Harlequin

The sound is pretty good. It's loud enough and all the sounds are nicely balanced but maybe a little bit muffled. It comes with "Active Drive" enabled, which I like. That means that you get gradual acceleration, deceleration and when decelerating you just hear the valves going phut phut. The chuff sync with the motion was a bit out and needed tweaking. The main whistle sound does seem to have a bit of distortion at the end. It might be loud enough to overdrive the speaker, perhaps? I need to do some testing. I can't see any clear sound paths out yet but I'll know more when I open one of them up.

I live in Devon, which is considered by most of the country to be the westest west of the far southwest (they think Swindon is in "The Westcountry") - and yet Camborne is so far west from me it's almost in a different time zone! 😆 When I drove down to Kernow MRC a couple of years ago it took me two hours. Admittedly I did get caught up in the A30 roadworks. (Are they ever going to finish the A30?)

I'm happy to say that the courier did manage to find me today. I had a nice surprise because the parcel included both my non-sound No. 61 and my sound-fitted No. 97! They were both icy cold when I opened the boxes. 97 has been chuffing around my test loop, running in as suggested. I replaced the scroll irons with the smaller ones and she looks much better for it. No sign of any clashes with the motion on my 2ft radius curves.

So near and yet so far... 😞 My Railmotor was out for delivery today but the cr*ppy final stage "logistics company" (man in van) couldn't find me, even though it turned out when I rang them that he was within about 30 yards at one point. The problem with handing off deliveries to these small companies is that they don't have the big databases of the national couriers who know where I live. Grrr... It will be out again tomorrow with detailed instructions on how to get here - assuming the young lady I talked to wrote them down correctly. (She said, "Hold on a moment, I'll find a pen" and then said "Left" when I told her "Right", so I don't have great confidence). Hope you all have better couriers where you live!

Now with indicator LEDs:

Quick diagram without indicator LEDs:

Here's the OS 25" per mile [corrected] map revised in 1897 showing the signalman's cottage (I think), level crossing, signal box and no bridge: https://maps.nls.uk/view/106018050

There have been photos on Facebook but nothing here, unusually. Maybe the Facebook collectors were quicker to order than us. 😉 I received a, "Your order has been shipped", email from Kernow MRC yesterday and I too am patiently waiting...

For simple analog manual control of points from a panel look at the existing MTB MP1 point motors. They just need a suitable power supply, a standard SPDT switch for each motor on the control panel and each one will switch the "polarity" of the relevant frog, whether that's DC or DCC.

By flipping the FY over trains running on the through lines now have to negotiate ladders of multiple facing points, which increases the risk of derailments.

The point about my design is that it's very flexible: It allows a train to leave in either direction from any storage loop, enter any storage loop from any direction and every storage loop can hold every train. So you don't have to compromise the operations to suit the FY. Unless trains are running a cyclic route they will mostly go from A to B and in the end come back from B to A. So that implies that most of them need to change direction in the FY, doesn't it? It depends on the topology of the network around this station, which I'm not familiar with. (Re)railing stock on curving tracks is more difficult than on straight tracks and especially where spacing is tight but the curves in my design are required to compress the number and size of storage loops into the space available. If the number of loops are reduced the design becomes a bit more rational but at the cost of storage capacity, obviously. It's all a question of compromise. Modern multiple unit trains probably require much less manual handling than loco-hauled trains so maybe (re)railing on curved track isn't such an issue here? Since we know the lines through the proposed station are signalled bi-directionally, part of the FY pointwork could be kept on scene without looking silly, and thus extend the scenic area a bit. In the case of my design that would mean one or both of the facing loop entry crossovers.

One revolution alone has to descend approximately 70mm just to clear the track above. The gradient using R3 radius will be about 1 in 45.

Here's my idea for an improved fiddle yard: The storage loops (blue 1-8) are all set up as trailing crossovers so a train in any loop can leave in either direction on the correct line. The shortest loops (2 & 3) are 1667mm long between turnouts, enough for a 5 car train and clearance at both ends. The longest loop (8) is 2167mm long but the usable length would be restricted in practice by the nearby R3 curve. The two through routes are very smooth apart from a short section of R3 radius (red) in each. The through routes encounter all the loop turnouts in the trailing direction. Only the loop entry crossovers are facing. Turnouts are all Streamline Medium (brown) and Curved (green). There's room in the top left corner for further storage spurs if needed. FY baseboard width is 650mm so there are no reach problems. One entry crossover is mounted on the lifting section to make use of this valuable space.

