roundhouse

I have found that even powerful magnets will come loose these days with the state of the roads if you find a pothole. Had a 4mm Modelu figure which are very light, fitted with a neodymium magnet, come off the layout and lose a foot. Luckily I had a few spare feet where I had carved off a leg to fit a figure around a speaker. A clip or even a few small screws blended the same colour with the roof is probably best.

Another good day yesterday although did have a dry joint in the fiddleyard but that was a very easy fix. At first we thought that the locos required a clean as they only stopped whilst over a rail joint in one direction until it got worse and power went to the turnouts and track beyond the rail joint. Last September I had to replace a turnout and had to cut the fishplates then solder across the joint with a piece of wire as a stiffener but it had worked loose . The board is now in the shed ready to be worked on to avoid that happening again. The now scratchbuilt wagon ran fine during the weekend after freeing up the axle bearings after the Tonbridge show and all locos ran fine over the weekend apart from an occasional derailwment with the locos that still have the factory fitted pony wheels. I will be replacning them with the Tramfabreik ones when they are back in stock as once these have been filed down in width they perform superbly well and I dont think we had a single derailment with them except when turnouts hadnt been set correctly. It will be 7 months before the layouts next outing which will be Taunton, so plenty of time to build the remianing coaches to complete the fleet. Plus I must now get on a write the article for one of the magazines. A few more photos from the weekend. The scratchbuilt oddball wagon that the L & B had plus the SR cointianer on the flat car. In the last hour on a SUnday we tend to relax the running rules so its a good chance to run the back up locos.

Paul Looking very good. Interesting design for the fiddleyard having walls on three sides.

Yesterday the layout worked well with very few issues. All locos performed well including LEW which used to jam up going forward and occasionally going in reverse. After adding a shim of paper around the rear axle bearing, it didnt jam once during the show and I even managed to shunt with it. Despite being the same weekend as Ally Pally it was very busy all morning and still relatively busy a good part of the afternoon. A general view of the layout as the show opened. LEW preforming well arriving from Lynton As there were quite a few young familes watching we did run BRITOMART together with my other halfs two special wagons.

At least you had what looks like a comfortable carpet to kneel on. An excellent start and if only Melbourne ( our last visit was back in 1998) was a lot closer to us I would love to have visited the exhibition. I am considering making my section of the old Bourne Valley 009 system ready for exhibitions as a stand alone layout but hope that one day we can get all of the Bourne Valley modules together and set up again. I think that this was the last show it went to back in 2010 and believe that it was along the West Sussex coast.

I have heard of that bar. We will be in Kendal early next year but will be with a layout at the show so not much time to get to WIndermere.

Its being blowing near Hooley (just up the road from us) today🙂. In between rain showers I managed to replace the headlight bulb in our layout shifter ready for the trip to East Grinstead in the morning. Layout was loaded in another pause in the rain. Some mudelling commissions carried out this week for three different Alans. one collected this morning, another will collect tomorrow and the third Alan will have to wait till some parts arrive. My other half is happy as the new Sky Streaming box arrived lunchtime and she can now get back to watching her favourite programmes.

Not the best grammar in my post. Mind you we do have some that have more than one sound decoder but then thats a multiple unit type of thing by Rapido.

Just a quick update. The layout now has three shows this year, he first one being in Stow On The Wold in May. Its a small show on a Sunday but in the past all the layouts have been very good and the venue is the town hall slap bang in the middle of the town. The layout will also be at Stafford in September and then Tolworth in November. A the last Warley show I picked up another Tilmanstone wagon off he Oxford Models stand. This one has been heavily weathered with bits of timber inside. This wagon will be fixed on the old direct line section that was at one time used to sore and break up rolling stock. I may fit more sound decoders into some of the locos before May.

Yes the signals were connected back to the dispatcher with a three screen panel. They could see any trains occupying blocks and also set up routes. Outlying modules dint have signals and that included mine. I didnt recall what the block section lengths were so may ask them if that was a set parameter.

Early this morning I serviced the two Farish XC Voyagers that started playing up during the show. One ran fine but often would not stiwhen the throttle was put to zero. Tried on two different systems today and it responded fine, so nothing to fix. The other one just stopped running at the show and did the same this morning. Took it apart, sprayed electrical switch cleaner in to the motor, left it to dry and now it work. Would rather get a new motor but Mon showing on the usual websites, so hopefully it will be be OK at the next show which is next year at present.

