Northmoor

Missed this on the news this week, sad news and RIP David. You gave much more to the world than you took from it. I have happy memories of a couple of childhood visits to the ESR (and a photo taken there in 1996 was my first published shot) and a treasured print of his Dubs Crane Tank on the wall in our living room, for the last 20 years.

I had never realised it's inaccuracies until I joined RMWeb, but I'll own up to being one of those that "loves it anyway". The loco has a real charm that allows me to overlook it's faults. I currently have three, only one of which is a keeper; that's going to get HMRS British Railways lettering (in Great Western style) and a front numberplate to suit my layout's intended era (mid-'50s). Yes I know the last one was withdrawn in 1951 and they were based no further West that Llanelli, but Rule One, etc......

Agree with every word you say. This is exactly how I estimate values of stuff I'm selling (on eBay I also select Sold Items, so you don't even have to wait for the listings to finish). I look a typical value for the same item in similar condition and deduct about 25% for a starting price. It gives bidders "somewhere to go" and feel they might get a bargain, so put in a bid. There is a huge amount of stuff not selling now because starting prices are too high.

I've never traveled in one (a DD) but everything I've read - apart from what is described above about the restrictions the loading gauge impose on getting in more seats than a standard vehicle - suggests the upper deck was very claustrophobic, especially in hot weather as obviously the upper windows couldn't open. Also - and this is critical on commuter stock - is that loading and unloading is much slower as people have to practically climb over one another. Acceleration, braking and dwell times are the be-all-and-end-all of the commuter railway. Worth remembering the challenge it has been for modern EMU builders to get the same theoretical unloading time as VEP stock. Only ten seats per door meant you could empty a 12-car slam door set at Waterloo in about 15 seconds (although admittedly some lunatics would start the process before the train stopped). That's about 1200 people.

Actually it would work just the same. The lubricating film in a white metal bearing is only a few micron thick anyway; the film thickness varies more with speed and temperature than load.

I reckon someone had been at the absinthe when they designed that. That is just bonkers.

I must be going to the wrong swapmeets and shows - the traders I overhear always seem to be moaning about the lack of trade! Mind you, when I used to do the odd autojumble I found the traders the same and it's no different at car boot sales. Probably not a coincidence that the prices being asked by these traders for very common items are at the top end of a range. More people would attend swapmeets and take the business back from "the internet" that most of the traders also seem to be moaning about, if they were known to be the place to get bargains. Nowadays I find show traders are good only for obscure secondhand bits, spares and detailing parts. New and common items are better sought elsewhere. Actually I think very few "traders" make a living from it, the regulars at model railway shows are the exception (and even some of those are not full-time businesses). I suspect that most eBay sellers with 10s-100s of lots are not really "just clearing out the loft" at all, their feedback scores in the hundreds or thousands indicate that they do far too much to be just a lapsed hobbyist. Usually their lot descriptions indicate their lack of subject knowledge and are probably almost as blank as their tax return.... FWIW I have specifically "bought to sell" on eBay, buying job lots where I want to keep a minimum of 25% of the whole lot, knowing that selling the remainder, often bundled with bits of other lots and with a detailed description, will cover the cost of the 25% I wanted. I have also bought some collections privately from work colleagues in the past and disposed of the unwanted items on a similar basis, but I never have and never would "cherry pick" a collection. It is discourteous to do only half the job for them and I have always given them a fair price (about 75% of re-sale value), occasionally giving a little bit more than they asked, when there's a gem in amongst the tat. Does this make me a business? I don't know, but most businesses probably sell more than two or three lots a week and don't stop selling for months at a time!

