ejstubbs

If you mean this one: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/28198-bradfield-gloucester-square-br-1962-ish/ then you need to be aware that that layout was constructed using hand-built track. You can basically forget replicating that using ready-to-run track. Just look at the single slip/scissors/double slips combination in the station throat: If you try to create the same combination of route options using rtr track it'll end up a lot longer than the 15ft that TheLaird used for his layout. I'd suggest that Minories, or something close to it, is still a better bet if that's the sort of thing you fancy ie a compact urban terminus with a fair amount of operational flexibility and interest. I'd also suggest that going from a single platform with a run-round (ie your Cardiff Clarence Road idea) to three platforms is quite a jump, and might indicate that you still aren't clear in your own mind what you really want. No worries, though: that just gives you more opportunity to do more research! How much length do you actually have to work with? As stated earlier in this thread, the original Minories occupies about 12ft by 1ft in OO. There's a plan of Minories using Streamline track in this post on the 00 Minories track plan wanted thread. It only shows the station as far as the scenic break, but that only occupies 7ft so if you had 12ft that's a fair amount of room left for a fiddle yard (especially if you use cassettes, or a Denny-style fiddle yard, rather than pointwork). (Note that the rather awkward "wiggle" around the hinge at the bottom edge of that plan can be designed out if you are building a fixed layout ie you don't need it to fold.)

From that article: Gasly says he does not mind which scenario ends up happening as he sees benefits in both. "The two options are exciting for me. If I go to Super Formula, fight for the title and come back to Mexico and finish the season with Toro Rosso that would be great, because a title is a title. But if I can go to Austin and race with Toro Rosso and end the season with them I will not complain because it is a fantastic opportunity." The young man seems to have a sensible attitude. (He'll never get far in F1, then...)

Ah, the Brownie 127...I used two during my youth: the black second model with the shutter release on the top, and the grey third model with the shutter release on the front. I do have some railway photos taken with them somewhere, I'll maybe try to dig them out. There was a third model Brownie 127 on display in the 1960s exhibit in York's Castle Museum, when I went there a few years ago. I nearly had a fit when I saw that they'd 'completed' the display with a cassette of 35mm film! (Edited to add that I like your photos, and would like to see more!)

And illegal, don't forget that. Overtaking on a pedestrian crossing (PC20 - 3 points), plus passing at least two pedestrian refuges (islands) marked with "keep left" signs* (TS50 - 3 points each). Plus a minimum of 3 points for driving without due care and attention (CD10) and you're off the road sonny. Oh, hang on, if they lose their licence they can't work so they can plead hardship and carry on driving... B*ll*x to that, I say. If you need your licence to work then you should have thought about that before choosing the break the law so egregiously. * OK, someone appeared to have demolished one of them. I don't know whether that's an adequate defence. OTOH, it could easily have been the bus that demolished it.

Not that I don't believe the official report in this case, but your comment does remind me of the days when Alfa Romeo were running their own cars in F1 (1970s and 1980s) and their engines had an unconquerable tendency to blow up. At one race Andrea de Cesaris (or "de Crasheris" as he was sometimes known - or simply "the mobile chicane" to James Hunt) retired and the official reason given was an oil leak. Autosport reported one pit lane wag as remarking: "Yes, you can see it leaking - out of that big hole in the engine block."

That Pareto principle gets everywhere. When I used to do programming for a living I used to estimate that 20% of the code I wrote handled 80% of operating conditions - ie basically normal operations - and the other 80% of the code was there to handle the remaining 20% of conditions, the exceptions to normal processing. I note that the Wiki article references Pareto in the context of bug fixing. It comes down to the same thing: 20% of the code is traversed 80% of the time, so getting the bugs out of that 20% of the code will eliminate 80% of crashes simply because that's where the bugs are most likely to be encountered, not because that's where most of them actually are. However, by taking that approach you potentially risk failing to debug the exception conditions, which is not a good idea. It's precisely when things aren't behaving the way they're supposed to that you need the system to work. See British Airways and their IT meltdown over Easter: their disaster recovery plan was inadequate. You need to test this stuff to make sure it works.

