KingEdwardII

Surely Horsted Keynes, if we're allowing preserved lines? Will be even more impressive if the second line via Ardingly gets restored...

Now, for me, it's the cakes that make a Viennese cafe into a true heaven. I'd be very happy to visit such an establishment for a lunch that consisted of three or more courses of cakes and nothing else, except cream and an appropriate quantity of strong black coffee. Mmmmm Yours, Mike.

The restrictions on planes these days have a lot to do with carry-on luggage, since there is limited space in the overhead bins. Yes airlines do care about weight as well, but they cannot tolerate excess carry-on whatever the weight. My recent flight had a large allowance for hold baggage but only allowed a small under-seat carry-on - I would have had to pay significantly extra for a bag that could go in the overhead bin. The problem with modern trains is that there is no equivalent of hold baggage - i.e. stuff that in the olden days would have gone in the brake van rather than in the passenger sections. One design of train that deals reasonably well with baggage are the Eurostars, with large racks at both ends of each carriage, although even those can get overwhelmed. Yours, Mike.

Now that's a reminder of just how grim the area around Blaenau F. could look. Get a winter day with lowering clouds and drizzle and the greyness just takes over - a special kind of hell drained of all colour. It made a big impression on me as a child - and I still think it worse than anything in South Wales, even the South Wales of the 1960s, before they implemented schemes to restore and "prettify" the coal tips. Yours, Mike.

Just goes to show that there is a place for pristine even on the mainline, not just in preservation... A wonderful photo, btw. Yours, Mike.

The strikes are forcing people to find alternatives to travel - and once they've found ones that work for them, they are not likely to switch back to rail in a hurry. Following close on the heels of Covid, some significant damage has been done to the railways that may take a long time to repair. Yours, Mike.

That's odd for Bavaria - my experience over the years is that "Gruss Gott" is the more likely greeting in that part of Germany. Along with the lederhosen. At least during the Oktoberfest... Yours, Mike.

I don't think that is correct - some of the new roads I'm aware of have substantial noise barriers where they pass residential areas. I've also seen such barriers retrofitted to some older major roads. What we've not seen so much of, in comparison with HS2, is new roads being buried in tunnels and deep cuttings just to reduce their impact on the locality they pass through. Yours, Mike.

One of the neighbours in our village has a large mature Tree of Heaven in his garden. A decade ago, the neighbour applied to fell this tree as it was sending up suckers and destroying his driveway. The local tree officer refused this, even though it's a non-native tree. Subsequently, the tree has started to die and has a lot of dead wood in its canopy. It is now dropping large branches including on to the public footpath. I suspect the tree officer will not be happy until someone gets crushed by a falling branch. More "Tree of Hell" if you ask me - and a warning not to plant potentially large trees in your garden. Yours, Mike.

Hmm - my experience is of the mobs who tie themselves to the trees, or make homes in the trees (etc) to stop them being felled. Not seen many do that for any kind of house... Yours, Mike.

Unfortunately, the government takes a huge fortune in taxes on vehicles - and spends only a fraction of that on road building and maintenance. That's a kind of profit - and the current lack of fuel taxes on electric vehicles is giving the politicians and civil servants something of a headache. Yours, Mike.

Just try and fell a tree in a roadbuilding project and see what happens... Yours, Mike.

I just love the gentle curve on the viaduct shown in the photo above. Somehow a curve like that makes the structure far more impressive than one that is simply straight. Ribbleshead viaduct has more grandeur because of its curve. Also means you might get a view of one end of the train from the other as you speed along that section... Yours, Mike.

They are good at explaining - unlike some others - but that does not get away from a very long time from announce to availability, much longer than originally envisaged. These long delays do not give the model railway industry a good reputation. In some other industries, such delays would cause investigation by the authorities (I worked in the IT industry where any pre-announcements had to be carefully handled to avoid accusations of market manipulation). Yours, Mike.

Do the same for the north Cambridge area near the Science Park and along the A14!! Leafy fields when I left Cambridge in 1979... Yours, Mike.

