Harlequin

The loops baseboard is not very wide because it's a duck-under (or could be partly lifting) and it needs to leave as much room as possible in the operating well. So I don't think there's room to do anything really scenic - unless you love ballasting... I think it's useful to have a non-scenic area where you can take things on and off without risking damage to scenery and where stock can stand around as required. There's also a small practical issue with the tunnel: If it exits into a scenic area you need a second scenic tunnel mouth but if it exits into a non-scenic area you can make that exit simpler and much bigger so that you can get your hand inside to deal with derailments and clean the track. As Flying Pig said: Up to 5 trains on the layout, 2 running on the main circuits, 3 either standing in loops ready to go or being changed over by hand. I don't know how Berwick operated or operates today but from looking at it's track plan I guess that it might have been a place where carriages were attached and detached from long distance trains??? The sidings would be primarily carriage sidings and the spur at top right would be where a shunter stands?

I went to do my weekly shop today and this is what I found: Sainsburys with a slightly Soviet air to it: Empty shelves - no vegetables, no bread (nor yeast, nor flour), no loo rolls, very little fresh meat. Anxious people quietly patrolling the aisles. A baby crying non-stop somewhere in the hard echoing hall.

Rant deleted Sketchup used to be great. Now the product range is a mess and it costs $299 per anum to even get it on your desktop! Shame.

Ah, some "Grist for the Mill"... Good! In the GWR world my nomination is Churchward's secret shame, the Krugers. (Although Dean was nominally the designer, Churchward was heavilly involved.) Remarkably ugly: Badly proportioned, lumpen and too many "bits". Let's hope no-one is ever mad enough to make an RTR version!

Hi, Thanks - I'm glad you like it! (Hope I haven't trod on any toes.) I suggest you have a really critical look at the design before you jump in. Make sure it really will do what you want and that it offers enough interest. (It's quite simple but it's a reasonable contraction of Berwick-Upon-Tweed and it's hard to see how much more could be added to it.) If there's anything you don't like please let me know. You could take the design as-is and either print it out at real size or take measurements from the drawing to position everything. I can send you a PDF file. Or you could try to replicate it in your software if you want to change things. The location in the garage sounds fine. The view blocker is a bit woolly at the moment but it would do two jobs: 1. Hiding the exit of the track from the scene and 2. Disguising the tight R2 and R3 curves. It could be another tunnel mouth or overbridge but we already have both of those so it would be great to find an alternative method. Maybe just some tall(ish) buildings? Perhaps someone has a suggestion? Edit: I forgot to ask whether you'd thought about point control yet. Are you thinking of motorising the points or keeping it simple and doing it by hand? If you're going for point motors then the medium left on the bridge needs to be thought about.

I think you still have R1 curves in the inner circuit. That will cause problems with a lot of rolling stock.

Something like this maybe: ECML station, bridge, tunnel. I made the bridge straight for easier construction. Track all on one level but the scenery rises and falls all around. This is simpler and more reliable than trying to create gradients in the track. R2 and R3 radius curves are used but are hidden. Elsewhere min radius is approx 610mm. The only turnouts that have to be Setrack are the optional facing crossover under the hill within the R2/R3 curves. Everything else is Streamline and If that crossover is omitted you can use Code 75 if required. Streamline: 5 curved right, 5 curved left, 1 large Y, 2 medium left, 1 medium right. The only place where the twin track has the normal Streamline spacing is over the bridge and in the fiddle yard. Basic fiddle yard in the form of two passing loops where you can manually set up one train while another is running on either circuit. There is a facing crossover on the left hand side. That is as per the prototype. It's still a bit rough and some details would need to be worked out to turn it into a working layout. The track gets close to the backscene in places so the scenic edges could be difficult to disguise but that's pretty much unavoidable in such a small space. The operation would have to be checked. I know that some wrong-road running is needed to exit the inner FY loops in the clockwise direction (and enter the outer loops anti-clockwise) but that might not matter if the layout is more about play value?

Might the smell of old model railways actually be the smell of tobacco smoke? Some second hand books and models I've bought over the t'internet have had that distinctive aroma when they arrived. Old Hornby adverts often show Dad with a pipe in his mouth and I know that if Dad was a pipe smoker, like mine was, the smell and the staining got everywhere. On the plus side St Bruno tobacco tins were invaluable for storing bits and pieces! "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

How about Berwick-upon-tweed as inspiration? It is on the ECML where it is double-tracked. There is one island platform between the up and down lines and there are a fairly simple set of loops and sidings on the down side. The station is built in the grounds of a castle, of which the west wall survives. One end of the passenger station immediately abuts the river Tweed, which is crossed by an impressive viaduct. (One of the station crossovers is actually on the viaduct.) The modelling possibilities are mouth-watering and the station is not too big or complicated - so it should be able to be compressed. Station (with castle ramparts!) on the long side, bridge over river on the right. Some station pointwork on the left, skinny duck-under section at the bottom, as you have shown it.