A very accurate description, locomad. My sister and I dread the day we have to dispose of our Dad's books, magazines and models. The models might be <cough> found a home but I am unlikely to ever have space for the railway book collection (let alone any of the other books). Much of my own model collection is also of this era, so much was bought in the 80s and 90s - often secondhand - and it's possibly worth what we paid for it and no more, but I do have a rough idea what it is worth and it's surprisingly little. I notice now, in my regular eBay surfing sessions, how many model train listings now get no bids, I suspect because there are so many ridiculous starting prices being quoted for what is just old tat. There is a wider issue here that the general public believe that everything eventually becomes valuable just because it's old. Just like watching Antiques Roadshow every week isn't going to make you an antiques expert, seeing a few old models sold for big money won't make you an expert in valuing model railway collections. Extending the AR analogy, you only get to see the interesting and valuable items on screen. You don't get to see the people who come with Nana's brasses or Collector Plates, who know thousands was spent over the years and are stunned to realise it's all worth £20 (and that's if you weigh in the brass and throw most of the plates in a skip).

Sold my "spare" yellow-cabbed APT at the weekend in an eBay auction for just under £85 (started at £70). Hope it went to someone on this forum who will make good use of it. I have so many projects that I have had to be brutal with myself and realise that making a cut-n-shut APT from two sets is waaayyyy down the list to get done. FWIW my listings always include the statement that "No I don't have a buy-it-now price in mind"; I have seen one or two individuals ask that of multiple listings (usually job lots) when surely if the seller had such a price, they'd have displayed it in the listing.

With two-thirds of the power of a 125 but only geared for 90, probably slightly faster than a Deltic......

Funnily enough I think the uninitiated think any old model railways are valuable, yes, including Tri-ang Princesses. I no longer laugh out loud at people listing these on eBay with some contemporary rolling stock in indifferent condition, as "rare and collectible", the joke has worn thin now. I would love a predictive text feature which said "There are 70 items like yours listed right now", which might deter a few of them. However there are a lot of eBay traders masquerading as private individuals who use all sorts of poor practices much worse than this. I read a story once of a record dealer who was so fed up with people convinced their old Beatles vinyl was valuable (and that he was just trying it on with silly offers) that he kept a stack of the most common singles under the counter. When an unbelieving customer came in and accused him of being a rip-off merchant, he would produce one of his stash and smash it with a hammer in front of them.

Ohhhh yes. At some of the longer or more boring ones I have designed entire layouts.....

One of my projects awaiting my attention is a Trix DB Cl. 144 electric loco. A lovely Bo-Bo from the 1930s, survived until the 1970s I believe. Influenced by "Locomotives that Never Were", I intend to make some subtle detail modifications to turn it into an ex-LMS electric. As the model is HO, fitting the loading gauge in OO isn't too much of a problem. I like the idea of it under 1500v DC catenary, hauling semi-fasts between Manchester/Liverpool/Crewe/Preston/Blackpool/Carlisle.

These guys know how to create atmosphere and in quite a small space: https://otcm.wordpress.com/ There is something indefinable about some layouts, where you can imagine yourself in 4mm scale walking round on others' layouts (and beyond the baseboard edge, because you can see the wider picture that the builder had in mind. It helps when something beyond the railway boundary fence is included, it frequently isn't. "Wibdenshaw" was certainly one that did this right, Chee Tor is probably the finest example I ever saw in the flesh. Olive Mount Cutting is another, but that's perhaps easier to imagine because I once lived not far from the real location....!

Have a look on Google Earth in Rosyth Dockyard, there are eight. I worked there over twenty years ago and most of them were there before then. They're no secret; the local Councillors used to be brought round every so often to show them how they were being carefully conserved and monitored. The big costs of disposal for old nuclear power stations (and submarines) is because when they were built, nobody seriously considered how disposal would be undertaken. It was someone else's problem. With new projects, the process, plans and costs are agreed up front (which is why the costs of nuclear seem so enormous, they are actually considering whole-life costs) or the project doesn't happen, even though the costs being committed might be 50 years in the future. New nuclear power stations will cost considerably less to dismantle, precisely because they are designed to do so. They also produce far less low level waste as the processes are designed to produce less routine contamination.

