DCB

I think there is scope for 5 areas of independent operation. Four locos /operators running / shunting simultaneously I would arrange for all controllers to be able to access all areas, maybe like me you have an expensive controller with wander lead and some old stuff without, makes sense to use the good one most of the time. My terminus is wired with 6 sections fed from 3 sources and each SECTION (Not Controller) has a multi pole rotary switch with red /green /Black/White black being off. An "OFF" position is very useful, my main station does not have one. Common return on a simple layout does simplify wiring and allow single pole switches but I would not use common again on anything complicated. I have no problems using fishplates for connection indoors but limit sections to five pairs of fishplates , that's six yards from the feed or 11 yards 33 feet 30 metres of plain track or maybe 5 points like 2 metres when feeding from the toe, its the number of fishplates which is critical My Terminus panel is a row of six 4way rotary switch knobs poking through the baseboard framing with the switches behind on a sub panel which pull out when the knobs ae removed. Main station rotaries poked through Hardboard. and the controllers are spread around the room. 4 of them can each operate over 90% of the layout so you can run a loco from just about anywhere to just about anywhere on any one of 4 controllers (The one with the wander lead usually) see doodle black arrows feeds

Another vote for code 100. 3ft radius is a good minimum which rules out double slips (2ft) as points and curved points (2ft 6") However double slips are more reliable than long crossings when used as crossings and easier to wire as live frog. A lot of locos (Bachmann 2-8-0s in particular "turn the corner A lot depends on the circuit breaker "DCC" usually implies around 4 amps, "DC" about 1 amp. Design amperage is 1 amp. So what is bullet proof on DC is woefully inadequate on DCC You can use 1 amp breakers on DCC and power areas and avoid the issues. or like myself use 2 amps DC and get all the DCC fishplate and point blade failures without DCC. If there is access surface mount point motors, make sense, I prefer under baseboard motors driving through bell cranks and omega loops. Many of my Peco live frog code 100 points used straight out of the box just work and keep working and have had no maintenance in 35 years, one or two suffered point blades coming loose but just one or two, I have never changed a fish plate in the FY but they live in the dark under a station, so don't get UV light or the oxidisation the ones in sunlight get and the ones outside need fishplates changing about every two years droppers to every bit of rail and all the DCC faddle while being DC, Lots of solutions to lots of problems,j ust identify the problem before parting wi cash.

Not at all hard to wire up. One feed to anywhere along the top rail and one to the bottom with insulated fishplates everywhere. Feed from the bus on DCC but through a change over switch on DC if more than one controller can power it. In many ways it is an easy and more reliable alternative to a long crossing,they only get complicated if they are live frog ones.

Southern Region is a broad church. The three constituent railways retained much of their individual character until electrification or dieselisation. It's also not the Great Western. Most SR layouts are operated like GWR lines with "equivalent" SR locos. I am pretty confident there were no electric point motors on the SR west of Exeter and probably none west of Salisbury, until well after the end of steam. There just were not any significant signalling and point operation upgrades after around 1900 , just some extra sidings in WW2

OMG I suppose it could be a collectors item.. I suppose I had better put it on eBay, when I find some tension lock couplings, Unless anyone on here wants it for the cost of postage.

Any ideas what this wagon is please? And what is the coupling please? Looks like a lump of iron to attract a magnet and looks like a hook is missing. Came with a job lot off eBay. It looks horrible, It has "Made in England", open axle boxes Triang type coupling bosses but no makers name more H0 than 00 scale. I'm just curious, I have never seen one like it before.

From my rather skewed viewpoint I feel the wagons would need substantial weathering to fit in, I think the different yellows is the bigger deal than the body colour. Is the brake gear different on the protptypes because that jumps out at me

I have a lifting section with a station on it and a second lifting section above which lands on it. It does not give much trouble except from distortion of the shed to which the layout is attached. It was a lift out and was a total PITA. The lifting section has metal hinges, very robust one being a Ford Focus bonnet hinge. The upper level pivots further back than the lower so it can stand vertical behind the lower one, it is shorter than the main one as it sits higher and both just clear the ceiling . The main hinges are around one inch wide and very rigid, The upper being just a girder bridge has its pivots below track level and the deck is shorter than the side girders for clearance. The hinges are adjusted so the non hinge end bangs down on its supports absolutely square on. Any packing or flexing leaves the tracks mis aligned so I make sure its solidly down.. The lift section is hard wired with wires running at right angles to the tracks so there is minimal droop. I can get in or out by lifting both sections passing through and lowering them in about 15 seconds, In my view lifting ( and lift out) sections should be properly engineered and the adjacent baseboards built or adapted to suit. Pictures taken at an earlier stage of construction which show the outer hinge (arrowed) and upper hinges are hidden in the "Stone" abutments which swivel downwards.

It's the fact so many sit in boxes and display cabinets which is the real problem as it puts performance too far down the manufacturers check list and slow running the gold standard when performance is considered.

