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I believe so. I think it is the group who are rescuing the LNER tender as mentioned on another thread. Last I heard they were going to build two, one as a working loco and one for static display.

It is interesting to see how much stick the B1s are getting on here. I always thought that they were regarded as one of Thompson's success stories! Simple design, 2 cylinders instead of 3, no complex conjugated valve gear, easy to maintain but apparently, not actually very good. Would it be really naughty of me to suggest that if they had been built with 3 cylinders, they might have run smoother, with more even power applied to the wheels, meaning they didn't wear and become rough riding so quickly? We may never know! Wouldn't it be sweet irony after what Thompson did if we could convert one of the preserved B1s to 3 cylinders with conjugated valve gear to see if we could improve it. My tongue is so far in my cheek right now that there isn't a "smiley" that goes that far! Please, nobody take this seriously........I certainly don't. Tony

I have heard that of B1s too. My friend Malcolm was a loco inspector (or whatever they were called at the time) in the 1950s and often went out to ride on a particular loco when faults were reported. He had been shaken about on a few B1s but said he had not been on anything as bad as a Black 5. He only rode on one once but was worried that the cab would fall off as many of the fixings were loose and it rattled about something terrible. The driver reassured him that it was quite normal! The drivers I have spoken to who have driven both types have done it in preservation days, when most locos are looked after far better than they were in BR steam days.

After some of what has been said about the B17s I have just been re-reading the relevant sections in the RCTS "bible". There is quite a lot in there about the design process and about some of the work they did. Apparently Thompson tested one against a B2 (his rebuild to a two cylinder loco) and the B17 was more powerful and economical than his rebuild, so he cut short his rebuilding program. I always thought GWR stood for Gresley Was Right! I bet you get far more satisfaction from your "mongrel" than you do from a RTR loco. I hope you do anyway. Anybody who can turn a Cornard loco body into a good looking loco should savour the experience!

It is one of those aforesaid above mentioned B17s. Nice pic and certainly looks like what it is supposed to be.

I agree 100%. I can understand it to some degree. If you have spent many years with particular locos, learning just how to get the best out them and developing certain driving techniques, then you have the taken away and replaced by others, perhaps of a quite different type, there was often some resistance. You are quite right, many folk just don't embrace change, whether it be for the better or not! I enjoy reading the memoires of loco crews and they don't seem to have been too backwards about mentioning the shortcomings of locos, so I don't think that they had their rose tinted spectacles on as much as we enthusiasts. In relation to the appearance of a particular loco at a particular date, I would think that the historian/enthusiast is the person to go to. But if you want to know how a loco performed on a train, then the footplatemen are the only people who can tell you what they were really like. They were, after all, the only people there! What else do we have to base our opinions on? Timings and coal consumption figures and not much else.

I only mentioned that they were professional railwaymen to differentiate their experiences from those who are more on the outside looking in, not to belittle anybody. I agree, you have you views and experiences and I have mine. They differ and I am happy to leave it at that. Tony

