Joseph_Pestell

As above, in the Valleys 158's on some lines, Mk3's/class 43s on very little.

 

153/155/156//158/159 all seem to be as 158's. 

Certain units/locos may be banned from a line not because they would be out-of-gauge but because no work has been done to prove that they would be within gauge.

As I understand it matters have been devolved to the Welsh Assembly which has chosen a shortlist of four favoured contenders for the new franchise, though there have not yet been any formal proposals.

So when it all goes pear shaped it will be the fault of the franchise winner not the politicians, of course.

Jonathan

Yes, of course. That's the real reason why the railways were privatised.

i'll be interested to see how many of those players go on to get regular first team football with their clubs. or will they be squeezed out by "ready made" foreign mercenaries as is often the case at present?

Four of the players from Everton. So I, too, hope that they get a chance and are successful at Premiership level. Not too optimistic though as we have gone on a spending spree this week and our track record with young stars is not the best.

yes they do, although sometimes not that fast if the M25 is playing up...!!!.

Today being a case in point.

SWMBO delayed for about one hour on the bus and missed time for going through security by 2 minutes. Not allowed to fly unless willing to pay £800 to transfer to later flight.

Thank you so much British Airways. I hope all your flights in future have lots of empty seats. We certainly won't be booking with you again.

How disappointing! When I read the title I was hoping for a passenger excursion train formed solely from buffet cars selling excellent Belgian craft beers.

Those last two iterations of the plan look very good to me in terms of being a good representation of Victoria.

But will you be able to get to both sides of the baseboard? Unless you are a very unusual looking person, you can't reach across 4ft of baseboard.

Speculating but it sounds as though Hatton's have paid him.

Swansea suffered more than most from WW2 bombing. Hence a lot of fairly grim 1950s/1960s buildings in the city centre.

Being right next to the docks, it is hardly surprising that Victoria sustained a lot of damage.

I do not know if a previous thread like this exists, but I am interested in finding out what those who organise exhibitions feel about the current situation. First, a bit of background:

·      Currently, there are  a lot of them. Magazine diary pages show that September to November have well over 200 shows in three months. Indeed, only December is relatively quiet, with around 20, while even the summer months [fairly empty even 10 years ago], now average around 30 each.

·      A good exhibition is neither easy, nor cheap to organise. Chances are, a school exhibition hall will cost between one and two grand for the weekend, while a Sports Centre will be double or treble that. Any invited layout that needs a van is going to add a couple of hundred to basic fuel costs, while if overnight accommodation is required, then a further £40-£60 per head, per night needs to be added on. So, while a local layout, which travels in a car, will only incur expenses of £30 or less, a big layout travelling any distance will cost many hundreds of pounds to invite. Add on things like insurance, chair and table hire, catering, tickets & programmes etc, etc and the cost can really escallate.

·      Recouping these costs can only come from a limited number of sources. Sponsorship is one [if you can get it] & this is behind many of the larger shows for obvious reasons. Goodness knows how much it costs to hire Alexandra Palace for the weekend! The other two are entrance fees and income from traders. In the case of the latter, a medium sized show might have 200-300 feet of trade stands, which should bring in around £10 per foot or more for a two day show. So, £2-3000. Income from entrance fees is simply cost x those attending, so a show that gets, say 700 over a weekend at £6 a head will generate £4200. Add in trader fees and you have around £7000 to play with. Or you make a loss…

 

 So, my basic questions are:

·      How are clubs/organisations/individuals managing the process?

·      Who is making a profit/loss [and in the case of the former, how?]

·      How are organisers finding things in terms of sourcing quality layouts, given there is so much competition?

·      How are Traders faring? Which type of shows are best for sales and what can organisers do to make attending a show worthwhile for you?

·      What do visitors want to see at a show – though bear in mind here that one cannot please all of the people all of the time. I am talking generally, rather than specifically here.

·      In short, what should exhibition organisers doing to secure the future of good quality exhibitions

 

 I presume I will not be alone in being very interested to see what people think.

We did have a thread similar to this a couple of years back.

I would prefer to see clubs combine to provide fewer but better exhibitions. But that is not easy to achieve.

Other than the total cost, you need to look at the cash flow. I used to manage by having the trade stand income paid up front so that I could cover the advance costs; Hall hire, publicity, etc. The admission money covered the layout expenses with, most years, a reasonable surplus.

