Michael Hodgson

I would like a Caprotti 5, but if it's got as many problems as these version seem to have, I'll be passing on the Hornby one. Of course there is the possibility that it prove OK - but I'll have missed out by the time we know.

It would also be implictly covered through things like drivers' route knowledge, documents such as WTT, Sectional Appendix.

NMRA was founded before WW2. Zero One was 1979, but there were a number of early electronic/digital systems, mostly incompatible with one another (just like OO couplings!) Not sure when the Americans decided that a common set of standards for this would be a good idea.

No need for FPL 4. It's goods only.

Oh Mister Porter, what shall I do? I want to go to Birmingham and they've taken me to the loo"

Indeed, but that was just a proprietary form of DCC that didn't conform to NMRA standards.

There's a recent thread about pick-up goods and how they were made up. Most wayside stations are much more easily shunted in one direction or the other. There's no reason why that would be the same direcion for every station on a given line though. So you'd shunt some stations on the way out and the others on the way back. The wagons to be detached at any particular station would generally be marshalled together to minimise work at each station. The sequence of such blocks of wagons would generally be fixed too, although not necessarily in the order station 1, station 2, etc. Pick-up goods generally ran in daylight. I don't think they would ever have been lodging turns, that was something more for long-distance services. In an area with as many lines as your hypothetical map there would be commercial considerations between competing companies and agreements between companies. Each company originating traffic would (within reason) seek to optimise their portion of the total revenue by doing as much of the mileage as possible on their own metals, which meant routes might always be the most obvious. Before pooling of wagons the empties from other companies would be returned empty unless you were able to use them for a return load. Empties from your own company would be sent on to somewhere on your system that needed them.

It was an excellent sales pitch aimed primarily at the many modellers who say "I dont understand electrics".

I have a vague recollection from about half a century ago of a Coventry museum telling me about some local factory having built a 21-seater bike only it proved too heavy to move. But there's always this .... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/worlds-longest-bike-looks-like-the-support-structures-of-a-walmart-store-146352.html#agal_0

Sounds improbable. "Great Western would like to apologise for the late arrival of the Cornish Riveria Express. This is due to an operating decision taken personally by the Rt Hon the Secretary of State for Transport to give prioirity to a goods train carrying roadstone to fill in potholes in the motorway".

That would indeed improve sighting, but it would not be provided at all, because as RailWest has said, the trap would (rather than could) be replaced by having 5 lie towards the siding, making 1 in its current position superfluous. If the trap were left in situ, I see problems locking it in such a way that there isn't a risk that the trap could be moved under a train needing to shunt the kickback siding unless yet another signal were provided to protect the trap in the opposite direction. Your lever numbering looks appropriate to the lever frame being at the window side of the box (the most usual arrangement) rather than the back wall. I think it unlikely that 7 and its FPL would be combined on one lever unless it was a MR layout or a more modern isntallation with power-worked points. I'm not sure about the 3-lever ground frame at the warehouses - I suspect you would be unlikely to work both ends of a run-round loop from a one GF.

By working, I would understand the linkage to be capable of being screw-adjusted. Is that really the case here, or is it just a 1-piece 3D-printed linkage, pivoted behind the drawhook?

They keep a project status page on their website, useful as long as they keep it up to date (last updated a couple of days ago) https://revolutiontrains.com/projects/

Union Mills was a real station - on the 3' gauge IoM Railway, a crossing point on the Douglas to Peel line.

All roads require maintenance, just some stretches require rather more than others. One can argue about whether we should pay more or less in various sorts of tax, or whether taxes should be hypothecated. We do already pay for the maintenance of roads though general taxation, including fuel duties and VAT on the fuel duty as well as the petrol - but they're still not fixing the potholes. I see charging tolls as the thin end of the wedge - a move towards the French Péage system or "road pricing". And once they've been introduced, usually at a very low level, it's easy to increase them, potentially to levels unaffordable to the masses. It's like congestion charging and the new tourist tax that Venice is introducing - local authorities cashing in on one's ability to move around the country. The rich can move about as they wish but the hoi-polloi should all stay in their own little village like they did in feudal times. It goes against one of the "four freedoms". All EU citizens and their family members have the right to move and reside freely within the EU. This fundamental right is established by Article 21 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union and Article 45 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Of course, EU law now longer applies in Britain as the turkeys voted for Xmas.

