TonyMay

DCC is a standard set by the NMRA, and as such is unlikely to be declared obsolete soon. The DCC standard means that a DCC chip from one company will work with a controller from another. What should happen is that chips ought to get smaller (and cheaper), and add-ons such as sound more common, and locos more likely to come "DCC-ready" and not require a chip soldering inside them. The standard though is fixed, and in such common use that all future equipment should be backwards compatible.

I think a big issue here for roundy-roundies is exactly how much of it needs to be absolutely compressed? "Small things" like going from 1st to 2nd radius curves, adding a loop/siding on the outside of the circle, adding a little extra length to the long side of the straight, make a big difference when you don't have much space at all. If you can do those things though, that's great. The measurement given is 3.1 feet - I'll take this as being 3'1" or 37 inches rather than 3 & 1/10s of a foot. In the below then the top half is a R1 half-circle, the bottom one is an R2 half-circle, showing that an R2 curve will fit, but only just and only as long as there is nothing outside the circle.

Well as far as track planning goes, does look rather small to shunt the sidings. Remember you can shave off the ends of points, including set-track points to get them to fit them into smaller spaces. Compare the following:

I think an R1 loop would be ideal at this stage. Try avoiding bogie coaches stock and big locos. 0-4-0T and small wheelbase 0-6-0T should be fine. 4 wheel wagons and maybe 4 wheel coaches. Hornby Smokey Joe pugs (and others built on the same chassis) go like rockets and are quite enough fun for youngsters. They're what would typically be found on a small industrial railway.

Yes, transitioning between set-track spacing can be slightly tricky to achieve and usually involves a little bit of flexi-track to make the transition. Hopefully there wouldn't be any collisions this way but it's always best to check with your longest stock. I put in the crossover to get the track spacing right; you can delete it later if it's not needed.

I wouldn't use N gauge set-track, use streamline instead; it won't come out much bigger. The goods yard probably won't work, too many reversals. And why is there an engine shed in the middle of a goods yard? All the sidings are parallel with the edge of teh board. Having them off add odd angles and curves helps break things up a bit and makes things flow. And finally, you shouldn't really have the track at the back of the engine shed overlapping the running lines, it'll only lead to collisions.

Well it's not a very P4 plan. Let me explain: Railway modelling is the art of compromising. OO compromises *a lot*, whereas P4 compromises (at least on trackwork) very little. But that means on an OO plan you can have other compromises, usually in the terms of compression, and it doesn't look out of place. Your original plan seems to be a classic "try-to-fit-as-much-trackwork-onto-the-board-as-possible" plan. You have short sidings, and lots of lines running parallel with the edge of the board. It's a model railway but it's not a model of a railway. But that's perfectly OK in OO, where you can buy RTR track. But modellers adopt Finescale, due to wanting a challenge, but also often because they're unhappy with RTR compromises. So for P4 it's quality over quantity. You'd typically have a lot less track, with longer loops, longer sidings, fewer but higher quality kitbuilt stock, etc. Finally, EM gauge is often better than P4 especially for steam-era layouts. Outside cylindered locos have to have overscale motion; otherwise it won't function. EM gives you a little more room to fit that in, and a few other compromises as well.

What could be further on from Felixtowe? Felixtowenayl?

Well it does already have a sort of 1980s run down feel, with a largely unused and overgrown goods yard maybe being used as an engineering yard, but have you considered converting it to a car park? The shed might look good in a forlorn state, minus its roof, and access points removed but some plain track remaining to show its former glorious steam heyday. I'm thinking rural East Anglia somewhere, nice and flat with a lovely freezing fog coming in off the North Sea and in the gloomy dullness a class 25 painted the dullest shade of weathered BR blue being extremely boring. A perfect 1980s scene.

Of course that's another option too - go foreign. There are some fairly quaint and rural Japanese or Swiss lines with 1 car DMUs. And somehow (to me at least), not really knowing much about them, compromises with respect to reality seem to be more acceptable. Or even go completely whimsicle and build a Christmas layout with a lot of snow and an HO scale Santa riding atop an N gauge train... Meanwhile, back to reality, the 4x1 suits the piano line format particularly because since you have access to all sides it can be operated from the rear. Portabiltiy and storage are also important considerations.