I had three pints of Harveys Old on handpump in one of our local pubs this evening. its great that they have it back on all the time that it is available

Good morning. It was raining when I went up to the shed before 5 am and still raining. Forecast most of the day which may well affect out planned walk to the pub at 4pm via Halfords as the layout shifter requires a new main beam headlight bulb. Not as severe as one of our long time layout crew who has to get his car (a taxi) a new headlight unit and bumper after his third too close encounter with a deer in the last few years. Can't really say its his driving technique as the previous encounter he was stopped in a queue of traffic when a deer ran into his drivers door leaving a ghostly outline on his window.

I have used both the Tam Valley and Gaugemaster ones with sound locos in OO, HO ,009 and N scales with no issues except for the Gaugemaster ones with 009 locos where the locos would stall on the frogs, so were replaced with Tam Valley ones. Oddly the Gaugemaster ones have worked fine with both UK and American N scale.

The Freemo weekend wnet very well. Its thefirst time that working signalling has been used extensively at this meet. Whilst Fort Myers doesnt have any working signals, the adjacent junction module did. Along with working phone handsets positioned arond the whole set up this made communicating with the dispatcher much easier. There were issues with a good part of the signalling on the Saturday, virtually all of them were working on Sunday. Here are a few photos of the signals on various modules.

Blackmoor is out at the East Grinstead show this coming weekend. Not a lot to do to the layout but might do a touch more on the foliage. In the meantime here is another superb video taken on the line before it closed.

Saw this in a bar in Brighton a couple of years ago -not been back since😁

More clutter has been added around the caravan / mobile office including a surfboard. I had one spare so seemed a good place to put one. A few small repairs also carried out to the platform canopy and lights that are mounted on poles. A few of the lights had gone missing over the years. Will see how long these ones last. The yard office roof has also been weathered using weathering powders. I must try and source some USA style police officers to go next to the police cruisers.

I was tempted to buy some cakes to celebrate 30 years of Fort Myers but i am concerned that our number one operator Mike will eat them all, but at least we wouldn't have to save any for you🙂

I am currently working carrying out a few repairs and detail upgrades to the layout in time for this weekends Freemo meet in Surrey. The caboose is ready. As to whether it gets to go anywhere on the set up is yet to be determined but it will be in a siding on Fort Myers just incase.

At the show we did late last year we heard a few viewers comment that the layout doesn't look anything like Banbury station. I guess that it has changed a lot since it was modelled in 2011 especially with the multi story carpark and the resignalling etc. So I decided to add an information board to the front to explain what has changed and why.

I didnt get chance to watch the layout but each time that I walked past the glass partition along the corridor the lighting did look superb.

A few more photos from the Abingdon show. We had a whole classroom to ourselves so we thought that it would not be all that busy. I commented that we could have plenty of oprating space as the viewing area would be enough if it would unlikely be three deep. It was three or four deep most of the day inlcuding at times on the Sunday. The layout performed superbly well with only two or three locos giving any issues, so mainly us operators making errors. A thoroughly enjoyable weekend. We did get one potential invite but we are already attending that show htis year with a different layout but does mean that we will probably have at least a couple of shows next year. The one loco that had pick up issues is one that I checked before the show but didnt think it required cleaning as it worked on the test track and its harldy run since it was purchased. Its now been cleaned and checked over. We have a couple of Farish Voyagers that worked but not as well as they should so I think that they require new motors as they have been used a lot on the layout. The first photo shows the KUA nuclear container wagons by revolution with recently remotored class 47 'Rail Express' at the head end. The first time that it has been in action on the layout for some years. Once the show cloesd on Sunday we had a bus repalcemtn service notice 🙂

Pah, thats nothing, we 'did the world' in 16 days🙂 Admittedly 11 of them were in NZ arriving in LA before we departed Auckland. Apart from one night in Bangkok we have visited the other stop off points before or since then for longer.

Most companies that I worked for were fairly flexible with annual leave. Generally you couldnt take more than two weeks but odd extra days either side were often OK. The downside is that no one looked after your work whilst away even if they were told to, so things would be chaotic on getting back and could be very stressfull. Saturday mornings drive to Abingdon was like being on a boat as the M25 was so wet. Luckily the sun was out when we arrivedin Abingdon to unload. A great time had both during the show and Saturday apres show pubs. The North Star in Steventon is a fantastic old world grade II listed pub. We had our own serving hatch above our corner seats for the ale served on gravity rather than handpumps and the roaring fireplace in the other room kept us very warm aswell. There was even a home signal outside the pub despite not being next to the GWR mainline but trians could be heared in the distance when outside. Drive home last night was also in good weather with no queuing on the M25 around the M3 junction. There was queueing around the roadworks at the A3 instead. Just the boards to unlaod this morning once the heavy frost as gone.