jamespetts

There have been problems with Shapeways in printing this product. Somebody ordered a set in "Black Premium Versatile Plastic", a material in which this had been made available but which I had not printed myself. Although Shapeways accepted the order, it later e-mailed me to state that it could not print this in this material because the part in front of the cut-out is too thin. It was very unclear whether this applied also to the "natural versatile plastic", and after repeated queries to Shapeways, I have eventually been told that, because this has been designated as not printable in one material in what is described as a "family", it is not printable in any other materials in that "family". No explanation has been given as to the rationale behind this, nor as to why this should be a problem given that one pair previously printed without difficulties. I have found it very difficult to find anywhere else online that will print these as most places will reject them on account of being too thin. I recommend that people download the .stl file from the Shapeways link above and either print them themselves, find another supplier who can print these reliably (and let us know about it), or try re-uploading to Shapeways themselves and printing in black natural versatile plastic to circumvent the insanity described above. As noted previously, these are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 licence, so people are free to download, modify, re-upload and share these as much as they please.

Not the plain track, but the turnouts are available in the same colour as the bullhead rail by request, I believe. I know because I backed the Kickstarter and requested this, and I was told that this could be accommodated. Note that the turnouts have plain profile bearers which could plausibly be wood or concrete whereas the plain track with concrete sleepers has bearers which are sculpted in profile and could not plausibly be wooden sleepers. One might, of course, paint over this track if one were after flatbottom rail with wooden sleepers, although the sleeper shape would not be right on closer inspection. This is significant as wooden sleeper turnouts with flatbottom rail were common for much longer than plain track with wooden sleepers and flatbottom rail.

I believe that British Finescale (Wayne) offers these in a black colour to represent turnouts with wooden bearers for the 1960s-1990s period. Indeed, this is what I have ordered for my Kickstarter reward.

Interesting - how late in the 1930s was 3215 allocated, may I ask?

Interesting: I had not seen evidence of those in the research that I have done so far. When did those run, do you know?

Appleford, Culham, Radley; Tilehurst, Cholsey, Pangbourne, Goring & Streetly (all stations between Reading and Oxford excluding Didcot, if the OP wants a small station on a main line theme).

Apart from the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton trains, which were hauled either by Collett Goods or T9 classes, all Locomotives in Southampton would be Southern, but GWR and LNER carriages would be seen on inter-regional services. Note that the Schools and Nelson can fairly easily be modified to 1934 condition with some deflectors and transfers: brass smoke deflectors for the Schools can be had from Phoenix and 3d printed ones for the Nelson from Shapeways. Beware of Southern carriages and in 1934: the only non-corridor carriages available ready to run that would have been used in the Western section were introduced in 1935, being the LSWR rebuilds made by Hornby, aside from the now hard to find Kernow push-pull set. If you want more locomotive variety, consider Weymouth. The Basingstoke to Reading section could work, but again, all the Locomotives would have changed at Reading or Oxford and would be Southern. Somewhere on the GWR might work better; somewhere between Reading and Oxford would allow Southern engines and carriages, as these were often changed at Oxford. You will then not need any Southern local carriages, and GWR local carriages are now available. Southern locomotives on this section are likely to have been confined to Arthurs, Schools, Us and possibly some better 4-4-0s,although you would need to research the latter more.

NCE is sub-optimal in a number of respects, so replacing it would not be entirely insane.

No, that is the Marsh umber, not the Stroudly teak livery. They are quite different: the Marsh livery is a 20th century livery.

The 2013 catalogue can be downloaded if you search for it, and most of the items in it appear to be current, even if the prices are not. The website does list new items.

The full brakes will be excellent; some in S. R. green will be useful in my planned 1930s Southern layout. But no Stroudly LBSC livery to go with the early Terriers?

I have recently taken delivery of wheels and other parts from Markits and had a prompt service. Some wheels were out of stock but I am told that they are in the process of being manufactured and should be available in a month or two.

I do approve of progress.

The idea is to test for where the short occurs when cold.

Attempting to have these printed in black resin failed: I never had any response from the people doing the printing, so I have printed the latest versions (version 5) with Shapeways. I attempted to print these both in MJF and black natural versatile plastic, and, surprisingly, the latter produced higher quality and finer detail. Here are the deflectors in MJF ("Black professional plastic"): Hornby Lord Nelson with 3d printed smoke deflectors mark 5 (MJF) by James Petts, on Flickr and here they are in black natural versatile plastic: Hornby Lord Nelson with 3d printed smoke deflectors mark 5 (Black natural versatile plastic) by James Petts, on Flickr I have updated the Shapeways shop (link above) with the latest photographs. As a reminder, these are available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence and I do not make a profit on these from the Shapeways shop as this is not intended to be a commercial enterprise.

Test with a multimeter in continuity mode with DCC chip removed and a blanking plate in place instead?

That is one way of doing it; one might have to imagine a world in which there was some economic reason for Central Croydon to be busier than it was. I think that you are right about the train to which you refer on the Disused Stations website being an LNWR train: they clearly have the deep waisted design of the LNWR panelling. It is interesting to imagine where these trains went - Broad Street, perhaps? Watford? Mansion House? Kensington (Addison Road)? Willesden Junction? And the locomotive - I imagine that that is probably a 4'6" radial tank, although it is not entirely clear from the picture. One could in principle have a layout that could be set in either location and switch between them by switching over the nameboards. I have to say, there is much that is interesting about the East London Railway, however, and trains from the LB&SCR as well as the Metropolitan District Railway are likely to be interesting to model. In any event, it is good to have multiple possibilities.