This really strikes a chord with me, how the everyday is often missed. One of my favourite railway photographers, apart from Colin Gifford, who is on another planet, is Henry Priestley. I have an album of his photographs, mostly taken in the 1950s-60s; what is particularly noticeable is that about half the shots have no train in them at all. Priestley liked to photograph the whole railway scene, so you can see not just what track layouts were but can study where the point rodding went, how it went under barrow crossings, what type of signs were at the end of the platforms, how the brazier was placed next to the water crane, what the surface of the platform looked like..... I could go on for pages. So many photographers just photographed locomotives and just to study train formations behind the loco immediately seems to reduce the amount of available research material by a factor of ten. I think layouts of the earlier diesel era have only very recently started to capture this level of detail because the builders have had to research it. When it was in front of us all we forgot to record most of the extra details. Not all layouts can possibly capture all this detail, or can they? We all say a layout is never finished. I see others lack confidence about scenic work and I share this, but I will have a go (when the layout gets to that stage soon). However, the layouts which most inspire me are where the effort is balanced - locos, rolling stock, buildings and scenery are of a comparable level of detail - I've yet to see it in the flesh but everything I've seen of Pendon suggests this is what makes it so special. However, for us mere mortals, new r-t-r models are now so exceptional that it is more of a challenge to produce the scenery to do them justice.

Rob - That's a very nice piece of work and good advice. You see plenty of layouts exhibited that have been thrown together in six weeks by experienced modellers and I think their haste often shows, but not here; and you've achieved more than I have with my layout in 10 months! I will say this - please don't take this as a negative criticism, it really isn't intended to be - but this isn't the sort of layout I will intentionally go to see at exhibitions. However, if on a display board (perhaps the type that people often use to cover/hide the fiddle yard) you had a timeline of the build, explaining the order everything was done and the time required, it would really capture my attention. Plenty of possibly aspiring modellers must go to exhibitions and think, "I couldn't possibly do that". If they are looking at Copenhagen Fields, they will be right. Looking at a neat little layout like yours, they would be wrong. Rob (Another one)

Johnster, this is an outstanding explanation of mental health and ways to help your own. Some years ago I was going through a bad phase at work and it was affecting my health. I had bought and collected a secondhand wooden high level bed for my son but the instructions were long gone. My wife thought it would be impossible but by identifying key parts and a process of elimination, we'd built the whole thing by lunchtime. I felt I had achieved more as an engineer in 4 hours than I had at work in 4 years.

This thread has produced so many "What if?" scenarios for particular railways, most of us have come up with more than one to justify our choice of "prototype". However, I once started to compile a list of more strategic "What if?s" where a major industry or political event did or didn't happen. See if you can add to these: The Irish potato famine never happened. Quite apart from the obvious millions of people saved, it would have impacted the railways of Britain as trade with Ireland would have been considerably greater. One example is that Fishguard Harbour wouldn't exist, Brunel would have built the harbour 50-60 years earlier at Abermawr about 10 miles further west, in deeper water. (Mentioned elsewhere in this thread) The Grouping was a much less extreme event than actually occurred, with the companies consolidated into perhaps a dozen and not four. Larger regional companies, perhaps the financially more secure, survived. Perhaps the GER might have stayed independent? With more companies, would they have all retained their own works or would have been increasing use of contractor-built and standard locos and rolling stock? Electrification planned by the NER and LMS actually went ahead in the 1920s and progressively extended. The initial Crewe - Carlisle would be extended to form a NW England network with branches to Liverpool and Manchester where conveniently, it would link with the 1500V Woodhead route electrified by the LNER! Nationalisation - which was as universally unpopular across the industry as privatisation/franchising was in the 1990s (but the government did it anyway!) - didn't happen. Instead the government offered low interest loans to the companies to invest in modernisation but still created a BTC to offer standard designs of diesels, units etc. There would have been less variety but also considerably fewer redundant/duplicate designs built by contractors without the skills to build them properly. The Big Four were often quite innovative, British Railways generally built slightly more modern versions of the equipment the railways already had, without updating the working practices. The Beeching report was implemented, but nothing that WASN'T listed in the report was closed. Sadly a great deal was; most rail re-openings, planned or actually implemented, are of lines closed after 1968 which the Beeching report didn't propose for closure. (We've all dreamed of this one) Steam wasn't hurriedly abandoned in 1968 but was continued in a few small areas where there was a concentration of traffics with no advantage of diesel over steam (e.g. short distance, slow-moving, unfitted coal trains). Newer steam locos, such as 9Fs were retained until they were worn out, the traffic was lost or modernised such that steam was no longer appropriate. The massive costs of redundancy ies was spread over a longer period and the workforce given longer to adapt or leave the service. The full design life of the 9Fs might have seen them in service up to the mid-80s, which coincides with the pit closure plan which led to the miners' strike..... (My favourite) The Channel Tunnel project was completed in the early 1970s. What might the rail network look like now? Would the GC have been mothballed then upgraded as the main line to the continent? Would Tonbridge - Redhill - Guildford - Reading have been a major freight route, to Berne Gauge? Any others?