I have a lot of respect for you, as an experienced and highly knowledgeable member of the model railway community and a contributor of some great stuff to RMWeb. Only the other day I was painting some LMS carriages and I was looking at your website for inspiration. That is what makes it quite sad for me to be in a position where I am having to challenge statements from such a "name" in the hobby. My sources are people who worked on and with the locos. Sadly, many are no longer with us to back up what they told me. It is a long time since I was called a "boy" and I shall take it as a compliment! Only 53 and barely remember steam! I sat and worked for 30 years with a bloke who did design real locos or at least big chunks of them (no one person ever really designed a loco - it was the drawing office team who did the real work!) he did the bodywork on the Class 85 electric and numerous parts for steam locos. He worked in Doncaster drawing office under Peppercorn and spent many happy hours discussing Thompson and Gresley with the people there. His stories were wonderful, always entertaining and full of relevant facts and names and I never once found anything he said to be innacurate. Through him and through others I met through him, I was fortunate to spend quite a few happy hours with people who were there. Not railway enthusiasts (although they had lots of railway enthusiasm) they were professional railwaymen. I am very lucky in this respect and accept that others may not have had access to such marvellous first hand accounts, although many were also authors so at least some is on the record and has to be more valid than the writings of enthusiasts who didn't work with the locos. So I mananged to talk to those in the thick of it on the real thing. You have been around longer than me and have a far bigger profile in the hobby than I do, so if I managed it, why should it be so "silly" for you to have done the same? The reason I quoted Dick Hardy particularly is that you seem to want to agree with his views on Thompson but not on Robinson. You are the one selecting the comments and words that match your views, not I. To answer your points in turn: A5s and D11s. You never said they were bad locos. What you did say is that they may have been built as some sort of appreciation to Robinson for recommending Gresley for the job. Pure fantasy. They were built purely on merit, suitabilty and availability, not some romantic "thank you" notion. O4s and O2s. At the time both classes were designed, the two companies were in competition with each other. The surplus O4s were away in ROD service and nobody knew how many would come back and what state they would be in. They were built on the quick and cheap with inferior materials (steel fireboxes), as the LNWR realised when they pretty much bought them for the tenders, rather than the loco. It is a bit like saying that if the Midland had built some LNWR 0-8-0 locos in 1912, they might have been better off. At the time the O2s were designed, the O4s were simply not available and nobody knew that they would be, so why on earth should Gresley, as CME at the GNR, suddenly start producing locos to another companies design. It did happen on rare occasions but only when the companies and had offered or been asked for help because had nothing suitable itself, which the GNR clearly did in the O2. The Brighton Atlantics and the Southern 4-6-0s are cases in point. Gresley having O4s in 1918 was no more a realistic prospect than Gresley going to Churchward and saying "I like your 28xx so can I build some please?" B17s, I think Tony Wright has put that one to bed. They had to be more powerful than the B12 and they had to work over some light bridges, so to reduce the hammer blow to acceptable limits they had to have 3 cylinders. They also had severe length restrictions, which resulted in a compromised design but they were hardly total failures. They were quite capable of working the Boat Trains and the long distance workings on the GCR. As for debate, on the contrary, I enjoy it greatly. I have even been known to change my mind sometimes! I fully accept that people are entitled to differing views and I welcome them openly and with enthusiasm. Since when were B7s (mixed traffic - think early 4 cylinder Black 5), B9s (Freight locos mainly) and Imminghams (the clue is in the name - fish trains) top link locos? The B2s and B3s may have been but again, a sweeping statement which groups a good number of highly varied different classes as all being failures is a bit wide of the mark. Most GCR expresses were quick, short and easily handled by the very capable Atlantics and 4-4-0s. The were not all perfect or even good locos but even the smaller, non standard classes of a couple of locos lasted until they were swept away by the B1s. Probably better than small no standard classes on a number of other railways. I used to be in a debating society (45 years ago now) and the first rule was that you argue your case on suitable points for and against, not by sweeping statements belittling the opposition. Finally, I never said that you hadn't been at the sharp end of the hobby. I know how long you have been building superb models and that you have probably acheived more in the hobby than a good many of the rest of us put together. I just said that Tony Wright has a certain degree of knowledge and experience, not that you didn't. Just like I never said that you had claimed that the A5s and D11s were poor. You seem to be attributing things to me that are far removed from my intention and carefully chosen words. Gresley and Robinson clearly had a lot of respect for each other, may we please try to emulate that? Tony .

The drivers at Mansfield (ex Midland) despised the LT&SR 4-4-2 tanks, which they got as replacements for their beloved Midland 0-4-4 tanks. They were, at least, both LMS (but still foreign!). There were not many places where "foreign" locos were adopted with any degree of enthusiasm. Funnily enough, the D11s in Scotland and the A5s in the North East seem to have been exceptions to this! The B1/Black 5/K4 comparison is a more recent one, based on preservaton era drivers and doesn't have the same degree of partisanship. One who thought the Black 5 was the best loco he had ever driven to Fort William changed his mind when he had a go on the K4.

So, Gresley built more D11s and A5s out of gratitude to Robinson! I always thought it was because they were very, very good locos and saved him the job of designing something similar, when a perfectly good loco design was available and could be built and put into service quickly. The comment about the O2 is a bit daft too. Gresley was designing the O2s during WW1 and the first was produced in 1918. At the time the GNR and GCR were competing for much coal traffic. Gresley would have had to have known that the railways would be part of the same company, that he would be in charge and that he would have the opportunity to purchase hundreds of surplus locos at good prices. Even then the LNER needed more, so more O2s were built. This makes sense as the O2s were the slightly more modern design and the production was to be at Doncaster, where they had experience of building the O2s but not the O4s. Both classes of loco were very good and I am sure that if the O4 showed any great superiority over the O2 then Gresley would have built more of them instead. He was not averse to using Robinson designs - see A5 & D11 above! If anybody wants to read a bit more of Dick Hardy's work, which I thoroughly enjoy reading (I met him once too, a lovely man) then go beyond the good things he has to say about Thompson and have a look at what he says about some of the Robinson 4-6-0s. Apparently much maligned and a lot more capable than many railway enthusiasts seem to think. I got to meet George Hinchcliffe shortly before he died. He rode behind (and sometimes on) most of the GCR locos and he and the crews who worked them thought the world of a good number of the types. The B7s in particular would pull anything you put behind them. Dick Hardy wrote about seeing one on 32 carriages once. The Imminghams and similar were fine locos too and did excellent work over many years without any major rebuilding. So, by the accounts of people who worked on them and with them, they were not so bad. Perhaps those giving them such a hard time can quote their experiences, excluding second hand reading of other enthusiasts words. I do dislike this slagging off of railway locos, designers etc. They all had their good points and ideas (mostly!!) and they all got it a bit wrong sometimes. Such and such a desginer/company/class was "stupid" "fell flat on their face" etc. Far more provocative and antagonistic that Tony Wright's views, which are based on a lot of experience at the sharp end of the hobby.

