Harlequin

Oh yes! Thanks. Sampford Courtenay is a village near me with a station and a working railway passing through (but not stopping, sadly). Phil

Hi Tim, A few quick remarks because I am supposed to be working... 😆 Llanuwchllyn looks like it was a lovely little station. It's documented in, "An Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations, Layouts and Illustrations" Vol. 4 pages 106-7. It's a "crossing loop" (a place where the track and signals allow trains running in opposite directions to pass each other) on the single line. The platforms are stated to be 353ft long. Having the circuit all within L shaped baseboards like that is not the best way to do it because it makes the boards too wide to reach across, the balloon loops are even wider and intrude into the space where you want to move around and it pushes the track out to the edges, so that it's not "in" the scenery. Almost certainly better to run around the entire space with just a thin shelf behind the loft hatch - that part doesn't need to be scenic. Have a look at "Stoke Courtenay" in the Layout Topics area. That layout is also in a small-ish loft and consists of a station scene and a fiddle yard on the opposite side. The fiddle yard gives trains somewhere to come from and go to and so their movements purpose. P.S. You'll have to tell us how to pronounce, "Llanuwchllyn " correctly!

Yes, exactly, thanks Neal. Less coal, enough room to stand and fill some sort of carrier, like a bucket or wicker basket, to transfer the coal into the SRM bunker. Sorry I meant to reply earlier but I forgot.

Thanks. That sounds like a pretty good plan to me!

What would you choose, @Karhedron?

Hi Tim, You really need to draw a scale plan to work out what you can fit in the space available. For starters if you just draw the outline of the space with some labels showing roughly where things are and post it here that would help us to understand it and advise you better. Are you imagining that there will be a continuous run of track so that you can just leave a train circulating safely? If so, have you worked out how that will fit in the U shape you are thinking about? (You need ~4ft width for a balloon curve to send the track back the way it came...) Remember that in OO scale, 1:76.2, your 17ft width is only ~1,300ft in the real world. That's this long: Barmouth bridge, by comparison, is twice as long: 2,700ft. You also have to curve the tracks into your space so there's less room to fit in straight things. And there's the fiddle yard question...

Hi Rob, If you can find it, please PM it to me and I’ll have a look.

😮 I bet you took some deep breaths before starting that!

Football today is not how it used to be:

Asking for a feature set that suits you in particular is not going to encourage a manufacturer to produce a model. A better approach is to think like a manufacturer and work out the minimal tooling that would be attractive to the widest audience, bearing in mind contemporary expectations of levels of detail.

But people appreciate the accurate van and wagon diagrams that you've made. Why are milk tanks any different? Can you explain why they would be more expensive to produce? Is it due to all the fine superstructure around the tank itself? You held off doing a 14xx because the word was out about another company doing one so wouldn't you also know if some other tanker model was in the wind? 😁

The photo in Lewis' "Auto Trailers Part 1" is definitely the same loco and auto-trailer setup as that shown in the GWR magazine article, IMHO, but from a slightly different angle and looking much more like an official company photo. The quality of the photo in Lewis Auto Trailers is much better so we can see that the trailer is No. 13 with the Calne destination board and that the loco is 1468. It has the cream backsheet but the inside of the cubby around the handbrake winder is either brown or black, probably brown? This book is full of photos of 517s, as you might expect. Three high quality full page photos in the first few pages concentrate on 517s. Readers of this thread probably already know this but, Lewis also says something useful about the all brown livery and the crimson lake livery on coaches: The all brown livery had the letters "G.W.R." twice, one at either end of the coach in the waistline panels whereas the crimson lake livery had the "G.W.R." once only, near the centre. So, if you can see the coach side in a B&W photo this will help to distinguish between the two liveries and that in turn might say something about the loco livery.

This from 1907 is directly relevant to the 517: The photo illustration shows a 517, which we have to assume to be "brown", hauling a chocolate and cream coach. Not sure if this link will work but: https://didcotrailwaycentre.cook.websds.net/PDFViewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2fFilename.ashx%3ftableName%3dta_journals%26columnName%3dfilename%26recordId%3d296%26page%3d15%26end%3d16&searchText=brown

What about this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/296381247388?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=Y4wOs05CRfa&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=v9f6SNKMRWe&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Correct livery for your chosen era, said to be a good runner, DCC ready. And the seller is none other than "G J Churchward" - the man who designed it! 😆

There's something funny going on at the rear end where the body doesn't sit flush on the running plate. The seller doesn't explicitly say that it's a runner (I think) - so it might be a non-runner. The livery isn't correct for your chosen era but maybe that doesn't matter if it's just a test loco.

