JDW

Just to add clarity to what I suggested above about a second platform and access to the station: Of course, if as suggested in the earlier plan there was a tunnel, access to the station platform between A and B could be via steps from a townscape above the tunnel. That part of it was just an alternative to the tunnel idea.

I've drawn roughly on Kris' version from above to show what I mean. I've moved the tracks labelled A and B to the right by a few inches, with a platform between them as per RJD1977's idea. I've also suggested a second platform on the outer track, which gives the impression of a bigger station, which might or might not be what you want, but does at least give a plausible location for the station buildings (booking office etc) outside the oval (orange block), and allows for a footbridge (orange line) across to the island allowing plausible access. I considered a platform to the left of A and one between B and C, but that would be overkill I think, and look cluttered. I've also suggested moving the crossover between inner and outer ovals ('up' and 'down' lines) to the right at the bottom of the plan. In hindsight the one at the top of the plan could also move to the right hand side of the level crossing. That would make it quite easy for a train to arrive in the platform at A or B and the loco run around to the other end, allowing the train to depart in the opposite direction. E.g. train arrives anticlockwise in A, loco uncouples, runs forwards, reverses via B to the bottom crossover, reverses again onto the back of its train, then departs via the crossover back onto the clockwise circuit.

The right hand end as in the drawn plans and your first photo from the side. The same end shown by your last photo. That crescent shaped area which has nothing in it bar the little siding with the two wagons on - looking at your last photo I'd move the points and crossovers for the 'inner' pair of curves (the ones where the grey platform is in RJS1977's drawing) as far towards the 'outer' pair of curves as you can to minimise the wasted space. In other words, bring the 'inner' pair of curves as close to the 'outer' pair as you can. Does that make any more sense?

It has certainly come on a lot since the first post, and looks much better for it. If I may be permitted to suggest another modification, depending on whether you want a tunnel or not I'd move both the 'cut-off' loops further to the right (ie by the length of one R600) and get rid of that short stub of a siding where you have the red and grey wagon. That would give the impression of a main line and loops with the centre station platform, it would get rid of a potentially hard to use crescent shaped space where that short stub siding is, and would give you a bit of extra lenght/space in the centre for the goods yard area. The curved point you take out could possibly be used to add an extra siding there instead.

That's a good idea with the foam to fill the gap but as @MarshLane says the gap seems a bit large, I'm sure mine don't sit that far apart. Could it be that the foam is a little too long, pushing the coaches apart and pulling the close coupling mechanisms out on their springs as far as the slack/slop in the couplings will allow?

I can't help but imagine that if they didn't notice the bridge coming towards them, they probably wouldn't notice the sign either...

For most stock I just use the last three digits without the class number, so 156402 for example is 402. I find it easy to remember most of them, though for some reason there are a few 144s and 153s that I constantly have to look at to remember! I use the same system for locos, apart from a few classes which have adopted class number + 2 digits, due to clashes with 66s. 66001 clashed with 01 - I allocated single-digit numbers to shunters when I first started fitting decoders, I think to try and save typing in long numbers every time I wanted to shunt. And 66405 clashed with 37405. So they became 6601 and 6645, with others following to become 6620 (66200), 6641 (66411) and 6727 (67027). The 144s use the same, as their unit numbers are in single digits (eg 144007 becomes 1447 rather than 07). My Railtrack 121 is just 121, and the 950 is 950, whilst an MPV is just 989, the first digits of the vehicle numbers, as they are all likely to be one-offs (whereas I have something like 10 156s!)

