Harlequin

Thanks John. I'm really sorry to hear about Fern. It sounds like she was a great companion. Fernhead it is.

So, John @JST I will try to re-align the two goods sidings and find a way to give one of them a loading bank and/or end-loading dock. (And try to get rid of the double slip.) That will leave the corner more open for scenery. Should I make any other changes to the station design due to the discussions above? Have I made the bay too long? I was thinking about Minehead and Kingswear when I drew it. It seems reasonable to imagine that the station was only a few miles away from the mainline junction where there was a shed with a turntable - not least because that's exactly what you've got in your layout! Thus, there's no need for a turntable at this station and tender locos travel up and down the branch light engine, tender first as necessary. OK? What do you want to do about the local engine shed? If the large shed at the junction is near enough for the light engine moves described above then the original engine shed (there almost certainly was one) would probably have been taken out of use in the 20's. So do you want to retain the local shed under Rule 1, justify it some other way or say that it has indeed been taken out of use but the building remains and the tracks are still used as stabling spurs in the busy summer months? Perhaps even get rid of it completely? Even if there was no local engine shed (in use) there would have been a water tank and one or more water columns and I think it's possible there might still have been a coaling stage - but I'm not sure. Final question: Do you have a name for this station?

Put signal 3 nearest the track and ground disc 4 outside it so the ground disc "reads to the left" as you approach the points.

Are you committed to buying two 8*8 sheds? A single 16*8 replacement for the original shed would be a much more flexible and more usable space. Timber sheds can be made reliably water-tight and so that they don't need treatment...

Hi John, Here's my first stab at it: The first thing you'll notice is that I'm suggesting a bigger fillet because it allows a more continuous curve instead of a dogleg station. Is that possible? The platforms are long enough for 6-coach trains, with run round on the Main side plus a 4-6-0 standing proudly at the head! The platform looks a bit skinny but it is wider than the regulation 12ft along most of its length, and it gets wider towards the station building to try to give it a bit of "heft". Carriage siding can hold 6 coaches. I've plonked a station building on just because that's the obvious place for it - not saying you should change your plans. Engine shed, carriage siding and goods yard are all naturally trapped to protect the passenger lines - no need for catch points (if I've done it right). Engine shed connects to run round loop, which would normally be kept free so no problem with loco getting in and out The goods yard could be laid out in a number of different ways. It might just be possible to fit a turntable in the engine shed area. Smallest radius of 610mm is in the 1 Double slip in the goods yard. Other parts: 1 Large right, 3 Medium left, 1 Medium right, 2 curved right, 1 curved left.

Or one of these: https://www.dremeleurope.com/gb/en/rightangleattachment-224-ocs-p/

The thickness of slitting discs varies. You can buy very thin ones, diamond coated as LaCath suggests, which make a very fine cut. Everything works if you use one of the fatter ones - you just get a louder click-clack as the wheels cross the gap... The other thing I would add is that after cutting you might feel the need to chamfer the rails: Be gentle otherwise the wheel have even further to drop and the click-clack gets even louder and more worrying.

My first layout was a circuit on a board in my bedroom but sadly I can’t really remember it. I do remember being put to bed in Mum and Dad’s bed so that Dad could work on the Layout in secret in my bedroom and then later being carried half asleep into my own bed. It was revealed as a birthday present and I remember the green papier-mâché tunnel that covered part of the track. Later we had a bigger layout in the attic. Dark, cold, dusty. Chipboard strung between rafters and roof braces. Rusty Hornby steel track. I desperately wanted a Battle Space Turbo car but Dad said it was unrealistic and silly. When we moved to Cornwall we had a small BLT to fiddle yard layout in the cellar for a while before we got much more ambitious and took over a static caravan, as commemorated here:

Did it have more issues than any other model by any other manufacturer? There are issues with any model and owners who have problems are always very vocal. Nothing wrong with that but it can obscure the true state of a model's quality. For the record, my two railcars (1st and 2nd iteration) are two of my favourites. Great slow running, great detail, fancy lighting as standard and no troubles at all (aside from the sound installation, which is a third party issue).

