roythebus

A few points raised (and destroyed) in this post; from my rather ancient signed route knowledge of the Met Line when I was a guard at Rickmansworth in 1973 and a few years before that at Parsons Green and a as BR driver post 1974. The LT train stop/trip cock won't prevent any train from passing a signal at danger. What it will do is make an emergency brake application by opening a valve on the train brake pipe (on older stock) or break the brake continuity wire on later stock. Once a driver has "hit a stick" (to use LT terminology) or a SPAD to use modern terminology, he has to follow the following procedure (apply the rule in old terminology): if it is an automatic signal (signal plate will show the prefix A) the driver can reset the trip cock and continue at caution after waiting 2 minutes until he has passed 2 signals displaying a clear aspect. If it is a controlled signal (with a box code on the signal plate) he must contact the signalman before proceeding. A signal plate displaying the letter X is the last automatic signal before a controlled area and must be treated as a controlled signal. The Met has a mixture of traditional LT two aspect signals and BR style 3 or 4 aspect signals from Harrow on the Hill to Amersham. It doesn't have AWS or tWPS due to the presence of the centre 4th rail. Signalling on that line was set for the days of unfitted goods trains which shared the fast and slow lines when the line was quadrupled in the early 1960s. The local lines south of Moor Park had disc style distant signals, but these were all removed many years ago. From information gleaned from a train drivers' Facebook group the Chiltern driver is an experienced driver with many years service. The same group reports that it is fairly common for Chiltern trains to be tripped on debris on the Met for some reason. It also reports the driver "hit the stick"/SPAD, reset the trip cock and continued. Whether or not he contacted the signalman is not mentioned. In continuing, the train ran through the trailing points for the Chesham branch as the road was set for the northbound Met train which was stationary in the northbound platform with the signal there displaying a proceed aspect for the Chesham branch. That signal returned to danger as soon as a the Chiltern train occupied the track section ahead of the signal. The layout at Chalfont is a facing crossover between northbound and southbound lines with a trailing point on the southbound line which leads to the Chesham branch. No switched diamonds involved, all plain points. So, enough of the speculation, we'll have to find out from the RAIB what actually happened and why.

I spoke to Brian's daughter a few years ago when Alec Swain former MRC chairman, BR footplate inspector and 1A shedmaster passed away. He was her god-father. Alec was one of the founder of one of the Merchant Navy groups, Clan line I think and was also a well-known railway photographer. Using his position as shedmaster at 1A meant he was able to get many "rare" shots.

High Street Kensington. A terminus of the District Line from Earls Court, the through station the Circle Line from Gloucester Road to Notting Hill Gate, a double double junction. th goods yard (the Midland Railway coal depot kicked back up an incline from the District Line platform then kicked back again so the sidings were parallel to the District but on a much higher level. I often wondered how goods trains entered the coal depot and the wonderful NLS Maps provided the answer. Goods traffic stopped in about 1964 and was steam-hauled usually by a Jinty until the end. The coal yard site is now a couple of hotels.

Any know how to remove the wheels? I pushed mine out a bitt too far on checking the back-to-backs and can't now press then in a bit without removing the wheel sets! How does the original Tri-ang Hymek compare to the Heljan model?

One of mine must have been an original Lilliput model as it has different wheels. As I may have mentioned earlier, the late Adrian Swain of ABS Models made the patterns for the bogie sideframes for this model. The fleet we used on New Annington had working pantographs, but not for current collection.

My track is gued to a fairly soild but fexible foam lino type underlay, I had loads left over from a bus restoration job! I used a copydex type commercial adhesive to stick the track dow. I can be lifted by soaking the area with soapy water. the glue is rubber -based.

His daughter or family may well own the copyright.

Having just seen Hayfield's latest reply come to think of it I've had some problems with the thin sleepers curling up, but not on track that has been firmly glued down. If I were starting again I'd use thicker sleepers.