As a general rule of thumb the earlier you go the more varied and "interesting" the operations are. The overall trend over the past 100 years has been towards standardisation (using fewer locos and those that are used are increasingly to the same design), decreased use of labour (and avoiding any operations that require labour), and carrying bulk goods (especially passengers) with lower volume goods shifted to onto the roads. However, using RTR models anything before the mid-1950s starts to get a bit tricky because before then there were lots of older vehicles (not only locos but coaches and wagons) still running around then that are not currently available in RTR form. Modelling 1930s GWR is possible (especially in OO) but more tricky for the other big 3 companies. At the other end of the scale, with the most up-to-date stock, then it's mostly DMUs and not everything is covered by RTR manufacturers. If you do go modern however I'd advise you to still choose a period, e.g. 2010-2015 and stick to that, as in 5 years' time the railways will have continued to change. My advice (again) would be to choose a period now and then work towards consolidating that. It'd be easier (and cheaper) to sell 1 DMU now and buy modern stock (if that's what you want), or older stock (if you suddenly develop a dream for steam (and N gauge steam models have improved immensely over the past few years)), than waiting until later on when you've got a bit of a hodgepodge eclectic mix. So this is an important decision to make.

Historical and regional specific context is one of the main things that distinguishes a model railway from a train set. The best advice is that you're not modelling an exact location, so there's no need to be anal about it but I think it's worth trying to create an overall impression that's broadly right. Even if you're not really into railway history, and don't read many books, or watch any videos, it's amazing what you will pick up by an osmosis-like process as you read magazines or forums or just browse Wikipedia. And then you'll be looking a the model you've made and things will start to look wrong because (say) you've got some modern wagons with a BR blue diesel, but after a while these nags grow and grow... So I do think it's worth trying to get the historical and regional aspects broadly right from the off. Engineering trains are also a good idea (pretty much go everywhere and often use older wagons such as BR-standard bake vans). Having said that, rule 1 applies, especially if your intended audience doesn't really know any better, or you don't care and you just want to ignore me and my grumpy ramblings like most sane people do.

Fitzalloa?

The Regional Railways livery of your set puts you firmly into a mid-1980s-early 1990s period. Some of them probably retained RR livery with the new TOCs until the mid-late 1990s, pehraps with new TOC branding, look at photos though to confirm. The class 66s were introduced in 1998 but didn't become ubiqutious until about 3-4 years later. Some anorak can probably provide you with a delivery schedule. The good news is however that if you were to go for a 1980s period, there were (relatively) more interesting diesels around than 66s (I say relatively because they're still a boring box on wheels). Class 47s were the original ubiquitous main line British diesel loco. And in the 1980s the liveries started to become a little more interesting than 1970s BR blue (which is probably the worst ever British livery, although with a fair amount of authentic grime, weeds, and dull overcast skies it goes with the dull run-down atmosphere if you want to capture this). Anyway, yes with a newly painted clean and not yet on its last legs Class 101, it's the 1980s for you.

Yes, there's little point in being innovative in this game. You can follow the patterns and produce a template that works or you can try to be innovative and produce something that probably doesn't. This sort of thing would indeed be suitable for someone (say) waning to handbuild thier own track but not wanting too much of it to hand-build. Perhaps a first layout in EM? But anyway, we are using narrow gauge OO and RTR HO scale track... Less is more works, especially: As we mentioned, budget! There is less to go wrong. What does go wrong can be easily fixed. There is less to clean. OK, so this isn't N gauge, but still it's something to consider. Building scenery, including water, canalboats, buildings, etc, introduces more variety into the layout rather than track, more track, and even more track. There are certain things that present potential difficulties to modellers, such as motorised/wire-in-tube points, coupling (and autocoupling), working (bouncing?) semaphore signals, working level crossing gates, etc, that need to be dealt with carefully. Keeping things simple (at least for the first build) allows the modeller to concentrate on developing his skills and techniques in a manageable and scalable way. On a historical note, the LMS 1930s period isn't that well served by RTR models. Yes, there are a few, but the main market is for locos that survived into the 1950s. By keeping it simple you need less of a representative sample of stock and can run it with 3-4 locos. Finally, it doesn't look like an explosion in a Hornby Dublo factory! One is almost tempted to bring back 3rd rail track; it could hardly make it much more toylike.

