DCB

Lets hope the Titanic Hornby operation doesn't drag Oxford Diecasts down with it. I was looking forward to a nice Oxford die cast die cast King with the actual ability to pull a train (unlike the Hornby one) some time in the future

Its a special sort of expandable organic filler strip to prevent the glass rattling.

Its the idea that one wire can be positive for one circuit and negative for another at the same time with Model Railway DC Common return which makes our brains hurt.

Inside I use Tension locks between coaches but with usually Mainline couplings re mounted to close up the gaps between vehicles and never uncouple the rakes. For locos, wagons and the ends of rakes I use H/D peco style couplings. The garden is Tension Locks only so I have experience with both. The simple answer is with Tension locks you have fiddle about to get the height right, changing wheels perhaps. I cobble up a set of templates and adjust all the couplers so the coupling "loop" to be within 0.5 mm of datum height or one vehicle will lift its neighbour enough to derail it. The old Triang metal coupling is the easiest to tweak, but the tweaking will often put the droppers too high or low for uncoupling ramps. or else they get stuck in points. The NEM Pockets are good in that you can mix and match to get the couplers to get the heights better. To be honest if I were starting again I would look in to using the N gauge couplers for 00, Kadees work well but look a bit too American for me.

It looks good system but I wonder about overload protection. I don't know which Triang controller you use but I have several different and most have a 1 amp nominal cut out on the 12 volt DC with controlled and uncontrolled DC off the same cut out. This is a push button reset. I don't remember if the AC has a cut out but the unit can't deliver that many VA anyway probably 12VA hence the 12 volt 1 amp branding. Max voltage is actually around 19 V DC some are more. A feature of using a voltage regulator as a speed controller is very good speed stability up hill and down dale, and the ability to provide a lot of Amps at low speed. very different to resistance controllers like Duettes and that ik. I don't know what sort of PSU you have acquired but plenty of PSUs happily deliver 5 plus Amps. so you need a good overload cut out to protect your locos, especially coreless motor ones and a good heat sink/ airflow Maybe a small fan in the handheld enclosure?.

Did any 4Fs ever run with BR numbers and an LMS lettered tender?

Its locomotives and tenders being modelled separately which annoy me. Everything else to the nearest half millimetre and the tender an extra scale foot and a half behind the loco and a couple or six scale inches higher/ lower where the steps and footplate align or don't align, arrrggh RTR is bad but on a hand built model unforgivable

Looks vastly better than what AC and the rest came up with. I guess each half kept its bus transmission, so for starting and steep slippery grades the Ticket Collector/ Guard could fire up the back engine and rev the nuts off it reverse to get it moving. Looks good but surely a Standard gauge 2-4-0T would be inside cylinder Plenty of room for cylinders over the leading axle. The GNSR had some weird outside cyl 0-4-2Ts for Aberdeen Docks which allowed a lot of sideplay on the trailing axle . Think I will take a hacksaw to my 101 bodies and see if I can make something other than a Fairlie out of them

At risk of stating the obvious bays in an island platform.are very effective for cross platform interchange from terminating trains to through trains without the need to use footbridges or subways, Passengers can simply cross the platform from train to train, quite a bonus when women did not have visible legs. The alternative being having to decamp to a waiting room and wait for the next train to arrive or go mountaineering over footbridges or down subways. Passenger convenience mainly affected the upper classes and ease of operation the working classes so Passenger convenience took priority! Actually shunting stock could be a bit of an issue but with so few passenger trains in Steam Days compared to today it wouldn't have been that onerous even if the shunt blocked both main lines, might just mean giving the warning to a goods at the box in the rear so it was prepared to stop at the outer home. The idea that the running lines have to be kept clear is a model railway concept, they know exactly when trains are due on the full size railway and they often have an half an hour or so to do a bit of leisurely shunting, or frenzied shunting on market days. The Rugby track plan is a good example of what happens when full size layouts evolve, platforms lengthen, unused connections such as Euston to Leicester passenger lines are removed, and it looks like a dogs breakfast....

Draw bar, I think the Rear Truck pivot also forms part of the current path, I would winkle out the driving wheels and make sure the axles are clean when they pass through the bearings. The axle bearings can come loose in the chassis and not make contact. I put thin wire around the bearing and forced it into the chassis to hold it rigid on one of mine when I used Tender Drives. Past tense, they make the track filthy with their traction tyres so most have been retired and replaced with (in many cases much older) loco drive chassis with Romford wheels and no traction tyres. There is a good reason why these locos are cheap but the UK built ones are well engineered, don't get Mazak rot and will outlast the Chinese built versions by decades.