Why only 2 coaches? my branch terminus "Ugleigh" can cope with 4 X 60ft B set coaches and a 4F or 2251 0-6-0 can run round them and it's about 7ft 2100mm from first turnout to buffers. It's a bit of a stretch to get a river under a line just before it plunges into a tunnel (though Malmesbury may be similar) but in the 303mm /ft world bridges have points on them (Buckfastleigh and Goathland) and platforms on bridges like Pickering (and Stroud GWR ) Lots of stations were designed as through stations and the line was never extended, (or cut back) some were built as terminusses and had the tracks extended. Any station serving a reasonable size community not next to a coal mine in steam days will have plenty of inbound coal traffic to give excuses for sidings, far more so than a wagon repair business. Maybe a second hand locomotive dealer.... Or breakers yard

Interesting thread. I am long sighted, so I need to wear reading glasses for reading and strong glasses for close work/modelling. You can have the best most detailed letting and fine detail on an exhibition layout and I'll never notice. but a coach1mm too high at the buffers or cant rail, or a gap where there should be corridor connections, even excessive gap between coach ends jumps out at me and looks wrong. Modellers struggle to get realistic lighting for a layout, overcast with 10/10 cloud cover might be doable, but anything where the sun shines will provide shadows, Shadows tell me which way full size trains are running. Frequently layouts have a lighting rig giving a representation of bright sunlight but without shadows. For realism the angle of view is interesting, much like cropping photos I think the closer you get to the model the better as the background blurs out, The Gorre and Daphetid had floor to ceiling scenery,which disproves my theory, as does my garden line as focus is on the moving train so the background blurs out but as I stop rambling I feel the talk of viewpoints is irrelevant as there is no actual fixed defined viewpoint viewers will see the models from different viewpoints, unless it is through a lens, camera, web cam mirror etc. Many of my favorite views of the layout are photographs from locations where the human eye cannot access...

It looks like the Midland swooped after 2 failed attempts by the GER and a live one by the LNWR through the NLR alerted them to the opportunity to expand their empire, by offering shareholders three for one share exchange worth 6% Pa (Other Midland shareholders had to make do with 2%) The LTSR had already committed to electrify much of the network and didn't have the funds to upgrade the infrastructure and keep their shareholders in the lap of Edwardian luxury so it was probably a good deal all round. The GER retaliated by preventing the LTSR running their brand new 4-6-4 tanks over their tracks.

Great Shame, I had really outstanding service from there. I try to call in when I am in Devon but Paignton is not on a main route so means a detour (Unlike the Buckfastleigh shop just off th main road) I guess future prospects for modelling with the cost of inventory escalating have put off potential buyers. And laziness, I'm 10 miles from a major box shifter but buy 90%of my models on line . There is a sewing shop near Poundland in Teignmouth which sells model railway items, they shut at 4pm today and I arrived at 10 past

If that is code 100 concrete sleeper track I feel you would probably have a better chance gluing Set Track as their sleepers are a harder more brittle plastic than the flexi. I would use a set track 26" straight with the ends cropped as a basis. Another advantage is Set Track stays dead straight unlike flexi which loves to flex slightly

Are you doing a pair of crossovers, facing and trailing or just one. I have an old lifting section I was thinking of using for a similar test track but I'm now wondering how long it will need to be to be a fair test

So would I , but I often sell locos on and I would say in the ad "Super detailed chimney drilled out."

The weights of the original Non superheated straight running plate Saint and the Manor were very similar and the smaller driving wheels would have been lighter. Size for size superheated boilers are superior to saturated but weight for weight? There is absolutely no doubt the non superheated Std no 1 was a vastly better steam raiser than the Manor. Even the Dean Goods was a better steam raiser than the pre Sam Ell modified Manor as was probably the Dukedog, but the Dukedog would have been hard pressed to haul 6 bogies up to Notgrove and the 43XX wore their leading flanges so they wanted a bogie put on the 43XX, They should probably have just put a std no 4 boiler on the 4-6-0 chassis with a distance piece like 4700 used when it had a no1 but they tried to be too clever. OK a Manor looked pretty but from the writings of O.S.Nock and others pre 1951 ish they were pretty hopeless, On the other hand J.A.F Aspinall found time between overhaul was a function of wheel diameter, so maybe a bog standard 98 clone early Saint would have been a better solution still

I don't know if the affected loco runs slowly consistently or just on a test plank. My lima locos take several yards to "Warm Up" after a period of inactivity and are then fine. I did have problems years ago when running Lma locos on slow heavy trains. If they didn't get a good high speed thrash they got slower and slower the armatures ran hot, the brush holders came loose in the end cap and the temper went out of the brush springs. I changed the end cap, brushes and springs to solve it. I did have armatures fail with wear to the drive gear bit at least one eroded the commutator slots which are part of a PCB Disc. I went to CD Motors about 15 years ago for my garden line but have a couple of surviving Lima DMUs which don't give any trouble when run at scale speeds 30 + mph .