I've seen this often too. As a former bus driver, the amount of bad driving I saw was appalling - but of course, I was the one driving the big brightly painted thing with an identifiable name on the side, so it was always them jumping up and down and threatening to phone up and "report me"... One of my favourites was the taxi driver who must have known I was behind him. He pulled over in a bus stop. A nice long bus stop, with people waiting at it. Bus in his mirrors. People at stop. 2+2 = 'that bus behind is probably going to want to stop here too', you'd think. But no, he stopped right in the middle of the layby. I gave him a toot of the horn and got the middle finger. The stop happened to be outside a bingo hall, and I had a fair few older passengers getting off, plus more getting on. If he'd stopped at either end, even at 18 metres long I could have gotten into the kerb, made it easy for the eldery passengers, and left room for traffic to pass. As it was I had to stop alongside him, block traffic and have people struggle off and on. Anyway, he wasn't happy that I'd dared sound the horn at him and followed me to the next stop, pulled up alongside me, got out of his car and tried to talk to me through my window while I was boarding passengers. I didn't acknowledge him so he came and got on the bus. I asked if he'd enjoyed watching the elderly people struggle, and pointed out we could both have stopped happily and been on our way if he'd given me room but got the usual rant. Me: "OK, well you're holding up the bus now, can you leave please?" Him: carried on Me: "The bus is about to leave, you need to get off now." Him: more ranting about me learning to drive properly Me: "Stand clear of the doors please, the doors are about to close. Stand clear of the doors!" Him: keeps going with the usual stereotypes Me: "Mind the doors!" and pressed the door close button, ignored him, checked mirrors, signalled right and moved off. At which point he became very keen to get off. Him, with his car still in the middle of the road, door wide open: "This is kidnap... you can't do that... let me off,... blah blah blah" Me: "I warned you, you chose to stay on. And you said I should do my job properly, so I can't stop between bus stops " The icing on the cake was that when I got to the next stop (only about 300 yards away) he turned to leave expecting the doors to open. I looked at him with a straight face and said "You've travelled one stop, that'll be 90p". He didn't like it, it got a round of applause from the passengers as he left though

It was clearly about a station of some kind

I do agree that electronic signs (not just on smart motorways) need to be better co-ordinated and more accurate sometimes, so as not to give false warnings or apparently pointless lower speed limits*. The other day I joined the M1 in Yorkshire, and the sign advised of a 60 limit. The next one was a national speed limit sign. A few miles later, 50... then 40... then blank, then blank again. Some people speeded up, some didn't, because having had an NSL sign after the previous 60 limit it was unclear whether the first blank one was not working or whether the limit had ended. Also for the avoidance of misunderstanding, a red X is not the same as a red traffic light or wig-wag light at a level crossing. It means you must not continue any further in that lane. It does not mean stop, unless all lanes have a red X above them in which case you must stop. After two decades of driving, and seeing all manner of things, I actually had all lanes flash up a red cross about a dozen cars in front of me a couple of months ago. The first time I'd ever seen it on all lanes at once. In that case though, the police had already pretty much brought traffic to a stop, and it was only for a few minutes to move a stranded broken down car from the central reservation. *Of course, there's always the chance that you pass through in the short window between the obstruction moving and the signs being updated, it will always take a few minutes, but it seems to happen far too often for that to always be the case.

I'm trying to work out which is more accurate, the model or the mangled English below it... With apologies for being slightly O/T, poorly written eBay ads are one thing but it amazes me that big companies can put out something so badly written...

It looks like yours is the same as mine, the prints have splayed out at the bottom, presumably as they cured. I found as they were they were way too wide. As you say the material is very brittle. Heating it in hot water is enough to make it pliable enough to gently bend back to shape. I usually run them under cold water afterwards to speed up the cooling again, and then leave then sat between a few heavy tins to make sure the shape holds until they are cool. I had a spare Lima 156 chassis, and pretty much sliced the sides off. In reality, not much different to a piece of plasticard but I had it to hand, it was spare and roughly the right dimension, and already had a hole in for the bogie pivot. How well do the Elecrta graphics line up? I know Electra's graphic work is generally pretty good, but as I said on my thread am not convinced by the window-line of the 323.

I see what you mean - but there are a lot of strange people out there! Assuming it is genuine, I suspect the car driver hadn't seen him fall. As the car pulls up, the driver's likely looking at the ticket machine. S/he opens the door, suggesting maybe a problem with the electric window, another minor distraction. By which point the guy is on the floor out of view of the driver in front of the car. Driver sees him crossing, focuses on getting ticket, looks back, the man's gone, sets off... it's not hard to think it's one of those cases where all the holes in the Swiss cheese line up to lead to an accident.

