James Harrison

Six 50-foot carriages and a diminutive 2-4-0. A godsend for those of us who want to model a mainline but think we'd struggle to find the space.

Marvellous work Nile, a vast improvement over the base offering.

Just a query; what are the track centres if you build a crossover from two of these points? Do they differ from the Peco bullhead/ Streamline track centres? (Just thinking, if I need to, will I be able to use a mixture of these kits and Peco rtl pointwork?)

We need a 'drool' icon, and I need something to clean said drool off my laptop with.

You could model the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway (of The Way We Live Now fame) if you want a British railway in the US.

That's an interesting comment, more usually I see moans about museums sequestering exhibit space for use as tea rooms.

I'll believe they're available, when I see one on a shop shelf waiting to be bought.

Just a pity you can't actually see it without first removing the body. I dunno, maybe they could have put a light in there? /circular reasoning

Well, at least they'd have a good five or six hours in the car talking it through and deciding who was at fault for that.

The MS&LR didn't really have a house style as such, if you look at (say) Worksop, Woodhouse, and Staveley (just picking three at random) you see very different results. I think the style of station you'll end up with will be very much influenced by how the line has developed between the 1840s and your 1905-14 period. If it's been quadrupled to deal with traffic, an 1840s neo-Jacobean station isn't going to look right. On the other hand, if it has stayed a bit of a backwater, you're unlikely to find an 1870s or 1880s 'double pavilion' sort of arrangement.

Certainly looking very good! Re the Hattons models- that's exactly my way of looking at it. The French Grey ones are far too early for me (but I could tempted when the time comes), so I've ordered the GNR ones and will be repainting them.

With a bit of work the Farish generic stock can also produce half-decent GCR matchboard stock as their overall appearance is about right (it's just scratching in the matchboarding is a bit tedious). Keeping on-thread with the Hattons carriages, I'm very much looking forward to getting my GNR-liveried 6-wheelers. I'll probably be removing the insignia and lettering with T-cut and then scumbling over the teak finish to get closer to the GCR dark teak/ not quite mahogany livery.

I've had good results lining carriages with one of these: http://www.mylocosound.co.uk/?page_id=12 The raised beading on a panelled carriage side makes for a fairly easy guide to get a ruler on to guide it.

Funny you should say that, the 1900s suburban sets were rather what I had in mind. (Being purely selfish, 50' suburbans I'd buy two or three rakes of, 42- 44' carriages I might two or three examples of). There's a yawning gap in the market for both, of course.

Just a thought. If these take off and sell like the proverbial hot cakes (and of course we all hope they do, don't we?), would that encourage Hattons to look at, say, 50' non-corridor bogie carriages in a like manner?

It also allows me to play with the multi-period idea I was toying with a few years ago. I've lost count of exactly how many locos I have, suffice to say some of my collection is, strictly, out of period for me. I could have the main layout set in my stated 1918-22 period and the loco depot could occasionally go back to, say, 1905-10. Or vice-versa, the loco depot being 1918 onward and the main layout being 1912-14.

I like both options! The shed area is based on a plan I found in Iain Rice's "Designs for Urban Layouts" and that too uses a cassette to get locos on and off. I think what needs to borne in mind (and the plan doesn't really show it too well) is that the shed layout will be probably 5 - 6" above the main layout, so a cassette option probably makes more sense in avoiding an awkward gradient that has to come across in front of the main fiddle yard and then make a 90-degree turn (still climbing) to get to the yard entrance. .

That's one idea (I ran out of bits on my free SCARM to investigate it more thoroughly). It should be possible to get one line from the sheds down to the terminus, I would have thought.

Over the Christmas break I managed to clear out some of the railway room, and then I realised just how large a space it is. Work started on redecorating the top hallway and it's been found that the wall separating hallway and railway room is pretty much life-expired and will need to be renewed. Then of course came lockdown so that's not going to be rebuilt anytime soon which then in turn means no railway building anytime soon either. However, when I was looking around the space I was considering how I could make better use of it, it always seems that my layout plans take up about three times as much room as anybody else's for the same want list (or that they find it easier to get a quart into a pint pot). I started to think do I really need the station, the goods yard and the loco depot all linked by scenery, or could I make it more a series of linked dioramas... And came up with this. Yes the station is now reduced to 'just' a Minories, but look how I can also make use of the width of the room to get the goods yard at angle off it. The mainline is a fisherman's walk- three steps and overboard- but the wall it seemingly runs against then becomes the fiddle yard or cassettes with the townscene built around it (I'm still thinking of something along the lines of Weekday Cross there in terms of levels and whatnot). And then I can build the loco depot on a separate board above a corner of that and have just one line run down into the fiddle yard. So I tried to condense one layout and concluded that the best way to do it is to build two!

That's OK, nice to know it's not just me it happens to

That is what I was referring to.

What Zunnan said. If you can build your range up quicker than Peco (and considering how long their slips and crossing have been 'in development' I think you'll struggle not to do that) and you'll have a customer here.

I think you're thinking of @richard i's Dettingen thread, French Grey and Chocolate is too early for me (plus I can't understand why that livery has been chosen as there's nothing currently available in the motive power line that could run with it, except maybe if Bachmann backdated their J11?- and even that wouldn't particularly a good fit). Considering the expertise of the people who have restored No.946- including the guy who has I believe literally written the book on GCR carriages- I can't see that it's a million miles off what the livery actually looked like. But it was so long ago who can say for certain?- oh to have a time machine and take a modern colour camera back to say 1903....

I always just view it as the necessary blood sacrifice for a decent model.

At the rate Peco are developing and expanding their range though.... what is it now, three years and counting for slips, crossings and a second size of turnout?