ejstubbs

If I've understood the OP, their original idea would have allowed that, too. I think Rivercider's photos demonstrate that. My first ever "model railway" had a layout similar to the one that David suggested. I found that the station buildings obstructed my view of the trains in the platforms - not helped by the layout being at chest height. As well as that, the passenger access to the station being more or less in the middle of the goods yard didn't 'feel' right (though I have no doubt that there are plenty of prototype examples of such configurations). The layout I am currently planning will be similar in its basic configuration to Rivercider's, except that there will be a bay road on the other side of the platform. The station building will be very close to the backscene, and the goods yard will be at the front of the baseboard (my baseboard is even narrower than the OP's - only 375mm). I guess it depends to a degree what you want to look at: trains, or buildings. I know which way I am inclined this time round.

Nonetheless, it is done on a regular basis in certain disciplines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statistically-speaking/

How much would he be likely to be fined? He might be able to make a profit by handing himself in! (He doesn't look like the type who'd be bothered about having a ?longer? criminal record.)

Seems to have kept time pretty well over that stretch. Then again, I've no idea how challenging the schedule was. On the return journey, left PNZ on time, 23 down by Lostwithiel, made up 22 by Liskeard - somewhat hard to believe for a leg originally timed at 38 minutes!!! I assume these runs have no pax on board.

The down run seemed to be going well until it passed Par. Anyone know what happened between there and Camborne?

Or the Peco equivalent (which appear to have the benefit of actually being available to buy).

Do what Brian said. And have a good look at his web site. You're unlikely to go far wrong if you do

At the risk of heading seriously off topic, could you elucidate, pease? James who? Anyway, George Stephenson was an engineer. He designed and built useful things. I don't see any need to be sniffy about that.

Thanks for that suggestion. I'm not too keen on digging trenches in my baseboards, I'm afraid. Given that I'll be using underlay then I could cut grooves in that. It still seems a bit awkward, though. Another option might be to solder droppers on to the various contact pads, run all the droppers through separate holes in the baseboard and connect them up underneath. You could double up the function of the wires from the stock rails and use them to energise the frog via the external switch as well. Still doesn't seem all that elegant, though... This shows another possible approach which might work: Here, the thick green lines would be wires run through shallow channels cut into the undersides of the sleepers. You wouldn't need to modify the webs between the sleepers because they aren't as deep as the sleepers themselves. I have some tinned copper wire for this purpose which shouldn't need too big a channel cutting. Once it's all ballasted nothing should be visible. Well, I've got a few more ideas to think about, anyway. TBH, the more I mull the options over in my mind, the more I think I'm inclining back towards the use of droppers to the underside of the baseboard, since that involves the least mechanical surgery to the points. Thanks again for the ideas.

Good point (sorry). If 60700 has seen no movement with one loco on either road, but both moving with one on each then that would be fairly diagnostic of such a problem. (I think you'd also expect the two locos to be rather sluggish). If that's the case then a small amount of fettling of the contact patches between the switch rail and the stock rail could solve the problem. You could also get this result if one of the wires on the underside of the point that bridges the break the switch rails is broken eg due to a manufacturing fault, no matter how clean the contact point for the switch rail against the stock rail was. The solution in this case would be to return the faulty turnout to the retailer who supplied it and get them to provide a good one in its place.

The mechanical redesign of the Peco electrofrog points has not changed their behaviour in terms of electrical switching (assuming that the point has not been modified from its out-of-the-box state). The two-piece switch rails are electrically continuous, same as the old one-piece rails. The tab was there to make a positive electrical connection between the stock rail and the switch rail. I'm not sure why Peco have removed it in the later version - it might have been for cosmetic reasons, or it might even have been suspected of creating a short circuit risk with wheels that don't conform to modern 00 standards. Arguably its absence does have the downside of making the electrical connection between stock and switch rail vulnerable to dirt, rail paint or ballast (which is a good argument for bonding the switch rail to the stock rail, although you need to switch the frog polarity externally if you're going to do that). Based on your diagram, and the symptoms you describe, it does sound to me as if there is a 'phantom' power feed into that bay road somewhere. I would suggest checking carefully that there aren't any rogue whiskers of wire bridging a gap somewhere (there was another poster recently who spend ages chasing a similar kind of problem - though in his case it was a short circuit IIRC - only to discover precisely this as being the root cause of his problem). I would have thought that it's quite easy for this sort of thing to happen inadvertently when replacing a bit of trackwork. Correct, and correct. It should be straightforward to verify this with a multimeter. This really shouldn't be necessary, assuming that 60700 has shown the power feeds and insulating joiners correctly on his diagram (and I've no reason to suppose that he hasn't). You don't need insulating joiners beyond on the frog on a dead-end road, which is what Bay 1 effectively is, in electrical terms (because of the insulating joiners at the heel of the loco release turnout). In fact, if you put an insulating joiner beyond the frog of the new point on Bay 1 then nothing should ever run beyond that point: there would be no way for power to reach the upper rail unless there is a phantom power feed somewhere.