That looks great. I'm very tempted by the 175 or 185 that he's produced too, but I think any of the 185 liveries might be a bit complex to paint, and the 175 is a bit out of area for me! Great build though, nice to see something a bit different. I had the same crack/split issues a few times on my 323s, the printed material seems very brittle, I imagine these are the same?

Unfortunately that probably wouldn't do much - if the force of the train stopping is hard enough to throw the trolley forwards at any great rate, then it'll likely be thrown, tipped or just skid with locked wheels, as there's only a limited amount of friction between smooth trolley wheels and the carpet. A push-down handle like on airport baggage trolleys that released the brakes might help stop it at slow speed - maybe they already have them to keep them steady, I don't know - but at anything like a higher speed the lack of friction between the trolley and carpet would be the bigger problem.

I'm not generally an N scale fan but this is fantastic, the attention to detail and level of realism in such a small scale is brilliant.

Interesting dirt marks on the shed wall in the background too - presumably locos were often started up or left running in that same location!

If I were stuck I'd use a Hornby one. I have three and all run fine, though would really benefit from smaller wheels to lower the ride height a little. My ability to cut things square and straight is sadly much too poor to even think about trying to build a chassis myself. I'm sure it would be do-able, but experience has taught me that getting things accurate is not a skill I posess...

Yes, I'd rather have something that runs well than just stick it on a Hornby chassis because it's cheaper (but with the price of them on eBay, not that much cheaper!). I'm keeping my eye out, though have managed to acquire a single 144 car sold for spares and repairs, and have almost a full chassis left from my second centre car build which used a Realtrack unit, so might be able to bodge something together.

Following on from yesterday's post, I managed to pull the wheels out to around 14.5mm which seems to have sorted the problem, and the units run fine again. I've ordered a few more sets so that all bar one of my 156 sets will either have the Hornby motor, or replacement wheels. Whilst testing things in the loft I couldn't resist posing the 141 alongside a 3-car 144 and a 155. Don't get too excited though, look closely and it's just the shells sat on supports!

I mentioned on my workbench thread yesterday that I'd bought a few sets of these and found the back-to-back measurement way too tight, causing too much friction between the wheel back and the bogie frame. I managed to open it out a little today to around 14.5mm from the 14-ishmm they were set at, which seems to have cured the problem. A few small tweaks might be needed, as at least one unit sparks quite badly over a couple of sets of points. However, it does seem to have sorted it and first test seem to show they run well. I've already ordered a few more sets to replace the Lima wheels on other units.

...I also got around to fitting a couple of sets of replacement wheels to some Lima 156s, obtained from Peter's Spares following a recommendation on another thread. The wheels look great, very fine, and no traction tyres. But unfortunately that's where the fun stopped. I popped a set in one unit, and although it moved, it was very stiff, wouldn't move at low power and when it did, it was with a very high current draw. The back-to-back measurement appears too tight by maybe as much as 0.5mm, meaning that the wheel backs are very tight against the inside frame of the bogie. I've tried pulling them out on the axle but the fit is too tight to move them. I've tried a light skim of the boss on the plastic bogie frame with a file, but it wasn't enough and I don't want to do more and introduce slop when I refit the Lima wheels. All 8 axles are the same. The matching wheels for the unpowered bogie seem the same. Has anyone else had this problem? I'll send them an email and see what they say.

Not much progress of late, but the Arriva 153 has been fitted to its chassis, with snowpoughs added and glazing fitted. The chassis still needs new air tanks and BSI couplings fitting before painting, and new radio pods need fitting before the roof gets a coat of dark grey. It also needs new steps under the light clusters, as some are missing. No real progress on the layout though...

It would work, it's built from rearranged Hornby 142 parts after all, but I'd rather try and use a Realtrack one for better running, and to save the work of re-motoring. The Hornby one sits a little high anyway, and the Peco Leyland National roof sections are also slightly tall, so a Realtrack chassis should bring it back down to a better ride height.

Thanks, I can't take any credit for the painting though!