From the camera on Vettel's car it looks very much as it Vettel moved in towards the apex and cut up the driver he'd just passed. https://youtu.be/Zo13jKbGmXc?t=75 (These YouTube links usually don't stay up for long, once the F1 rights team have got to work.) Odd how the two sequences look very different. Perhaps something to do perspective being distorted due to the use of wide angle lenses on the car cameras?

If you finish the baseboards, you could follow Siberian snooper's suggestion in posts #216 and #223 and use the Peco point templates to experiment with laying out different track formations at full size (assuming that you're going to be using Streamline track).

The crossover will be formed from two points. The track you choose to use (Setrack, Streamline, other) will largely dictate the crossover's length, and the spacing between the two parallel tracks. The bit on the platform road between the crossover and the bufferstop will need to be long enough to accommodate your longest loco, otherwise it won't be able to run round the train in the platform road. The distance between the crossover in the station itself and the one in the station throat needs to be long enough to accommodate the longest set of coaches you hope to be able to run. Plus a bit, because there will be overlap at the crossover. I usually allow at least 5cm extra at each end where coaches are going to be sat on one of the diverging roads. This stuff is massively easier for you to do if you get yourself a track planning tool, and there is no good reason why one of XtrkCAD, Railmodeller or TRAX won't work on your Mac.

Looking at the description of the app on Bluerailways' web site, it looks as if it effectively gives inertia control, with configurable acceleration and deceleration (and an emergency stop) rather than 'pure' analogue control. If that's the case then I'm quite tempted to drop £40 on the 522 just to have a play with that.

That would seem to settle it, then: the layout needs to be on the right hand side of Harlequin's diagram. It would be very helpful if the precise dimensions of that space could be determined. It looks to me as if there would be more space for a fiddle yard at the bottom of the diagram - the top seems to have less room available due to the need to keep access to the Juliet balcony free. Still doesn't look like a whole lot of room for fiddling. A fiddle yard behind a scenic area might work. Rough diagram below (layout in green, fiddle yard in blue):

The platform, singular, is on the left at the end of the double tracks ie the side where it says "Station" on the map. It is often difficult to make out exactly where station platforms begin and end on those large scale OS maps - they were often indicated fairly sketchily. Arriving trains would need to cross over from the down line using the crossover before the kickback siding. (If the platform had been on the other side then the crossovers would have been the other way around.) The platform is actually marked on the 1954 OS 1:1,250 plan: Interestingly, there's also an engine shed marked: at the north end of that screenshot, beyond the blocks of factories. Those large factory blocks aren't on the 1920 map, and nor is the engine shed, but the latter is shown on the 1941 map as "Engine House" - I had assumed that was referring to a stationary engine but it appears not. I suspect that the engine shed was more for locos working in the extensive factory sidings, rather than for the passenger service. But it provides an "excuse" for loco handling facilities if one were needed.

In that case I can see no reason why XtrakCAD, Railmodeller or TRAX shouldn't run on your Mac. (I think you may need the X11 libraries to run XtrkCAD - you can download them from here. This is the method recommend by Apple to get X11 on MacOS.) Does that mean there's no chance of a bridge/removable section across the french window giving access to the Juliet balcony? If so then the layout will have to be one side of it or the other. I'd favour the right hand side (looking at Harlequin's diagram) since that's furthest from the cooking area. Which window are you referring to here - the one giving access to the Juliet balcony, or the smaller one next to the cooking area? There's quite a lengthy thread about Cardiff Clarence Road station on RMWeb here. You can see the track plan if you search for Cardiff Clarence Road on the old-maps.co.uk web site, and pick the 1:2,500 scale maps. Here's a starter for ten: That's the 1941 edition of the OS map, which is the earliest edition to show the kickback siding Johnster mentioned. The 1954 1:2,500 plans are actually a little bit clearer - you can access them via the link I posted above. The old-maps.co.uk web site can be very useful for researching the layouts of old stations, or stations which still exist but which have been "rationalised" ie downsized for nothing more than EMU/DMU services. The Disused Stations web site is also quite good for researching station layouts, and station histories.