Vehicle wiring was mentioned, most car wiring was common ground with the return being through the body structure. Everything was the same polarity. Earth (ground) in cars is the return, not to be confused with mains earth if you have visions of a long and active life.

Looks more like a tree stump than a Mustard Pot. Strange how the French could make such a pigs ear of a simple loco when Webb, Dean, Fletcher and Worsdell could produce far more efficient and better looking locos, and in Worsdell's case more sophisticated (compound) locos.

I think the lack of replies suggests a bit of a consensus that we don't really have a clue as to what would satisfy your requirements. Normally a steam age terminus would be ideal for your space four platforms, goods yard, loco depot, nice spiral to storage bit of scenery. sorted. However dead end BR Infrastructure yards are like hens teeth, You could model a 4 platform station with only 1 platform remaining in use and one infrastructure siding and run round loop, the rest of the site used for car parking. At £5 each the 200 or so diecast cars would soak up a fair chunk of your budget. Even C J Freezer never designed one of these so I'm afraid you are a pioneer sir and we will watch avidly as you venture further into the unknown.

If it works on adequately on DC on a feedback controller or resistance controller then try a single decoder. Don't test it on a high quality DC power unit like a Morley or H&M Variable transformer as that will run almost any pair of chassis at similar speeds. I would connect the pickups together to give 8 wheel pick up if you want smooth running, though perhaps this wiring should have been installed earlier in the build, but my feeling is two decoders will be needed and quite a lot of fine tuning to get max haulage without one chassis slipping. Ffestiniog Fairlies had separate regulators for the two power bogies. As K1 is a compound the HP power bogie can only slip for a short period before back pressure from the LP power bogie chokes the slip or the LP bogie slips as well. A big motor in the boiler and drive as per a BoBo Diesel would have been much easier electrically and mechanically....

There are some tiny Chinese micro switches on ebay price £1 for 5 inc postage (from China!) I have used half a dozen or so to switch point frog polarity, I surface mount them so the point tie bar operates them directly and hold them down with track pins. I'm not expecting them to last very long in the cold and damp but they can be disguised fairly easily and may offer a solution to your need for additional switching capability.

The Replica had a Pod motor if i remember correctly. They never were much good but are easy to change. Needing a push start was quite normal with Mainline and Replica split chassis mechanisms. Bachmann Chassis is the usual upgrade but our Bachmann B1 doesn't run very nicely either. Pushing a de motored B1 with a Hornby B17 Tender is also a possibility.

If you go R/C but keep insulated wheels you can run on any layout with compatible rails, or indeed run it on the kitchen floor without any track at all. AC, DC, DCC, 3rd brail, Outside 3rd, Spring powered, the world's your lobser, and Battery power is beautifully smooth compared to mains derived power units.

Two amp wire should be a minimum for 0 gauge outside, 3 way plus earth lighting cable for two way switches is probably as good as anything but don't mistake a bus wire for 230 volts or you could frighten the horses with your screams. Be careful with soldering, some of mine done with multicore solder oxidised and failed after a couple of years, quicker than failing rail joiners in fact. Make sure your ballast doesn't touch the rails as much of it is conductive especially when wet and make sure the track drains. I abandoned rail pick up for my outside line at home as so much current shorted between the rails because of the way I ballasted with sand and cement. Father in law's outside extension in 00 on elevated wooden baseboards works well even when its raining despite limited droppers and the use of co ax aerial lead as part of the feed wire or bus.

The best way I know of to value a loco, or anything else within reason, is to check the prices on Ebay, Find a similar item, watch it and see what it sells for, or if a buy it now, if it sells. It will probably take several days to get reliable data. The other day about 20 Hornby 27XX were advertised on Ebay from 99p plus P+P so about £4.50 to about £30. Only the 99p one had any bids. From trying to value some old O gauge It looks like no one is interested in bottom of the range Hornby 0 gauge at all The Hornby Dublo value seemed to peak about 20 years ago as did Wrenn which suits me as paying £5 for a chassis or 4 wagons suits my budget. Sadly our highly detailed models are generally worth less than a play worn standard version. I have been putting 2000s Tender drive locos back to standard couplings etc for a friend and hunting in his loft for the boxes to sell as non standard couplings seem to put people off, again standard pristine boxed is what folk seem to want. Luckily I don't care about condition so I can still pick up bargains

There are still a lot of Bachmann split axle locos out there being sold as new. My son had a "New" Cambrian Coast Express set for his birthday present from my father in law this summer 2017 and the Manor shed a wheel within 20 minutes of running in. It went back on kept the quartering but doesn't bode well for the future. My Mainline Manor on a Triang B12 chassis with an X04, Romfords etc, has been running for some 25 years or so with very little attention hence my preference for modified Triang/ Hornby chassis and Bachmann bodies.