Just been in my library and the figures for the C&C could make sense. Intermediate stations at Cenarth, Abercych and Llechyd wouldn't contribute much, but in 1925 Kilgerran and Cardigan contributed half the passengers and three-quarters of the freight traffic for the whole Whitland and Cardigan (which admittedly wasn't that great). Transfer that to the Newcastle Emlyn branch and it might have survived beyond 1952 (and 1972 for freight). Off topic but noteworthy is that traffic receipts from some Pembrokeshire stations fell by 70% in a decade during the 1920s/30s. The idea that rail traffic only declined after WW2 and was run down by BR is 30-40 years off.

Being brought up in "Little England beyond Wales" I always liked the idea of the Carmarthen and Cardigan as well - the Cardi-Bach would never have existed and I'm sure the passenger services would have lasted at least as long. I am currently building "St.Davids" myself, but as terminus of a standard gauge branch from Mathry Junction (first station just at the top of the incline from Abermawr Harbour).

My little project layout uses sundeala off-cuts from the first attempt. That is the only "first-hand" component used so far. The board under the fiddle yard is a skip-raided (next door neighbour is a builder, lucky me) bit of 8mm plywood. The frame mostly came from a dismantled children's bed, the backscenes are to be painted on what was the back of a flat-pack cupboard and the scenery uses polystyrene from furniture packing. Not recycling but free-cycling: for one future project I have a bucket of sea coal granules recovered from Seaton Carew beach. Just pick out the sand and crushed shells (less difficult than you'd think) and instant coal loads. Nothing represents coal better than real coal, IMO. Now you see why my blog has the name "Modelling for Cheapskates".....

My Dad has some slides of this service stopping at Clarbeston Road in the late 70s, with the lady from the village newsagent collecting her dailies and steam escaping from the leaking hose joints - so much atmosphere! I think the whole journey took about 7 hours....

Much the same could be said of the "Hyperloop" scheme which lots of people seem to be getting terribly excited about, myself NOT included.

Many years ago there was an article in Model Trains magazine showing how to motorise this using the chassis of a Roco East German railbus (possibly a VT98?). It filled most of the interior but had the right wheelbase and being Roco, ran beautifully. However it was never the most common model and not cheap. The article is worth hunting down, though. For years I have had a part-built/dismantled Airfix Railbus in my box(es) of projects and not so long ago, one of these Roco railbuses turned up in one of my eBay job lot purchases. The body had been poorly repainted but since I effectively paid a tenner for it, I won't feel any qualms about discarding it. (What am I saying, of course I won't throw it away. I throw nothing away, as my wife will confirm).