ejstubbs

To my mind the only backscene that really jarred was the one below the branch terminus, that made it look as if it was floating in the sky. Replace that with (another) retaining wall and it would look a lot less odd. That could turn the "port" in to a canal spur specifically built to allow freight interchange with the railway. I reckon you could lose the bit of canal that goes parallel to the high-level terminus altogether, and instead have the entrance to a canal tunnel disappearing off under the terminus, leaving just the bit next to the operating well as the freight wharf. Some of the rural backscenes may be a tad close to the rails to look realistic but it might be possible to disguise that eg with a length of dry stone wall such as this, this or this at the base of the backscene (maybe cut down to half thickness to fit in the available space - bonus: it covers twice the length that way!)

I stand happily corrected on that point. That would be less likely to be impeded by the Brian Kirby staples, then. My offer of Bachmann couplings for Kirby-isation is still open, if you would be able to put them to good use. (I even have a more or less unused pack of the PH Designs etchings for Bachmann couplings which were intended to make the conversion of the couplings themselves easier.)

It was the front door that was obstructed by the bus shelter, not the garage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-40529083 There's no mention in any of the online articles about it (Google 'station road langley mills bus shelter') of it actually being advertised as "convenient for public transport", though one wag on Facebook did apparently write: "Talk about the bus stop being right on your doorstep." One's sides were never really in danger of splitting.

Both Rails and MRD are still showing the PL-55 as pre-order, due 2017. The original article about it on the Peco website says the motor will have eight positions, not exit positions (which could indeed mean only four actual positions for the table itself).

It may be relevant - though relevant to precisely what I am not sure - but simply rehashing the same arguments ad nauseam doesn't really add anything to the debate, especially when they're over-seasoned with "in my day" nostalgia. There is genuine irony in the final paragraph of that article, where it states: "I know of no other hobby that covers such a wide range of facets or caters for such a wide range of skill levels," and then goes on to say, basically, that anyone not doing it more or less his way is wrong. The author may believe that people are 'missing out' on things that he finds rewarding, but that doesn't mean that other people don't find entirely legitimate satisfaction in other ways. Absent a genuine recognition that different things float different people's boats in different ways, there's a risk that the author will come across as having a rather blinkered view themselves. At least it's usually fairly easy to spot such diatribes within the first few sentences, and pass along to find something that hasn't been said a hundred times before.

I can understand that people might feel a bit daft standing a white line waiting for the barriers to drop when the siren starts, but given that there is a footbridge right next to the crossing then they don't actually need to do that, they can cross safely anyway. Most of them seemed perfectly able-bodied so it really just comes down to pig-headed laziness. As 96701 says, a couple of lifts to enable those of restricted mobility to use the elevated crossing and not only is the risk to pedestrians permanently eliminated, but they can get some useful extra exercise as well!

Bear in mind that the staples modification (which is widely known as the "Brian Kirby method", after the man who invented it - see page one of the link that imt posted) requires that the coupling hooks themselves not be magnetic. I think you have already mentioned that some of your stock has the old, riveted on type of coupling hook which I'm pretty sure means that the hooks on those couplings will turn out to be made from a magnetic material. The one type of tension lock coupling which is reliably known to have a non-magnetic hook is the Bachmann one. What this means is that you could be faced with changing the couplings on a lot of your stock, which would be time-consuming and fiddly, and would cost money. Not as much as switching to Kadees throughout, but unless you can find a generous soul who started down the Brian Kirby route and then decided to follow a different path, and who would be prepared to donate their unused Bachmann couplings FOC* then money will likely need to change hands. I also strongly suspect that coupling hooks modified for the Brain Kirby method won't work quite so well (if at all) with an uncoupling paddle, which is what I think you mean by "the hand of god". * Like me, perhaps? Drop me a personal message through RMWeb if you would like to discuss further.

Same here in Edinburgh. I believe that it's not just the absence of the school run, though: lots of people take time off work over the school holidays (trying to arrange meetings during half term weeks can be just as difficult as it is around Christmas, Easter and July/August) so it cuts down on the number of commuters as well. My previous job to this one was based at an office with a sizeable car park and lots of people drove to work - including me, because unfortunately there was no direct bus. It was significantly easier to find a parking space during the school holidays. Edit: Reorte beat me to it.

Just noticed the Ramsay Ladders Depot on the right. The house I live in was built in 1964, and has a Ramsay Ladder for access to the loft which I believe is original to the house. The lady we bought the house from was very proud of it. IMO it's a rather noisy and rickety thing which takes up an inordinate amount of floor space in the loft (which is boarded). It probably had to work quite hard in earlier days - I know that the seller's deceased husband had a layout in the loft. I keep meaning to get round to replacing it with a wooden fold-away ladder attached to the trap door, but somehow more important things keep cropping up that need doing...

The shorthand term for this is MGIF: "Must Get In Front!!!!!" Other common abbreviations when discussing poor driver behaviour are SMIDSY ("Sorry Mate I Didn't See You") and DILLIGAF ("Do I Look Like I Give A F..." - which usually refers to the response offered when another road user 'asks someone to reflect on the standard of their driving'). Also: texting when stopped at traffic lights. The giveaway being that they get so engrossed in their phones that they don't notice the lights changing, and hold up everyone behind them. I presume they somehow manage to regard waiting for the lights to change as "not really driving". Or else they are just chronically stupid.