Are these loops or dead end sidings? I designed and operate a set of sidings and loops beneath a terminus using DC and simply have a 2ft push button operated dead section on the dead end roads which stops single headed trains from max speed before the buffers. Double headed trains hit the buffers! I can see most of the sidings in the gloom but with advancing years and the possibility of going DCC or R/C my preferred option for enhancement is web cams. Much used on US layouts a couple of strategically placed web cams together with some strategically placed white LED lights should allow you to watch the train approach the stopping point on a monitor, you could go split screen or show individual camera feeds. Many are around golf ball size. The big problem I forsee with DCC is identifying which loco is which and which code it responds to when in the gloom of the hidden sidings. Manobier Castle is much like Devizes Castle which is much like Sir Edward Elgar and not very different to The Gloucestershire Regiment or Denbigh Castle. With DC it doesn't matter which is on a train. With DCC I could end up with some very embarrassing situations as the wrong loco moves and derails 20 wagons by pushing them through wrongly set points... If the low level is below a station planning the framing to minimise depth is a good move, strength members can go above track level at the edges and under platforms for instance, drilling wiring route holes to keep wires within rather than below the framing before assembling the baseboard, and using removable hardboard covers to keep the bottom of the upper level neat will make dealing with the inevitable Quintinshill like accident less painful. Having spent the summer tweaking gradients on friend's layout to allow 21st century RTR locos to pull trains, I would suggest the less height difference between low and high levels you can get away with the better the layout will operate.

I'm pretty sure Penzance was extended in the 1930s losing middle sidings and gaining a 3rd platform in the existing trainshed making 4. Many GWR stations were extended in the 1930s though Plymouth North Road was not finished until the 50s due to WW2. Plymouth Millbay was a good mid size terminus where several long distance trains or parts thereof terminated and started in the 1930s as well as branch and local Auto trains with 4 coaches and a 64XX popping in and out en route from Saltash to Marsh Mills(?). It closed to become a goods station when other facilities were bombed in WW2. I find 7 coaches make a decent believable express train. My winter 1930 GWR train formations book has plenty of 7 coach expresses terminating at places like Millbay and even 5 coach express formations to places like Weymouth. There is no reason for trains to be the same length as platforms, 12 coach Pines Expresses departed from 8 coach long platforms at Bournemouth West in pre EU health and safety laws, equally 2 coach trains departed from 10 plus coach long platforms at St Ives. WW2 is not a great era to model in RTR, plenty of Bulldogs and Dukes with outside frames, and lots of non standard pannier tanks not available RTR Unlined Green shirtbutton or GWR Black liveries. At least there is a decent Dean Goods from Oxford now. No Counties or Modified Halls until the very end of the war, no 7XXX Castles, Think I would go fictionalised with 8 ft long main platforms and an extensive goods yard and double track approach.

You could cut the webs between sleepers on the curves and gently tweak the curves to a slightly larger radius. I have eased 2nd radius out to nearly 3rd radius doing this. Don't try to tighten the radius, I can't make that work without kinks. On a small layout, for steam days, use set track long straights for straight sections as streamline is hard to lay dead straight and steam age tracks were dead straight. Diesel era use second hand streamline as the dogs hind leg look is quite prototypical.

I do it the other way round with power applied and the bell/ light/ buzzer checking for continuity, both ways equally valid.

Some old 4-4-0s are bad for front overhang, Triang L1 and M7 (going backwards) are my test chassis for front overhang . I don't know anything worse than a Mk3 for center throw but I use a Mk1 coach for center throw on a 1957 layout and a 156 Sprinter on the 1987 outside line. Getting the curve absolutely constant radius is vital, it is the kinks which cause the collisions. I use set track below 2ft radius cutting webs between sleepers and easing them out to larger radius to close the track spacing towards Streamline spacing, and to far less on straight sidings etc.