Gruffalo

Hail Mary was not something I was saying at the time, it wasn't me who was sinning!

Re hotels - only a couple of years ago, I booked into a Premier in northern Kent using my smartphone's on-line facility. About 2 hours later I arrived at said hotel and they didn't have my reservation, even though I had my electronic confirmation. No problem I thought and they duly gave me a keycard. I went up to my room, washed and changed, went town to the restaurant and had a meal, An hour or so later, I went back to my room, did a little more work then turned in around 11pm and, although it wasn't the quietest of locations, it wasn't long before I was asleep. At 00:30, I awoke with a start and switched on the light to find a very merry couple about to start ripping off each others' clothes - I'm not sure which of us was more embarrassed or startled! I duly got a full refund for my night's room.

That deserves an agree vote and a supportive vote Don, can't do both so just a line!

For goodness sake, don't tell the Finching sisters or heaven knows in what state they may next appear!

For me, the enclosed spaces of a water drum or steam drum in a boiler plus squeezing in and out of the burner hole in addition to Neil's list ensured I needed to keep a touch more sylph-like than I am today. I would happily go back for another trip as an engineer to see how things have progressed but the thought of being on a cruise where I have no purpose being on board just doesn't appeal. As for mal-de-mare, I joined my first ship in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, USA (near Trisonic's stomping ground?) and, although the old passenger and car ferries of the Isle of Wight had never bothered me, I was nervous in case I exhibited the normal signs "on a real ship". As soon as the mooring lines were slipped, I felt awful and the ship was still about 15 miles from open water! This was the only time I felt bad in my seagoing career and I subsequently did Biscay in Force 10, the Caribbean in a full hurricane, a storm round the Cape fo Good (or any) Hope and the Pacific in a typhoon on ships from 600 Tonnes to 350,000 Tonnes without issue.

The track plan is probably more Kingswear than Penzance but is really neither although the name clearly references both. I have a love of Devon & Cornwall in preference to South and West Wales so didn't research anything involving the Severn Tunnel in its connection to Headquarters. I did originally intend a river under the station approach (Kingswear has this and Penzance has one a little further up the line) but I have to start the gradient where the up and down main tracks on the plan displayed in the previous post end. I want to have a tunnel mouth soon after that so the two would conflict. Breaking the view of the layout seems important as it gives a sense of coming and going. I have already created Box Tunnel's west portal (the Box end) as a OO scale line drawing in AutoCAD to print on A3 so I can have the wrap-around effect of the sides. The basic portal won't fit on an A4 sheet, relics of the broad gauge obviously! Twerton's west portal will get the same treatment for the other tunnel mouth and I will make both available as pdf's once completed. I greatly admire those who have the skills, time and patience to construct their own track but I'm afraid I have to set targets that are achievable for me, given that I have a spouse who demands quite a bit of time and some grandchildren who need regular sitters and support, other life gets in the way of modelling all too frequently. The shabby pile that is Gruff Towers will be too much for us at some stage in the not too distant and life in a single storey building will beckon too so the plan incorporates the option to be dismantled and moved as and when necessary. Since I am not hand-building the track or turnouts, a significant investment was made in Peco's Code 75 Electrofrog turnouts from Northampton's Model Shop and a cutting list sent to my friendly nearby timber merchant J K Timber & Packaging who conveniently delivered everything to my door. Although I printed the whole layout track plan at full size, when I laid them out on the baseboard decks I found a notable difference between the plot and the physical devices. As I have several turnouts in series the errors are compounded. Surely I had made a mistake? No, checking and re-checking showed that there is a discrepancy between the Peco Code 75 components in AnyRail and the real thing! Rather than go back to the drawing board, I drew the track centre-lines on the right corner and its adjoining baseboard decks and after assessing the deviations, I decided that the best solution was to slightly tighten the radii of the main up and down lines on one side and expect that the platforms may be slightly reduced at the other end. That may result in 6 rather than 7 coach train formations but I will have to accept that, after all these stations would always have had 8 coaches or more arriving so yet another compromise. I am using Tortoise turnout motors to set routes so a clearance of 50mm radius from each turnout tie-bar centre has to be provided from any baseboard edge framing or cross-board support brace and this defines where the baseboard bracing bars can be mounted. The previous paragraph's issues have caused something of a delay whilst I adjusted everything. The route forward would seem to be that I construct the first two baseboards before doing the next adjacent boards with adjustments being made along the way. Thank goodness I didn't outsource building the baseboards according to my AnyRail track plot! Now, provided SWMBO doesn't provide a new list of tasks for me tomorrow and it isn't so cold I can't work outside, baseboard construction can begin properly with the two key boards. Hey ho, a new dawn brings a new day!

Offering sympathy now is wasted and I know that event would certainly be nothing to smile about. I used to visit Aruba but more frequently Curacao (a Shell refinery island) - where the harbour stank of crude and always had an oily sheen, almost the same as Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela where we used to go to load asphalt / bitumen for the eastern US seaboard ports. The largest ship I ever entered those port on was 33,000 DWT. Bl**dy sundeck department, always causing trouble for us. PS - The Ratty was on a Tony Robinson Walking History ITV3 prog yesterday evening.