Sorry, I'm having difficulty picturing exactly what you're describing. Could you post a drawing or diagram of that part of your layout? The reason I raise the question is that I managed to confuse myself mightily with a single rail isolated section at the end of a bay platform (though it didn't have a run-round). There were two turnouts in a row between the power feed and the bay and it took me a while to work out where power was going according to which way the points were set, and why a loco in the isolated section would move in the isolated section but then stop when it reached the normal section adjacent to the point. By the way, I'd take David's criticism of new Peco pints with a bit of a pinch of salt. I know he does have a fondness for buying up second-hand track, but I can assure you that - before it had to be dismantled and re-planned due to an impending re-organisation of space at home - my DC layout ran fine with over a dozen unmodified Peco short radius electrofrog points bought as brand new stock from a high-volume online retailer (I actually held off ordering while they got new stock in) less than a year ago. Even the odd behaviour in the bay platform was a result of the points were functioning as they were supposed to - it just took me a while to get my head round why, and what re-wiring I had to do to correct it.

Are there breaks in both rails, or just one?

I would say that Templot is way OTT for track planning with ready-to-lay points and flexitrack (I think Martin Wynne would agree). Most people seem to use either AnyRail or XtrkCAD, although there are other track planning tools around. IIRC XtrkCAD has better facilities for designing transition curves than AnyRail, but I find its UI paradigm difficult to get on with. XtrkCad does have the potential advantage that it runs on Windows, Mac or Linux whereas AnyRail is Windows-only. That said, I run AnyRail quite happily on my Mac within a Windows 10 virtual machine running under Virtual Box. (Virtual Box is free, Windows costs money. There are tools out there which you can use to "P2V" a Windows 10 machine and load it up as a vm.)

I suspect that something else may be going on. You may even have a faulty point (though I'm struggling to understand how a fault in the point could cause what you describe). All my electrofrog points, bought within the last year, isolate* correctly using only the point blades for switching. There may be a "ghost" feed coming from somewhere else that's confusing things - do you have a switched isolating section or an auto-stop section at the end of the bay? * Strictly speaking, electrofrog points don't isolate the road not selected, they put the same polarity on both rails. Which amounts to the same thing in terms of locos being able to move, but can sometimes - with certain combinations of isolating rail joiners, sequences of turnouts and so forth - cause a road to be properly "live" when you don't expect it. Insulfrog points, of course, disconnect power completely from the rail coming from the frog vee on the road not selected.

This subject seems to come up quite frequently: the instructions that come with Peco code 100 electrofrog turnouts don't seem to apply exactly to the short radius left-hand and right-hand turnouts, and the short Y. I've had a close look at my examples of each (both purchased new within the last 12 months) and I've come up with what I think should be a workable approach for each. First the short radius left-hand and right-hand turnouts. Setting up frog switching is straightforward enough, and there are already breaks in the switch rails: In this respect the instructions are adequate. However, if you want to go a step further and bond the switch rails to their corresponding stock rails, it seems less clear. Having had a look at the underside of my points, I believe that this approach might work, at the possible expense of weakening the track base: Any comments on this idea? Are there better places to attach the bonding wires which don't require cutting the track base? Moving on the the short Y points: the instructions don't seem to apply to these in any useful way. Having inspected mine, I note that there is a break in each switch rail, right before the vee of the frog, between the switch rail and the wing rail: Looking at the underside, it doesn't appear to be anything like as straightforward either to arrange external frog switching, or to bond the switch rails to their corresponding stock rails. This is an attempt to illustrate how I think it might be done: I believe that bonding switch and stock rails in the way suggested above might also require cutting a channel in the underside of the track base for the bonding wire to run in - again, potentially weakening it. Once again, comments or alternative suggestions would be welcome.

