Martin S-C

Nothing to add for the moment, I just needed to post so that my own thread doesn't drop off the bottom of my own feed :( However next session of baseboard installation along the colliery side of the room and around under the end window (fiddle yard end) will be happening in early September.

I was focussed on the size of those trunnions.

My dad had a shed just like that. Corrugated tin roof that exploded with noise when it hailed or rained and asbestos panels held together with wonky aluminium angle but his was painted a really naff chocolate brown which was left over in the can after he painted the house window sills. Even though I was only about 10 years old at the time me and my brother and our "gang" took over the shed as our clubhouse I thought it was a terrible colour! We wanted to pool our pocket money and buy a tin of dark green paint to match our military interests but Dad put his foot down. I think he must have been proud of that brown paint job!

We need to know what Aston is doing on Clun and if its consensual.

How close did it get? You may still be in with a chance.

To expose more of my ignorance I presume a pulling list is the list of levers that need to be reversed BEFORE the signal protecting that route can be. Is that right?

Where? We need more ladies with guns.

These railway modellers are a most curious bunch. What they really need is a hobby.

I was hoping some server fixer-upper wizardry would do that. Are you *quite* sure we need to do it ourselves? *Shudders at the thought of going back to Feb 2018 on my thread*

I'm sure I signed up for a model railway thread. Have antipodean wildlife enthusiasts hijacked the discussion?

I honestly cannot agree with this. Internal combustion farming certainly away from the big "modern/planned" estates was still very primitive in the 1920s and 1930s. There was recession and the horse and human muscle reigned supreme until after WW2. You would never see an abandoned ANYTHING in the 20s and 30s, let alone a "modern" cutting edge steam traction engine. Our canals remained mostly horse drawn past WW2. Until the 1960s there were more horse drawn delivery vehicles in London than trucks and vans! The lorry began to be used more for long-distance freight usurping the train in the 1930s but local rural use remained the province of the horse. I've said this countless times on RMWeb and elsewhere but railway modellers seem to model internal combustion power far too much and too early when horse drawn appliances of every kind should be more common on our layouts even up to the 1950s and 1960s.

A visit to Pendon Museum with a camera will furnish you with more inspiration than you could possibly model. My own take on the 20s and 30s is that almost everything should be horse drawn or worked (or even sapiens muscle power), with a very occasional steam traction engine. Internal combustion in most rural areas was really a post-war advance. The biography of Roye England (Pendon's founder) "In Search of a Dream" also has numerous photos and written asides about inter-war English farming practices.

Kevin, just a quick question - do you use an airbrush? You have a nice border of brownish dead grasses/dirt between the gravelled hard area and the full-height grassy area and I'm wondering how you achieve that boundary. It seems to work well and takes away any hard edge between the man-made surface and the plants.

An apostrophic calamity.

What an absolutely magical and appropriate building to have a lovely big O Gauge model railway in. I need to visit.

Isn't it terrible? I am deeply shocked. Ah, well yes. There's the issue. Is it mother's or mothers? Enquiring minds want to know.

Thank you both for that information. So its: Dapol = ready built, motor and electronics included, has lighting fitted RATIO = ready built, requires adding separate servo/motor, lighting not included Without measuring it appears the Dapol ladders, safety hoops and railings are finer than the Ratio product - I assume they are metal instead of plastic. I fear I'd need to replace the Ratio ones with brass. A signal coming off in response to a route setting isn't something I need and I'll examine the Ratio prices as well as servo/motor sources and do my sums.

This is the Dapol unit, yes? Are they expensive do you think, or worth the money. I have a lot of working signals to install and am considering these or motorizing Ratio kits but replacing their chunky ladders and safety hoops with brass etches.