Well I'm not a fan of sideshow BLTs over the fiddle yard. Nor am I a fan of filling all of the available space with track and buying 26 sets of points to do this. Going on the original remit: A freight-based shunting layout Budget is important Set in the 1930s in the West Midlands area Include a canal and canal basin. Be reasonably realistic Offer the opportunity to do some scenic modelling. We'll concentrate on a single track roundy-roundy with a goods yard for shunting. We can do this with maybe half a dozen or so points (thus saving a big chunk of cash). We will also try not to collect a massive collection of locos and rolling stock and feel compelled to squeeze as many of these at once onto the layout as possible - we'll operate on a one engine in steam principle. There is a lift-out section over the door which will double as a storage cassette, thus removing both the need (1) for a large fiddle yard and (2) a separate liftout section. We will use some R2 curves in the corners as a result but these will be reasonably well hidden, and give us more room for the main sweeping curves. There are several possible arrangements for how to zone the parts but here is an example drafted out to illustrate the main features of what I mean. It's a draft and will need moulding a little bit, but doesn't need anything added to it. Scenery would be a platform and station in one of the corners, disguises for the exits and other bits and bobs. If you want a model of a railway, rather than a train-set, spend a quarter of the money on track yet have a layout that looks four times as good, this is the approach to take: Please feel to tear this apart.

I'm not happy with this layout design; it's basically a complete mess, and you guys aren't being helpful at all. You're rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic when really you needed to redesign the titanic so it had fewer deckchairs and more lifeboats. The BLT (which is described as not being the focus) is at the focal point of the layout; the rest of it is itty-bitty; the corners are too sharp so there's no flow (to describe them as curves would be insulting to curves). It looks horrible and amateurish.

yes, but they weren't as ubiquitous as the BR class 08 shunter; the appeared in relatively small numbers, were introduced late in the LMS period (i.e. during the 1940s), and many of these were subsequently were borrowed by the War Department for the duration. Shunting would have still been done traditionally, i.e. horses for light work, using locomotives for heavier work. While you can use an 0-6-0D shunters as a typical from the late-1950s onwards, before then you can't. And there is a great importance in railway modelling of having things that are "typical" for they make it look like it generally was. Horrible things anyway.

Oh I see. How about swapping non-powered bogies for extra powered bogies in the middle of an 8 car set?

Just an idea about lack of power in these. Since most people don't actually model the LU, I can see some (even most) people having to prototypically haul them with a loco and barrier wagon. In other cases, though people will have weakly-powered 8 car trains with grades and curves to get around. Is it worth splitting and combining sets (via ebay) to allow some people double-motored versions and others no-motored versions? And talking of barrier wagons, and loco haulage, what did they use for the prototypes when they were being delivereed?

I think we probably need to have a look at a scale darwing of the whole layout including fiddle yard design and indications of viewing and operating positions. I suspect that less track and more scenery would probably be appropriate, including as noted that the goods facilities/warehouse seems to be tagged into the layout by the "OK, so there's a bit of space created by the station throat being throat-shaped, so we'll stick a kick-back goods yard in it"

you could make that into an L-shaped layout around two walls room with two main scenes of the station and the coal depot.

The mark 1 Oss, used for shunting by all railway companies, had four legs, went "nay", pooed a lot and once life expired got turned into glue and "beef-burgers" by the knackers.

I'm not sure that the siding from point 6 is a good idea. To shunt it with a loco requires clearing of siding at the toe end of 6. in reality, this would have been done with 'oss-power, but that's difficult to arrange in scale. Also, having the siding makes the electrics slightly more difficult. A small signal frame might be housed in a small hut which would be operated as and when required by the railway staff. THese are "signal huts" rather than "signal boxes". An NER signal hut might be appropriate: - http://www.signalbox.org/gallery/ne/hammerton.php

Have you thought about converting a Bachmann/Mainline LMS period I BTK into a BG? Several of these were done in real life as they were converted to ambulance trains during ww2 and then converted to BGs afterwards.