I did consider that, but I recall reading that it only had, at most, about 7 trains a day (and for much of its life about 2 trains a day).

My book on the East London Line has arrived, and, looking at samples of the timetables, the service was not frequent enough to have warranted three platforms, so here is a (probably more realistic) two platform version.

I do not think that there is space for them there, if I have understood what you mean correctly.

Here is one of mine without a number, ready for easy renumbering, next to the larger and slightly later T9 class (a Hornby model): OO Works K10 and Hornby T9 by James Petts, on Flickr

Eric, that is very interesting. 36" translates to 914.4mm, which is shorter than the straight sections of the fiddle yards in the simplified version of the plan. Also, from what I understand, trains on the line at the relevant time were only 6 carriages, albeit possibly increasing to 8 later. (That is a lovely photograph, incidentally - do you have a thread for that layout)? This suggests that the simplified version may well work. I attach a revised track diagram with the simplified locomotive storage area as suggested earlier. I am still not entirely sure how scenically to treat the scenic break, etc., but this may well be a workable arrangement.

Here is a revised track plan with the original fiddle yards (save for the alteration to the locomotive sidings recommended by Scottysnitch), and an additional siding near the coaling stage, but with the original coaling stage positioning.

Thank you all for your replies. History of the East London Railway I seem to have had not entirely consistent sources on the dates, at least by what I initially recalled, so I have conducted a review of the sources that I have found so far. The sources that I have found so far are as follows: John Speller gives the opening of New Cross to Wapping as the 7th of December 1869, the LBSCR running the services, with an extension to Shoreditch on the 19th of April 1876 allowing through services to Liverpool Street, which Spellerman states were run by the GER; the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_London_line#Establishment_of_the_East_London_Railway]Wikipedia article on the East London Railway[/url] gives the openining of New Cross (LBSCR) to Wapping as the 7th of December 1869, operated by the LBSCR with intermediate stations at Deptford Road (Surrey Quays) and Rotherhithe, a spur to Old Kent Road opening on 13 March 1871, the connexion to Shoreditch on the 10th of April 1880, the New Cross (SER) spur opening on the 1st of April 1880 and the St. Mary's Curve spur opening on the 3rd of March 1884; the Wikipedia article on St. Mary's Curve states that the South Eastern Railway used this from the 3rd of March 1884 until the 1st of October 1884, when it was replaced by services on the Metropolitan and District Railways; Davros.org gives quite a detailed sequence of dates, showing LBSCR services to Liverpool Street commencing on the 4th of October 1876, the SER service to Liverpool Street from New Cross (SER) commencing on the 1st of April 1880, the through service to St. Mary's (operated by the SER) commencing on the 3rd of March 1884, but withdrawn on the 30th of September 1884, and the following day, the service being run by the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, the LBSCR withdrawing its service to Liverpool Street on the 31st of December 1885, to be replaced the following day by a Liverpool Street to New Cross (LBSCR) service operated by the GER, with the terminus station at New Cross (LBSCR) closing on the 31st of August 1886, a service to New Cross Gate (i.e. the LBSCR main station) commencing the following day run by the District Railway; a Board of Trade accident report of 1885 indicating that Metropolitan Railway services were running into New Cross (SER) as of that year; an LURS article giving the opening year for St. Mary's Curve as 1884; Disused Stations, which states that the LBSCR worked the route from teh start from the 7th of December 1869, opening to Shoreditch/Liverpool Street on the 19th of April 1876, a spur to Old Kent Road on the South London Line opening on the 13th of March 1871, a further spur to New Cross Gate in 1876, a connexion to the Metropolitan/Metropolitan District being authorised by Act of Parliament in 1879, and GER trains starting to run in 1886 after withdrawal of SER services. See also the following maps of the line: Incidentally, I note that my reference to the source for Central Croydon did not appear in the first post owing to a technical error: it, together with the photograph on the basis of which I designed the platform trackwork, can be found here. It can also be seen here (WIkimedia Commons): Coupling on curves So far as coupling on curves is concerned, I used the following data from the source linked above: This is where I got to the figure of 30' scale - 30' in 1:76 is 30 x 4mm = 120mm - multiply that again by 5 (in the "reliable coupling of anything" category above) and I get 600mm, which is the minimum radius of curve on this track plan. Zomboid - do you think that the empirical data in the source to which I refer is incorrect? If there be a conflict of data, the best way of resolving this is to compare the quality of the empirical basis for each conflicting claim. May I ask about the nature of the source for your information to the contrary effect to that cited above (if, that is, you believe it to be incorrect)? If the curve uncoupling cannot work reliably, however, I can always revert to the original plan. Track plan I attach a slightly revised version of the track plan, the difference being to alter the position of the coaling stage to bring it further away from the running lines so as to make the scenic break with the fiddle yards easier to disguise and also so as to add a further siding to allow for easier shunting of locomotive coal trains in addition to slight alteration of the station pointwork to accommodate this.

An attempt at revising the track plan to include a more conventional fiddle yard. This one does require the ability to couple locomotives to carriages on a curve. According to this forum thread, using Kadee couplings (my preferred type of coupler for automatic coupling/uncoupling operations), it should be possible to couple down to a 600mm radius if the vehicles are not more than 30' (scale) long, which should be the case for LBSCR carriages and suburban tank locomotives (A1, E1), Metropolitan District Railway carriages and locomotives (A class).