Harlequin

Insert: Stand layout on lid, place box over the top, clip down. Do not turn box over! Remove: Unclip lid, lift off, remove layout.

Can we change this thread title from "Forum grindingly slow this afternoon" to "Problems with Forum web site" or somesuch? I don't think the current title is quite appropriate any more!

You need to go back and read the rest of this thread!

Ah! Click! Now it makes sense. Yes, you're right - he was building track using C&L chairs. And in fact, now I look at it in daylight, the plastic is a slightly different colour than the other brown detail parts. So case solved! Thank you very much!

I recently obtained an SECR liveried H class through the 'bay (in fact from someone I know quite well on here). It's almost brand new, nothing wrong with it at all but when I opened the box there were a couple of loose parts. These were not part of the detailing pack which was still sealed. One was the roof vent and that was easily refitted. The other was this: It's about 5mm across, moulded in the brown colour of the frame and running gear. I've looked all round the loco and scanned a few YouTube videos but I can't work out where it should go... Can you help?

Yes, it really is! I'm not even going to take it out of the packaging to inspect any further because I don't expect to have to bend parts of a brand new loco back into shape. Even if I did I would be staring at the front end for ever more wondering if it's really straight or not! The retailer has arranged a replacement.

I just received my 6110 in the post. Joy turned to abject disappointment very quickly. The front running plate is twisted due to being jammed into the packaging incorrectly and consequently one of the stay rods is very badly bent. Needless to say, it's going straight back whence it came.

I meant realistic in terms of practicality. If you have tracks close to the edge there's no room for any trackwork outside, very little room for scenery and more chance of rolling stock being knocked and damaged. Visually realistic curves are a subjective thing and you have to decide what attributes you don't like: big gaps between vehicles, overthrow at the ends, overhang in the middle, sharp angles between vehicles, etc. I think Iain Rice said (in a book) that a good test for a realistic radius was if the outside rail was still hidden under the vehicle as it took the curve. (Note that you can't see the outside rail in the photo above because of parallax.) For most of us minimum radii are much more about practicality than realism, unfortunately.

Hi Chris (and interested followers), There's a wonderful group on Facebook called "Everything Great Western". Lots of ex BR(WR) staff are on there, including Adrian Vaughan, and they post photos - many from their own private collections, I think. Over the past week a guy called Derek King has posted photos of the Tetbury branch. I get the impression he used to work on the line because he's able to name members of staff in the photos. Could be a great source for you! It's a private group so you have to ask to join.

Thanks. It's OK but I can see a few possible improvements. In this case, by keeping the throat turning, always turning, so that it can connect to the traverser as far forward as possible. This means that the throat is entirely made of curved turnouts - so for reliable running it would have to be laid carefully and you might have to pay a bit more attention to your wheel back-to-backs to avoid derailments. Putting the turntable in the corner outside the curve makes better use of the space and seems to lessen it's visual impact. (It is drawn as 75ft diameter!)

Hi Keith, If you used a 3-way point to take the coach and livestock sidings off the loop both could be longer.

Howard, I think that the over-centre spring has been removed from the turnout in the photos above. Is that right? Have you done that on all the turnouts? Do the point motors have their own over-centre springing to hold the blades against the stock rail and If so are you sure it’s working properly?

Hold on Howard, Unless you've debugged the problem with your current turnouts you may get the exact same thing with a set of new ones. Did you clean between the blade and the stock rail (outside rail) so that they make good electrical contact? (Ideally, use a fibreglass pencil and hoover up afterwards because the filaments that break off are both irritants if you touch them and insulating, which would defeat the excercise.) Did you do what Malc suggested - bridging across the insulating joiners? If so, what happened? If not, please try this: Power up the layout, make sure nothing is running, get a bit of wire and starting with one of the working turnouts: Bridge across one of the insulating joiners to the frog. Then do the same for the other joiner. When you change from bridging the joiner in the straight rail to bridging the joiner in the curved rail, you should hear the DCC80 relay click. When you go back to the straight rail it should click again. Do that a few times, making sure you can hear the click each time. Then do the same on one of the non-working turnouts: Do you hear clicks on both rails, the same as the working one? (Remember to try a few times each way.)