There are also the characters who do 40 everywhere, regardless of the actual speed limit. Highly noticeable when driving in the Highlands: they do 40 on open but bendy roads where you can't overtake safely, then when you reach a village with a 30 limit they pull away from you! Also known as FARTs: "Forty All the Ruddy Time".

Or you could get your baseboards made for you. Although more expensive than DIY, this is a justifiable approach if you're more interested in running trains than you are in carpentry. I got mine made for me by PLS. Others I am aware of are: Model Scenery Supplies, Model Railway Baseboards and B&R Model Railways. I'm sure a bit of Googling would turn up a fair few more.

Nope. Prost at Imola in 1991 - in a Ferrari, which would have been popular with the tifosi. It was p1ssing down, though. Berger went off at the same corner in his McLaren but managed to keep it running and take the start. Grosjean put his Haas in the wall in Brazil in 2016 - again in the wet. Crisjian Albers managed to take out Michael Schumacher on the parade lap of the 2005 Chinese GP in the dry: both drivers started from the pit lane in their spare cars. There may be others. DC seems to be the only one to have done it from pole, though!

Didn't cause me any offence, just puzzlement. To me they sounded more like sour grapes, or perhaps just Ferrari's somewhat legendary peevishness, than a "smack down" (which is a pretty horrible phrase anyway IMO). I have in front of me just now a book by Enzo Ferrari (I suspect fairly heavily ghost written) published in Italy in 1995 and called piloti, che gente... (roughly: "Drivers, what guys...") The book says this about Jackie Stewart: "Stewart è stato un genuine campione. Un uomo che non concedeva molto agli avversari. Sapeva quello che voleva e lo sa tuttora. A parte le qualità eccezionali del whisky che offre agli amici, direi proprio che è un ragioniere e nei suoi conti ha sempre amministrato scrupulosamente anche il rischio. Lo ammiro, anche se disdegnava le macchine con le ruote coperte... È entrato con autorità nella rosa dei migliori di tutti i tempi, e non soltanto per i tre mondiali che ha riportato. Lo ricordo al volante di una Ferrari, in coppia con Amon, in una 1000 Chilometri di Brands Hatch che fu decivisa per iltitolo mondiale del campionato Marche del 1967." Stewart was a real champion. A man who did not concede much to his opponents. He knew what he wanted and still knows. Aside from the exceptional qualities of the whisky offered to friends, I would say that he is an analytical man and in his analyses he has always scrupulously accounted for risk as well. I admire him, even though he didn't think much of sport cars... He arrived on the scene with authority in the best of all times, and not just for the three world championships he won. I remember him at the wheel of a Ferrari, in partnership with Amon, in a 1,000 Kilometers of Brands Hatch which clinched the World Sportscar Championship for Ferrari in 1967. Across pages 398 and 399 is a photo of Stewart in the 330 P4 he drove with Chris Amon in that 1967 BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch. Of course, it was later in that year that Stewart declined Ferrari's offer of a factory drive...

That seems to have been corrected. The guff about it being the Hogwarts Express seems to have originated from the father, perhaps picking up on his kids' excitement: "In the end I decided the only option was to phone the police and mountain rescue, ask if they have any local knowledge that could help us out," said Mr Cluett. ... "The amazing thing was it wasn't just any train. The next train that was passing was the Jacobite steam train - the Harry Potter, Hogwarts Express steam train that goes up and down that line." Funny how a train can be both The Jacobite and the Hogwarts Express...

Ah, gotcha. Post #252 was mine: I'd forgotten that that was where that baseboard shape was first suggested, and why. So flipping it the way I suggested in post #337 above probably wouldn't work because of the Juliet balcony. I did have a rather simpler overall layout concept in mind than you have come up with: just a terminus and fiddle yard, with perhaps an extension of the scenic area in front of the fiddle yard. It still raises the issue of how to 'fiddle' between the scenic break and the wall, though. I didn't quote any dimensions - that was Johnster in post #254, and I'm not sure how he managed to derive those numbers. If Ed could manage to run a tape measure along that wall and tell us what it says, that could be a big help!

Whereas, of course, tension locks look so prototypical on British stock! The way I see it is that Kadees are a vast improvement on tension locks in terms of reliability and automatic operation. Part of that is because they are made to a common standard (albeit a proprietary one) and the manufacturer provides a range of ancillary tools and components to help get them fitted and working on just about anything that runs on model rails. Yes, they aren't prototypical for much British stock, but at least they do look like a railway coupling, which no tension lock could ever do IMO. For those who do want something that looks more prototypical there are other options, like Spratt and Winkle through to full three-link couplings. S+W are again proprietary, and for those who run rtr stock involve removing whatever coupling was fitted out-of-the-box - so, little different to a lot of Kadee fitments in that regard, then (although unlike Kadees there's no NEM S+W!) Three-link couplings should obviously look the business but are entirely manual in operation, and out of the question for many modellers with less then perfect eyesight or dexterity. I look upon it as a continuum from cheap & cheerful automatic albeit not particularly reliable and completely unprototyical (TLCs) through varying levels of functionality and increasing prototypical-ness (what is the word for that?) until you get to three-link couplings. Everyone is free to pick the point on the spectrum that meets their personal preferences in terms of operational requirements, reliability, cost, effort involved, and visual realism. As it happens, this thread is mainly aimed at people who have chosen the Kadee point on the spectrum. Wibbling on for too long about TLCs is taking it seriously so I'll shut up now.

