GRASinBothell

I have a couple of upper quadrant Bassett-Lowke signals, one of which is missing the spring on the balance weight.Is there a good source for those? Gordon

I guess the Warships weren't all that reliable, even at the beginning. When I saw them running through Bath, they were starting to supplant Castles, but it wasn't uncommon to have them double-heading with one of the "replaced" steam locos - an arrangement I was happily able to replicate with my Trix and Dublo locos. Gordon

I have a JeP STEF van on which I wanted to change the couplings. JeP had attached them by twisting tabs. And yes, they were the devil to remove. Gordon

So, is that "one thing" the locomotive (Basset-Lowke?) at rear, or the figure on the platform? I take your point about the Hornby-Dublo aesthetic, but the Bo-Bo never did it for me when I had Dublo as a child - maybe because I never saw them. Living in Bath, the Trix Warship, together with the Dublo Castle were my choice. Gordon

Thanks for the explanation. I suspected Blue Lightning was a member, but had no clue about UMRC. Gordon

Blue Lightning? UMRC? Gordon

.

And there was I thinking that all those pictures with locomotives and stock in Southern livery meant it was in Southern territory... Of course, I run Great Western, LMS, Southern and London Transport all together,with a few pre-grouping thrown in, and there's nowhere I could pretend that lot could be together (except perhaps a preserved line), so I should talk! If all else fails, Rule 1 applies... Gordon

Did the Southern run those Bo-Bos? Or is Birlstone being transferred to another region? Gordon

I use one of the ERTL Thomas the Tank Engine characters (one of the narrow gauge engines, based on Talyllyn Railway originals) as a load on my O gauge tinplate Bassett-Lowke 3-plank open wagon. It is a tad underscale, but looks the part (apart from the face!). Gordon

It's not so much a "desire to run express trains round train-set curves", as a desire to run express trains, and only having room for a layout if you use train-set curves. Gordon

72' is only a little longer than the GWR 70' Dreadnought coaches. Those could have done almost as good a job of lineside clearing! Gordon

All my Ace six-coupled locomotives have flanged centre wheels and go around O-54 (54" diameter/27" radius) curves, although on the Black 5, I found it necessary to take advantage of the feature that allows the cylinders to be moved out a fraction for use on tight curves to clear the bogie wheels. Gordon

Ace Trains offered a City class loco a few years ago. I think that was the size of wheels they had. You could try them (contact details on https://www.acetrainslondon.com/). However, the locos were actually built by ETS in Prague (https://www.ets-trains.com/), so they might be a possibility. Of course, those would only work if you are looking at a loco with outside frames. However Ace have offered locos with that size of wheel (like Castles) to, so if they have spares, those would work too. Gordon

I have to say I like that backscene. I didn't pay anywhere near enough attention in art classes all those years ago to even manage anything a tenth as good. They certainly evoke the spirit of one of the captions on a photograph of Blakeney in H.W.Paar's book - "Looking west to the fair hills of Dean, that lured the Central line to its unhappy destiny". Will you be including a milepost like the one in the book, with Forest of Dean Central Railway misspelled as CFDR? Gordon

Hmm... I was running a train today with 8 Hornby side-tipper wagons, so I guess that makes me a collector of sorts too! Gordon

Sounds like a good reason to go for "coarse scale" (aka "standard scale"). I run an Ace GW Castle, Bulleid Light Pacific and LMS Jubilee round O-54 (2'3" radius) curves, which would give you a reasonable amount of straight track in your 10'. You could even go the whole hog, and add that extra rail in the middle... Gordon

By 1963 you'd have had five years of listening to Warships, Brian! Gordon

I wasn't suggesting you would or should. Merely pointing out that if you were a member of the heavy-wallet brigade, you could! Lionel caters to (and makes money off) all tastes... Gordon

Lionel also make a scale version of the Polar Express loco, but you would need curves of at least O-54 to run it. Oh, and it costs around $1000 more than the O-27 version! Gordon

Interesting discussion about S-curves. I put in an S-curve on my layout, (a) to avoid having the track parallel to the baseboard edge, and (b) to make room for a beach and Lionel lighthouse. The S-curve consists of a right hand Atlas O-99 curve immediately followed by a left-hand O-90 curve (the same on both inside and outside tracks). All worked fine for a while, but eventually I had a problem with the centre-rail pick-up on a Darstaed corridor bogie coach. Just at the join between the two curves, the straight section of the pick-up spoon caught on the 3rd rail, causing the bogie to derail. I reshaped the spoon, so the straight section shouldn't come into contact with the rail, and so far it's been OK. Fingers crossed... Gordon

I was wondering if this thread would ever get back to its original subject! Is the LOWMAC a Directory Series one? Gordon

I can't say I've ever come across the use of the term "O-31", except to describe the diameter of curved track over here. In adverts, the shorter-than-scale-length locomotives and cars are sometimes described as "semi-scale". I thought they were 1/48 scale, with selective compression. Gordon

Northwestern Models sell some O gauge point levers: https://northwesternmodels.co.uk/products/0-gauge/point-levers-x2/ They also have some ground signals from the same source (a company called Detail Matters). Gordon

I have often wondered whether the pronunciation in the English-speaking world of the numeral zero as the letter O had anything to do with the way the number was treated on portable typewriters (anyone remember those?). They generally had no key for the numeral zero. You had to use the capital letter O. Of course, they also generally lacked the numeral one, and you had to use a lower-case L for that. Gordon