Bracing all fitted: Both boxes are now absolutely rigid and square! Those few diagonal braces make an amazing difference. It was important to clamp the boxes to be as square as possible, and to flatten out the warping in the baseboards, while the braces were glued into place because the braces set the shape of everything permanently. The bottom box in this photo carries the throat pointwork and you can see that I adjusted the bracing to avoid the point motors:

Hi Chris, I have an AnyCubic Photon (S) and I'm slowly learning how to get the best out of it. Did you see the complete signal I printed? Some problems still to get my head around but I did manage a hollow ball finial! I'd be very interested to try a print of your van body if you'd like...???

Today's task was to add some cross-bracing under the baseboards. That meant I needed to know exactly where the point motors would go so I printed out the track plan at 1:1, cut the sheets of paper to size and laid them into the right hand box. (The left hand box doesn't have any turnouts so no need to worry about that one yet.) The walls of the box meant that the printouts were very easy to align and I laid a couple of spare turnouts on top just to prove that everything had scaled and printed correctly. It all looks OK so far... I decided to make diagonal cross-bracing to do two jobs at once: support the deck and resist twisting of the box. It took a bit of maths followed by trial and error to get the lengths and angles right!

I note that if you nave not experienced any shorts then you will not have not been able to examine any wheelsets that would produce them... So what evidence do you have that back to backs are the problem? I thought it had been established pretty clearly earlier in this thread that the problem is related to axles that crab across the track for various reasons.

Development: Still a bit square... More flexible loco yard including turntable(!) Run round loop more like Leander's plan to make goods handling a bit easier. Traverser as before but very slightly shorter to allow the entire station to move down a bit and give room for something low-relief behind the carriage sidings.

Yes, exactly. An alternative material would be clear nail varnish: Thin enough to paint precisely, hard wearing, insulating, no need to mix and even comes with it's own brush(!). In fact you could label it, "Miracle Track Short-Stop", and sell it for twice the price!

It's very difficult to fit the essential elements into your L shaped space but here's an attempt to rebalance thing a bit: Similar to Zomboid's last plan and that's because they are both Minories-on-the-curve. (We're not obsessed with it, honest!) Two carriage sidings where the loco spur was in Minories and only 3 platforms to try to decongest things. Platform 1 is single sided with a fence along the back. No loco release crossovers - there isn't room, really. Needs a pilot loco. Pilot loco shed making use of top right corner, outside the main curve, accessed from traverser to separate it from the main curve and save a turnout. Inner curve just above traverser is R3. Kickback sidings use space inside the main curve for goods/industry. 6-road traverser just under 5ft long. All roads can be connected to both inbound and outbound. It's all a bit square but it's mainly drawn to see what would actually fit!

I think you're trying to pack too much into the space. None of it fits together comfortably. Is there enough capacity on the traverser? I think you need at least two more roads to match the station. This all definitely feels more urban than suburban, BTW.

Colour reproduction, colour perception and what the original colour would have looked like in period with varying numbers of coats of paint and coats of varnish... Absolute minefield! However, on a different tack: Looking at the photos of the model just now, it seems to me that the firebox is a little bit more domed than it should be. What do you think?

I think the fiddle yard needs to be included to know if there's enough length for a points fan or, if not, how much the station has to be re-aligned for a traverser. A 5ft traverser should do the job (with loco lifts for running around and turning). The station might need to be shortened and angled towards the traverser to allow for maximum displacement.

Passed but with a note to be more careful when fitting dowels in future.

The two boxes are done and will fit together OK I think. Annoyingly the right hand box is ~2mm wider that the left, but only at the top. At track level everything lines up,as you can see: That is because of the trouble I had with the dowels. I should have rejected that frame before I glued it into place. Ho hum...