

I am very glad to be able to say that the whole Buckingham layout, complete with all the original stock and the amazing "Automatic Crispin" is currently being re-assembled so that it will look and work just as it did in the railway room in Truro. It has been a long job as we did much damage moving it but real progress is being made now. Grandborough Junction has been tackled first and this ended up being rewired completely (using all the original home made switches and controls) because the wiring defeated me. I posted a photo on another thread but I am repeating it here to give an idea of what we were faced with.... In fact, only this week we had trains running properly from the fiddle yard to Grandborough Junction and back. We did much less damage moving Buckingham itself so I hope that getting that part going again should be a lot quicker. We are now limiting exhibitions with Leighton Buzzard to one or two a year to avoid over exposure and also to slow down the rate of accumulation of wear and tear, so this year the only show we are doing is York at Easter. Next year we are doing Railex plus the special 60th anniversary EMGS show at Bracknell. I feel that I have slightly hijacked a Borchester thread now, so I hope the originator will let me off! Tony ps And yes, it is very much loved and I am treating it with great care and respect!

Superb layout! As is the follow up Striven. Can anybody remember what size they were (I think the both used the same fiddle yard and were probably the same size)?

Ian Futers did a few circular layouts way back when. The ones I recall had a fiddle yard so were not strictly 360 degree viewing. I always though it was a really nice design and gave the opportunity for running trains continuously that a fiddle yard/terminus or end to end layout doesn't give. Does Alan Whitehouse's Mini MSW count? Again, the scenic section is one half of the circle but that one truly is a circle rather than a "donut", which is how the Ian Futers layouts were referred to. There was an American layout at Nottingham show a few years ago where changes in level and a bit of a spiral enabled really long trains (longer than the circumference of the boards) to snake their way around and back into a hidden fiddle yard on the inside of the curve. Tony

The joys of looking after old layouts built by other people! I have been asked about exhibiting parts of Buckingham other than Leighton Buzzard (which was designed to be portable). The baseboards for the rest of the layout are so flimsy (including a good dose of now treated woodworm) and when we moved the layout to its new home, every time the boards were lifted, they twisted and many brittle soldered joints in the track broke. Whole lengths of rail just fell off, or just remained attached by the electrical wiring. So I can really understand just how much work goes into such a project and also how much the rest of us should applaud the current Borchester crew for not just saving the layout but for bringing it out to shows so that we get the chance to see and enjoy it. Tony

Not at all. Likewise I apologise if my posting led you to think so! I really do think that it is an interesting question, why some layouts are known for being inspirational and others don't. In one of the articles in MRJ Frank Dyer describes his approach to designing a layout. He talks a great deal about compromises and how to adjust track layouts to get more into a given space and also about using transition curves. He also talks about how making your own track frees you from the constraints of RTL track and can allow a great deal of space saving because you don't need to have the same distance between, for example, the crossing nose of one point and the blades of the next. It is very pragmatic and more about building a complex and interesting layout in a small space than it is about prototype accuracy but it is an approach, which can lead to a highly individual layout that stands out from the crowd, as both Borchester layouts have done. Tony

There is a story in a book written by a former railwayman at Bawtry, that Cock 'o' The North once derailed shunting a horse box on less than perfect track in Bawtry goods yard. It was brand new and on a running in turn on a local train. So we can all use one as a yard shunter as long as we have a layout set withing a few miles of Doncaster. Seriously, such a loco is always going to be one of those "specials" that we want to have because it is such a magnificent loco rather than need to work the prototype services on our layouts. Tony

Interesting question. Does a layout need to be copied for it to be inspirational? Has anybody copied Buckingham, or the "Little long drag" or an other of the layouts that have cropped up in the "What layouts have inspired you" thread? The original Borchester layout probably had a greater impact on the hobby than the later one. It was very realistic for its time and gave a convincing portrayal of the normal and every day aspects of railways in the period. The operational aspects of the layout, recreating what was, then, almost modern image modelling, were way ahead of their time and people still recall the large crowds that gathered round the layout at exhibitions. Borchester Market is probably slightly less influential on the hobby as a whole as it was a follow up and pretty much "more of the same". Frank Dyer's ideas behind the layouts are, to me, still as valid as ever and his "special" issue of a magazine and his series on operating layouts in MRJ should be read by anybody who wants to make a success of recreating realistic operation on their layouts. Borchester Market is a superb example of how to build a realistic and very interesting operational layout in quite a small space. Perhaps it is a layout that we should be copying, or at least nicking ideas from. The design and the set up of the layout for operation are something we could all learn something from. How inspirational a layout is or isn't is really down to the individual. There are some layouts that others have found inspirational that do little to float my boat. I certainly find Borchester Market inspirational and there seem to be a number of others who do too, so perhaps that qualifies it to earn the title. Tony

I need glasses. I misread that as slag ladies and wondered what on earth we were going to be looking at! Tony

My days of last minute panics have long gone. Anyway, I thought Enterprisingwestern junior was the fiddle yard man! He was saying something cryptic about stepper motor drives on Wednesday. Tony

Can you explain why you are sitting at a scanner when there is a layout to be built? Naughty boy! Seriously, how come I never got to see these before. Very nice. And yes, he is a lot older than he looks.......... Tony

Perhaps I am confusing it with the McGowan or Millholme tenders. I did a lot of hacking about to make GCR tenders from bad kits and they did get a bit of "mix & match", not all ending up behind what they were intended for. My recollection is that the BEC one was roughly the right size and shape but that things like the water filler behind the coal space, axleboxes and tender front detail were a bit generic rather than GCR. But it is a long time since I saw one close up and perhaps it is better than I remember. Tony

I recall seeing a BEC J11 once, that had been quite dramatically improved by the builder cutting out sections of footplate incorporating the splashers and swapping them from left to right sides to correct the wheelbase. It would take some careful measuring and cutting, plus the provision of new frames. I am pretty sure John Quick has a BEC J11 modified and improved and it may have been his that I recall being altered in that way. His ended up looking really nice. He models GCR period so the kit parts were quite appropriate to him, as covered by Tony W. One of the worst aspects of the BEC kit was the tender. There was very little about the tender that even vaguely resembled anything the GCR had in terms of detail. Tony