AngusDe

I don't know if this has been covered recently, but I am now in Motability territory and was thinking of taking the EV plunge via the scheme. During lockdown my trips have been limited to to/from the hospital, but I hope for more adventurous days out soon. I was wondering if anyone has looked at it from this perspective and has any useful thoughts/input? Thanks, Angus

Ullapool has been one of my dream layout scenarios since I was a schoolboy. These thoughts have been heavily shaped from 60s/70s schoolboy trips to Strornoway, either via Mallaig or via Kyle and finally by bus to Ullapool from Inverness. Late 70s/early 80s there were frequent trips to Thurso where my brother worked at Dounreay. Against this backdrop, I reckoned the Ullapool branch was built as a light railway with traffic on a par with other Highland light railways such as Wick and Lybster and the Dornoch branch. WW2 brought adhoc upgrades to manline standards to service activities in support of convoys forming up in he lochs etc, which led to a naval fuel dump being built in Loch Broom rather than Loch Ewe and of course such a depot would be rail served, etc. When the ferry switches from Kyle to Ullapool, the 8 coach train from Inverness splits at Garve, 5 coaches going to Ullapool and 3 to Kyle etc. this is what I remember at Georgemas, 5 to Thurso and 3 double headed to Wick. The ferry also gives other options. when it started the road upgrade was way behind schedule, so a bit of an imagination has scotrail experimenting with motorail and sleeper services. In those days folk were slipping calmac crew backhanders to get off the ferry before the lorries just in case they got stuck behind a HGV all the way to Garve/Inverness. another option might be reinstated fish traffic to bypass the road chaos. Your imagination can run wild and its all plausible! Angus

I follow all the Minories theme layouts and threads on here with great interest. Phil's purist approach is fascinating. I'm half hoping one of the laser cut plywood baseboard manufacturers will take the concept on board and produce a Minories in a bag, baseboard kit! Angus

A personal flight of fancy of mine is, the Highland built their light railways on Skye and Lewis and had a rail ferry service from Kyle. Just let your imagination run wild with the ideas that then allows

Amazing thread and layout! When I started my first tour in Germany back in 86, I felt quite snooty about their adherence to 3 rail standards, but there was no escape from the inbuilt reliability. I loved the automated train set display in any railway station of any size. Great fun. I think "play value" is what's missing from most train set model railways available nowadays. Angus

Love it. My first visit to Köln Hbf was in 1986, last one 2013, one of my favourite locations !

I love a train ferry layout idea! More, More!!

Seen this on twitter: An extraordinary "protest train" of 20 freight locomotives, horns blaring, has today done a circuit of Berlin's railway tracks. The private freight railway operators are requesting the same bailout support that state-owned DB Cargo is to be handed. Hörst du das Signal, Berlin? https://t.co/na7AGP6LK8 https://t.co/Iu8b2JCTSq

Thanks all, fascinating stuff! Angus

Mine arrived today, its a beautiful model, detail is stunning, which got me thinking... .. anyone know if they're cleared for train ferry/Channel tunnel operation? My layout is going to have a double identity as Germany and/or Scotland, sort of, with lots of rule1 back story only loosely based on reality, but hopefully plausible, lol Angus

Can anyone give me a definitive answer as to whether any were renumbered in TOPS series, ie 17 XXX? I seem to think there were some at Polmadie in late 60s/early 70s when I was ticking them off in in my ABC books? I think the books then listed both numbers for each loco, so I might be misremembering, it was a while ago, lol! Angus

When I lived in Germany, Wuppertal was a fair distance from Gutersloh, but it became a regular day trip, just to ride the Schwebebahn. At the weekends you could ride one of the original cars whilst enjoying coffee and cake for an extra fee, not sure if that is still an option?

Nice set of pics there, many from the Polmadie I remember as a boy. I used to find them fascinating, I guess it was the centre cab, when I saw them out and about in Glasgow. Mine arrived in the post this morning, I've spent the afternoon watching it go round in circles, and trying to make my mind up which direction my embryonic layout is going to go in. Captures the look perfectly in my book! Angus Edit: screw your eyes up, and think Southside Glasgow, urban decay, 1970ish.....

The more I read on DCC control systems, the more I'm attracted to the idea of mechanical point and signal control with proper mechanical interlocking on the frame, seems easier and more prototypical ....

When I arrived at RAF Gutersloh in January 1983, the combination of beer at circa 30p a pint, a 50yd walk to work instead of a 5 mile cycle and brattie and chips with extra mayo on the walk back to my room every night led to me putting on 2 stone in 2 months......... ...loved it! Angus