The statement about the O2s makes no sense. The O2s were being designed during WW1 and first appeared in 1918. At that time, it would have needed a great deal of crystal ball gazing to know that all those surplus O4s would be available a few years later and that the GCR and the GNR would be the same company rather than competitors. Have people seen the details of what sorts of performances the V4s put in? They were great second string locos and the LNER would have been well served by a fleet of them (instead of B1s) had Gresley not died when he did. I am not saying that the B1s were bad locos. They were very good indeed, better than an LMS Black 5 (that comes from drivers who have driven both types). The K4 was regarded as being better still! Very sure footed and powerful for a small loco and ideal for the route it was designed specifically for. As for the comparison between an A2 and a Brit, two bits of video is hardly conclusive proof. The quality (and experience) of the drivers, the rail surfaces and the load can make a huge difference.

Did the I see the usual nonsense is being trotted out again? The GCR 4-6-0s were all failures, as were the B17s. Gresley wasn't keen on 4-6-0s because they made the fitting of his favoured wide firebox tricky. Most of the design work on the B17s was outsourced to North British and they are hardly a typical Gresley design. They were also hampered by weight and length restrictions on the GER section. However, they were hardly total disasters and put in some excellent work over many years. As for the GCR locos, try reading some of Richard Hardy's accounts of the work done by some of them, especially the B7s, over what is probably the hardest main line route in the country, over Woodhead. They were not perfect and with a bit of hindsight some aspects of them could have been improved but again, classes like the Imminghams were in service for over 40 years. My favourite story relates to a wartime passenger train, seen at Retford. In one of Richard Hardy's accounts, he mentions how all the staff at the station came out onto the platform to see a B7 on a 32 (I think - from memory - I read it a few years ago) carriage train. So, they weren't perfect but neither were they total failures either. Most of them remained in front line service until the advent of the B1s, so for a group of small classes of non standard locos, they lasted pretty well. If they had been that bad, I am not sure that they would have stayed in use for approx 25-40 years. Robinson got it absolutely right later, with his D10s and 11s for passenger trains and with his O4s and J11s for freight work the GCR had an excellent collection of locos. Good enough that when the grouping came along, the LNER wanted him to be their CME.

Not easy in 4mm scale. There are already some tight clearances and when Malcolm Crawley designed the kit he had several attempts at including the splasher and decided that it was a bit impractical. Malcolm's main interest (and all test building) was in EM so it mght be a bit easier in OO and he had no idea that the kit would ever be produced in 7mm scale, otherwise I am sure he would have included it! Tony

Hello Dave, I would always recomend a seperate power supply to the servos. If you use a common return, any slight variation in the power level, such as the surge when a motor starts drawing current, can be misinterpreted by the servo drive board as an instruction, which needs to be obeyed by moving the servo. I have even had servos go daft when I unplugged a soldering iron from a 4 way mains extension, which also had the transformer for the servo supply plugged into it. So any variation in the power input to the servo drive boards is best avoided. Having spoken to others, it seems they have experienced similar problems. You might get lucky and find that you don't have such problems but I just wanted to give you a "heads up" of the problems we have found. Tony

This ties in a bit with the lengthy thread on the future of kitbuilding. As Tony says, quite correctly, there is little or no point in trying to build kits if your aim is to end up with a particular vehicle on your layout. Very few modellers can match what Hornby, Bachmann and others are producing in terms of quality. If your aim is to have fun making things, it is a different matter. My answer to "sameness" is to model the pre-grouping scene and even then Bachmann are going down my chosen GCR path! The RTR people are no doubt constantly on the lookout for new ideas to put on the market and it won't be long before pretty much every major class of steam loco and all major classes of diesel loco are available RTR. Certainly enough to run many a layout as "big four" or BR. It will be a long time before any RTR firm makes enough locos and stock to allow anybody to run a pre-grouping layout. There are also certain areas, which can be chosen as prototypes, which have not had the attention of the RTR folk yet. As an example, there are very few RTR locos available that would have run around Lincolnshire branch lines in the 1950s. Suitable classes would include N5, C12, A5, J6 and J11. Only the last one is in the pipeline as a RTR. The others are all available as kits, assuming they are still in production (I haven't checked). Good to see that Tony Wright seems to be getting "back in action" again. Putting his views across with his usual style! Tony

