Echo

Good & bad news. Claire, my dear wife, found she was pregnant at the end of November. I (we!) have now concluded that it's goodbye to railway modelling, the model railway room and all my spare time for the foreseeable future. I have scrapped most things but will keep the work I have done on Lausanne for now, just in case I find the time to proceed with it again before the DJLC. Ever an optimist! Bye to RMweb and everyone on here for a long while to come, I guess!

I have read that the Board of Trade definitely did discourage railways from using 0-4-0T engines on passenger trains. The North Sunderland railway was a long way from London and does seem to have got away with a few no-nos including putting the carriages at the back of mixed trains from time to time, so I wouldn't read to much into their use of 0-4-0Ts The Wantage Tramway was legally a tramway, not a railway, so was subject to a completely different regime of rules and regulations. It too seems to have ignored a few of those.

You need to consider SER and LCDR wagons too, as these were the constituents of the SECR. Roxey do some nice kits.

Thanks, Ian. I don't find it frustrating though - sorry if it came across that way. This part of the project is all new ground for me, so quite interesting to do (sorry for the unintended pun). Nevertheless, I do want to prove this bit thoroughly before I embark on baseboard construction etc. Other things to experiment with before building the baseboard include the building and operation of the gradient for the short funicular, the sector plate and the trams.

Slowly, but surely the winding mechanism is coming together. Having looked at the photos in my last entry, I decided that the winding drums could be a lot closer together, so I cut the assembly down the middle, trimmed the motor shafts, cut some wood out of the middle and stuck everything back together again. I have also installed the winding cables - polyester thread. I tied a short section to the motor shaft and secured with glue, then powered up the motors to wind the thread in. Each thread is around three times the length of the incline. This allows me to cut bits off if necessary, due to wear and tear, entanglement etc. several times without having to install a completely new thread. I have also added wires to the motors, ready to connect up to the control box. The pulley assembly has also been completed, now the pulleys have arrived. These revolve freely on a metal shaft, which also revolved freely in some brass tube. The ends are deliberately long, so I can rotate the shaft by hand once everything is assembled, if ever necessary. This assembly will be attached vertically to the front of the winding mechanism. The centres of the pulleys line up with the track centres at the top of the incline. I have also made the control box. I still have to do a bit of wiring, so it is not yet connected to the winding mechanism. This will eventually be screwed to the baseboard. There was almost a disaster here, as the retaining nut for one of the controllers had a damaged thread. After trying without luck to find an alternative, I glued it in position, so one controller is now permanently fixed to the control box lid. The run up to Christmas is likely to be a bit hectic, so I don't expect to proceed much further for the moment, other than finishing the wiring. There's still 2.5 years to go, so no need to panic just yet!

Thanks for the explanation Mark. I hadn't made it very clear which way the banana effect was shaped on mine - it was the same as yours. Kind of relieved to hear that even a master craftsman like you is not completely immune from the phenomenon!

Sorry for a late response, but I only just saw your reply, Mark. I always find doing this kind of construction that I end up with a kind of banana effect as the rail expands more than the PCB and therefore shrinks when it cools. Do you find this too, or am I just being extremely incompetent as usual?

Google Maps is helpful https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.5625773,-1.9911154,315m/data=!3m1!1e3

Is this this new announcement just for England though?

Out of curiosity I meddled with your crank photo to bring out more of the detail. I would gently question a few of your assumptions in the light of this. The enhancement suggests that some of the detail is in fact disguised/confused by strong shadows. Firstly, the "end of the sleeper" is more likely a bracket coming from the "compensator" or whatever it is. It seems to form a loop surrounding the point operating rod. Secondly, the "crank" is more likely a piece of iron helping to hold the underlying timbers together. Thirdly, the assumed connection of the main rod run to the crank is probably not. It doesn't have any obvious link to anything in the photo. It is possibly raised above the base, as there is a suggestion of shadow below it. I am only guessing, but I hope it helps.

Surprised that the Peaks came out so well, relatively speaking. Without looking at the figures I would always have assumed they were amongst the very worst.

Have you ever browsed the Warwickshire railways site? This has some fine photos in Midland days, including this one http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/mrwo1045.htm It would take a fair bit of patience to go through all the pages and images, but you might find some useful track details there.

Capturing that last image in model form would be difficult. The atmosphere is created by it being boxed in on every side. Not good for viewing!

Class 04 with all the window/skirt variations

Retford wasn't demolished all in one go. You can still see the main station building in one of the Britain From Above images. I suspect the overall roof and maybe the westbound platform buildings etc were demolished, but the main building (on the north side of the line) survived much longer. OS maps also show the main building lasting a long while. EDIT 1948 shots here https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW016456 https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW016454

If you read back through the many comments in this topic I think you will find answers to your criticisms. For starters, many examples of turnouts with angled timbers really did exist. It allowed thinner timbers to be used. Drawings and photos exist. Right angled timbers were used too, of course, but not exclusively as you wrongly suggest. The only timbers that are wrong are the very end two, which are not really required in most situations and can easily be removed. The unifrog is unlikely to cause short circuits as there is a small piece of plastic at the knuckles. Provided the wheels are coned (which they should be) there won't be any shorts. As Martin says, early turnouts and plain track had wider spacings between sleepers/timbers than we are used to today. Having bought some, I can assure you they actually do look quite good - better than the photos. Not completely realistic perhaps, but much better than anything we have had before RTR and convincing enough for most people. With just a little bit of work they look even better as some of us have demonstrated.

As I suggested before, I think it would be wrong to take the Boulton's Sidings drawings as accurate. I doubt the information was available to do that - and the absence of a scale on most of them points that way too. There are one or two exceptions, like the broad gauge 0-4-0T in fig 57, which I feel sure I have seen a scale drawing of elsewhere (possibly The Engineer?). In the frontispiece and at the end of the book, the original author suggests that many drawings were produced from faded photographs or sketches from memory where no photo existed. Looking through the book, the photos are of poor quality. Most photos are angled to show a side and an end., so guessing exact dimensions for things not quoted in paperwork must have been an educated guess, at best. Look at fig. 44, for example, and compare the locos shown with the drawings quoted on p155, as figs 25, 65 and 4. Maybe the drawings represent these locos at different stages of their careers, but there are quite noticeable differences nevertheless. If you are really keen to do a credible model, I would find a good drawing of the original locos and adapt it to suit. The wheel diameters in the book ought to be reliable and Boulton's other enhancements can be approximated from the Boulton drawing. If the castings aren't right then you have a choice of either using them and adapting the design, or sticking to the design and making new parts.

You could try the opposite and stretch the drawing to the same size as the castings. That might work. Otherwise, it may well be that the drawings in the book are essentially reasonably well-proportioned sketches. Personally, I would be pleased but surprised if the drawings in the book were to exact scale.

Image Leicestershire's SWA Newton collection is a good start http://imageleicestershire.org.uk/view-item?i=11959&WINID=1511633555453

Out of curiosity, what is the thinking behind building the turnouts on a single piece of PCB, please?

Don't road traffic restrictions apply just to motor vehicles? I am guessing that pedestrians can go the wrong way up a one way street for example, even if there is no footpath.

They close off roads for bicycle and running events. Seems strange that they don't allow it for cars.