Are you referring to the track planning tools? I would find it a bit odd if none of them are working for you. XtrkCAD is available in a MacOS specific download, Railmodeller Express and Pro are on the Mac App Store, and TRAX should run on anything that's got a reasonably modern browser (I think it needs HTML5, but any currently supported browser should be compliant with that these days). How old is your Mac, and what version of MacOS is it running?

You seem to have completely overlooked the fact that I was not talking about product innovation, but about providing the impetus for a "wide-ranging behavioural and infrastructural revolution" (my exact words). And I said he had no track record of doing that - please provide evidence to the contrary if you have any - while the automotive manufacturers arguably do, based on what they've done in the past that was very little to do with the physical product and a lot to do with changing the way that people bought them. They have shown in the past that they can think beyond the product itself. I haven't seen that from Dyson to date. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/29/dyson-electric-car-project-industry-experts-2020-engineering-manufacturing-regulatory-hurdles And I didn't say that the automotive engineers are the only ones innovating, which is what you seem to be trying to imply. I said they have a stronger track record for innovating in areas beyond just the product. You mention Elon Musk and I would actually agree that, although a lot of people focus purely on the physical hardware his company sells (still without making a profit to date, BTW), he does seem to have a broader vision for what the world could be like several years in the future. I don't believe that he's in the game just to sell cars with batteries and electric motors instead of tanks of liquid hydrocarbon fuel and ICE engines. He's got other things in mind. I'm not convinced from what I've seen and heard from Dyson so far that he is aiming to do anything more than create a better electric car - and it seems to me that in doing that he may find himself fighting battles that no longer need to be fought, against competitors who are already planning to move the battlefield completely elsewhere.

Hey, that looks good! An indication of the approximate scale would be helpful, eg the real life distance that the sides of the small squares represent. Which of the windows is the Juliet balcony?

XtrkCAD/XTrackCad runs natively on MacOS, and is free. That said, I find it difficult to use. In fact the last time I decided to give it a try (last week) I coldn't even work out how to place a turnout - it seemed to need me to set a configuration setting which I could not for the life of me work out how to do, despite much poring over online help and the like. OTOH, many RMWebbers seem to like it so it's probably just me. There's also an app in the Mac store called Railmodeller - available as a free download with limited functionality, and the paid Pro version (see http://www.railmodeller.com/express-edition-en.html for more info). I have tried it but it was a while back. As I recall it seemed OK, but not enough to wean me away from my favourite layout planning tool which is... ...AnyRail. I even paid for the full version. Yes, it's only available for Windows I run it on a Windows virtual machine running under VirtualBox (you need some way to install Windows in the virtual machine if you take this route - I used the VMWare P2V tool to create a Windows VM from a laptop running Windows). Other RMWebbers report running it successfully using WINE (not a solution I'm not fond of, TBH). Either of those techniques can reportedly also be used to run SCARM on a Mac. If the technical jargon baffles you, you probably don't want to go down this road... There is another, somewhat left-field option which is (theoretically) platform agnostic because its basically a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering: TRAX. All you need to run this is a web browser. I did have a wee play with it once. It seemed...OK. Well, it didn't crash, anyway. The page design is a bit "pre-school" IMO. One way or another you should be able to find something that will run on your Mac that you can use for designing layouts.

Old school thinking. What you really need are some of those clever interlocking plastic barriers that disconnect themselves and fall over at the slightest breath of wind, blocking the entire lane. When I were a lad they'd put a little tent over the hole and mark the hazard with the road mender's equivalent of flaming torches. Aye, them were the days...