Stating the blindingly obvious as it is a chance for transferring a rhetorical question from the pointless thread Andy, the last magazine in which you look will always have what you seek! Us old farts do have our uses when parents want some "me" time. The islands of the Caribbean are fascinating in their own right and there is a long dormant volcanic centre to the area. There are some lovely tourist spots and some very rough other places, fabulous wealth and abject poverty. Islands closer to Florida include that semi-US state of Puerto Rico, The Caymans, The Bahamas and Cuba. I spent many a sea trip passing between many of those and the further away ones such as Windwards, Leewards, Haiti / DOminican Republic on route to various oil ports to load or discharge in the late 60's and the 70's.

Thanks for your comments Don. The time period in which the layout is set is 20 years before BR came into existence and I seem to recall that many of the bridges would have needed some work for the axle loadings Kings brought. That was an issue for Collett that Sir Felix Pole sorted at their introduction I believe. My 28xx is an old K's kit and will need a new chassis so that is one for much later. Panniers were somewhat ubiquitous so there could well be more. I'm not sure whether to remodel a Bachmann or two to set them back to a Churchward build and a Dean Goods is also a possibility although I have one (and may get another) Churchward Mogul which would be I think quite suitable. I am seriously trying to hold back on stock purchases as I have a lot already that needs bringing to finer scale standards and converting to DCC (to be explained in the next post). The track plan is probably more Kingswear than Penzance but is really neither however I do have a love of Devon & Cornwall. I did intend a river under the station approach (Kingswear) but I have to start the gradient where the plan above ends. I want to have a tunnel mouth soon after that so the two would conflict and breaking the view of the layout seems important to give a sense of coming and going to my mind. I have created Box Tunnel's west portal (the Box end) as a scale line drawing in AutoCAD and will print this on A3 so I can have the wrap-around effect of the sides. Twerton's west portal will get the same treatment for the other tunnel mouth. I will make both available as pdf's once complete. The tortoises are a major outlay and I don't have them all yet. I am tempted to order them from the US as the cost is so much less and it seems I could save 20% even with exchange rates, customs duty and shipping. If I buy in the UK, it seems Coastal DCC is the most competitively priced. As a GOS denison who arrived in the first half of the last century, I am aware that I have a finite time left to do this project and so I have chosen to use Peco Code 75 rather than the hand-crafted route. I greatly admire those who have the skills, time and patience to do their own but I'm afraid I have to set targets that are achievable for me, given that I have a spouse who demands quite a bit of time and some grandchildren who need regular sitters and support and I do need to exercise regularly for a heart problem. The shabby pile that is Gruff Towers will be too much for us at some stage in the not too distant and life in a single storey building will beckon too so the plan incorporates the option to be dismantled and moved when necessary.

Knowing well the area you describe but only since mid 80's, I was unaware of the Crick / Kilsby station. Is that where the present DIRFT rail link into the western Tesco sheds is located? Not far away from me is a goods shed at Watford which has been neglected for at least 30 years, perhaps that should be recorded for posterity too?

A hard frost here overnight with clear skies earlier although light cloud is now drifting in from the SW as the breeze quickens. Yesterday I laid out the two key baseboards of my last great project (until the next one, that is) and measured out the positions of all the turnout switch tie bars so I could see where the sub-deck bracing could be located according to the AnyRail computer generated design. Luckily, I also had most of the necessary turnouts and found the real thing doesn't match the computer image. It sadly seems that I may lose a little platform length. As for dieting, two wheatibangs at breakfast, a small portion of cheese and a few biscuits at lunch and Gruff's own take on Nasi Goreng, the Indonesian rice dish with one glass of wine should be less intake than I expend so why is the weight stuck at the same poundage for the past few years? Today I shall mainly be slow roasting part of a shoulder of local pig, I would be happy with steamed vegetables (red cabbage, potatoes and leeks) but the natives would get restless if there are no roast potatoes and Madam Gruff also failed to resist an offer in Waitrose of a lemming sponge for pud.