Why do you need a terminus? If you used the long side of the room for a big-ish double-track through station you could still terminate some trains there. You can have terminal sidings or bays as well specifically for that purpose. Then you wouldn't need the separate small through station at all, or the multi-level design (which will be very difficult in the space you've got) or the reversing loop which inconveniently crosses the operating well... Fiddle yard along the opposite side, probably partly crossing the doorway in some form. Your operating well needs to be bigger than shown. P.S. I expect Crewlisle will be along shortly...

I assumed the inner curve was R2 but it might still work if you could bring the R1 around to 22.5 degs then insert the point. Some fettling of the outer curve would then be needed to allow the crossovers to connect. I wonder if there's room for R2 and R3 instead because some stock won't like R1...

@daryll Why do you want to do this? Do you have severe space limitations?

You could start the outer platform loop further around the curve to make the outer platform longer. The two station crossovers could possibly also be moved to start in the curves if the Settrack geometry could be made to work out. The advantage of doing that would be to get rid of reverse curves and keep the crossovers, and thus the outswing of vehicles ends, further away from the platforms.

The drawing that I canibalised to create the baseboards above was for a layout about the same size and it only had a 4 coach run round ability. So 6 coach will have to include the curve onto the fat board and I'm going to try to make it smooth and organic. (But not today, sadly.)

Hi Bob, Here's my paperclip idea - hopefully it's self-explanatory: The hook is formed using needle-nosed pliers. Obviously it will be a bit more difficult to insert the wire when the turnout is already fixed in place but I think it would still work. You'd need to watch out for shorting with Electrofrog turnouts.

Hi John, Does this look right dimensionally? Each grid division is 305mm. The top edge, excluding the end triangle, is 2880mm including the 550mm width of the fatter board, right?

Perhaps AnyRail's window position has just got messed up? Try this: After running it, click on the icon (to make sure it's got keyboard focus), then type Alt+Space, then hit X. If the window was hiding somewhere that should make it visible by maximising it.

Hi John, How big is the triangular fillet? (The loco depot looks great, BTW.)

Hi Mark, The road crossing could just give access into the goods yard but I suggest it should not be at the very edge because that makes the exit of the track from the scene almost impossible to hide. If you assume that passenger trains are short on your light railway, possibly using 4 or 6 wheel stock (hello Hattons ), then you don't need a huge run round loop and you can use Streamline parts. I suggest keeping the trackwork simple and leaving room for convincing scenery.

Hi Bob, Sorry to hear you’re having these difficulties! When you’ve poured so much time and effort into a project it’s really hard to make objective decisions about it. Unfortunately, It’s difficult to offer any useful suggestions without sounding trite. (You can probably guess why I say that...) Is it only the points that are annoying you or are there other things you’re unhappy with? I wonder if it’s possible to make a wire hook downwards into the tie bar hole and pass under the rail to reach your wire-in-tube. I imagine using piano wire but I’ll play around with some paper clips to see if it’s feasible. All the best,

Hi metijg, I like No.2 because of the land form, the stream. and the trestled tipping station. (And the flat NG will make it more reliable.) The plans that push the tipping station headshunt in front of the scenic break and the "fiddle yard" really work well, IMHO, because they expand the scenic area, disguise the fiddle yard best and the headshunt makes sense technically. I think you should definitely have a continuous run in the final design! Maybe you could move the mine entrance and the bridge over the river? And maybe the small stream in #2 could replace the river? What's the thinking with the NG diving into the mine buildings? If that's not a core part of the story-telling then it might be simpler not to do it and that might make other parts of the design work better. Quick sketch idea: It sort of works but it gets very complex on the right where all the tracks and the river leave the scene in close proximity! (The grey rectangles would be view blocker buildings.)

The middle goods siding should probably lie alongside one of the other sidings. Then you would have a simple open yard - but it depends if you can then make their intended purpose work properly. The goods loop seems a bit long in proportion to the sidings, perhaps?

The min radius in Plan SP6 is smaller than R2, the smallest radius for SetTrack turnouts. So the circuit would probably require a creative combination of SetTrack parts to fit in that space. It's clearly a very old plan. (Surely a CJF original?) You could maybe make a slightly bigger version of it that comes to bits and is stored under the bed when not in use? Say, three identical boards, each 2ft by 5ft. Two join side by side to form a circuit and the other connects at a right angle to give a terminus. Any suitable floorspace would do for operating sessions. That still leaves the question of a reason for shunting in the modern era...