RobAllen

That’s good as I’m going. A friend of mine recently gave birth, so I’m going to see her in Manchester and it’d be rude not to also pop in to this show!

Just found this thread. Interesting stuff and I'm following with interest. That 08 looks pretty good to me!

Collected son from university as his semester finished today. M42 was Not Good in either direction.

I had guessed :) Everyone's thoughts are very much appreciated though, but as our American friends would say, I know that the buck stops with me!

This is a key question. I don't know. However, it's fascinating how what feels like acres of space seems so much smaller when you actually try to put track and buildings into it! I'm aware that I overthink things too 🙂

Good to know. I'm currently printing out the latest version at 1:1 to put out and have a look at.

I'm planning on using bullhead and increased the radius to 65cm on the latest plan. I'll look into tracksetta. Update: Looks like tracksetta only does 24" (61cm) or 30" (76cm), so no choice for 26" (66cm) or 28" (71cm).

Morning all. Spent yesterday revising the track plan for Holcombe after printing at 1:1 and putting on baseboard. Today, it's my wife's grandmother's funeral. She made it to 103 and was in good shape, with an alert mind right up to the end, which is pretty much ideal. Born in 1920 and using Zoom in 2023. That's a lot of technological change over a life time!

Had another play in RailModeller Pro and took some inspiration from the Sturminster Newton which had its goods shed and dock at the end of the loop. Map for context: Obviously, Sturminster Newton is double track with two platforms, so I took out one of them and lost the down platform and came up with this. I wish I had Harlequin's artistic skills to fill in the surroundings!

Placed baseboards in position and printed out at 1:1 scale a track plan that I thought showed promise, inspired by Harlequin’s picture, but with an extra siding. Immediately obvious that I didn’t pay attention to the point made much earlier about keeping away from the edge and the goods shed clearly can’t go there. I would prefer a through-road good shed as I like the look, so am going to try moving track around. Related, I used a 60cm radius curve for the flexitrack curve on the grounds that it’s not as tight at setrack. Is it okay for flexitrack though or should I use a less-tight radius?

That’s a really good point that passed me by. Thanks! less field, more building it is. Though, with 18”, there’s not a massive amount of room!

Morning all. It's cold outside, so I've been researching what's going to be around the station on my new layout by pouring over the NLS maps website with a cup of tea. Not a bad start to the day, and I've kept warm!

I've been thinking about what's around the station. In my history, Holcombe is a big enough market town to warrant taking the railway to it. As such, I'm wondering how built-up up would the area around the station be in the mid-to-late 1930s? Maybe not as much as I thought. This is my thinking. I imagine that when the railway came to a country town in the 1880s, it would have been on the edge of town, with probably countryside around most of it and the town close by on one side. This makes sense as I guess that the land would be cheaper and there's less uprooting of existing buildings, etc. We can see this with Yovil, Minehead, Frome, Burnham or Wells on NLS maps. This is Wells, where we can see that the city is to the north east of station and there's not a lot around the station: What about in 1930's though? Wells is a little more built up in this 1929 map, though not as much as I would have thought: Interestingly, it looks like more houses have been built on the road to the south of the station and also just north of the goods yard where the cricket pitch was. There looks to be fields directly to the west and north-west of the station. I would have expected more industry or at least warehouses much closer, particular to the goods yard. However, looking at West St on Google Maps, we see this: They look like post-WW1 houses to me and I'm wondering if that's the original wall that separated the road from the goods yard? To circle round to the start of this post, I'm thinking that even though Holcombe station has been built to serve a market town, as it's in the countryside it's likely that there'll be fields around the station and just some light urban features. Have I missed anything obvious in this thinking?

According to plate 15 in Bath to Evercreech Junction by Mitchell & Smith: "The overhead conveyor was electrically operated and used mainly for moving bins of ash. It was severed prior to the coal stage rebuilding and never restored"

Baseboards have arrived. I'll be able to put track on them soon and then have to make some decisions!

Morning all. I survived the gym and the dentist this morning!

It's hard to imagine any exhibition succeeding without the stars of this kind.

Assuming that I've found the right part on their site, I do like this comment in the downloadable instructions: "It is anticipated that resourceful modellers might find alternative ways of using the tongue."

I'm clearly failing at using the Internet today, but how do you subscribe to Model Railway Journal? As best I can tell, https://www.titfield.co.uk/ is the home of MRJ (but maybe only Wild Swan books) but it only seems to allow me to buy an issue at a time.

Noted and added to the diary. I'm in London that week, so will be a bit of train adventure: Worcester - London - Kettering - Worcester. I noticed that the OJP says: "We don't yet know if this journey will be affected by engineering work."…

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole on this and found the Nettlebridge Valley Railway (Abandonment) Act 1878, which references the Nettlebridge Valley Railway Act 1874. However this is a GWR plan for a branch from Mells via the Westbury Iron Company Ltd to Lower Stock Hill in Chilcompton and obviously never happened given the 1878 Abandonment act. More playing with Google and I discovered the Somerset and Dorset Railway Act 1873 which I didn't know about, as I was aware that the Bath Extension act was the Somerset and Dorset Railway (Extension to the Midland Railway at Bath) Act 1871. The 1873 act provided for: A railway (Nettle Bridge Branch), one mile, five furlongs, six chains, in length, commencing in the parish of Binegar by a junction with the Bath Extension, at the road leading from Shepton Mallet to Bristol, and terminating in the parish of Midsomer Norton, in a field situate on the south side of, and adjacent to, the mine or pit called or known as the Strap Pit of the Downside Colliery Company. (interesting that it's "Nettle Bridge", not "Nettlebridge" here). Very much fertile ground for a plausible what-if!

We're all as young as we feel... right up until that twinge in our back!

Monday again. Cuppa tea first, then email and call about a potential job. After a weekend of thinking railway, it's back to the day-to-day.

I did not! How interesting. I mostly studied the British Geological Survey's information on the coal mines and quarries in Somerset and then used railmaponline.com to see where the SDJR and GWR lines were and invented a route that picked up a couple of quarries and a couple of coal mines.

Have to admit that I like the excursion platform at Burnham, but very difficult to justify for Holcombe!