The decision on the layout's historical placement had to allow me to justify some of the locos I really wanted, some of which are already owned and painted in post-27 GWR green.. I wanted to be able to run Churchward's Stars (x1) and Saints (x2) and perhaps a heavy freight 28xx together with Collett's Castles (x2) and Halls (original, x2). At a more local level, some prairies, a Collett 2251 or two and at least one pannier. That pretty well set the period as somewhere around 1929 - 1932. I feel that the route restrictions applying to Kings, and the fact that they were only designated for the very best of express turns at that time, dictates against including one of these. My next conundrum was that of geographical location. I was tempted by Kingswear - where at least I could run the odd Castle - or that simple but effective station that is often modelled: Penzance. In either case, I was looking for a design that would allow a tender loco and six or seven 57' top-lights. With one shed wall of 3.4m, it seemed a shame not to use the length to best effect. So with those two options I knew I needed four platforms and at least one at 1900mm length. So now I had passenger traffic, what else would I need? Well, tender locos would need turning and I had followed a thread in which another RMWebber (Dah)) built an SE Finecast turntable so I bought one of those. In addition to passengers, I settled on livestock (to match the rolling fields surrounding the approaches to the station) with a cattle dock alongside the station, coal (because practically every mid-sized or larger station had some form of coal handling) and a brewery (only to justify a private siding and a Metcalfe's kit). The next issue was to try and avoid tight curves that would easily reduce the overall effect. At this point, a draft layout was posted on RMWeb and some really great help came from Jon_1066 to arrive at a potentially working arrangement with curved turnouts. It is surprising how tight things become even with a shed of these dimensions and I really didn't want a roundy-roundy - it had to be a terminus and trains had to arrive and depart for a destination. So now there was a plan. It involved 26 turnouts, only one crossing and almost 50m of track. Once I costed that, I had to draw in a (very) sharp breath. Alongside this, I had decided that I would use stall type motors to drive the turnouts. Cobalt seemed to be the route but then I had a chat to a supplier of these at one of the shows and was guided towards the Tortoise device. As these are a reasonable amount less than Cobalts, that suited my budget even though they are perhaps a little more bulky. As I already have a number of Peco, SEEP and old H&M solenoid type points motors (although some may be duff), and having seen some excellent layout videos with operating signals, I want to incorporate these. So, if working signals are to be included, they had to be correctly located and of the right type. Additionally, this would decide the size of the signal box. So, I know precious little about signaling but, with the resources of RMWeb, "I know a man who does" and the plan was sent to the oracle that is The Stationmaster. Several suggestions from him resulted in further track changes and one more turnout to achieve a really workable layout. Gradients are incorporated because the departing trains ultimately have to return and some measure of storage is necessary to "hold" trains so they don't just go straight forward and back but this does not need much description or even displaying - actually that is clearer since some of these loop under the main station boards. Suffice to say that he ruling gradient is 2%, another advantage of a spacious track plan. As yet, I don't know how well my locos will perform on that but I am optimistic that I can install enough weight over any drivers on the few r-t-r locos I have, the rest have white-metal bodies so have inherently more traction. Enough for now, planning the baseboards is the next step and that will expose more issues!

Good update Simon, keep it up. If you can do the signaling module without negatively impacting the main course, I am sure it will ultimately be beneficial. Take care!

"other modelling plans are bubbling under behind the scenes" could imply that you haven't finished last Christmas's brussel sprouts Andy! Assuming our little idea / plan comes to fruition in time, will there be enough space for Fffffffffffffr?

Early risers? No posts for an hour in the morning suggests either many still under the duvets or a truly boring day!

You're the one standing next to Andy York and I claim my £5!

Just windy and partly cloudy round Gruff Towers, don't send it this way please!

With what are you agreeing? Is it that I am a Grumpy Recalcitrant Unreconstructed Friendly Foolish And Lugubrious Oldster?

Just looking at the bend on the trailer under 805, I see where Hornby get their ideas for Stars from

The fact that the Nanny State has now seemingly got the majority of the population believing that the state is responsible for everything rather than the individual shows what a terrible STATE we have reached. Those of us who are free thinking and feel responsible for our own actions will be the first against the firing squad's wall come the revolution! Grumpy Recalcitrant Unreconstructed Friendly Foolish And Lugubrious Oldster

How right you are Mick. As one of several on this site who spent a number of years "man and boy, before the mast" I do mourn the passing of the British Merchant Navy and the fact that we seem to have Admirals' egos calling for aircraft carriers (very much suited to foreign military excursions) whilst we seem unable to maintain a proper naval defensive force. I believe we have a smaller navy now than we have had at any time since the 1700's. Still, I know we need to close naval shipbuilding at Portsmouth so we can concentrate it in a country whose government wants to become a foreign power. As Dell Boy used to say - "You know it makes sense".

Plating is generally the same thickness but that does present a problem where a relatively small diameter shaft needs to exit the engine room or shaft tunnel. In the big old boats (250,000 DWT or more) the single shaft had to cope with around 40,000 horsepower and was around 900mm in diameter so the stern tube inner diameter was that and the outer was around 1000mm, which was not too bad to form plates for. If you were talking multiple propellers, the shafts would be smaller and so more difficult to form plates for. The bigger the ship, the more water it draws so the more pressure the plates have to resist and on some of those I was on, we had a fully loaded draft of 90 feet! On one occasion following a minor catastrophe, we had to have a new alternator diesel put in the engine room so, while we were in dry dock, we had a hole cut at the same level as the engine bed in the side of the engine room and the old debris was removed and a new one entered through it. The plate was replaced and then welded over from inside and out. When we flooded the drydock, I was very conscious of a possible leak but all was well. For NHNeil - no it wasn't a Paxman and to Debs - lignum vitae!