It's a very old model. The motor/chassis intrudes into the cab so that there is no backhead detail, as you'd expect to find on all current models. It's probably a "split chassis" design (someone will now for sure) which means that it will be more difficult to adapt for DCC because one electrical connection to the motor will be through the chassis. For DCC you need to send the track feed to the decoder only and then the decoder motor control wires to the motor. IMO worth about £10 tops. One other thing to watch out for when looking at old models on eBay, is the size of the wheel flanges. Big wheel flanges don't like to run on modern Code 75 track. That can be fixed by replacing the wheels on simple rolling stock but it's more difficult on locos.

Agree but remember some of us model the times before BR so you don't need all those "ex"s in your request! 🙂 Rapido have revolutionised the humble open wagon by moving on from generic, chunky underframes, generic brakes, wrong wheelbases, etc., and they could do the same for milk tankers, which were a huge part of the railway scene both pre and post war.

Wolverhampton livery would be lovely on a 517 but it's difficult to work out whether it could legitimately be applied to the early variants Dapol will make. It seems that the first extended wheelbase 517s (1483-1488) were constructed in the second half of 1885 and nine more were converted between 1891 and 1895, some at Swindon, some at Wolverhampton. So most of that happened before the livery change in 1894. The cab style, the tank size would have to be similarly checked and the lack of a Wolverhampton style bunker on these models might be a problem. Sadly, I don't think it's possible to make Fair Rosamund from the Dapol model because she was never converted to the extended wheelbase with external axle box.

He does indeed! I’ll PM you some stuff.

Not worth it. The track is horrible Hornby Setrack, the loco and rolling stock are all from decades old moulds ("tooling") and you'll throw the controller away as soon as you know what you're doing. (I think the CD is part of the licensing system for downloading the software.) Much better to buy some Peco track and turnouts, a small loco that you really want for your chosen region/era and a simple controller - things that you could re-use in your layout. There are various DCC starter systems. Have a look at the DCC questions forum and search for "starter" or similar keywords to see what people think of them. BTW: The radii for straight Peco Streamline OO/HO turnouts are small = 24", medium = 36" and large = nominal 48" (but in reality is about 45"), not what the Johnster said. Curved and Y turnouts have different radii again. Edit: P.S. Don't feel you have to buy "DCC Fitted" locos because very often a decoder you fit yourself will be better than those fitted by the manufacturer. A Design Technology Teacher such as yourself will have no trouble in fitting a decoder into a loco.

The thing about "Railroad" is that it represents the core of what Hornby are/should be selling: basic affordable models for beginners. Hornby is Railroad and so it's very confusing for everyone to find Railroad is a separate brand within the Hornby offering. Maybe they should get rid of that sub-brand and add a new premium brand to sell their "premium" products (although their track record has not been good on that front recently). That would clarify the price points, clarify the toy vs. serious model identity crisis, allow the marketing to be targeted more accurately and make it clearer which products are really meant to stand up against those of the newcomers.

I say, that's a bit strong, sir! Everyone loves a Pannier tank but sadly, for peak inter-war Ashburtonism we don't really have a suitable RTR candidate (if we're interested in doing it properly). One of the smaller (pre)grouping saddle/pannier tank classes would be ideal, even though they too are riddled with variations. Dapol are showing the way to do it...

Sounds good. Is that at floor level or at layout level? I'm throwing these questions at you to establish the basic parameters. 🙂

Hi Tim, Is your loft insulated, draught-proofed and boarded? Do you have open space or is it full of roof trusses? Are the ceiling joists strong enough to support the extra weight that you might put up there?

Weight restrictions prevented the 57xx's being used on many branchlines until BR times when they were reclassified from Blue to Yellow Route availability. Edit: I think the 4400's were always in the Yellow RA group.