Zomboid

That has been mentioned. I've no idea if it impacts their ability to meet their obligations under those agreements though. Their decision was a seemingly kneejerk political one following Fukushima (which was very likely to be repeated in Germany, a country well known for its seismic activity and tsunamis).

The sums will have been done and the spare generation capacity will be on the other end of the various interconnectors. I don't have visibility of the sums, but given how we view electricity as a human right, they will have been done with a view to keeping up with the likely demand. How self sufficient have we been for the last 20 years anyhow? We've been mostly burning imported coal and gas.

Paltrygate?

I tend to think with N that you really need more space to do it properly than with HO and O, just because it lends itself to large sweeping setups whereas in larger scales you can do better micros. But maybe that's just a load of old wibble.

Maybe think of it as two stations, initially built by different companies. One building has been knocked down and replaced with something else, or both have been redeveloped into something modern (but probably only on the plot of one of the original buildings). If you work out how it got built like that in the first place maybe you can come up with the story for how it became what you're modelling. As for adjacent termini at different levels, only Broad St/ Liverpool St immediately comes to mind, but Victoria was effectively still is two adjacent stations...

For the specific example of Cardiff to Plymouth I doubt there's a lot of demand for the full trip, or a proper all day service would be provided. But speaking more generally people will choose the direct train if one is available - to the point of not catching the train at all if it would involve a change. Particularly people with no great in interest or knowledge of the railway. So yes, a 150 is fine for a 3 1/2 hour trip if there's almost no one wanting to make that whole journey and if you're not bothered whether those few people would choose the train again afterwards...

That's true, I doubt the Cardiff to Plymouth service is intended to serve people going the whole way. But in my example I was going Prestatyn to Birmingham, so I took the direct train (which was then turned round at Shrewsbury, where we waited in the cold for the late pair of 158s which were coming up from Birmingham and were turned round at Shrewsbury, so the journey didn't really work as planned). It would have been faster via Crewe, but the lure of a direct train is strong, and people will make that choice even if it's a little slower.

Show down man, you'll have finished in 15 minutes, and then what will you do?

They're fine when used on appropriate services. I had one from prestatyn to Shrewsbury once, and though it had a reasonable interior, it's not really suited to that run. But can't fault the design for people using it wrong, it's like trying to go offroading in a Ferrari...

There's a break in an emergency panel thing, so the doors are available, just not in normal use.Only the ones behind the driver are locked out anyway, so it's just one of 6 sets...

You're ruining my "not enough space for 0" argument... Like how restrained your plan is, like what an actual railroad would build.

The name made me immediately think of East Anglia, but aside from that I like this layout a lot. Hope to be able to see it in the flesh sometime.

Internal combustion on narrow gauge in the UK goes back a long way, it's far from my area of expertise but I remember reading about simplex tractors and peculiarly modified model t fords on the ravenglass & eskdale as part of its 15" resurgence (the 3' version being a pure steam outfit). Possibly due to a glut of equipment becoming available after WW1.

Why should BREL have to share its patents? Surely that's the point of having stuff patented...

Some parts of the UK may do ok without a rail network, though given the fuss that was made over a remote and fairly unpopulated corner having it's link severed (Dawlish) I'm not sure where that would be.The South East of England would collapse without the railway though, at least whilst people have to show up at the office regularly, and I suspect the northern metropolis' would need mass transit inventing if it didn't already exist.

Without wanting to go near politics, it's just an observation that rail electrification in recent years has only happened under conservative governments. At one point under the 1997-2010 administration NR was told to investigate de-electrification of Newcastle to Edinburgh, whilst since 2010 there's been a rash of projects that has far exceeded the rail industry's ability to deliver. Which suggests to me that the current administration isn't really "anti rail". BR got more electrification out of Thatcher than NR got from Blair/Brown... Of course that doesn't mean that our collective memoires shouldn't also include the bungling of privatisation, just that I'm not so sure it's an ideological hostility to rail.

I think it's harder to meet crash performance requirements with the corridor. I.e. More expensive rather than impossible...

Stratford (London) is the coldest place I've ever waited for a train.Didcot will no doubt actually have trains waiting for one another, it has the platform capacity and enough reversible signalling... Not as good as a through train (some of which wait there for quite a while in todays timetable), but not that awful. I imagine the delay to Oxford is related to the forthcoming station redevelopment, no point rushing to have stuff installed just in time to be taken out again, really...

Even an 18" detachable fiddle stick is a non starter? I've got 4'6" x 1 at the moment and I've got a 322 inglenook in HO using American trains, there's just nowhere for them to go once I've made the trains up... So I'm sure you could get a traditional shunting puzzle (inglenook or timesaver) into that space in N, with space left over to shuttle the 101 in and out. If you're happy with short trains and mostly shunting, 4x1 in N is plenty.

There will be operational interest there if you have some specific locations for spotting cars. Otherwise not a whole lot tbh.

Best not mention pendolinos then... Or the pan to transformer cabling in every EMU.

Inter unit bus lines are not something that's been used anywhere to my knowledge - a 25kv plug and socket can exist, but wouldn't be the kind of thing you'd want to use often, and certainly wouldn't go in an auto-coupler. So if your train is a 2x5 80x, as will run often through goring, you need 2 pans up. Same for 8 & 12 car EMUs, if they use those in that area.

Of course it's possible to design OLE with the aesthetic of an Edwardian lamp post, but the cost of such a thing would be ridiculous, and it would be less robust unless made from an alloy of titanium and unobtanium. And given what this stuff costs before accounting for that...

You'll get a conventional BLT into that kind of space. Have you got CJF's small layouts book? It's aimed at 00, but there's countless small BLTs which should give plenty of inspiration. Also, think about your freight/passenger preference. With a DMU you could make your station a single siding/platform halt affair and use the rest of the board for freight, if that's your preference. And with 4x1, have a look at carendt.com, lots of non uk content there (a plus for me, but not necessarily for everyone), but millions of ideas for that kind of space in all kinds of scales.

Fine until someone wants to run one of the many types of trains which don't have a backup power source through there...