Harlequin

Covered fiddle yards, hidden gradients, powerbase… In my book those are all things to avoid if you possibly can! Would you like to share your track plan with us? We might be able to offer some helpful suggestions.

For me, they were in with the spare wheels set. Have you checked that bag?

Oh thank you, I'm honoured! But I'm not in the same league as those guys. I'm a Rice fan too so I will have to add this book to my ever-increasing reading stack!

I think the GWR would say, "Sorry, our yard at Warren is very small and there isn't enough room for you to operate out of it, Mr. Coal Merchant." Mr. Coal Merchant would set up his yard somewhere off the public road, nearby.

You need to be able to reach across to do two-handed work without damaging any scenery and without your clothes (e.g. thick jumpers in the winter) from catching on things. 762mm is about right but it varies from person to person. A 610mm wide operating well would be physically workable for most people but could rapidly become annoying because it's more difficult to rise up into after you've ducked under, you feel hemmed in while you're in there and you have to be very careful when you turn around not to knock anything. A standard British doorway is 762mm wide (2ft 6in) and that's a reasonable comfortable width for most people. Design the layout first then think about the best arrangement of baseboards to support it.

Yes, it has the same sized speaker well as the mogul, approx. 20mm by 40mm. I have just squashed a Zimo Dumbo into mine. I had to file it down a bit to get it in.

That's a bit unfair. No-one wants to find problems but if we do find them we can't just keep quiet and ignore them. That would be very unhealthy for everyone, for the whole hobby!

Not everyone will worry about the misaligned running plates (and steps and hand rails) between loco and tender but it niggles me so I've looked into it some more. (Why does it niggle me? The loco was designed to have the running plates aligned. Look at any drawing of the class, including the one on the box...) I measure the misalignment as ~1.25mm, that is 3¾ inches in the real world. That may not sound much but it’s about half the depth of the valences - the top of one valence is pointing at the middle of the other. I dismantled the tender to investigate the problem further and this was enlightening. The whole tender body, including running plate, valence and steps is one unit and the valences overhang the chassis (unlike the typical Hornby tender). So if you can insert some spacers between the tender body and chassis you can get all of those important visual elements to line up with the loco, and crucially, do that without affecting the couplings and without opening up any obvious visible gaps! Here's a quick bodge up with some 1.2mm rod inserted temporarily to create the spacing and the tender body just resting on top, not properly fixed: Much better to my eye! Some things to note about this: 1. The supplied fixing screws will have a very tenuous hold on their collars so they will have to be very carefully tightened. Probably worth sourcing some longer screws. 2. More of the tender chassis will be visible, obviously. Whether this is more or less "prototypically correct" than the model as supplied is hard to say. The bottom of the steps now seem to line up with the bottom of the frames - which is what the drawing shows on the box... 3. The fall plate(s) may have to be adjusted but the one attached to the tender is metal so it should bend to a new position. 4. There's 1mm more space for a bigger speaker! I need to play around a bit more and then maybe make more permanent spacers, but it looks promising.

Yes, "488" is definitely wonky on my version but of course this is an extremely cruel close-up that you wouldn't normally see when the model is on your layout:

Thanks. So should be 16mm on the model and I do measure them as 16mm +/- a bit. (They are of course, more coned than the prototype so it depends where on the tread you measure.)

Does anyone know the specified diameter of the prototype's tender wheels? I don't have the right books and although I've googled I can't find that info yet.

Since outdoor photos are de rigeur at the moment, here's mine (with a cat hair already attached 😞 Stunning! Notice "SE&CR" on the tender's axle boxes... Amazing! I need to think about running plate alignment... As with the Mogul, setting a function key to drive both F0Fwd and F0Rev outputs got the firebox flicker working. And as with the Mogul it's not very bright.

My 488 arrived at lunchtime. It was a surprise because the only notification I had was from PayPal some days ago. Very beautiful! Thank you Rails and Dapol! Decoder installation was a bit tedious because the speaker enclosure jammed in the opening and I had to do some very delicate simultaneous pushing, pulling and levering to get the carrier board out. (The GWR Mogul came with speaker enclosure not fitted, as I recall.) It runs well: very smooth, very quiet, nicely progressive speed control, no sign of any "lumps" in the motion. One minor point: I don't think the coal load is up to the standard of the rest of the model because it's not a good fit and it sits high, so that you can see the edges of the moulding. Some filing might make it sit down better so that the edges are properly hidden but the better long-term answer will be to replace it with some real coal. I'll try to get the firebox flickering after work... Should be possible with a bit of CV tweaking.