Eventually, they needed fettling to get them to steam freely, I feel reason that Churchward didn't fit 5ft 8" wheels to a Saint, and they were designed to take the smaller wheels with very minor alterations, was the success of the 43XX on heavy trains. They were still being employed on 12 coach excursions in the 1950s by which time they were past their prime but with experienced crews pre WW2 they put up some very creditable performances, their boiler has a shorter boiler and firebox than the No1 but the same diameters, The no 4 would need very careful firing to steam well but not a very high firing rate, The Manor was a bit of a shame, a non superheated Saint with 5ft 8" wheels would have been a much better loco with the same overall weight. None of those Stanier inspired sloping throatplate boilers delivered except the LMS 2A possibly. Manor County or the various LMS 4-6-0 / 2-8-0 iterations never seemed to perform as well as the straight ones. The Jubilee "Rooke" which went spectacularly on the Settle and Carlisle was straight throatplate. Its like the Gresley A1/A3 The A3 was better than an A1 but could not run to Norwich The Court was better than no 98 but by the mid 1940s a brand new 98 clone would have been light enough to run on the Cambrian and apart from needing a bigger tender or more water stops would have been a much better tool than the lamentable pre Sam Ell Manor.

Having sold a mint little used dull red Wrenn City which I couldn't bring myself to repaint I now need a replacement and a Hornby Dublo Duchess of Montrose is lurking in the loft. The only area and era correct Duchess for my WR layout is City of Nottingham which was at Swindon in May 1964 on Railtour duty, highly polished and it what looks like a considerably lighter shade of Crimson than most RTR stock and very shiny, certainly not Hornby eggshell. I tend to paint gloss and then weather with matt black, grey etc. Any suggestions for paint shade, I prefer rattle cans, Presumably red oxide primer... Many thanks

The problem I see is propelling, especially around reverse curves. I prefer to shorten the buffers to get clearance, they are always modelled as fully extended yet ran partly compressed in service. I always model buck eye coupled Mk1s with buffers retracted and habitually shorten buffers on other prioritising distance between coaches, and ability to propel over exact accuracy as a static model.

The first 50, (Not 49) 73000 to 73049 had the BR1 tender then 73050 on had the modified cab with no rear handrail and later tenders. My big beef with my Bachmann std 5 is its's so slow, top speed is barely a scale 60.

Very sad to see Hattons go. I need a couple more 14XX.58XX locos It sounds to me like demographics has triggered the run down. We are all getting older,and it's still the same people buying (or dying) My local model shop has had the same proprietor for 40 odd years and has a huge pile of various era stock covering 1990 -2023 Virtually nothing for pre group per WW2 or BR stem era, just a few niche models. It seems everyone is chasing the 65 to dead demographic who have every single locomotive ever produced so we have to make 1825 steamers or one offs and soon I assume Neverwazzs, I can't wait for the LMS Passenger Garratt for the Highland so I think I had better bodge one myself. The modern image (Not Post 1968) ranges seem many and varied but how many units are actually shifted I'm not sure how many people want them, but my experience modern eras are about 5 years (4 for Highland 1985/9) and its an absolute nightmare finding compatible stock to run side by side on a modernish era layout. I think Hattons woke up and smelled the coffee and decided to wind down the business before it became unprofitable. With a contracting market this will alleviate some of the pressure on competitors, but will not help manufacturers. Hopefully someone else will take on their moulds but really it seems to me that the bottom has fallen out of the model railway mass market .

I string the diodes between two of those white connector blocks (insulate the bare wires) screwed to a bit of hardboard. My 1N400 diodes have worked for the past 30 years. Including operating 3 way points. I use a 6 way rotary switch with a 5 amp rated push button to energise to operate my fiddle yard where the 3 way is located.

It is described as a Curio. Some guy has put a lot of work (and very little money) into it. Looks like Hornby Dublo 3 rail wheels A4/ Duchess as suggested above, I can't see any insulated bushes but I have done some of mine and it's not obvious. Drive gear is Triang Hornby, 3/16th bore but sleeved to fit 1/8th H/D axle so quite an able engineer's work. I reckon the cylinders are Graham Farish 81XX, cut off, drilled through (Early ones don't have piston Rods as standard) and mounted to spacers which attach to the chassis. Looks like the pony truck coupling has 12 BA bolts or rivets holding the coupling on. Not easy. I reckon the centre bolt goes through the safety valve. It could be it started as a Grafar replacement chassis or for a Kitmaster, both available mid late 1950s the drive gear is about mid 50s Coupling around 1960? may well be over 60 years old and a credit to a long dead modeller(Or flung together from scrap over Christmas) But there was no decent RTR big Prairie until the centre axle drive Hornby circa 1990(?) I was (am) fitting Grafar 81XX and Wills 61XX bodies to Hornby Hall chassis (with Wrenn wheels) to replace rough running Airfix mechs in the 1980s and 90s so I understand the motivation behind an X04 powered big Prairie