Basically it's always been the same. When (the then) Triang-Hornby introduced the "System6" track 50+ years ago, they kept their "super4" track geometry which had always had LH/RH crossovers. When you look at the complexity of many other set track ranges in the US/Japan/Europe, the simplicity of the Triang Super4/System6 geometry has never been beaten. When Peco introduced their SetTrack range 30ish years ago, they matched the Hornby geometry, but there were subtle variations, one of which was the diamond. I think the assumption is in most set track set ups there will be enough "wiggle" room to accommodate/absorb the gaps. Another subtle variation (presumably to help accommodate/absorb the gaps) is their respective "quarter straights" are different lengths. Another difference in the ranges was the curved points. In the initial range, the Peco offering was R1/R2 points, but after a few years they were dropped and replaced by R2/3 points, again there is subtle differences with the Hornby offering. One point that was never brought over from the Super4 range was the R2 Y point, something I always thought had many uses, but obviously nobody else thinks so, lol! I also think the big omission from both Peco and Hornby ranges is a LH and RH curved crossing that would preserve the R3 curve coming out of junctions, although I'll concede the geometry of such a curve would be complex. Angus

You're talking to a guy who, to date, has been unable to remove a Dapol 26 body that supposedly just slides off, lol! Angus

I'm surprised how little excitement the Clayton announcement has generated! (Or maybe that's just me, lol!) Given their apparently imminent arrival, my finger has been twitching over the add to basket button on several mail order sites on a daily basis, but my reticence is only due to the lack of DCC fitted options, and the box shifters I've looked at don't have a DCC fitting option on their menus as they appear to do on already released models. (or is that just me again?)

If I've read the OP correctly, this is an invitation to ramble on about nothing in particular, so here goes... For some reason RMWeb is one of those sites I only read on a full screen PC or laptop, unfortunately my granddaughter has had the laptop since start of lockdown for her homework and as I'm shielding I've not seen either for 100+ days, but I do have the PC in the cupboard under the stairs, so I'm on it now. Facebook is one of the sites I do read on my phone, and it reminded me today, 9 years ago, was Catherine's first session of chemotherapy at the Western in Edinburgh, which reminded me, not that I'd forgotten, I'm back there myself for my next dose of immunotherapy this week coming. It's now 6 years since Catherine passed away and when I started my own treatment I was amazed how many of the nurses and doctors I recognised, I'd always assumed they'd 'burn out' sooner rather than later, but obviously not, they're all heroic really. Catherine was always rather scared of needles, had terrible veins and had several Central and Hickman lines, non of which were very successful and her whole cancer journey was rather miserable. In comparison, my journey (so far) has been a breeze, no symptoms of the kidney cancer at all, and side effects of the treatment have been irritating rather than debilitating, but there's always that "but you've got stage 4 cancer" message tannoying in the back of your head. Anyway my favourite distraction is always a few hours on RMweb or AnyRail so I'm here. A working life dominated by 12 hour solo shifts left me well equipped for shielding/lockdown and I started off full of good ideas of what I was going to do, including build my layout I've been dreaming about, but it has ground o a halt as quickly as it started as the list of bits n bobs I need gets longer and shops stay shut etc and other thoughts of grander plans seem to run aground on a shortage of peco track in the box shifters etc. Other minor irritations include being unable to pull the body off my Dapol 26 to have a go at fitting a DCC chip, lol which is compounded by my (Bachman) DC controler only works in 1 direction. However I did enjoy playing trains, running in circles, until started thinking about my end to end plans. Anyway, I started looking at this thread, as when I worked in London Jan84-Jan86 I'd get the Nightrider (?) train up n down. I did try the bus once, but that was horrific, the train was luxury in comparison. Hope I've ticked all the thread boxes! Angus

The working at Lossiemouth that always made me smile was it had a through sleeper to/from London, which was actually the longest sleeper run in the country. Between that and rule 1, you could get away with running anything to the "Scottish Riviera", as the railway tried to market it once upon a time! Angus

I've been getting my secret stash of train set and embrionoic layout bits n bobs out from behind the wardrobe and planning to put my 12 weeks isolation to good use. I have. 2 Bachmann train set controllers, one DC and One DCC for my (previously un run) 4 modern era locos, so I've been running them in. The one DCC loco is the Bachmann 37. Anyway, my #cough# running in circuit has been expanding as I go through my big box of bits. Since I started adding my 80s vintage Roco/Farish points, the 37 has been regularly stalling/shorting out? on the points. The DC locos sail through with no problems. Any idea if the problem is with the points, or the loco? Where should I start looking? Cheers, Angus

I've posted this before, but this was my late 60s first layout on a 6x4 piece of chipboard. The only buildings were the solid wooden station and goods shed, the only scenery was the solid plastic triang tunnel, everything else was painted on. sometimes there was a lego over bridge across the dock branch, the mainlne and the goods siding, which in my imagination was shields road, crossing the multiple lines in that corner of Govan in Glasgow at that time. Angus

I have a strong memory of Mallaig, sometime late 60s ish (I was 10 in 1969) when as a family we came off the ferry from Stornoway at the end of the Glasgow Fair and the Glasgow train was mobbed and was double, possibly triple, headed by NB type2s, and there was a relief train in the bay which was going to follow our train to Glasgow, at Fort William the front of our train was well beyond the platform, as was the back. Angus

The new streamline code100 small radius curved points look like setrack geometry curved points? If they are drop in replacements. the unifrog/live frog options would improve running on many layouts I suspect? Or do they give streamline track spacing rather than setrack? Angus

I don't want to come over as some sort of rivet counter, but.... On exhibition layouts with catch/trap points, it always annoys me when they don't actually operate... (switches off pedant mode) Angus