Good luck with your project. Peter would have been highly delighted that his wonderful layout is still inspiring modellers after all these years. Tony

Couldn't agree more! That is why a number of my smaller layouts have individually chaired track. I often cut my own sleepers from thin ply sheets because my favoured GCR used 14" wide sleepering through most pointwork. My latest layout has 7 points, all GCR pattern with correct 4 holed chairs. The slow bit for me comes in more comple pointwork, as on Barnstaple. They usually involve lots of very short rails, perhaps only supported by a couple of plastic chairs and these chairs often have to be cut to fit. I have a good pair of cutters and I just nick the PCB sleeper to mark the length and snip it cleanly. No filing is involved but I agree that the time difference is not in the sleepering but in the supporting of crossing noses and suchlike as well as the extra requirement for electrical bonding of short rails, which takes care if you don't want to melt the chairs. I also find that I tend to glue the chairs on quite slowly, checking gauge and clearances all the time, then allowing the solvent to set properly before going on to the next bit. If I make a mistake on PCB, discovered when a vehicle runs through and bumps (doesn't happen often but it can happen) I can wave an iron at it and sort it. A mistake on individual chaired track can be sorted out but it is more difficult, so I take more time to ensure that it doesn't have to be amended later. In an ideal world I would always use chaired points but for a project like Barnstaple, I can fully understand the decision to go PCB as I would have done the same.

If I was working on a layout of such complexity, I would have done exactly as you have done! If I do a layout with a small number of points, plywood sleepers and individual chairs it is. I have quoted this story before but a friend of mine, who had operated one of the layouts at many exhibitions, threw his hands up in horror when I told him that the next layout was going to have copperclad points to save time. When I told him that the layout he had been operating for several years had copperclad points he was gobsmacked! It takes me approximately three times as long to make a point with individual chairs compared to copperclad. After all, copperclad was good enough for High Dyke, Retford, Dunwich and Blakeney as well as many other layouts. So I am with you 100% on your decision. Well made, nicely aligned track (as yours clearly is) properly ballasted and painted matters more to the overall look of the layout than individual chairs. Even looking at the photo showing the two types side by side, I doubt anybody will notice once they are painted alike.

By coincidence I was looking at some of the individual plans just the other day. When we were in Truro dismantling Buckingham, we came across a large box marked "building papers". In amongst a large number of full and part used printed papers, by people like MERCO, were a number of the Percival Marshall plans. Some of them will presumably be over 60 years old now as Peter Denny used them for some of his earliest buildings, in the late 1940s. Holding such items is like looking at he very dawn of the hobby. Fascinating stuff!

What a cracking thread! Some lovely "Minories" inspired layouts appearing from all over! I have spent a bit of time connecting levers up to points and have 5 working and 2 to go. Nothing so elegant as Howard's as mine uses 0.9mm brass wire for rodding, which will be hidden under scenery. There is still much to do and not enough time. For the fiddle yard, I have gone for points. Many folk miss that factor of the Denny fiddle yard idea. His turntable is fed from a set of points. The two tracks from Grandborough go down to one "off scene" and then split to the 6 tracks on the turntable. The idea is that you have 6 trains set up ready to go. You can work all 6 out and back without touching the fiddle yard. When all 6 are back in the yard, it is a few moments work to turn the lot round and start again. I have chickened out on the turntable but reckon that by having points, I only need two operators, as the fiddle yard will be attended to only infrequently. I have used cassettes and traversers before but it alays seems to me that the fiddle yard has almost as much going on as the layout, especially if the operation is intensive. In the fiddle yard, I have gone down the Cyril Freezer influenced route and used space saving Y points. I reckon that I can get trains of 6 bogie carriages plus a loco on a fiddle yard 8' long, plus I have a headshunt each side, so that stock can be shunted as if it was still a double track. We will find out if it works at EXPO EM North in a few weeks. I hope to have it fully operational but with 3 weeks to go, the fiddle yard track isn't down yet, there is very little wiring done and the scenery is, shall we say, basic! Time to get off RMWeb and get on with some serious "speed modelling"! ps Teaching myself guitar but you wouldn't want to be in the room (county) when I am doing so!