That's actually a long-term aim of the companies working on autonomous vehicles: you won't own a car any more, you'll just hail an autonomous vehicle using a smartphone app and it'll take you where you want to go. Basically it's a switch from private cars to private hire cars. Which is probably why Uber is so desperate to get it working (I say "desperate" because they once again seem to have taken Zuckerberg's "move fast and break things" mantra rather too seriously - and what they broke was the law). That also helps with the issue of your electric car not being charged when you need it unexpectedly: your autonomous vehicle provider manages it all. And if your ride does unexpectedly run out of juice in the middle of the job, they can just send another one to pick you up and carry on. A bit inconvenient but not a show-stopper. It also helps with another issue, that people tend to buy and run the biggest car they will regularly need - so Dad drives to work on his own every day in a car capable of carrying him, the missus, three kids and all their gubbins to Centre Parcs for the weekend. His autonomous minicab provider can send him a compact vehicle for this daily commute, and a minivan for the weekend trip. But to bring this back to Dyson: again, a number of organisations are already working on it, and IMO it's even more doubtful whether he can bring anything useful to such a wide-ranging behavioural and infrastructural revolution than he can to the technology that makes cars move. I say that purely because AFAIK he has no track record of doing anything with the stuff that he makes other than sticking it in a box and selling it. It may strike some people as odd, but it's arguably the automotive manufacturers who have a strong record for innovation in that area, with their history of innovative finance schemes (was it GM that was described as "a loan company which happens to make cars as well"?), approved used car schemes (to overcome the market for lemons effect) and so forth. They're working on electric vehicles. They're working on autonomy: all those 'driver aids' that are turning up in new cars are steps along the way, and arguably more to do with getting people used to the idea than being technical stepping stones (it's quite likely that the technology they could deploy is way ahead of what regular car buyers would be happy with right now). It's extremely likely that they're also working on how these things are going to be bought and used in the future as well.

I think that's a very USA-centric viewpoint. In Europe it's much more common for people who work at a fixed location (office, factory, call centre, distribution depot, hotel, hospital...the list is long) to use some form of public transport: bus, train, yes even trams - more so on the continent than in the UK, but they're making a comeback here too. The point you make about a car that's already been bought and used being more "eco-friendly" than a brand new car does have a degree of merit. (Looking at the whole-life environmental impact again, not just the in-use emissions.)

Northwick looks quite interesting. Have you seen the layout thread on RMWeb for it? There's a plan for it in post #7 - looks to be 22ft long without the fiddle yard, though I'm sure it could be judiciously modified if that was too long. The station throat in particular could be compressed somewhat, I think. It is quite "busy" - there's quite a lot of trackwork for what on the face of it appears to be a fairly straightforward station - and might be just a little too much for one person to take on singlehanded working only at weekends (assuming you get to your holiday flat that often). At least, I'd expect it to take a while before you could operate an interesting service on anything other than bare boards. Remember that what you see on that thread was built by a club, so quite a few hands will have contributed, and a fair few will be quite experienced. Achieving an equivalent level of scenic detail to what they've done, but working solo, would be quite a long-term project, I'd imagine. (I also note that the club decided that the original track layout had some drawbacks, and had to think about modifying it - see post #42, which IMO makes it look even busier, especially since it includes a double slip and a three-way point.) You could consider building something like that in phases eg having just the loco shed to begin with, then adding the more extensive depot later. Or simplify the track plan a bit, possibly at the expense of operational convenience, but without losing operational interest (in simple terms, the amount of 'stuff' you can justify having your engines doing on the layout before they have to disappear back to the fiddle yard). The bay platform and carriage siding are another example of the kind of thing that could possibly be held back to be added later - so long as you remember to leave room for them at the back of the layout. Note also the travails that the club had with their turntable. In post #4 they had to replace the operating mechanism, and by post #61 they had decided to replace the whole thing - which also involved extending the relevant baseboard section, and completely re-working the track layout for the depot. I think this is a good example of how these things can turn out to be a lot of work, and difficult to get right first time, per the warnings earlier in this thread. That's not to say don't have one, but it's best to be aware of what you might be letting yourself in for in terms of both time and cost, and be realistic about whether that investment is really justified in the overall context of what you're trying to achieve. I think this is actually a good example of what you can learn by reading other people's layout threads: getting a feeling for people's design ideas (without necessarily having to use their actual designs), seeing the good ideas they had, and they hurdles they found they had to overcome. As an example of another RMWebber's protracted design process involving multiple false starts and dead-ends, I'd suggest having a look at Danemouth's series of layout threads: Danemouth OO Danemouth Mk2 Danemouth Yet Again Danemouth Esplanade Danemouth Mk 4 I have to say, I admire his persistence! (And the fact that his Mk 4 design is uncannily similar to my own layout is neither here nor there. Convergent evolution is the name for that phenomenon, I think.) Another good one to have a read of might be halsey's RMW "Layout & Track Design" worked thread, which is pretty much a case study of how bouncing ideas back and forth with other RMWebbers helped someone to design and build - to the point where they had trains running how they wanted - an operationally effective layout that met their particular requirements for a model railway. I'd also have a look at some of Stubby47's layout and design threads, which always seem to contain interesting ideas about creating a back story for the layout and using that to shape the design, as well as particular design details.

