ikcdab

15 years until i get to my mid-70s.....

So do you need a removable or lifting section at all? My layout crosses an outward opening doorway and we just duck under. After several years it is not a problem. I would just leave it fixed and avoid all the trouble and hassle. Ian

Hi John, I'll see if I can find the missing pictures. I need to do an update anyway. Whatever I am doing with the shed is working as it's remained bone dry for the last three years despite all the rain we have had!

I think 3d printing is the way to go. For not much more than the cost of a couple of rtr locos you can have a really good resin setup. Fusion360 is free for home use and is a very capable design package. Once you have that then any models you want can be designed and printed at home. Certainly there is a learning curve, but also there is a curve when learning to build etched brass or whitemetal or scratchbuilding from brass. Sam's trains has a series when he learns to design and print stock and locos, starting from the simplest mickey-mouse stuff through to a fairly sophisticated LNWR loco. Well worth looking at. A lot of railway modelling skills have changed, and if you can develop tech skills, it opens up a whole new range of things.

May well be true, but it's the same for virtually all rtr models that are moulded in plastic. You just need to add weight. Personally I think 3d printing is the way to go.

And the guard will also indicate when the driver should stop. The guard can see the buffer stop, the driver probably can't. Ian

I agree with the above ref the hardware. You won't go far wrong using peco points of any type. BUT if you want reliability, you do need to address the power supply. Do not rely on fishplates. Wire a separate track feed to every piece of track. You also need to avoid using point blades for electrical continuity and wire to the crossing. I don't use peco points but there are ways of doing this and others will come along with the details.

I am sure that someone will come along in a moment with the exact details. I remember being told a long time ago that whilst we railway modellers fit point motors to our layouts, in the real world they use "point machines". The issue being that a point machine contains both a point motor to move the blades and a facing point lock. in mechanical operation there will be just rods and locking mechanisms, in electrically worked areas, there will be just point machines linked by electrical cables.

LIP is loco inspection point. These trains are normally sandite RHTT. It's an available path, the train only runs as required.

This sort of thing really annoys me. They would never do it if it was going to cost them money, they only do it because they aim to increase revenue, and dress it up as a "simplification"...

Our 1897 sleeper 9038 has clear windows throughout. It would have been oppressive to have windows blanked out...

The app bulkrename is free and very good. You can add sequential suffixes or prefixes to any subset of files. There are many different rename methods in the app. I have used it for years and highly recommend it.

Hi Baz, point taken. As i said in my other post, I am on the organising committee of a regional (non-railway) annual show. This costs us getting on for £300K to stage and we barely cover our costs and made a loss this year. It is staggeringly difficult today when all the costs have risen c25% and you can't jack up the ticket price to cover the costs or you drive away visitors. So i very much appreciate how hard it is and I admire the Warley club for keeping it going for so long.

As I said, it's not easy, but if you fail to succession plan then your event dies. I agree that you need to have the people ready to step up. But you can't just wait for them to turn up or to offer themselves. You need to create the environment in which people want to help out. I have no connection with Warley except as a very happy visitor over many years and I have no idea at all what attempt they made to recruit new volunteers . Bearing in mind the thousands who attend, it doesn't seem beyond the wit of man to recruit a small number of them (1 or 2 a year) to add to the team. All I know is that I have never seen any kind of advert at the show or in the show leadup asking for people to come forward to help organise it.

100% agree. You miss the third thing, everybody's old and no young people coming along. To be honest, it's rubbish. To prove my point, look back 30 years. The same thing was being said then. But people forget that there are always "new" old people coming onto the scene. Biology dictates that. It's a fact that young and middle aged people have so much to occupy themselves with families and things, but when that eases up, they are freerer to do other things. My own local heritage line is thriving with young people starting to take over things but we also have managed to recruit lots of older people. Of course, they may not be with us for that long, but new old people are always coming along. I'm not sure what point I'm making, but please don't blame "ageing demographic" for the closure of a club or a society. You need to understand why new people aren't coming along and joining you, and sort out that problem. I very much regret the demise of the Warley show, I attended it for many years. I also regret that the organisers didn't make provision for their replacement years ago such that there was a constant evolution in the organisation staff. If you recruit one new person to the committee every year, then you are sorted. It's succession planning. And I do know how tough it is. I am involved in organising a local (not railway) show. It costs us £250k to put on and we barely break even. It's really tough but we have been successful in recruiting new people to help out and the committee has been totally renewed over the last 10 years. Ian

It's M2. But very short. Whatever you buy, you will need to shorten them a lot.

You don't need windows. They are a security risk, let in UV light and get in the way of scenery.

when there is so much on-line to attract you, it is really important to encourage any form of creative hobby. I don't really care if my grandkids take up model trains, boats, planes, warhammer, knitting or cookery - its all about learning a skill and making things. That is where the excitement lies - creating something that nobody else has done. and whatever they do, they can be assured that when they come to visit I'll be helping them with that hobby....

i very much appreciate this as its one of my bug-bears - horrible voids between coaches. So close coupling is a must. But equally important is rigidity - seeing coaches "shimmy" back and forth when using hook and bar is terrible. Any of the rigid couplings - hunt or roco close couplers are my choice - hold the coaches a fixed distance apart and are a million times more realistic. However, for wagons, i retain hook and bar as they were loose-coupled and did joggle around. Ian

i also recomend H&A models. You can also get the 12mm gibson 3-hole disc wheels you need from them too. Suggest you go for the shouldered top-hat bearings. Ian

ummm....this is a model railway where most of us are constrained for space. Very few modellers will run 12 or 13 coach trains and a lot of people run kings and castles and enjoy them. A large loco on 7 coaches looks fine on a model railway. There are lots of stations that match your criteria. In my area, Castle Cary or even Yeovil Pen Mill were junctions on busy main lines. I'm struggling to find gasometers though!

There are some on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/295982160163?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=OaptYK3dRKC&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=oMX1GZ5VQyG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY The original ratio kit has been rebranded as parkside, pc560, but it's the same kit.

Hi Bill, are you saying that elegoo standard resin is inherently brittle? if so, what would you recomend instead?

Thank you some really helpful tips here. Most of these i now do, some are new. Since i swapped to standard elegoo resin, the prints have been 100% successful.

You mean a checkrail then? Take a length of rail from another piece of track and use that.