RobAllen

An Historical & Modelling Guide to the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway from the SDRT has has some comments for coaches between 1931 and 1947: "Some of the Somerset and Dorset stock was used on the stopping services between Bournemouth and Bath, but Southern stock replaced it quite soon. The Branch received demoted stock." "General services on the S&D were later dominated by SR (Maunsell and Bulleid) and LMS (Period I, II and III) designs. A number of ex-LSWR and MR coaches also appeared. Train lengths were generally three, four or six coaches for the main line stopping services, and only two or three for the Branch. Many excursion trains included at least one LNER Gresley brake composite usually next to the engine. Livery changes in this period, followed the particular owning company's style, as appropriate."

Took the 1P to the club yesterday and put in one of the Hattons DCC decoders that I picked up in the closing down sale. It's a very nice runner but needs dusting!

For the last 5 years or so, I have charged a day-rate to all my clients, rather than hourly and bill to the half-day. I track the hours more for me than them. Over the course of a contract, it all comes out in the wash, and neither myself or my clients feel short-changed, so it works well-enough.

In other news, I worked too hard last week! I didn't become a well-paid consultant to work these kinds of hours! 🤣 More seriously, it's so nice to have a work to do and onboarding to a project is inevitably going to take more time than average…

I wonder how many people are able to take 3 consecutive weeks of holiday on a regular basis before retirement? My mother-in-law has been widowed for many a year now and very much enjoys cruise ship holidays. Personally, I can't imagine a worse holiday! Along with package holidays, they are much a marmite thing!

Impressive. I’m following with interest.

Until you see it in person, it's hard to understand how big this layout is. The scenic section 27' long by 5' deep and really has to be seen. Lovely layout.

My card slipped at the Redditch exhibition today!

Yes. I VNC'd into the Pi to use DecoderPro to create a roster which was magically available on the iPhone's WiThrottle which was nice. My motivation for getting a system with JRMI in the mix was that I wasn't motivated to program DCC decoders using an keypad. There's also PanelPro which looks interesting as I'll be using DCC for my points and electromagnetic uncouplers.

FWiW, I've gone with "The Full Works" DCC-EX & JMRI system from Chesterfield Models. For £155 they provided two boxes: the DCC command station and a Raspberry Pi running JRMI. Net result is that I turn them on and the system is ready to use in a seconds with no need to wait for a laptop to get going. I have an old iPhone, so I spent the tenner on WiThrottle for control. To configure JMRI, program locos and setup accessories, etc. it's easy enough to connect my computer to the WiFi network that it creates and VNC into the Pi to get at JMRI. Early days yet, but I'm happy that it works as my research implied that it would.

Very compelling arguments! Unfortunately, my wife and mortgage provider have this unreasonable expectation that I should earn money…

Changing tack, I've plugged in the DCC-Ex command station and Pi containing JMRI that I bought from Chesterfield Models and it works! DCC conversions required to the rest of my stock and the minor matter of building a layout, but another step along the way.

That's super-helpful. Thanks! I had forgotten about the facing point lock…

Having read http://www.trainweb.org/railwest/railco/sdjr/yellow.html, I think that I the ground signals would be red as I'm assuming that there have been no layout alterations. I'm not sure if the ground signals would be Stevens 'flap' type or small semaphores though. Reading the ground signals section of http://www.trainweb.org/railwest/railco/sdjr/signals.html, I imagine either would be plausible? I'm trying to understand what the ground signal to the right of the slip controls. As I understand it, this signal controls shunting movements onto the running line. Essentially there are two: Firstly a loco running around its coaches and secondly shunting wagons. I'm assuming that most shunt moves will use the running line as a head shunt. Does that mean that the ground signal needs to be off when shunting wagons from the goods shed to say the platform when making up the outbound train? If so, would the signal be easily seen by the local crew when coming from the goods shed, give that it's positioned facing along the runaround loop?

Morning folks! Have spent this morning fixing the controls on the cooker hood. It's only a few years old and I'm unimpressed that the plastic structure holding them has broken. Superglue and plasticard to the rescue! I'm also very thankful for the very helpful comment on my Holcombe thread about how to signal the plan. So much knowledge freely shared. I'll update the plan while drinking my tea next. I'm hoping to get the DCC-EX command station from Chesterfield Models hooked up to Melcombe Road Sidings today to see how it works. Once that's done I can start converting locos as I have a fair few non-sound decoders acquired during sales. Tomorrow I'm hoping to pop over to the Redditch exhibition as it's not too far from Worcester. I'm going to attempt to pick up the bullhead rail and points that I need, which does mean that I need to commit to either large or medium points. Large look better, but medium mean that the curve can be a little less tight. Decisions!

Irritatingly, I need to be in the USA that weekend meeting new client. Gutted!

Looks fantastic! All my stock is ~1935 and I'm incredibly aware that I only need to backdate a little to run SDJR rolling stock. Mind you, I have to build a layout first, before I need to learn how to build coach and wagon kits along with repainting locomotives…

There's barely any SDJR termini! 😆 Bath, Bournemouth, Bridgwater were all built by a separate railway. Wells was its own particular scenario, leaving only Burnham-on-Sea. Looking at the signalling diagrams for Burnham-on-Sea and Bridgwater in Harman & Parkhouse's Pictorial Atlas, the home signal seemed to be a little way out from the station. Burnham-on-Sea diagram has "237 yards" noted next to the signal, and Bridgwater has "25 yards", but I don't know where they are measuring from. Maybe from the signal box? As such, somewhere on the curve seems plausible, but I wonder if it would be more visible inside the curve or on the outside?

Ah! I guess that's why Burnham-on-Sea's was on the platform. Similarly, I see that Bridgwater's was up the line a bit right next to a level crossing, matching Phill Sutters's comments on an earlier plan that the signal box would operate a crossing if it was close enough to the station. Logical, when you know the thinking.

I'm working on the assumption of ~1935-1938. My current stock is post the 1932 renumbering. I may possibly one day back-date to the 1920s for the SDRJ livery. Yes. There'll be a gate at edge of the grey area in where the industry is as I'm assuming is the land that the industry owns. It's probably a brewery, dairy or something like that; I'm keeping options open.

I suspect that I would need a bigger baseboard! Lovely building though… 🤔 It arrived 30 mins ago. My initial skim shows that it is every bit as good as foretold!

This is the current plan. While not germane to the question of the signal locations, a few notes: The double slip exists as I couldn't work out how to fit a point and a trap point into that space such that the next point wasn't over the baseboard joint. I would have gone with Phil's idea of taking the private siding off the main line otherwise. Another compromise is that , it uses large radius points at the cost of a tighter curve at 62cm radius. Not sure if that's the best idea, so maybe I should use medium radius and loosen the curve a little. Signal box position is a complete guess. I assumed that the signalman needs to collect/give a token the box should be close to where he'd do that. Mind you, Burnham-On-Sea's signal box was on the platform itself.

Have neck pain for three days now. Grumbling about it, while taking ibuprofen and gently stretching it. Considering giving up on work for today.

Took me a little over a month. I’ve bookmarked so many posts as I have much to learn in my future and will need to refer back. There’s been more modelling achieved in the average week throughout this thread than I could possibly hope to get done in the average month!

I’m not sure if this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but watching the effort my wife has been putting into getting her Computing degree, it requires as much work nowadays as when I got mine 30 years ago.