jamesg

Thank you Castle for organising the tour on Sunday. I learnt a lot and particularly enjoyed visiting the signal box and the lifting shop. Every item at Didcot has a story, but they can only be told by an expert guide. Photographs may follow once the film is developed. Did I see someone else using a film camera?

I experimented with a coupling hook at one end when restoring some old wagons. Every wagon has one or two small Bachmann tension lock couplings; those with one have a loop made from plastic card using the Bachmann coupling as a template. They are fiddly to make but work reliably on the level. With just one hook they are slightly easier to couple and uncouple using a bent piece of wire taped to a pencil as a tool. Problems will occur when mixing small Bachmann type couplings with old Hornby ones, even if the hook is removed from the Hornby one.

Guards on First Great Western issued them for a time before going back to issuing the proper credit card sized tickets. I usually collect old tickets but don't think any of these survived. Are they carbon paper or proper ink?

800006 was on the Cotswold Line yesterday evening, stopping at a few stations to allow the train crew to check measurements against the platforms. I saw it once at speed on the main line and again stopped at the platform. All seemed to be running well, the diesel engines are very quiet, even at night accelerating away from the station.

You have been busy! Has the livery for the R1 been decided? If so, is it being kept as a surprise to the forum thread?

Fantastic, a lot of work has been done since I last visited in April. With 1450 running at weekends, will there be a few photographers trying to recreate the famous photograph? Is 1450 facing the right way?

I visited Dolwyddelan on the line to Blaenau Ffestiniog last Summer. What struck me is how well the local community look after the flowers on the platform, for a station seeing only a train roughly every three hours each way. My local station is a single platform with no facilities except a shelter, but I don't consider it a halt because there's a train in each direction every hour.

Those doors at the back are usually for cleaning the fire... One option is not to have a cab as such, but leave the footplate open. Many main line locomotives of the Edwardian era didn't have full cabs for the protection of the footplate crew, depending on the generosity of the narrow gauge company, a narrow gauge locomotive might not either. It also makes the footplate crew more visible, which some prefer in a model.

It does look very nice there (says one who has locomotives built 100 years apart on the same layout). It hope it sounds good as well. At the price you mentioned, it is difficult to turn down. They stopped running on the main line near me just a few years ago. It's a shame I don't have any photographs.

An indicator of this problem is the traders buying DCC fitted models to split the locomotive and decoder. It might be getting less of a problem now, especially with Hornby models as the decoders are now made available separately, but I'm not sure whether other brands are still making locomotives with a DCC sound only option.

Very interesting discussion so far, but the one point I picked up on is how DC can be superior on very large layouts, particularly where a locomotive in a siding or hidden fiddle yard can't be seen clearly enough (or at all) to determine the address and direction. DCC is great on my small layouts, but I can see it being difficult to adapt to certain situations. Battery powered radio control suffers from the same problem - a train must be identified before it can be moved. I'm also curious as to how the complexity of the wiring changes with layout size on DC as opposed to DCC. Any DC layout will have isolated sections, but with multiple power districts on a DCC layout, does the wiring complexity start to 'catch up' with that of DC as layout size increases?

The 'four square feet' rule is a decent guideline, but the most important thing is that the layout is interesting to operate independently of a larger layout. To quote Carl Arendt's website: The area is the last thing mentioned

Nice to see photographs of the layout in an exhibition context. It was very busy when those pictures were taken, by the look of it.

The figures look great - the Edwardian clothing will suit the layout perfectly. I can only echo Phil Parker's advice from a recent BRM DVD, which helped me when painting figures. White metal figures generally don't need primer (you can use car spray primer, which helps a little with painting). Glue the figure temporarily to a lollipop stick with superglue, it'll break easily when painting is finished. Start painting from the middle and work out to avoid going over bits that have been painted previously, so start with the face, then move to the shirt, trousers, waistcoat, hair, jacket and hat. Don't paint shirts white, use light grey instead as shirts weren't always perfectly clean and don't reflect the light perfectly. Painting figures does take time, the best thing to do is not to rush.

Excellent photographs, as always. I especially like the ones taken with a low viewpoint, they show off the patterns of the roof supports at Preston and Carlisle nicely.

The idea of a shed - door open or closed - will create a good illusion of a larger yard outside the layout. Having just the other day painted some wasp stripes, I can understand wanting to model the door open! Two pieces of software that might be useful for creating a backscene are GIMP and Hugin. GIMP is a general purpose image editor along the same lines as Photoshop. Hugin is a panorama stitcher; given a series of photographs taken by rotating the camera after each shot, Hugin stitches them together to make a panorama. Both of these are free, so are worth looking at before shelling out for some commercial software. Having a panorama printed on one sheet isn't very costly either; I had one made for about £5 from an online photo printer.

Having followed your narrow gauge layouts, I can't wait to see what you do with standard gauge. Do you have any thoughts on what form the backscene will take yet, as your narrow gauge layouts cleverly did without a typical backscene?

The terrier looks great. It's funny how something made out of quite simple shapes and materials can look unmistakeably like the prototype.

Probably a bit late now, but yes. It makes the vehicles easier to uncouple.

In case anyone missed either of the first two issues in print, they are now available in full from the Issuu site (Issue 1) (Issue 2).

Hi Gary, Excellent work on the fence for the cattle dock - I might borrow the idea for a small roadside fence needed on my layout. I have a couple of Mainline cattle vans that I was about to put on Ebay, let me know if you're interested and I'll send some more details. James.

Looking at the photographs of the GWR trains, there doesn't appear to be a massive difference between first and standard, except that first has 2+1 rather than 2+2 seating and a few more tables.

Hi Jim, Out of interest (and sorry if it's a daft question), what's the yellow lock on the rail in front of 67014? Does it protect a main line from trains leaving the siding, or does it prevent movements within the depot? Do you know if any of the new Network Rail DVTs are in use yet? I've only seen the DBSOs near me. Thanks.