An interesting discussion and quite contentious in a lot of ways! Over the years I've built several layout, including the Model Railway Club's "New Annington", a large exhibition layout in OO gauge. That used copper clad track with Kings Cross bullhead rail. I used Kings Cross templates for the points and a lot of hand-drawn bits using the Kings Cross templates as a basis. That was built to BRMSB standards and worked remarkably well and looked good. The track worked well with a variety of wheels. What mattered was the finished appearance. Since then I've built a German layout using Peco code 75, indeed it was probably the first layout on the exhibition circuit to use the then new code 75 track, and it certainly had the first code 75 double slip! That too worked well and looked good. The latest project which has been ongoing for about 15 years has been a large layout. I originally built it using a mixture of Peco code 75 and Tillig to give a mixture of pointwork geometry but it didn't look right, so the whole lot was lifted and rebuilt using Templot planning and C&L components. I had a lot of "scale" bullhead track from a previous home project. I made the mistake of using the fine-scale OO (DOOGAF I think it was called) on pointwork which meant pushing all the wheel out to 14.8 back to back. That never worked well, so it was all converted to 16.2mm through the points, with a lot being rebuilt. that seems to work very well. I've had plastic based thin sleeper track laid for over 10 years and that has lasted well as have the original points. There's been a couple of bits that have lifted, but nothing serious. Later pointwork including single and double slips have been a bit of a mixture with copper clad at strategic places and the rest plastic based. I would assume your layout will be a small BLT with maybe 6 points? Nothing too much to worry about. If you're not sure, there's a couple of people on here who can offer a professional track building service for you. I don't know what your budget is, but if you want good looking and reliable pointwork with only 6 to make, it may well be worth your while contacting one of these. I believe Hayfield is one of those. I've recently undertaken building the OO track for the Folkestone club's "Alkham Valley" layout. That was originally EM but the builder passed away and nobody in the club had any EM stock to run on it! As others have said, there's very little straight track on the real railway. On the MRC layout the only straights were in the loco shed and the hidden loops. On my own home layout again the loco shed roads are straight. On Alkham Valley the goods shed road is straight!

Yes, it looks good. Well done.

We had a visit to the Lux tram museum on the same day they had an open day at the new tram depot. The new tram was giving rides round the depot, yes, there's a circular track round the depot complex! The first hing I noticed in the tram museum was an AEC Regal IV bus from 1959, same chassis as used on the famous London RF buses of 1952. The Lux version had the bigger 11 litre engine and electrically operated gearbox as fitted to the Routemaster bus! they had quite a fleet of AECs and Guy buses. There's also pictures on the wall of the London RT buses that visited Lux in 1952 promoting visit Britain. All worth a visit next time anyone visits Luxembourg. I think our visit was September 2018, just before the new trams started running. There was an article in an early 1960s Railway Modeller about "modelling in prespective". It might be worth looking out for that edition.

The bridge mentioned in my post was demolished over the previous weekend as part of the clearance for OHLE. There was my mate saying "they don't move bridges".... the late Ron Birch.

Wasn't the shell of the Wood Lane generating station used as part of the bus station? I remember driving rail replacement buses through there a few years ago.

Just wondering if anyone has tried to plan Minories on templot? someone mentioned Anyrail in an earlier post.

when I ran GS Models in the 1970s doing cast metal bus kits, people were always asking "why don't you make a model of xxxx". Well, in a couple of cases I did and they flopped. The best selling kit I produced was the RF bus, sold over 1500 from what I remember. Patterns for bus kits in those days were about £300 a set, the first one in 1969 cost £35 as a favour from someone. As I said in an earlier post the moulds for the VGA kit in plastic were more than 10 times that price. I dread to think of the production costs for a modern loco, I'd suggest somewhere around £350,000. That money has to be found from somewhere, either from shareholder funds, re-mortgaging your house, loans or crowd funding. While ll this development is going on the company is probably trading insolvently. I'd suggest most small companies do that most of the time. To get back that sort of outlay you need to sell quite a big quantity of the product to get the production costs back. Something like the APT is never going to recoup its production costs especially when it was promised in so many varieties. How many people would but a 14 car set, especially of something that only resides in a museum and had a brief career as a test train.