Finding the right balance of trade stands so that they all have a financially-viable weekend is a bit of an art. You will gain a lot of brownie points by communicating fully with your traders and reassuring them that there is not going to be too much direct competition.

We saved a bit on van hire by doing a lot of the transporting ourselves but that was a nightmare to coordinate.

Quick visit this afternoon to see the first train carrying fare-paying passengers. Took a couple of photos (phone) of the train joining the mainline at Worgret which is a difficult location these days with far more trees on the sides of  the cutting than when the line closed to passengers in 1972. Then back to the station to see the WCR 37 haul the train back to Swanage. Will upload pics later and post.

That's an old pic, there's no room now, most of the spare space has been built on, especially between the old goods shed, and the crossing.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.6930991,-2.1143399,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sz10dPPRkAInV-G1ORQwwbQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Looks doable to me albeit possibly needing demolition of the existing footbridge.

I haven't been to Wareham in years, but are you referring to this crossing?

Wareham March 1985 OM1 246-002.jpg

There looks to be plenty of space there to put in an "off-the-peg" design of footbridge with ramps.

Edit to add: Of course, that's an old photo. May be a bit different now. I will take a look later.

How dare the LNW try and get into the heart of our territory! What were the people of Cardiff thinking?

 

No, they jointly operated the Marches with the GW. So who was the Fairford branch owned by before the GW?

The people of Cardiff, like the people of Hull, thought that a bit of competition might mean they got a better deal.

The Witney branch was, like many, an independent project, only taken over by the GW after some years. A new passenger station was built at Witney when the line was extended to Fairford. I don't remember whether that was an independent project or under the GW.

Just to throw another idea into the ring, have you considered Cardiff?

The good folk of South Wales got pretty fed up with the GWR having a monopoly on their coal traffic to London and taking a "great way round" to get there, putting up the prices. They asked the LNW to build a line to Wales. This would have started from Oxford and run over the Witney/Fairford branch, not then under GW control, continuing to Wales via Gloucester (so far, all true history).

The resulting passenger terminus in Cardiff would probably have been quite similar to Swansea Victoria but as this is a "Rule 1" suggestion, you can adapt the trackplan to suit the space that you have.

I looked at the station on old-maps.co.uk yesterday as well.

The station itself is fairly compact but, as you say, there is a lot of other stuff going on around it. Perhaps you could turn it round the other way so the carriage shed is in the background and conceals the unmodelled goods yard.

May also be worth constructing boards that are not rectangular. That way you can avoid modelling the high-level docks lines in front and it might make it easier to add the goods yard later on if you get the space.

No obvious scenic break at the country end of the station. You may have to invent a roadbridge or a high building (warehouse probably) to conceal exit from scenic area.

Thank you, the radius seems good esp the #6. With point motors what/how do you power them? I've never used them before do they run from the accessory output on the guage master controller?

It would depend what type. For solenoids (Peco PM10, SEEP, Hattons), 16v AC is the usual as supplied by the accessory outputs on various controllers.

Thank you everyone for the kind replies

 

I'll try and add to them

 

1) the info on the Jubiliees is great, I regret selling Achillles so one is definitely on my list

 

2) thanks for the info on the coaches I had no idea what the right hand meant but that makes sense

 

Last time I travelled on a Pendelino Tin can it felt like being squashed I decided the Chiltern line from Moor St was much more comfortable with the old BR stock hauled by what was then a 67 much more fun

 

3) I like the kit ideas. I can built model planes, tanks etc to a relatively good standard, what I've never done is huiltbany locos or soldered things, I'm not very mechanical...maybe I should start!

 

The overall roof just fills me with dread. I'd be happy building it if I knew where and how to start. I've thought about the scale scenes overall roof but it doesn't look right. I think that really it seems to be pole and metal beam things, I could built it partially covered which might make things easier. Given my Shelf is full of models I think I should try to get the shape. Why doesn't someone make triangle shaped canopy components? It seems that the triangle shape was quite common, there must be more to this hobby than the few canopies we have of which I do like the scalescenes stuff!

 

I guess this is what I need:

 

http://www.squirestools.com/files/12-19a.pdf

 

Thanks for the links- there seems to be more pics on that search engine than google found!

 

Thanks for all the replies. Next month I will hopefully be buying the wood (or collett coaches)

Back in the day when I was involved in etched sheets, it was always my intention to do a sheet of rivetted angle plates which could be used to construct roofs of this type.

If you made up a jig to hold things in place while soldering/glueing, it should not be very difficult. Plastic strip also an option as per Ron Heggs' Manchester Central.