I'm worried about the storage capacity in your fiddle yard - 6 loops probably isn't going to be enough. The current design is also not using the space very efficiently. There are long leads into the storage loops and some of those loops are very short. I think I've worked out a way to give you a fiddle yard that has 2 through routes, 8 storage loops, every loop long enough to store a 5 car train or longer and only using a couple of short sections of track down to R3 radius. It was a real challenge and although I think I've proved it will work I still need to draw it properly. It's going to look slightly crazed! Watch this space...

A traverser in the running lines of a roundy-round layout requires absolute 100% precise alignment and for the operator to stop using it and make sure it's aligned to one or two empty roads whenever running trains are approaching. They don't mix very well, IMHO.

My machine finally upgraded itself to Win11 version 23H2 today. It had been stuck for months even though I had tried various things to unstick it. I submitted a ticket to my tech support people this week and lo and behold Windows Update roused itself! (That's real Artificial Intelligence!) So I now have Co-pilot on my taskbar. I don't know if it's going to be useful or if it's just another gimmick. I asked it about Churchward and Collett and it gave a reasonable answer...

Huntley & Palmers?

Apart from Dapol, of course. 😜

Hmmm yes... I think maybe it's time had come. It didn't seem to generate much "buzz" this year! One of the reasons given for suspending Warley was that "the next generation of younger enthusiasts required to take over the staffing and running of such prestigious events does not seem to be materialising". I don't think that's quite correct. They (We) may not be materialising at physical clubs so much but we do exist and we are all engaged in the much bigger online community here, on RMweb. Something new will pop up in a new form to excite us all. Remember the Virtual Online shows that RMweb/BRM/Warners held during the pandemic? They seemed to work really well!

That looks really good. The fiddleyard loops might not be long enough for Dan's proposed trains but that can probably be improved. The real station has both trailing and facing crossovers at both ends. The trailing crossover is the outermost in both cases so you could maybe subsume one of them into the FY. Have a look at this google map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oxford+Rd,+Manchester/@53.4738414,-2.2424556,134m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x487bb18d95a2e85b:0x2a58e8246fd5b0a6!8m2!3d53.4663853!4d-2.2339112!16s%2Fg%2F1th7mfp7?entry=ttu (The parallax scrolling is beautiful!) You can see how small a station it really is - the island platform is only just long enough for 6 cars (I estimate).

The movable section will now apparently be in the scenic area. That makes it more difficult to do the scenery and to engineer the section so that the scenery stays put and survives the section being opened and closed repeatedly. Where the tracks cross the boundaries of the movable section they should ideally be running straight to reduce the chance of derailments (i.e. not curving while crossing the joint). They can be angled but not too much. You should have a short length of straight track between the joint of the movable section and any turnouts. That helps in the construction (because you want to lay track across the join and then cut it) and it helps avoid damage to the turnout near the moving section. Damaged track is easy to replace, turnouts less so. The tracks are very close to the cabin walls at west and east. The fiddle yard doesn't have its own crossovers any more. So trains that terminate and reverse direction in the FY will come out running wrong road - unless you physically pick them up and move them in the FY. I notice that the real station is elevated with some very tall buildings around it. That would be quite a challenge to represent but it would make a very interesting scene if you could do it! The station building itself is striking and would be a fantastic model but you'd have to get the angle of the bay platform right. In your current layout could perhaps change the angle so that the bay projects into the operating well. You have the room, it wouldn't affect reach very much and that small projection would make sense scenically because it is isolated and raised in the real world. From: https://modernmooch.com/2016/02/26/oxford-road-station-manchester/

Are your sidings supplied with power by points alone or from a switch on a control panel? If the former then you will need to isolate the sidings and give them a new power supply so that they remain powered whichever way the points are set. If the latter then you just need to turn all the switches on.

A 3D printed jig would have some benefits: very precisely formed to give nice continuous curves (although the design might be complicated by having to allow for the spring-back of the wire). endlessly repeatable so once you’ve made one that works you can make more and share them. I’m imagining a positive former with negative parts that bolt on to clamp and squeeze the wire to the desired shape.

What devices do you use to change your points? Whatever that device is, that's what should be changing your frog polarity, ideally. Only three short wires required for each turnout. Unifrog still has a frog that needs to be switched, as above. Remember that Unifrog only covers a limited subset of the Peco Streamline geometries: Large left/right, Medium left/right, Crossing, Single slip and Double slip. Edit: And P.S. The simplest way to change frog polarity is to leave the Electrofrog turnout unmodified and let it do it for you. There are pros and cons to that.

It's not a good idea to use the turning route through a slip in a main running line - the radius through the Peco slips is a nominal 610mm (2ft) and so trains encounter quite a sharp turn.