Just looked at my code 100 electrofrog turnouts: The medium points have two partially-drilled holes at the heel end, nothing else The short points have two partially-drilled holes at the heel end and one in the middle The short Y points have two fully drilled holes at the heel end and one in the middle These were all bought within the last year or so. I haven't checked my code 100 insulfrog single slip.

Only turnouts, not crossings. (I'm talking Peco here - I don't know about other manufacturers. The OP seemed to assume Peco, although didn't state it, and most of the responses seem to as well.) FWIW, my Bachmann 1F 0-6-0T runs through my SL-80 code 100 insulfrog single slip with no problem at all.

This question has been asked before: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/109116-track-underlay-how-wide/ (On this occasion I knew about the thread, because it was me that asked the question. But a Google search of 'cork underlay width rmweb' would have turned it up as the fifth hit.)

Actually, now I reflect, I thought that Copydex would come out by washing in warm water. So if the trousers' care label allows it, you could just try sticking them in the washing machine.

I think we may still have a bit of mis-communication going on here. In the photo I posted previously, the dovetail is how the NEM pocket is attached to the chassis of the vehicle. The NEM pocket is standardised, the dovetail isn't*. The Kadee NEM couplings comply with the NEM standard. That's all they have to do. Interoperability between different manufacturers' equipment: it's what standards are for! If all of your tension locks are NEM then (in theory**) all you have to do to replace a tension lock with a Kadee is to pop the "swallowtail" of the tension lock out of the NEM pocket and slip the Kadee's swallowtail in. (Some people claim that you can just pull couplings out of NEM pockets. I prefer to squeeze the end of the swallowtail together with fine tweezers, to free the protrusions at the end of the swallowtail from the lip at the back end of the NEM pocket and make it easier to pull the coupling free. After all, they're not supposed to just pull out: they're supposed to couple stuff together!) The annotated photos below may help to explain the terminology used, and the "anatomy" of the NEM tension locks in general: * Actually, there is a standard for a dovetail-style attachment: NEM363 (whereas the more usual rectangular pocket is NEM362). But NEM363 is intended for use "where space is restricted", and the coupling is supposed to fit directly into the dovetail, not via an intermediate NEM362 pocket. The dovetail fitting as used to fit the rectangular NEM362 pocket to the chassis uses more space: if it's meant to having anything at all to do with the standard, it is a horrible bastardisation of it. ** I don't think anyone has yet come up with a standard which is guaranteed to be interpreted and implemented in exactly the same way by all manufacturers. And if that could be done, there will always be instances where someone has, despite their best intentions, just plain got it wrong. Yes, Bachmann, I'm looking at you and your early Mk1 coaches Another common problem is "NEM droop": the standard seems to leave sufficient leeway for some NEM swallowtails to have noticeable vertical slack when inserted into a NEM pocket. This can usually be fixed quite easily with a small shim of 10 or 15 thou plasticard.

I feel that needs to be qualified, and can speak as someone who has standardised on a single design of miniature tension lock for freight stock, and gets complete reliability operating full size trains, up to 60 wagons, pulling and propelling Can I just point that what I originally wrote was: "You would not be the first person to discover that tension locks are decidedly inconvenient if you do a lot of manual rearrangement of stock within trains." I don't doubt that it's possible to make tension locks work reliably for normal railway-based operations.

You can buy aluminium angle from the DIY sheds. Just be sure to steer clear of the anodised or laquered kinds if you want to use them as running rails (which would save the cost of track, but may require you to use thicker and thus more expensive ally angle). For example, Wickes currently do 18 x 18 x 2440 ally angle for £8.49. Two of those, plus a length of say 9mm ply to form the base (which Wickes should be able to cut for you when you buy a sheet) works out cheaper than the 50mm channel for one track. The second track wouldn't need any more ply - you could just get Wickes to make two cuts off the sheet of 9mm - so would work out cheaper than the 45mm channel. And you'd have complete flexibility over the actual width of the base for each track, rather than having to run with minimal clearance simply because a bigger extrusion costs more.

That's nearly 70% more expensive! The cross-sectional area of the 45mm channel is 225 sq mm. For the 50mm channel, being thicker and with higher sides, it's 408 sq mm. So you actually get 80% more aluminium in the 50mm, which means that only 70% higher cost is actually a bargain!!! (Well, maybe not really, but it helps to explain the difference.)

Do dry cleaners still use carbon tet? If so then the OP could just get his trousers dry cleaned.