Jilted John of course went on to further fame with his massive Eurovision hit, "Pigeons in Flight": Ooph!

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party but that, Sir Duck, is the most excellent thing I've seen for a long time!

Here's how the trailing crossover and goods shed loop could fit: You can see that the route into the loading dock (the old shed siding) has to turn through the double slip. The down siding and the new shed loop could be longer but only by sacrificing the river crossing. Edit: The abandoned back siding is in light grey.

The goods shed loop might be possible by abandoning the back siding but it will be quite short. Amazingly, it looks like the extra trailing crossover can be fitted in without much trouble. (I was expecting it to be a real headache.) I'll post something tomorrow. Remember that Compound said that the extra crossover was only needed when the down siding was also used as a refuge and that doesn't have to be the case, esp. at a smaller station. And not all Midland stations followed the archetypal pattern. (Just thinking about the less-is-more principle... )

OK, so here's a revised version of my previous idea, which tries to make efficient use of the space by combining the access route into the operating well with the fiddle yard. This concept assumes that 4-coach trains are the maximum sensible train length, given the size of the layout. It uses cassettes to perform multiple functions of the traditional FY to save space: Multiple storage loops (infinite!) Passing loops Crossovers Turnout fans Min radius: 610mm There's a lifting flap in the main circuits so that continuous running is easy and separate from storage. 4-coach cassettes (1080mm long) have their own separate connections, with room on (some of) the feeder tracks to place and remove locos. The cassettes no longer have to be in place for the duration of a running session and so, if you are methodical about removing cassettes when they're not being used, access in and out is easy - just lift the flap. I would also suggest making rail level quite high so that it's easy to duck under when you don't want to lift the flap or remove the cassettes. The inner cassette connection is double ended but the outer connections are single ended and when they are in use the door can't be opened or closed. These restrictions might seem odd but they are carefully thought out compromises to make the whole design work. (The outer cassette could be double-ended if the minimum radius was allowed to drop down to R2.) The station passenger buildings hide the fact that the tracks keep turning and hide one of the cassette loop turnouts from normal viewing angles. The station track plan is deliberately simple - not trying to fit a big station with lots of features into a small space. Bad things: the curve of the platforms - but that's part of the design compromise.

Are you open to an improved cassette idea? I have worked out a scheme with a bit more flexibility than my previous idea. It uses 1080mm long cassettes - long enough for 4 Stanier corridor coaches or 3 plus loco. Locos could be handled separately. Cassettes would have side walls, lifting end stops and optional covers to keep stock safe while moving.

I like the elderly dying tree! That's more like real life and it fits in the scene alongside the tumbledown barn. Could you persuade some ivy to colonise it?

Also off-topic: "Running plate" vs. "Footplate". Discuss. Would it be correct to say that outside the cab it's called the "running plate" while the "footplate" is inside the cab?

Hi @Aire Head, I have a cunning new idea. To know if it would work, can I ask you: When the door is open 90 degrees, what is the gap between the wall and the back of the door? And is the door 768mm wide? Edit: Supplementary question: What max train length are you realistically targeting now?

Dreadnoughts, 1904 onwards: 70ft long 9ft 6in wide. Fair enough, not the 9ft 7in quoted but very close and my books say that was the maximum possible within the loading gauge. They had inset end doors to reduce the effect of the outswing.

Can you explain why? In the context of Aire Head's layout they could solve multiple issues and so they might be worth the potential downsides.

Hi JR, The curves at top left look a bit sharp. Your cassette connections allow trains to exit from the layout but you haven't got any connections or crossovers to feed trains in. How would the inner cassette spur actually work and where are the cassettes stored? Is it going to be practical? The line though the goods shed will have to be straight and that could affect all the nearby curves. The viaduct section will obviously have quite deep baseboards but that's right where you'd ideally duck under. Can you reach the back of the scene bottom left? The baseboards look very wide there. It would look better, and help setting out later, if you could make parallel tracks actually be parallel. If you abandoned the cutting you could maybe re-arrange things like this: Or like this: Hope that helps.

Sorry. No worries.