rogerzilla

In the "Races to the North", drivers quickly learnt they could make up lost time by taking, say, a 40mph curve at 60mph, and got quite good at judging when the inside wheels might be about to lift. Some of them came unstuck when locos appeared with larger boilers, raising the CoG, and then the gentlemen's agreement came into being for several decades to calm speeds down.

How many ballast wagons need 3 Class 66s to pull them? 50? 100?

That reminds me of the "Taggart" episode "Fatal Inheritance", where a creepy illuminated doll is used to lure the victims to their death.

Someone will be along in a minute to say that Swindon Works would do a full heavy overhaul in a fortnight 😄

Because another member raised the issue of gauge accuracy. I don't think this board is supposed to be a worship of TT, rather a discussion 🙂

The gauge error in British N is pretty small, though - 4" out, or 0.66mm, which is quite hard to see. Nowhere near as bad as OO, which is 7" out and really obvious from the front.

The Chadwick Model Railway channel has some interesting insights into the Easterner TT set. Charlie demonstrates that the track isn't very well made (the curves are too small in arc for a proper circle, and twisted outwards) and suggests you should try Peco instead. Also, because OO (except the track) is oversized compared to HO, TT is much closer to N rather than being halfway between OO and N. It is more like halfway between HO and N. I agree with this and would choose N instead as there is plenty of s/h stuff in N. He isn't a fan of the direct sales model, it's safe to say.

Generally, south of an imaginary line connecting the mouths of the Tees and Exe. Today's Swindon mains water is classed as "medium"; it scales up a kettle fairly slowly but it certainly leaves stains. it's a blend of water from the River Ray and some pumped from Farmoor reservoir in Oxfordshire. The villages just to the south often have their own supply, that can be very hard. Railway companies often treated the water, either in the lineside tanks/troughs or directly in locomotive tenders. The SR used TIA treatment borrowed from the French. Boilers are not like kettles, where you pour out the water and put fresh stuff in. In a boiler, only pure distilled water leaves in the form of steam. The concentration of salts would therefore build up very rapidly as topping up from the tender puts yet more dissolved salts in but no salts ever come out in the steam. To keep the concentration tolerable between washouts, there are continuous and manual blowdown valves to bleed off boiler water (as opposed to steam). The continuous blowdown often goes into the ashpan where it won't cause slippery rails or wet passengers.

Or either Brunswick Green or Mid Bronze Green for the GWR. It was actually Middle Chrome Green but the colour was affected by how many coats of varnish went on top. It can show quite a bronze tint in sunlight if the varnish is thick - the newly-refurbed Pendennis Castle is very well varnished.

Get the NR weedkilling train out!

I have a similar setup and it works fine. I power both tracks so a train can go over the crossover. Although it must be taking power from both feeds as it straddles the IRJs, it causes no problems.

Some of these lines also have apprenticeships, which are subsidised but probably not completely free.

I doubt it's the points. My layout, built in a day back in 2015 from s/h setrack, has one power feed per oval and insulfrog points. Alex doesn't cut out on them.

I would never have spotted that 😄

Here's Alex doing some slow running, a DC "simulation" start and a couple of others. Nothing wrong with any of that. He only gets tetchy with the crossover if running backwards.

My Alex runs nice and slowly but he is being fed through a Gaugemaster HF2 (not recommended for coreless motors, so at your own risk) which improves slow running on most locos.

I knew a guy who worked for BOC in the industrial north-east. To make liquid oxygen you literally pull it out of the air using compression and expansion to cool the air right down. Being the industrial north-east, the first stuff that liquefies from the air is unburnt petrol and other hydrocarbons.

Baby Deltic in green? 😇

The station at Kidderminster is a triumph but, on busy gala days, you can smell the gents' urinals from some way down the platform 😷

The gorilla from the ads has the makings of a decent fireman.

There's a man who knows his Hunslets!

How different is the Austerity (or 18" Hunslets like Jessie, which is a precursor https://preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com/hunslet-works-no-1873-jessie-0-6-0st/) to this 16" version? A Jessie as preserved might do well, provided you capture its incredible whistle sound.

Watching "Hornby: A Model World" last night, you'd think they planned 2,500 of these from the start 🤔

That's interesting - are the Peco small radius points much longer (if at all) than Hornby short points? Having said that, some Hornby short points just have poor QC and swapping out one such point totally cured a previous derailing issue I had with a Bachmann K3.

I think that's why mine struggles with a crossover of two standard Hornby points, which is basically a very short reverse curve. I know Hornby use it as a severe running test for EPs. The side rods would benefit from a bit more slop if you have indifferent or "train set" track.