I agree with that. That makes 1 extra flyover/bridge, since the current plan has one at Tempsford. I think Tempsford is also a more complex station in the current plan since passengers need to be able to change trains between upper level and lower level platforms, as at Worcestershire Parkway. I suppose it's a question of priorities. The commuter link from St Neots / Cambourne into Cambridge is surely the most important flow to consider, since it is likely to be the largest element on the line in this area. Reversing trains is not such a big issue - just look at the Cross Country trains at Reading, for example. I also suspect the number of "through" trains at Cambridge is likely to be small. Whether the EWR claim that there are more jobs near Cambridge South station than near Cambridge North station is something I'm finding it hard to validate - there does not seem to be easily accessible data on this topic. However, there seems to be political pressure to support the Cambridge South station - and I suspect this is the major influence since the politicians hold the purse strings. Yours, Mike.

My initial reaction to that question is "not very many". This assumes a connection to the ECML from the south west, somewhere near Tempsford and a junction towards Cambridge on the north east side of St Neots, which is currently open country. That Tempsford might become a bigger town than St Neots is speculative at best - there is a lot of building work right now around St Neots - and I note that new town Cambourne has only reached about 12,500 since building there started in 1998, still way smaller than St Neots at 36,000 - which also grew by about 6,000 since 2011... It is interesting to note that there has been local activity in favour of a northern route into Cambridge - see this website for details: https://cambridgeapproaches.org. It isn't clear that the northern route would involve a lot of demolition - but it might be more expensive in terms of construction. However, my view is that cheeseparing is a poor approach for a long-term project like this. As for legal challenges - they can happen whichever route you choose. Yours, Mike.

Well said. I am certainly looking forward to acquiring one. The only hassle is the unknown wait time for them to arrive. Recent models have been all over the place regarding the time from announcement to availability (I present the case of the Accurascale Manor, m'lud). Yours, Mike.

I can't agree more. It is a very strange route indeed. The decision not to connect via St Neots itself seems very strange to me. A rapidly growing town of some 36,000 - seems like the kind of place you want to connect both to Cambridge and to Bedford. Instead the connection will be made in nowheresville. St Neots is mainly served by Thameslink trains, but there are a number of faster East Coast services that stop there. Can't see the new EWR station getting anything but the slower Thameslink services. Furthermore, the decision to route to the south of Cambridge is very strange - one point of the route is to connect Cambourne to Cambridge. I suspect the chosen route makes the journey from Cambourne to both central Cambridge and to North Cambridge (where the Science Park is sited) about as long as possible - not a great idea. EWR claim there are more jobs near Cambridge South - but it was Cambridge North station that was given an earlier approval due to the growth in that part of the city. Yours, Mike.

My experience of such translation is that it can often be hilarious in the translated language as the translators have to "think on their feet" when dealing with native idioms in the source language. Yours, Mike.

The GWSR has used a lovely blue maple leaf moquette in some of its recent refurbishments that would be splendid for use in any film or television program - and hang the intended era! Yours, Mike.

My Android phone has a "Smart Lock" setting under "Lock screen". This can be set to keep the phone unlocked when it is in a trusted location, like your home - or railway room... Yours, Mike.

Or, as in my case, a prod of a finger on a touchscreen ;-) Once you go DCC and connect up to a computer, a whole range of options opens up - including automation or semi-automation (routes, etc). Yours, Mike.

I think that the way to attack this problem is to break it down into separate parts and deal with each separately. I consider the track plan as containing 2 major parts: 1. The terminus itself and the out-and-back loop on the left (in orange above). 2. The loop that encircles the terminus, on the right (in green above). For the out-and-back loop on the left, there must be a reversing section for each of the inner and the outer tracks. The most obvious place to put these are on the right hand side of the orange area, since the track there is clear of turnouts and looks as if it is long enough to accommodate the longest train running on the layout. For the encircling loop on the right, a reversing section needs to be inserted for each of the inner and the outer tracks. The sections identified by @WIMorrison above look suitable - lacking pointwork and long enough to accommodate the longest trains. So - I make that 4 reversing sections, with appropriate hardware to handle the reversal of polarity as trains transition them. Yours, Mike.

Horsted Keynes may have substantial passenger provision due to its nature as a junction, but in freight terms, the village itself is tiny and would probably not have had that much traffic. Provision of goods sheds at rural stations could vary a lot, not always in a logical way. The Cheddar Valley / East Somerset line through Wells had a mixture of provision, some places with just a loading dock, others with full blown goods sheds. The bigger settlements tended to have a goods shed, but for the smaller places it was somewhat hit and miss. Notable that Witham, the junction station with the main line at the eastern end of the branch, had no goods shed - the local village of Witham Friary is small even today. Yours, Mike.