You see, it's that kind of response that's likely to put people off helping you. You keep asking for help but without being at all clear about what it is that you need help with. You've told us that there is an issue with access to a window, but really without knowing where you were planning to put the layout in relation to the window, and what elements of the layout might be compromised by having to provide the necessary access, it's not at all easy for people to come up with anything more than very general suggestions. It's unrealistic to expect everyone else to remember where you'd got to in your plans and designs. Post a picture so we can see what's currently in your mind, rather than trying to envisage it for ourselves. Draw it on the back of an old envelope, take a photo of it on your phone and post it on here! If nothing else, at least please post a version of your room floor plan which is bigger than postage stamp!! Which is fine up to a point, but if you provide some feedback in response to people's advice - "good idea but I don't think it'll work in my situation because...", "cunning idea and it might provide a way to solve this other problem as well", "here's a drawing of what I think I could do based on what you've said", that sort of thing - then it really helps to move the discussion on. As I wrote way back in post #83: "I'd suggest posting a summary of the ideas you are currently toying with in terms of a layout - ie provide some actual input from yourself. This will give people an idea of which direction you're thinking of going in, and is likely to spark input from people who have seen or even done something similar." Or as Siberian Snooper said: People only do this out of goodness. Make it easy for them to help and they're more likely to do it. And by articulating your own ideas and thoughts, you might even realise that you can see a way past some of the problems yourself.

What's 'positive' about it? Pure PR puff, like much of what comes out of the Dyson organisation. 800 man years and they've come up with...an electric motor? Whoop-de-flippin'-do. It'll probably be a "digital" motor, though, like in his vacuum cleaners. Not just a common-or-garden brushless motor like I've got in my cordless drill, but a digital one - so it must be 'better', right? http://www.eevblog.com/2010/12/13/eevblog-132-delusional-dyson-marketing I'm glad you've been happy with your Dysons. My Henry is 12 years old and still going. And it's British. The vacuum it replaced (one of the European brands IIRC) was even older, and only got chucked out after we'd completely knackered it cleaning up the debris left by all the building, plastering, electrics, plumbing and carpentry work we had done when me moved in to our current house. At the time that one was coughing its last Dysons had a terrible reputation for quality and longevity. Which? called them out on it on a regular basis, as well as finding that you other vacuums they tested - even non-cyclone ones - performed just as well as Dysons. I have never seen a professional cleaner using a Dyson. It's usually Henry, Miele or Kärcher.

You can find out who has "thanked" you by clicking on the "List" link next to the total. The same goes for the other ratings that people can give your posts. (In this case it might just have been a phantom click or finger trouble.) It might be easier for people to help with changes to the layout if you could post the diagram that needs modification. I can't see a "this is my current thinking" diagram in the thread (though that might just be me). If there is one, please re-post it, or link to the post where it appeared.

As did the traversers at Moor Street: http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/gwr/gwrms1223.htm - there were voids under the platforms at each side to accommodate the "spare" track. Note the operating instructions: locos had to stop short of the traverser and be uncoupled before moving on to the traverser table. It makes you wonder exactly how much space the traversers saved, if you were still left with what was effectively two loco's length of empty track between the lead coach and the buffers. Perhaps that's why traversers didn't get used elsewhere for loco release: effectively an expensive non-solution to the problem of limited space. Mind you, the same operational limitations probably applied to turntables and sector plates, especially since they seem to have had much less clearance between the converging approach roads than the nice parallel tracks approaching the traverser. But at least with a turntable you can actually turn the loco, which the BoT seemed to be quite keen on towards the latter part of the nineteenth century (which I've read was more because of the reduced crew protection when travelling tender-first, than because there was anything mechanically unsafe about the practice).