I met Howard a couple of months ago and he is, indeed, as normal as many other modellers and more normal than some I could think of...... We compared notes on adapting Minories and he showed me some photos of the work in progress. There isn't much (any) more than track at this stage. One novel approach is that each bit of rail for all the pointwork had been cut, filed/shaped and had chairs attached but nothing was stuck down yet. Funny how many different ways there are to do these jobs. If the rest of the layout is built with the same attention to detail and application, it will be a bit of a "wow" when it eventually appears. Tony

Many thanks for the comments. I am one of those sad people, who instead of watching telly or reading a book to relax, I get a pad and a pencil and doodle layout designs. When I first came up with this one, it was dead straght and the pointwork still is. The curve only happens after the pointwork and that is a feature from Chesterfield. That gets away from the track being parallel to the baseboard edge, which hopefully makes what is quite a simple plan more visually appealing. Looking at it, I will claim a couple of other slight "Minories" features in that all the pointwork is on one board, allowing for nice and easy mechanical linkages with no cross baseboard linkages and there is a short spur for the station pilot to sit on but you are quite right, the overall rationale and the operational side will be quite different. I have started work on the lever frame today and I am hoping that the points will be operational before too long. I have been working out the lengths of the pushes and pulls in the rodding and introducing compensators as I have a dread of getting into difficulty if temperature variations are like the ones we had at Wells this weekend. When fully completed, the layout will be run as pre-grouping Great Central (it probably doesn't show in the photo but the pointwork is based on GCR drawings) but there is a lot of stock building to be done before I get there so locos and stock will be scrounged from elsewhere for the time being, hence the Royal Scot!

Thanks for the comments and I can see why you say that. With the layout in that state and our first show 5 weeks away, starting to rip up and re-lay track is not really an option! The point you mention, regarding the reduction in arrival platforms was actually one that I made after a bit of plotting the operation of the layout. The idea is that there is only one arrival platform, requiring some smart station work from the pilot to clear the platform before another passenger train can come in. There are only two platforms now as the centre road is a "holding road" and will also be used for ECS arrivals and arrivals of fish/newspaper trains, which will then be shunted to the dock on the left hand side. There will be 4 different ways of dealing with an incoming train. A fresh loco can be backed on and it can depart straight on another working. The pilot can remove the stock to the off stage carriage sidings, the pilot can shunt the stock to the centre road and leave it there or it can be put in the other platform ready for a new loco to back down onto it. I am also toying with the idea of the train loco reversing the stock to the carriage sidings. I know it happened in real life but I am not sure if it will look right on the model. With the original design, there wasn't really any need to shunt stock from one platform to another and that is something I wanted to include. It also simplifies the signalling (or it will when I get some done!). The general idea is that there is one arrival platform and one departure platform (with the option of a second departure platform if necessary) plus a centre road (to give a slight look of Chesterfield Market Place), a fish/parcels dock and the loco spur. We are also incorporating a system where we can have the train loco following departing stock up the platform, so it isn't left at the buffer stops, as has been discussed on another thread recently. I did spend a bit of time looking at the operational possibilities before I laid any track. My concern is not so much whether the layout will be interesting to operate but more if it has strayed too far from "Minories" to be called one!

I am currently working on a "Minories" type layout, which is not quite true to the original concept of minimum space because it is 20ft long. All the pointwork is on a single 4' board, allowing for mechanical operation without any cross baseboard arrangements being necessary. Once you have that station throat sorted out, you can make the platforms and fiddle yard as long as you like, as long as they are balanced with each other for train length purposes. In my case, each is 8' long, although I am doing the fiddle yard with points, so the maximum train length will be a loco plus 6 bogie carriages (pre-grouping short bogie carriages). That way, the train will never overpower the platform length. One feature of the original plan, which I wasn't too keen on was the reverse curve through the pointwork and the way the tracks slewed over beyond the platform and then back towards the centre of the board. There may be real places like that but to me, it always shouted out "model" rather than "real" railway. It as done like that to utilise Peco Y points because of their great advantage in saving length and as I have a bit more space available I have straightened the throat up. Cyril Freezer's original design is probably one of the most influential and downright clever plans in the history of our hobby. He once told me himself that he often tried to "tweak" it to improve it but never bettered the original concept. Here is a rather poor snap of what we have done.... I hope that my slight variations haven't spoilt the concept but we are exhibiting it soon (at EXPO EM North), so we shall find out then!

Very nice! I have been building quite a few signals recently myself, so I can fully appreciate the neatness and quality of the workmanship! I especially like the touch on the two doll bracket of one spectacle being painted red and the other black. Little things like that certainly add an amount of individuality and character, which very likely only comes when you are copying a prototype and paying attention to such subtleties.