I've not been following the DJM thread or this one right from start to finish. Having been the managing director of a company that went into liquidation in 2003 I was surprised to find it had only been closed down and the liquidation finalised 2 years ago! People need to realise the difference between a limited company and an individual. the two are separate legal "persons". The fact that the actual human person is the same human person who is in charge of the paper person (the limited company) is not realised by many. Remember companies can be a one-man-band like DJM Ltd or ICI plc. If the pitchfork mentality was exercised by the general public then no potential entrepreneur would risk anything. Every business is a gamble, some make it, some don't. It may be that Dave put a lot of his own money into developing his business, but it seems he relied on varies funding agencies and they like their repayments paid on the dot. I'd suggest more businesses close down due to lack of forward planning as anything else. The liquidators take their pound of flesh as they are legally required to do. They can only work with what is readily available to them. If documents have "disappeared" then unless they are digitised somewhere then there is little chance of retrieving them. I'd suggest the moral of this is is if any more crowd funded projects are advertised, then do some background research as the stationmaster has done; pay by credit card. That way you'll have some recourse fr a refund if things go wrong. Producing moulds and tooling for model railways is not a cheap business. Many years ago I done the kit for the VGA wagon, that cost me well over £4000 in 1982. I owned the moulds which were made for my and I still have the invoice for them. I haven't seen the moulds since th maker was taken over by someone else.

Having tried to build several CJF layouts over the years, very few of them are actually buildable and workable. Minories works, I done that in about 1968; the big terminus was built by a schoolfriend at about the same time, but curved through 90degrees. That just about worked. His layout with loads of loops and a central terminus I tried to build about 15 years ago. That didn't work because the radii were far too sharp and the pointwork didn't fit, no matter how i tried. the gradients were horrendous as well. The concept was goo, but not in such a small space. One of his 6x4 starter plans was built in the early 1960 and just about worked. Cyril admitted himself that a lot of his plans were unbuildable or unworkable. I suspect they were designed to maximise Peco's profits by including as many points in as small a space as possible.

Or the station announcer at Earls Court who used to shout "this train f'Kew and Richmond.

Sad to hear that Adrian Swain has died. He cast most of my range of GS Models bus kits from late 1969 through to the early 1980's when he bought the patterns and rights from me. I couldn't get the hang of his coach kits, very finely detailed but nothing on earth could stick the printed sides to the plastic body shell. i gave up with them in the end. Most ended up in the bin, but I still have quite a few cast bits around and a couple of complete built kits.

The report says that the On-Train computer showed a drop in train pipe pressure at about the time the crew said they had done a brake continuity test. My first thoughts when i heard of this incident was that something had been thrown up from the track and isolated the cocks or an inexperienced agency shunter had cocked up. The reason for my thinking on debris hitting the isolating cock was because I was the 2ndman on the loco that had the incident at Darlington in the mid 1970s. My driver and I had prepped the loco at KX and put it on the train. We were dug out of our "liquid lunch" break at the BRSA for a quick interview.

No ground signal needed for the engine shed. Once off the main running line and loop everything would be under shunter's instructions. There would be a ground signal at the exit from the goods yard. From left to right, a bracket signal to control movements to te platform (higher arm) lower arm for the loop, subsidiary to enter the goods yard.Sterter signals from the platform and loop. Other side of the level crossing would be another 2 arm bracket for the main line or loop. In the loop before the exit crossover a starter signal for the main line and a subsidiary signal for the headshunt. And the subsidiary signal for the exit from goods yard to loop. As for signal box position, would the bobby have control of the crossing gates? If so the box would be there, not by the main group of points. There's also the consideration of access for the booby to trains to do the token exchange. I've probably forgotten something as well.

A question has cropped up on the Templot forum about the Baeseler double slip that Roco and Tillig make. Has anyone hand-built one, are any plans avaialble to make one in HO? These slips seem to be used quite a bit on the continent but not in the UK. I'd like to try making one just for the fun of it! It's the sort of slip where the 2 slip roads don't actually cross each other, they share a common centre rail.

The place where Meccano was invented is in Calais, we went past it 8 times a day doing Routemaster sightseeing tours of Calais in 2018.

I can't remember my Lost Boy number!

For those who don't know, the Lost Boys is a private Facebook group of the drivers and secondmen on BR from 1968 to 1988. Pre-1968 drivers and firemen can join as honorary Lost Boys. The group has regular social gatherings around the country and lots of banter and memories about the good old days. The Lost Boys 47 is now carrying "thank you NHS" vinyls to show our support for the staff who work for the NHS during these trying times. Not my photos, I ought to acknowledge them.