Joseph_Pestell

I think there may be some in Hendry & Hendry - quite a few Highland stations featured. Will check later.

I think that the goalposts have moved a bit on this one in recent years - especially with some of the mammoth layouts we see now. A large layout for exhibition purposes is rather different from large if it never has to be transported. Scale of course also plays its part. 24' x 2' is large in N but small in O. It's really less about dimensions than complexity - so Lime St and New St definitely "large" but Stoke Bank perhaps not.

What became of Swampy? I have always had a sneaking suspicion that he may have become a merchant banker earning huge bonuses.

I'm sure you are right that this is Plymouth (North Road) after rebuilding.

There are locations with a mix. In such cases, it's usually a majority of colour-light with a lesser quantity of semaphore.

I used to work with an etched kit producer, so I know the score there. I'm only thinking of putting a couple in the corner of an etch on the frame surround. The purchasers of the kits won't ever see it and so it can stay on the artwork. If it works, it would of course be supplied via new artwork and a complete sheet. That would be split up into sub-sheets of course. I dread to think how many such joiners one would get on a 450mm x 300mm sheet.

It does not need masses of strength. It's only holding the rails in alignment over a very short distance. If of the right dimensions to give a snug fit, it should work well. My concern would be that you can't, in principle, etch narrower than the thickness of the material. Cutting them off the etch could be tricky too. Not a job to do in a carpeted room! I'm tempted to have a go at this experimentally by asking an etched kit producer to put a few in a spare corner of an etch. An alternative, which perhaps plays more to Wayne's strengths, is a specially moulded/routed piece of sleepering with sleepers at closer intervals (as per the prototype at track joints) and a little pip of plastic to keep rail ends apart. We are not bothered about conductivity here as people will want droppers from each section of rail anyway.

I assume that you have tried ones designed for Code 40FB??? I'm not that sure that appearance would be acceptable anyway. Instead of the conventional solution for rail joiners on model railways (I prefer to call them rail joiners because they look nothing like fishplates on real track), would it work to etch an elongated H-shaped piece with the etch thickness same as the concave bit of the BH rail? Brass would probably be too soft given the small piece which would result. But it might be strong enough in stainless steel.

Worked in my case as I thought: "What were they?"

I guess you will want some FB on the mainline - so probably Easitrax from 2mm Soc. But take a look at fiNetrax (there's a thread on here) for the loop and sidings.

I think that comment about the layout being "handed" is right. Turn it round and you have something very similar to another L&Y branch terminus - Holmfirth. In that context the slip (single) makes sense. This way round, I think that there should be a facing lead over ordinary turnouts into the main platform with a shunt move to get trains into the bay before departure. The goods yard should probably have a headshunt as well.

Looks stunning.

Some good info on the The Laird's Leeds Wellington thread about train formations.

I agree that a through service would have been very unlikely - which is no doubt why they never put in a facing lead. Would a shuttle service be justified? I think it may have been; probably as much as Bromley North anyway. It all comes back to the weird accountancy on the railways where no one really seems to understand where all that money is going. How much would it really cost to have a 2-car unit shuttling up and down a short branch like this? And how much extra revenue, not just on the branch itself, would come from people not driving their car to a railhead nearer London?

It would not have been difficult to provide a facing lead from the main line onto the branch. But back then, far fewer people commuted that sort of distance so it would not have been thought worthwhile. The main focus of the railways back then was freight.

If she has, it can't be that long ago. Had an article in RM within the last couple of years.

Ian, That sketch is wrong. Single-slip into the dock road as well, not double.

It certainly is. I think that a lot of people have been put off N over the years by over-large wheel flanges running along "girders". This quality of track could persuade a lot of folk to convert to N and improve the market for Dapol and Farish (and Arnold, of course).

Thanks. We've gone OT but I've always wondered about all that water they pump down the gutters each day. Having water mains in the sewer obviously poses some risk of contamination but fairly minor risk with greater pressure in the main than in the sewer. And if you do have a leaking main, water has somewhere to flow to rather than undermining the road surface.

Probably stopped doing this when an inmate used plans to design his escape tunnel.

Not a nice working environment for the engineers. But must have saved a lot of digging up of the roads - so not a bad idea at all. Is it definitely fresh water supply for drinking/domestic use or do they have a separate supply for all that water they use to wash down the roadside gutters each day in Paris? I noticed last month that Parisian dog owners not as good as they used to be at making their animals use the "caniveau".

I don't know if it because of this, but I agree with Steve that this CAD drawing catches the character/feel of the 50 in a way that others have not quite managed.

Hi Wayne, Thanks for posting those shots. Accurately filing and then soldering together reliably the crossing (frog) was one of my weak areas in 4mm track building. So I definitely like the idea of pre-cast and these look good. My other big problem is tie-bars. Looking forward to seeing your solution to that. Joseph

Hi Andy, Which database are you referring to, please? And how does one get access?

Ian Allan used this excuse once to me when I complained about the number of errors in a railway atlas that they had recently published. I replied that I thought 42 errors on just one page (including an EKLR station transposed onto the SER) was taking this a bit too far!