There was good reasin for charging in one direction only on the first Severn Bridge. There wasn't room for toll booths at the Western end, and whilst they could have put toll booths for eastbound traffic at the eastern end, that could have meant a lot of heavy lorries from the South Wales steelworks standing on the bridge whenever there was a significant queue. Although it is a suspension bridge, the road deck is a box girder design, and there had been a major collapse of a box girder bridge in West Wales. The engineers seem to have spent years studying that bridge presumably over safety concerns, as quite often I would cross finding contraflow on one cariageway for inspection of the other only to return a few hours later to find the opposite one closed instead. I do wonder whether such doubts were a factor in decision to build the SSC, as all the heavy traffic now uses that and the first birdge is quite quiet.

T This all agrees with Vol 14 of Pryer, diagram dated 1957. It also says the Moorswater line was worked by wooden train staff until 1921 then worked as a siding. Looe & Liskeard lines both worked by electric train staff, later change to Electric Key Token until 1964 when the section to Looe became wooden train staff, 3 signal (1 on Wikipedia diagram) was replaced by a disc in 1958 Spring points removed 1963 Box closed 1981

They were the one thing that went down on decimalisation in 1971. 2/6 was rounded down to 12p because they weren't prepared to faff about with the new halfpence, and initially at least it needed an Act of Parliament to increase the toll. Later increases could be authorised by an order of the Minsitry. There was a proposal a few years ago to reintroduce the tolls. That brainwave - on the part of a Welsh local authority - didn't get very far! The toll of course replaced the fare for the Aust ferry (same excuse as the Skye Bridge, Humber Bridge and a couple of others) so opening the Bridge didn't really make much difference to the cost of trips to Bristol. And you could walk across for free. My mum used to go to the Drop-in Centre in Chepstow as a volunteer to make tea "for the Old People" (in her late 70s herself ) where she knew the skipper of the last of those ferries - I think he became mayor of Monmouth at some point. The opportunity missed by the Welsh Nats missed was the propaganda value if they'd have called the toll a tax on entering Wales, with no corresponding tax going to England. In practice my journeys to the area were assymetric to avoid the tolls. I drove cross-country via Oxford, Gloucester and the A48 but often came back via the M4 (as it then was). I think a lot of unbalanced traffic from the Midlands for Newport/Cardiff also came in via the A40/A449 but leaving via the motorway. The SSC came over too far West to be of much use to us.

Nah. The Welsh are proud of making a profit out of the English!

If you were modelling NER practice, subsidiary signals under running arms were generally worked by a single lever with a mid position as well as normal or reverse. You pulled the lever half way to clear the subsidiary, pull it all the way and it cleared both Main and subsidiary arms. I think it was about the 1920s that they fell in line with practice elsewhere. Probably not suited to the OP's already built lever frame. S&F built boxes for LYR. LBSCR, LNWR, CK&PR, LSWR, SER among others. The diagram is a remarkably good representation of S&F house style - examples here https://www.gwra.co.uk/auctions/gnr-signal-box-diagram-humberstone-station-diagram-2017nov-0045.html https://www.flickr.com/photos/pwayowen/51790692145/in/album-72157627782450647/ A few minor omissions though ... the headshunt point should be blacked in to show its normal position name of adjacent box list of spare levers arrows to show the direction of the Up/Down lines company name advertised on the diagram

I would not remove isolating switches from an existing DC layout being connverted to DCC, but that's not to say you need to install isolating switches on a new DCC layout. A district cutout is just as good a way of isolating the affected section when you have a short. A derailed loco, a screwdriver or beer can standing across the running ralls may be easy enough to find, but smaller things like a track pin bridging an isolation break in the rails is a lot harder to find on a large layout.

Not yet available in RTR!

Not sure about the angles , but I think this point is about 5 ways: Top Centre to Bottom Right Top Right to Bottom Left Top Left to Bottom Right Top Centre to Bottom Left Top Left to Top Right ?

It's a mistake. They were supposed to go to Penbedw.

The old music hall joke was "St George for England! St Pancras for Scotland". Now it's "St George for England! St Pancras for France". That's the Auld Alliance foryou.