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I suspect that means all the DMU(A) services, of which there are quite a few, should be either 156 or 142. I may try to find an earlier version of the WTT to see what they were previously. Sprinters and pacers may be accurate, but they have no place in my heart or on the railway!

Right then chaps, summer’s over and it’s back to school. Questions to stretch your railway knowledge whilst you enjoy your first ale of the term will be along shortly. In the meantime it’s September ‘86, a mere 35 years ago. First move of the day is a 47 off shed making its way to the Down Holyhead to await the incoming Holyhead service. 87 hauled 1D82, the 20:30 ex Euston breaks through the gloom of Christleton south tunnel for a right time arrival at 00.02. It’s a quick traction change by the lads from Bluebeck shed, with just 3 minutes allowed in the timetable (I may need to increase that!). The intercity liveried 47/4 backs down on to the set, as seen from platform 1. The 87 has been down the Warrington lines and is now coming back through the station to the electric loco stabling. This service is booked aircon stock, as you can see from the PV mk2… With 1D82 on its way to the coast, one of countless DMU services trundles into platform 3. This is 2D29 the 23.53 service from Hooton, arriving Christleton at 0.06. Booked for an air braked DMU, a class 108 is doing the honours (I have no idea if they are air braked. Presumably an air braked set has better braking and can meet tighter timings?). The 108 will shortly depart for White Lane carriage sidings, for overnight servicing. Meanwhile a DPU is booked to come off White Lane to platform 1 for 12 minutes for loading. As I don’t (yet) have a class 128, a class 25 and a couple of GUVs have been pressed into action. This is one of the very few DPU services still booked in 86 to have a trailing load (although I have no idea if they actually did, and running in the small hours I suspect photos are thin on the ground). Anyway, White Lane to P1 is a complicated manoeuvre and involves a couple of back and forths known locally as the Christleton shuffle. The popularity of the shuffle is directly related to both overtime rate and proximity to closing time. Certainly tonight’s 25 driver seems to be wasting no time and is giving his Legomanbiffo sound system the full beans as he backs down to the Warringtons from the Up Down Through line. This will form the 00:21 4K12 Christleton to Crewe parcels service. Summer was just fine, but it’s good to be back.

I was just uncovering the layout and sorting out the model railway room this weekend, following the enforced hibernation during house works, when I saw announcement on mk2bs. The pre production models look really good, although I need to see them against the Bachmann mk2as of which I have too many, to check that they won’t look out of place. As summer ends I’ve been mentally setting priorities for the railway, some more scenery and a focus on freight coming up next I think. Hopefully I’ll be recommencing operating sessions shortly and giving the first few hours of the timetable a try out. Pictures to follow!

Do you get issues with dust and debris on the layout? My layout years ago had exposed rafters and I was forever regretting not sorting it before I built the layout. Not least so that it was warmer in winter and cooler in summer! Nice to see you making progress again - is the station building still in your plans? (I think I see it at the end in the first photo.) Also, what’s the source of the purple(ish) portakabin?

Is the BG on the left in RR rather than TP livery? I recall the lower band was a different colour.

I feel the freedom of a man chancing life without bicycle clips!

There’s always some fool makes a suggestion like this. And an even bigger fool that gives it a go! Watch this space…

I think this video addresses both points. A class 87 pushing a long set through 600mm radius points. There are a variety of couplings including Hornby, Bachmann pipes and tension locks.

Coupling epilogue: I have a spare Bachmann bar coupler from a class 101. It’s just a little too tight for the mk2f’s to couple. Here’s a photo of the relative lengths. The bar coupler is approx 14mm between stops, the Hornby 21mm and the pipe coupler around 23mm. I’d say I need something around 18-19mm between sockets. I think modifying a coupler is out of the question, as I can’t imagine a glue bonding strong enough to pull a rake of coaches.

A good friend of mine has it and it looks excellent. The quality is amazing. I really need to avoid it!

There’s not been a lot of progress of late, partly due to a number of other distractions but also due to building work on the house in the room above. One of the consequences of an old house is that the exposed beams and lath & plaster ceiling is a long way from being dust tight. The railway is therefore covered over and the room fairly out of bounds for a few weeks. The long awaited Hornby close couplings turned up this week though, so I decided to have a look at how effective they are. It was also an opportunity to get out a couple of new Bachmann mk2a TSOs, which I picked up for the princely sum of £60 for the pair. You can find reasonably priced second opens with patience! They have Scotrail branding, which I think is probably appropriate for an inter-regional set, but hardly the hardest job to remove if needed. Let’s have a look at some couplings then. First shot is two mk2a’s with standard tension lock couplings. They are actually pretty close and by far Bachmann’s best effort to date in terms of gangway gap. Adding the Bachmann pipe close coupler closes them right up. I’m very happy with this. Next up is the mk1s, which start off much further apart. This is the kind of gap we accepted in the 80’s and filled with a few metres of bath sponge. The Bachmann pipe coupler has never been satisfactory, although it’s quite an improvement. Now we try the Hornby (R8220) couplings. An impressive result, just a little gap at the bottom of the corridor connections (something you actually get on the real thing occasionally, but a little black paper inside the gangway will improve the look). So far so good. Let’s take a look now at the most disappointing mk2fs (the gangway gap is their only flaw in my view). Here we see the Bachmann pipe coupler. More than a foot between them. Even Indiana Jones would think twice. The Hornby couplings make a big but not perfect improvement. Potentially you could fill this with foam or paper. Maybe a wagon bar coupler will pull them closer. I may have a spare somewhere that I can try. Where the Hornby coupler does work is mk2f to mk1. Here’s the Bachmann pipe coupler. And finally the Hornby… The verdict then is that the pipe coupler works well for mk2a’s. For mk1 to anything else, the Hornby close coupler pulls them sufficiently close. For mk2f’s, the search continues… The Hornby coupler is also much, much easier to reshuffle formations in the fiddle yard.

