Fishplate

One of the points is working reliably. Not achieved as much as I had hoped whilst off work. Will plod on In other news, I appear to have acquired this Rapido model in the post Christmas sales.... 😇

Have just read through your topic over a couple of days. What a lovely layout. Looking forward to seeing more.

Congratulations George on getting Bodmin Moor in the Feb BRM Community pages

From a Guardian article today: A storm is named when it is deemed to have the potential to have a medium or high impact on the UK or Ireland. The Met Office and Met Éireann launched the scheme in 2015 to name storms as part of an effort to raise awareness of extreme weather events. Anyone remember this? Our neighbours chimney came down in the passage between us. We had our roof renewed and two weeks were spent with tiles piled up on the felted roof. They were nailed on just before Mr Fish's forecast. . . .

"Doing Railway day" found the new storage sidings temporarily butted up to the main layout. This enabled some more work to be done on the point operating mechanisms for the carriage sidings. They aren't making life easy, although I now have two points mechanically connected, just need tweaking to work reliably.

Ps.. . 👍 congratulations @KNP on reaching page 700 👍

Must have only just cleared the engine shed roof . . . .🤪

The experimental painting stopped short of the places where the two carriage siding electrical connections were to be made. That was done on Christmas Eve with wiring from the four electrical sections now as far as a choc block on the baseboard frame ready to join to the control panel, hopefully before return to work. Yesterday's visits involved breakfast and dinner respectively with the two branches of descendants. Grandad FP was pressed immediately into action operating Grandsons new red tractor he asked for alongside his new forager that Santa delivered. The living room carpet and most of the kitchen was 'harvested' and the resultant trailer loads moved to storage near the sofa before breakfast. Imaginative play at 1:32 scale. Assembling two marble runs twenty miles apart with the short people following the illustrated instruction books with Grandads help was also part of the fun of the day. All part of future life skills! However, today is 'Doing Railway' day. Mrs FP is off to take over the dining room table to cut out one of her presents from me prior to assembly into a winter dress. I have received a bottle of railway ballast. Things are progressing in that direction . . . . . .

Agreed. How about 'An inspirational fly past ' ? I enjoy the parts of LM that are outside the railway fence as much as those inside.

One of the items I wanted to get done before the layout goes into it's final position was to start on the track painting of the two carriage sidings on board 3. These will both be out of reach for such fiddly work on both sides of the rails at the buffer stop ends. So, after lots of prep room sorting this afternoon and following other people's examples, I've got this far this evening.

Making a start on Christmas works. Running late on a few of the items I wanted to do before the break, so a bit of catching up to do to get to the start line.

Have a good one both of you. I still have my one of those coaches! Or "The Winking Bus" as I used to call it when I was small, for obvious reasons (if you had one). Just had to check predictive text hadn't kicked in on that last sentence before I pressed send 😂🤪

What @RobAllen said! Happy Christmas Clive. I'm hoping my own efforts will make significant progress over the Christmas break with re-erection and becoming operational again on the cards.

Be the right way up if it had a sunroof. . . . Standby for 1970's/ 80's jokes starting 'What do you call a (insert unfavourable make of car) with . . . . . '

Hi Jonathon, Your revised signature struck a chord with me. I have enjoyed your topic immensely and have drawn inspiration from it. You've said some other things recently which have also struck a chord: Me too, but guess you are on the western side if you've received treatment in Lancashire. You may not have heard this piece before, but for someone who lives in an area surrounded by Dales of different names, I think this invokes the beauty of the County we both live in. The video is quite old and not great quality, but the audio is superb. I tend to put it on, sit back, turn the volume up, shut my eyes and just think of the beautiful scenery we live amongst. I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you. I've got various ideas for the traverser sliding and electrical connections to it. Will experiment to see which works best.

Purchased some aluminium channel and angle for the traverser guides.

Haha. Both posted at the same time!

How are you getting on Rob ? You've been a bit quiet on your topic. Hope all is ok?

Here's to a rapid recovery @John Besley

With ref to driving locos down the road, I was involved in the creation of a new railway yard near a high security prison. They were one of the formal consultees for planning approval. They objected as they were concerned that an inmate could be released by his mates hijacking a locomotive and crashing it through buffer stops, drive it over a road, through a car park and penetrating the outer wall. The project was unable to convince the prison authorities that this was a highly unlikely scenario, nor prove it could not be done. Goodness knows what speed a loco would need to leave the track at, or which way it would have gone when it was unguided. . . . The design was only approved after we proposed lowering the track a metre below road level to prevent such an occurence. As far as I am aware no prisoners have escaped using this methodology. I can't recall how much was spent digging a hole one metre deep for numerous sidings to prevent someone being liberated.

Thank you Rob. I didnt have enough vertical space for the previously planned cassettes at the old house in this triangular space. The room enables these storage sidings to be incorporated into the "dead" space where the ceiling slopes. If we were still in the old house, these storage sidings would need a wall knocking down... All wiring now complete to the edge of the board and all tested with a meter. Four items out of eleven completed prior to the main works over Christmas. A small board extension (about 150mm) will be required behind the buffer stops on board 1 to fill in the gap to the wall. I'm leaving that until the layout is in its final position. Popping up from under the storage sidings board I did like this view, so had to capture it. I name this work "Vanishing Point" 😁 Ps it's the camera not held level BTW...

10 sidings laid, electrically split into 20 sections. 17 wired up to choc block connectors at the baseboard edge so far. As this is definitely the railways permanent home, I'm not going to use interboard D connectors as it will need three sets to get to the storage siding control panel. Centre off, push or pull to on, have arrived.

Now we know what's in @KNP s crate at Little Muddle. Didn't take long to get the lid off using this. . . .

No you're not. Had the opportunity for a modern model of Evening Star recently, something I had hankered after as a youngster but never achieved. Definitely a "Rule 1 applies" locomotive on my layout.