MattR

All my BR renumbers (steam & diesel) have been through Railtec custom numbers. Top quality as always. Which reminds me that I need to make an order ...

True, but as close as I can get to the real thing here in the U.S.. Just like riding the Hogwarts Express cable-powered replica at Universal Studios back in February was as close as I'll get to seeing a real Hall Class, or even any British locomotive at all!

The Wildlife Express Train's locomotive at Animal Kingdom is based on a L&YR Class 5!

Rust and coral growth after being dredged out of the English Channel?

Agree. Anyone mispronouncing Reading, PA as "Reeding" must really really be "not from around here". I live in Tennessee, but my family is from Philadelphia ... the ones who didn't immigrate straight to the city from the old country originally came down from Northeast Pennsylvania.

Track and most scenic items removed in preparation for imminent disassembly. In other news, I’ve decided to make this a double-track line after all, with the second oval being Peco 2nd radius.

Fantastic shot! I'm always trying to find photos of traffic from the Rawtenstall coal concentration depot. I thought I had seen most Flickr had but I had not seen this one!

Dollar General Market with a Clayton Homes next door? This photo's gotta be in Tennessee. Reminds me of Asheville Highway here in Knox County.

Have fun! My wife and girls are headed there in a few weeks (four days of uninterrupted railway modelling at home for me!)

This really is a fantastic little layout! I especially love the footprints in the snow on the platform.

Excellent! Where in the U.S. will you be visiting?

The revised version of the layout won't exactly be 4x4 -- more like 4 feet 1 inch (124.5 cm) x 3 feet, 9 inches (114 cm). I'm planning on using Peco set track third radius curves and straights to form an single-track oval. I'm going to do a scenic break as well, with the backscene covering the rear 1/3 of the layout. As for the exact landscape, I've taken inspiration from the so-called Wanderers Curve on the Mid-Hants Railway, just before Ropley Station. I really like the high railway embankment and the open rolling fields. I think this will work well for my pregrouping stuff (mostly), since it's small in scale: - LSWR M7 in Drummond livery - LSWR M7 in Urie livery - SECR C Class in lined Wainwright green - SECR P Class in lined Wainwright green (on preorder) - LBSCR E4 in Marsh umber - LBSCR H1 in Marsh umber (this one will probably look silly on a single-track line with five Pullman coaches, but I did mention possible non-prototypical running) - LBSCR A1 Terrier in IEG Plus assorted coaches and regionally appropriate goods wagons.

The Peco station buildings/platform/benches/signs/lights/accesories don't look too bad, but all of this will go, as will the church, to the new Christmas tree layout my daughters do every year.

The layout as it appears now. Somewhat crude, half finished and featuring lots of oddities from its early stages. The dead-end lake with the bridge is very un-English. The low water levels and red clay banks are what lakes look like here in east Tennessee when there's a drought. There's lots of spruce or fir trees. Are those common in southern England at all? The wallpaper "backscene" is supposed to represent Montana or something here in the U.S. The castle ruins in the right corner was supposed to be something like Corfe Castle. The huge manual switch machine on the Atlas point is an eyesore. The signal box is partly crimson and partly green. There's a ladder and table with bucket of paint was supposed to have a painter figure who was repainting the box from LBSCR colors to SR colors. There are some trial attempts from when I first got my static grass applicator, with random patches of static grass over the grass mat. I do like the barn though -- I may keep that.

WARNING: This topic may contain controversial subjects like small spaces, roundy-roundys, set track AKA "track for toy trains", 0 potential for "operation" and slightly possibly non-prototypical running. Leave now before it's too late! Story time! All my model railway attention for the last two years has been centered around my main layout Dreams of Summerseat (8x4), however it was not always my main layout. When I first got back into model trains several years ago, my first layout was a 3x3 piece of MDF laid on the floor under the Christmas tree with non-secured ancient brass Tyco track. Once I got into British outline and Christmas passed, the layout was extended with more pieces of MDF to a 4x4 and set on some milk crates to raise it off the floor. Later, 2 inches of pink insulation foam was laid over the MDF, grass mat on top with cork track bed (which makes it incredibly quiet) and nickel silver Atlas HO track that included a point leading to a short siding with a station. Edge boards containing a very short backscene were added (I didn't know what backscenes were then, so mine was actually a fishing-related wallpaper border). All very rudimentary stuff. Eventually I really got into everything Southern Railway-related and settled on a firm period theme of 1923-1930 for the layout. Locomotives and stock followed and I later got into the SR pre-grouping constituents. I loved this little layout, but wanted to do something bigger too, which was the genesis for Dreams of Summerseat. This original one has been collecting dust and hardly gets run and when it does, it's usually the pregrouping stuff. So I've made the decision to sell off my SR stock and concentrate on pregrouping only. And since I have station and goods sheds covered with Summerseat and operation covered with my shunting layout, I'm going to completely tear down this layout and rebuild it to represent just open landscape with a single track running through -- no railway buildings, no points. Then I can run my pregrouping stuff and there won't be anything to tie it to post-grouping times. So starting now, everything will be removed/ripped out and I'm going to start over. I'm not sure if I'm going to reuse the MDF base, but the foam will definitely be reused.

Hmmm ... the cart on the mobile version of the site works fine, but the desktop version is still unavailable.

When I go to the website, the cart icon is greyed out and the cursor has a red circle with a line through when I hover over it. I also can't add anything to the cart. Anyone else having this issue?

Has your boiler pitch been raised or are you just happy to see me?

I'm from America and I wore a red shirt to work along with my Adidas England track jacket (the 2006 World Cup one designed to look like the English flag)!

"Motor cleaned" as in sprayed on the worm gear to remove gunked up old oil and grease.

Thanks! I’m pleased with how it printed up.

Timeline (Note: this is all analog — I don’t do DCC) - Bought from Hatton’s in May 2003, described as “noisy, inconsistent runner”. - When arrived, motor was cleaned with WD40 Contact Cleaner and relubed with Labelle 108 oil and Woodland Scenics Hob-E-Lube. - Ran quietly and consistently until autumn 2023 when the symptoms started and persisted every single time I ran it. It has only ever run on my main layout until yesterday. - Put it on my shunting layout yesterday and it started right up — no issues. Placed it back on my main layout it ran excellent there as well. - It was left on my main layout overnight and when I started it up this morning, it ran flawlessly again.

Very strange — I just rewired my small shunting layout and plopped the Jinty on just to see if I had power, and it started right up with none of the issues seen in the video. This is the first time it’s run normally from the start since October. I put it on my main layout and it ran fine there as well, merrily hauling a seven-coach rake at 35% power on my controller. It seems for the moment that the issue has resolved itself.

Speaking of Edward I, here's a tangent. The subdivision (housing estate in the UK, I think) I live in here in Tennessee used to be a dairy farm owned by a guy named Edwards who sold the land around 2005 to housing developers who decided to call the planned subdivision "Edward's Place". The main streets through the subdivision are Edward's Place Boulevard, King Edward's Court, Longshanks Road and Lawgiver Circle. When they started building the street that our house now sits on, I was praying they weren't going to name it Hammer of the Scots Drive. It ended up being named after a tree and that put an end to the Edward I-related names in here.

Signal box sides have all now been glazed. Not fun, and they look like crud close up, but from normal viewing distance, they're ok. Meanwhile, I've worked up the 3D design for the Brooksbottoms tunnel portal.