57m is some run! I think a circuit of mine is about 12… Good to see the upgrades to the coaches. I fancy having a go at a Lima mk2c TSOT, but a single coach in a rake of Bachmanns might be a step too far.

All such references are welcome! I have plenty of time to wait, it’s taken me 5 years to get this far.

I’ve just got as far as that working in my WTT. It’s booked for a 47/4 and TP set 2 through Christleton. It will be weeks until I get as far as the return working. It’s one of the few workings I actually have the right stock in the right place to run. Of course, it will have no storage space in either fiddle yard due to the 300 DMUs I don’t have!

My intention is to use them on Bachmann coaches; I found some pictures that showed them impressively close. I should have some comparative photos up shortly.

SLK is the code for speedlink used in the WTT. Who am I to reinvent the wheel?

That's the philosophy I've used so far. Unfortunately (depending on your view point), at least 7 units leave Christleton in the morning before any come back, or in some cases trains are in the wrong fiddle yard due to the unbalanced service (4 southbound freightliners versus 1 northbound in the early hours for example). I have terminal fiddle yards for Holyhead (Chester), Warrington (Mickle Trafford and Frodsham) and Crewe. There are two continuous running lines between Warrington and Crewe yards, but it looks like I need a link from Crewe to Holyhead yards to solve the problem of unbalanced freightliner and tanker trains. I'm happy to move locos between yards, but I don't want to have to move rolling stock or units. My fiddle yards are far from final, so there's still a lot of scope to adjust them to fit the timetable.

With thanks to St Enodoc for the original format, I've made some progress on the Christleton working timetable. I've transferred the first couple of pages of both Passenger and Freight timetables in Up and Down directions. This takes me to circa 90 moves between midnight and 07.00, without even a whiff of a Trans-Pennine service! There's a picture of the first 50 moves below. I'm trying to re-use locos and stock as far as possible, but I'll probably need to actually try it to work out if I've missed possibilities. I started colouring in services I can't yet run (the DPU), but soon gave up and just focussed on building the core timetable up. By 7am I'm onto DMU set 7 (Chester had a large DMU depot, so a lot of trains start from here), a couple of which could be EMUs to Crewe or Man Picc. Although I would need to sort EMU stabling or run them in ECS first thing. I may also run out of electric loco stabling if I want to allow all the Freightliners to change traction. Blue is down, Green is up, Black is moves within station limits, and there are a few less obvious codes: FYC - Fiddle Yard Crewe (etc.) FYU - Fiddle Yard Up (i.e. the continuous run section) DNHY - Down Holyhead (it's where locos wait to take over a Holyhead service from Euston) CB - Christleton Bluebeck WL - White Lane Carriage Sidings UDT - Up Down Through Most other things I think you'll work out, although I can't imagine anyone will look in any detail. Probably the most obvious conclusion is that it is a good time to be a model shop owner!

There’s probably a reality about coupling up under the wires as well! I really like the look of a model loco with a screw coupling, but I guess if I can live with the track being 250mm too narrow I can overlook the kadees too.

I have some Hornby close couplers on order which apparently pull the coaches really close and can be split in the fiddle yard. Magnets are next on my list. I am still mulling over how to use screw couplings for the locos...

As it’s the only pic I’ve found of an I/C mk1 in a consist bound for North Wales in 1986 I would say it’s definitely an outlier! I’d noticed most 47 hauled Cardiff services were PV sets, but hadn’t realised it was a Pennine rake (but I did know the Pennine rakes were cascaded to this route following the introduction of then Sprinters). I would assume the Pennine rake would do a Holyhead to Cardiff return between other duties, therefore on the date in question the set must have been red carded at Cardiff and the next available set used in its place. Still a fairly rare event to have a I/C mk1 at Cardiff! It’s another reason I can’t decide on coach couplings. The close coupling mechanisms look great, but being able to mix and match sets is something I want to do...

On the subject of finding photos, I found this whilst researching the forthcoming 47435. Ages ago I was talking about i/c liveried mk1s in the Cardiff sets (possibly with PCM), but I don’t think we managed to find any evidence of one. Looks like the model will need the dominoes painting yellow for 1986. http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_zoom_v3.php?img=0410020347000

Now that’s a train! Shows how long they must have had between services to allow that to progress.

My platforms are really curved, so I wasn’t sure about using solid wood. Much easier to get a nice curve with stripwood. Other than paint the black plasticard tops grey, I haven’t done anything with the platforms yet, but they are reasonably convincing of a faded tarmac.

I used 18mm stripwood for the sides with frequent cross members and 0.5mm plasticard for the tops. The droopy platform in question is lacking proper support. When I built that section the fireplace was still in situ and I was really unclear about how I’d deal with it. Luckily the platform tops are only lightly secured with dots of uhu - I was very conscious of the lack of rigidity in the plasticard.