Chris, You could also get more turning space by setting the building into the bank a little bit and more parallel with the boundary wall. Quite realistic, actually. In the end though, it's a compressed version of what might have been and if a big lorry can't easily turn off the weighbridge, that would be a small compression compromise and probably lost amongst all the other details.

Hi Alan, In the same area are John Armstrong's system of "Givens and Druthers" (horrible phrase) and Iain Rice's approach of checklist refinement but a new engineering perspective might be very interesting. Might this topic be better in the Layout and Track Design forum?

To harden off your prints quicker, put them out in the sunshine - lots of UV out there! One related thing that I found useful was to place the printer in a dark room while it was printing because that prevents stray UV getting in.

Things are happening! Payments being taken and the despatches are about to begin: https://railsofsheffield.com/news/articles/3885-wainwright-d-class

Thanks Mike. As ever, it all seems so obvious once you've explained it. One of the photos we've been looking at showed a 74xx pannier tank sitting in the up siding but with no vehicles in front of it. That did puzzle me. So the branch loco (typically a 74xx pannier tank at Lampeter) would draw up to 5 Miltas into the Up siding just before the Aberystwyth-Camarthen was due to arrive. Once the passenger train had arrived and passed the up siding the Shunter would wait for the Up Siding to Up Loop disc to change to off (he could of course very easily chat to the signalman directly) then wave the pannier driver forward until the leading Milta just buffered up to the rear coach of the passenger train and then shout "Whoa" and wave at the pannier driver. The pannier tank must have been providing vacuum to the Miltas to release their brakes, so in what order are those connections unmade and remade to take vacuum from the passenger loco? If the rear Milta was still in the siding would the passenger loco driver pull forward to fully clear the siding and stop before testing the vacuum and departing properly? BTW: I have a reference that says that 1472 worked the last passenger train on the branch but it was found to be not strong enough to work the freight trains and so it was replaced by 7417.

Hi Mike @The Stationmaster, I was wondering how the milk traffic from the Aberayron branch would have been exchanged with the trains to Carmarthen and what role the Up siding might have played in that? Obviously it would be organised to minimise any delays and get the milk to the city (Cardiff? London?) as quickly as possible. So I imagine that the branch goods would be timed to arrive at Lampeter just before one of the Aberystwyth-Carmarthen trains was scheduled to come through. Thus, the branch loco would be available for shunting. Would the branch loco cut out the full milk vehicles (tankers or in earlier times Siphons, I guess) from the branch goods and wait in the Goods yard or the Up siding? In the Up siding it would be trapped behind the milk vehicles and with the passenger train stopping at the Up platform that leaves very little flexibility, very little room for manoeuvre. Or would it wait in the goods yard, then when the passenger train arrives haul the milk vehicles out and propel them up to the rear of the passenger train? (I discount the possibility that the passenger train would stop in the Up platform and then reverse into the Up siding while passengers were on board to pick up milk vehicles. Too slow, too dangerous. Am I right?) So I'm starting to think that the Up siding plays no role in the Up milk traffic flow and is in fact more useful for holding empties that the branch goods will pickup and haul down the branch to the Creamery. And a secondary question, if I may: I don't see any calling on signals so how would the attaching of milk vehicles to through trains have been controlled? Flags and whistles, no doubt, but which staff would be involved?

These two designs are basically the same in terms of cost and complexity. They both give you a run round loop and an array of sidings, which you can "scenick" however you like. You wanted passenger trains and goods shunting, diesels and steam and not to be too ambitious and you chose Wiveliscombe as something that fitted the bill - and it does! If you've changed your mind about what you want, fair enough, but it's a shame because these designs have a lot of promise, IMHO.

Platforms: They are ~1600mm long.

Remember the other important thing: Engineer the lifting flap to be easy to use and 100% reliable, unaffected by temperature or humidity...