Or you could flip the baseboard shape vertically, putting the station along a straight front edge and having the fiddle yard away from the wall at the back. Roughly like this: If you have 4ft width to play with for the whole length then you could have a 2ft wide access gap at the back, 9" for the four-road fiddle yard and 15" in front of the scenic break for the station platforms (the position of the right hand end of the scenic break could be adjusted to create more room for sidings & loco depot). RJS1977's plan looks to require 13ft of length. Do you have that amount of space available?

Not quite understanding some of the comments about Jackie Stewart on here. (I'm wondering whether my irony meter might be broken.) I'll just leave this for people to reflect on: http://en.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/56647.html

Not really, largely because there is no standard for OO tension locks. See this recent thread. You can standardise on a single manufacturer's TLC eg the Bachmann one, which is fairly readily available. This can often mean taking a knife to other manufacturers' stock, though, which some folks don't like doing. Or you can just fettle the couplings on each item of stock until they work well with the other stock they'll be coupled up to. Droopy couplings can often be fixed with a shim of plasticard (see my post #415 above regarding a similar issue that sometimes arises with NEM Kadees). Or you can throw the blasted things away and fit something better.

Nah, that's what choc blocks are for!

I bought one of those last time they were in store. Unfortunately it failed the second time I tried to use it, so it had to go back for a refund. That's one of the slight gotchas with buying stuff like that from Lidl: they only have limited stocks so there's a fair chance that they won't be able to provide a replacement if the item does fail after more than about a month or so. That said, I've had perfectly acceptable service from other bits of DIY kit bought from both Lidl and Aldi - you'd have to prise my Workzone Li-ion multi-tool out of my cold, dead hands! I ended up buying an iron from Maplin that was recommended on RMWeb (possibly on the old Bargain Hunters thread) that goes down to 150º. Significantly more expensive but it does have that extra capability. Update: it was this one.

I've not got any of those particular wagons but I have found that NEM Kadees can sometimes droop a little due to being a trifle loose in the NEM pocket. Whether that's because rolling stock manufacturers don't follow the NEM pocket standard closely enough, or because Kadee's swallowtails are a fraction too thin, or an evil combination of both, I don't know. I've found that a shim of 10thou plasticard* under the swallowtail usually does the trick, although you may find that you need to tweak the trip pin slightly as well, per tomparryharry's advice. * For some unfathomable reason Slater's don't seem to do 10thou plasticard in black, which is a pain. I ended up having to pay rather more to get the Evergreen 10thou sheets in black if I wanted to be able to cut and fit shims without also having to wield the paintbrush

My understanding is that Johnster is fully committed elsewhere for the foreseeable future. In an idle half hour yesterday evening I knocked up this version of Minories in Hornby Setrack using AnyRail on my Mac: The grid lines are on 12" spacings, so this version is 6ft 6in by 1ft 6in. The longest platform will take three coaches plus a loco, the other platform roads rather less (they could be extended to end in line with the longest platform by the judicious use of cut track). If there was more length available then the platform roads can easily be extended. There's no fiddle yard detail: again, space constraints are likely to dictate what can be done there. Can I suggest this Peco booklet as a basic starting point for layout design? For only £1.37, it seems daft not to have it to hand...

I think the crossover is a hangover from the prototype Clarence Road, which had a double track approach (see earlier discussion on this thread on the subject eg my post #251). The crossover was needed so that arriving trains could access the single platform on the up side. With a single track approach it makes no sense still having it there. You do need a crossover at the buffers end for running round, though. All a bit odd, really - especially with more points in the rather bizarre fiddle yard than on the scenic area! I think that would be a bit of a challenge TBH: if the "classic" Minories as I referenced above is 7ft long that only leaves 3ft for the fiddle yard. Three 57ft coaches and a 2-6-4T will just fit in 3ft. Roughly 6" more could be won back for the fiddle yard by using only short radius points and putting the buffers hard against the end of the baseboard, but 3ft 6in still isn't really a lot. There would be no room for pointwork in the fiddle yard so cassettes/loco lifts etc would be pretty much obligatory. Mind you, if Ed is happy to use Setrack (as seems to be the case going by the plans he's drafted in Trax) then that probably shaves a bit more off the station length and could give a bit more back to the fiddle yard. I'd agree that, if Ed has 4ft width to play with then an 8ft x 4ft roundy-roundy with a central operating could be worth considering. That could be made out of two 4ft x 1ft or 2ft boards, and two 6ft or 4ft x 1ft boards, giving a 2ft wide operating well. That would have plenty of room for three coach trains.