TonyMay

I doubt this business model is going to work. There's no need for the customer to walk-in when everything can be ordered online, printed (customised?) in a small industrial unit and delivered via the post.

The basic design of minories is a trailing crossover followed by facing crossover. To keep that in place involves something like this. Not the worst design, but it could be better: replacing one turnout with a slip gives you something a bit better: but it's still not Minories.

The ads are really irritating, and if the intention is to drive people away from your website because they're costing you bandwidth, then it's the right approach.

Why can't you just use Peco track like everyone else?

If you set yourself the restriction of only modelling preserved locos/stock it can still be genuine.

I think you've identified the need for more wagons, but not how to get them. Based on their OO range, I expect Hornby will produce a handful of generic wagons, and some brightly coloured PO wagons, but the overall offering will be rather disappointing. It's the wagon kit manufacturers who should be looking at downscaling existing wagon kits. They are not very hard to assemble. And they're not very expensive, so they can be used to practice skills like painting and weathering. If you mess it up, it's no big deal. Better a wagon kit than a £200 RTR locomotive.

What about Minories in TT120 then?

I think for forced perspective, terraces are the worst thing because they are regular, and so have a pattern. Look down a terraced street and it's repeating. It's better to have a higgledy-piggledy mediaeval village where things get progressively smaller towards the back.

There's a lot of learning going on in this thread.

Does it move?

One of the important things about the turbomotive is the front end, as it ran with a hatch open at the front when in service.

Again, I'd be looking at adapting a lazy Susan from your favourite kitchenware department. They're available in various sizes; most are slightly bigger than your specification of a scale 40-45 foot.

Hmm... Are those R1 or R2 radius curves? Anyway, the problem with this set-up is (1) your baseboards are too deep (2) trains spend most of their time going round really tight corners (not curves - corners). As soon as a train starts going in one direction, it's immediately turning around a corner to go in the opposite direction. It won't know if it's coming or going. The first key is the location of the door. Enter the room through the door. Actually, the first thing to note is that the door is hung the wrong way; it would be better if the hinge was on the other side. Right now, you have to open the door, squeeze into bottom right-hand corner of the room, shut the door before entering the room proper. Weird, though solvable (though this in turn may leave the light switch on the wrong side of the door). Anyway, upon entering the room, the "top" part of the room is what you see first, and it's there I think your main layout should be. The "bottom" part of the room I'd use for a fiddle yard. You've got more than enough room for either a Minories type terminus or a BLT.

If it's for a fiddle yard, the best option is probably to build your own. Being in a fiddle yard, it doesn't have to look anything like a prototype; it just needs to work. As far as I can tell, you've got three options: Adapt a kit. Probably the peco turntable, shortened. Likely a bit fiddly, and slightly expensive. The Dapol turntable kit is probably the cheapest. Build your own from scratch. Requires woodwork skills. Adapt a 10" (25cm) lazy Susan intended for kitchen use. You can pick these up quite cheaply, expect to pay like £10-£20. My recommendation on cost and practicality grounds would be to go for the last option.

I think, by trying and failing to shoehorn it in, people are proving my point that the very silly branch line is actually very very silly indeed.

A few classic problems, which are by no means unique to you: The platforms look rather short and will struggle to contain decent length trains. Castles and Kings with 2-3 coaches will look a tad silly. The "goods" and "industry" looks like an afterthought that's been squeezed into the available space because it was a bit of baseboard without any track on it. In reality, in steam days, a considerable amount of infrastructure was dedicated to handling freight traffic, which was not only profitable for the railways, it was an essential part of the national economy. The branch line is really rather silly. I'd get rid of the silly branch line, and the "goods" and "industry" bits which are really just a pointless waste of expensive points. Then, make the bit where the branch line wiggles, a proper goods yard. And while I think placing the station throat on the curve is a good idea, it should start further to the right as we're looking at it, which would allow you to have longer platforms on the left. There's also more space there now because you've deleted the pointless goods/industry bit.

Again, the left-field option, but using single track rather than double track largely avoids this problem.

Given the space available, which is reasonable but not too extensive, and your interest in modern traction, and because I like left-field options, I'd recommend N gauge as something that would enable you to get what you want into the space you have.

Can't remember if this has been discussed before, but is Polly overscale?

In my experience, 0-4-4Ts tend to be poor runners generally; problems occur due to both the complicated nature of the pickups and the unequal power distribution inherent in having the front wheels powered but the back not, though this can be helped a little by altering the weight distribution so that there's more weight on the drivers. But compared to a similarly size 0-6-0T, an 0-4-4T is less likely to run well.

I don't think the London extension used dry stone walling as boundaries. Dry stone walling is used in Leicestershire, but more so in the upland Charnwood Forest area, rather than the Soar Valley which the GCR ran along. But see rule 1.

One thing nobody has mentioned is era, even just "steam era" or "diesel ear", or which region you want to set it in. I suggest it's a good idea to think about these now, even if the ultimate conclusion is the application of rule 1.

No signals, but the point needs a means of operating it, probably a trackside point lever rather than a ground frame.

I forgot Skegness, but I think forgetting Skegness is probably a good thing.