I should add if the scissors is too wide I may be tempted to get the Shinohara one although I have no idea which point motors to use (or how point motors even work). It also seems to have a shallow radius...

 

Feedback and ideas welcome

Shinohara do two scissors crossovers; a #4 and a #6. IIRC the #4 has a 2'8" radius. You can find details on www.scalelink.co.uk.

Any latching solenoid point motor will do or the Peco with the PM11 mounting base added. Any servo style motor will do the job.

So heres a project....

 

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2210749

 

Phil

But would they have run into the station?

Ta, it won't be prototype modelling but themed.   There's no way I can recreate that roof!!! 

 

 

 

 

Just been having a look at pics via Google. Roof does not look too complicated really and has the benefit of no glass (post-war) so that you get a proper look at the trains.

Meanwhile what of the class 230 D-Trains?

 

I would imagine the Vivarail team are hoping to sell more than a few of these. I would also think that from an operating point of view

it would be awkward for one or two odd sets to be deployed here and there, much better if there was somewhere where work could be found for a small fleet.

 

Going back to the original post, and the speculation about the trial Okehampton train service, might a small fleet of class 230 units be suitable for the Devon Metro?

A major factor would be, could they get between Exeter St Davids - Dawlish Warren - Newton Abbot quickly enough without disrupting the main line service?

Otherwise there could be more plus points than minus points if they could be used to achieve some of Devon County Councils aspirations.

Okehampton gets a train service that does not currently exist, and they could cover additional local services to Axminster (if they can be pathed, and keep clear of the Waterloo trains), - and free up a SWT class 159 set that currently works a couple of return commuter workings.

The Exmouth - Paignton service improves to go half hourly during the day and they would in part be replacing class 143 sets on that route.

Additionally it could be a captive fleet, working no further than Paignton/Barnstaple/Exmouth/Axminster/Okehampton, with all sets returning to Exeter St Davids each night,

 

Are there any other places on the system with a network of branchlines or stopping sevices where a number of sets could find work?

 

cheers

Talking of Metro-style services, the South Coast could be an option too. And they would not even need the diesel engines there.

Yes but we can all agree those HSTs (most especially the mk3 coaches) are far too good to just throw away.

 

XC could have some of them for a start.

Yes, but don't they need work to meet DDA compliance by 2020?

My late mother was involved in developing course materials for teaching French. But that was many years ago before the advent of DVDs and the like. Unfortunately, I don't still have any of the stuff that she did for Nuffield Foundation which would have been very suitable for updating.

Without going down the exchange route yet, perhaps you could set up some sort of Skype arrangement with a French child who wants to learn English?

I think the best method - if you can find a suitable teacher - might be one-to-one but obviously in his own time  (I used to have a young lady come to my office one day a week to give me French lessons and it worked quite well - sufficient for me to gain sufficient confidence to conduct 'phone calls in French).

 

The other approach - which might well be more expensive - is to find a good quality organisation which arranges exchange visits outside the usual 'school exchange' format.  We used to provide bed & board for foreign students coming to England under such an arrangement - the youngster attended school during the day and were with us overnight and at weekends when they were supposed to be practicing their language skills.  Nearly 20 years on my son remains firm friends with a German chap, and his family, who did one of the individual types of exchange although in the case of that one it was a German family looking for someone in England to send their son to in order to improve his English.

I think 7 is a bit young for foreign exchanges.

The Bay platforms at Wareham were removed decades ago but  there are a couple of crossovers to facilitate run rounds and a siding that could potentially be used to stable the train between runs.

 

However given the local residents are being total NIMBYS and refusing to let NR add ramps to the existing footbridge (because they 'spoil the look of it' / are 'totally out of keeping with a small market town' / 'look hideous' / 'are unnecessary' / etc.) and thereby allow the foot crossing at the station to be removed (it is currently manned during service hours by a Dorset Council funded crossing keeper due to the locals being unable to obey the miniature warning lights and the consequent near misses with trains) then for the foreseeable future all trains from Swanage must be DMUs / top & tailed coaches that have to fit round the SWT timetable and disappear back down the branch to clear the main line as the ORR / NR  consider it too dangerous to perform shunting manoeuvrers while the crossing still exists.

Perhaps easier just to put in a second bridge with ramps?

But this really is NIMBYism to an extreme level. The area around Wareham station with a fairly hideous concrete road flyover is not particularly special.