I've thought about a gantry I am just not sure it fits the mood of the model. I always feel gantries add an urban feel to things. We are supposed to be on the Gloucester-Herefordshire border here. Wye Valley area around Monmouth-Ross, etc, with the branch headed off into the Forest in a Coleford-ish direction. That doesn't seem like gantry-land to me. I'm sure there were some gantries around this neck of the woods, its merely the look of the thing that bothers me. The spur at far west will probably have some engineers stock stabled there, or a crane at least. Then again these might live on the long road that runs past the engine shed. I must confess I saw that spur as just an extra place to put stuff. Its one of my planning weaknesses - a sort of CJF "stuff in extra things" syndrome, I just enjoy adding superfluous bits. I admit it's a terrible affliction. Perhaps a carriage gas tank charging wagon will stand there, or a fresh water tanker that will be sent up the branch from time to time. We need to keep in mind that the layout will operate in two configurations - with and without P3/P4 being through platforms. I know this adds to the complexity but there we are. P3 and P4 will be the platforms served by the branch - most likely P4 with either a push-pull reversing there or the train loco running around via the west crossover if the door-bridging piece is in place, or an engine change with light engine released to shed if its not. So in its through-running configuration, yes, P4 is bi-directional but only in so far as it accepts terminating branch trains. P3 might actually be as well for the same operational need but I suspect I should make a hard decision on which platform will accept branch service terminations and stick with it. But yes, in terms of setting up signals I need to have them control P3/P4 in both terminal and through road configurations. P1 and P2 only ever serve mainline services so there is no need for a bracket arm on these - trains will only ever depart down the main, never down the branch. Ground signals will control shunt moves to/from carriage sidings or light engines to shed. Goods trains departing the goods yard shunting neck (loop adjacent to P1) can leave along the main or branch so will need a bracket arm. I can use smaller freight-only arms here. Thank you for that. This is why I like RMWeb so much. People who know stuff are so willing to help out.

I totally knew someone was going to suggest this. The answer I regret to inform you is an unequivocal "no". 😉 All trains coming to a stop at the home might be one solution. It would add another little operating wriggle to make things more interesting.

It seems that concensus is swinging now against the indicator board as being too new-fangled and the original 5-arm behemoth is what Colonel Yolland will insist on as a minimum safe requirement. It's a pity as I'm a fan of taking the route of least resistance when possible. Mind you a 5-arm home signal would look a lot more impressive than a 2 arm + indicator board.

Well... yeah... point taken.

Thanks again. As it happens the information side of that indicator board will be invisible from anywhere except if you go right to the end of the operating well and lean over sideways, so as Richard Mawer wrote in the thread you linked me to @Nick C it would be possible to model a mechanical indicator board that is a dummy and does not need to display the correct route code. I need to bear in mind as well that the railway represents a middling to not-quite-impoverished secondary route company where economies of necessity would mean all but the essential costs have to be trimmed back. I still want to have a railway run on the bare bones of the Board of Safety's recommendations. This isn't the LNWR or GW. :D One of my several inspirations is the M&SWJR.

It would certainly help to do away with both the main and branch junction homes - a total of 8 arms and replace each with a single arm and a shunt arm. How would route indicators have worked? I don't want to go with white lights so would that have been a small arm against a white board or something of that ilk?

Thank you both. The Hunstanton diagram is small but decipherable. I'll add dummy ground signals then to control light engines leaving the platform roads and loops. I would rather not add shunt arms to the already impressive 5-arm bracket home signal since I can see this getting out of hand time- and cost-wise. I hope it would be okay to control the light engines back into Plat 4 for them to reverse again into the loco shed by use of the main home signals? They would not be entering a line that was occupied and I am modelling a secondary company that is not flooded with cash. I will use short arms for the goods only departure road. EDIT: Ah. I have taken a look at the Hunstanton diagram and the home signal that controls access to the platforms seems to be just a single arm with different locking levers for the different points that access the different roads. I currently have a (rather monstrous) 5-arm bracket signal with a separate arm for each of the 4 platform roads, plus one for the goods arrival. Am I going overboard with that? Would a single arm do as long as we worked on the assumption it was locked to the correctly set route?