peach james

And now it looks like it will be a done deal with CP getting KC, according to OK the PK OK the PK story re CP/KC James

800' apart (typically). Colour can be determined by flow (sometimes) or by ???. The ones with the photos above- the big port is called a "Steamer Port", will be 4" or 5" thread. The other two will be 2 1/2". The steamer port now is often a 100mm Storz fitting, in my area (Vancouver Island) usually indicated by a black band. The valve is 4-12' below the ground in the areas that are frost prone. West Coast/California generally have the valves in the hydrant body. James

I'd also add- my normal response to a question on the government's actions- if you can't believe your problem, wait till you see the government's solution... One problem to see is that civil service is "no fail", it is far better to do nothing, ask for another study, than to make a decision...and if you make a decision, then you know it's going to be wrong on one side or another or another. I've spent 2000 hours of time because someone else wouldn't make a decision. (at $75/hr costed...) James

I think you will find he knew what he (Fred) was doing, and what it was doing to the UK....

You should be fine- almost all of the modern generation (>2000) locos and stock are going to run fine on code 83, or code 75 rail. I've been modeling the UK since the mid 80's living in the great white north, James

I have Long Martin, but haven’t done that much with it in the last year. My Mojo took a beating…(not just modeling).

4 or 5 layouts on the go here- I have Long Marton in OO, then I have the Lego layout (nameless...but it's the <O> company transporting plastic people around at speed...), and the N gauge that is on the floor inside, and Canadian Puget Sound II outside that is slowly getting worked on. (right now there are tree bits to be removed...) The club has a layout too- that is supposed to come visit me for re wiring from DC to DCC since I wired it to begin with... James

When I think of Kate Bush, my mind is drawn to Utah Saints/Something Good/ Cloudbursting...

Jeff, Look at it like the loco bodies, and the DAS clay- just because you might be able to whip up a batch of ABS in a spare beaker and machine a mold from steel you founded your self, doesn't mean you chose to do so ! I too had considered how to raise that it might produce a more finished result by asking for help. This isn't a knock at all- nor is it a knock if you decide to go it your own way. In that sense, this is YOUR layout not a club layout, where getting the best person for the job is important. Because said scenic painting is removable, I'd consider doing exactly that- make one yourself, and get Andrew to paint a 2nd one up. I think I know which one would end up getting left in place, and it has to do with painting something like that being far more subjective than objective. when in doubt, hire an expert to do the work- is the mural that my late father in law (Glenn Hawkins AFCA) painted for the kids, being installed on the wall behind 1/8" lexan.

Up here in Canada, the problem is far worse- witness Dibber25's comments on The Canadian, and if you watch "The Platforum", the recent one with the two DS's went into some depth of the problems that are happening with the 10 000' long (yes, basically 2 miles...) freights up here and 8000' sidings. I'd like to take The Canadian again, not sure if it is going to happen or not. James

I sent the older schmoe to get mine out of the car on Sunday- we needed to convert metric holes to inch, as I have only a set of # drills, not metric. (they were building a replacement top armor for a robot...nice cad file for it !) When did I realize I was first no longer "it"? About 2006, when I had to explain who "The Boss" was in relation to music. (Springsteen). Then teaching the children of my co-workers near the end of my navy career... (a spry and young 43 year old...) James

I had a reply from Rapido (I was the one who asked the Q...) If you are in North America, send an Email to Dan Garcia (dgarcia rapidotrains.com) for now. James

I'm waiting for the post: Drat, I've stuck my fingers together. Now they are stuck to the computerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :)

I had seen/read some of the reporting...the fact that some @#@##@$ had taken copper pipe and jammed it in the crack...well, the sad part is, they probably didn't meet their maker that day ! We'd had a series of leaking tubes (tube failures) on PRO in 2003/4, due to internal scaling of the boilers under high firing demands. No-one was hurt by them, but as a navy boiler op, one of the regular practiced drills was a leaky tube and what to do. There is a photo somewhere out there of the most spectacular one, from the flight deck, just after it happened, and the cloud of steam released was rather large. I understand the fire eye system tripped the boiler on flame failure, followed quickly by loss of limits at - 12.5" water level. The split was about 6" long on a 1.5" diameter rear wall tube. Tubes ended up being internally cleaned, and we ended up retubing the rear walls in 2005/6, along with header repairs. Our boiler inspector (navy, so command boiler inspector west) was quite on the ball about things, because there wasn't much kit left for him to inspect. James

One thing I'd suggest is taking with a fair grain of salt the comment that the materials used in the boiler replacement would be "sub standard" ect... I mean, they likely fell out of the same Chinese mill that our boiler tubes came out of on HMCS Protecteur, and while there are all kinds of engineering possibilities to cause a fire, I know I don't know enough to make an educated guess even as to what may have caused this one yet. Engineering Officer of the Watch for a Steam turbine tanker (that, and 2 pounds will buy you a coffee...) James

Even if you are not planning on doing auto repair...that is one of few mistakes I made when I built the (17'6"x24'6") addition on my house. Note: the 24'6" was determined by layout lengths !. At some point I am going to end up with the problem of getting the 40" wide steam Traction Engine in through the 36" wide door. Oops ! I'd also recommend, quite highly, building the layout as sectional. Because that way, when you "need" to get behind bits of it, or above it, you can spend the day or two to dismantle the layout to do so. Presently Long Marton is stored like so, awaiting me doing some more work on the room that the main layout lives in, along with getting a new furnace. It made it a lot less daunting of a task than if it had been well and truely fixed to the walls. Horses for courses though, as most layouts I have seen are tied to the structure of the house. The idea of the opposite side/height being staging certainly crosses my mind as being an efficient use of the space available. If you start out with a plan of a helix with a large amount of track in it, then the whole layout becomes easier to manage- I'd start out with something like a 48" radius helix (3m square...) to get between levels. It's a lot of real estate- but bear with me- I'd also design said helix to be the primary storage yard for the layout of the "opposite" type of train- so that you can store "offseen" the entire stock for the UK/US while running German/ect. Even if you went down to 40" ( call it 2.5m square), that would give about a 1:75 grade. (48"= 1:100, both at 3" seperation). Mushroom layout design, big helix for storage, sectional, opposite type of station above/below, fairly generic scenic treatments outside of specific stations...that's where my mind heads. Start with one of the stations & go from there in terms of construction. (I'd start with the German passenger station, because the throat of that would be fairly epic...and the station is also going to be big...). Don't be afraid of whipping together some of the layout that you KNOW you would have to rebuild either- I'd spend a short period of time building a round the walls loop early on, so that I can go "play trains" then carry on with the building of the layout from that. I'd assume DCC and some form of automation effects to deal with staging, but that's me/my style, not of necessity.

OK, so you have 30x30 available. You want to be able to "run" longer trains, of at least 3 different styles. How much height are you planning? If you are starting from 0, then a 3m, or even 3.3m (9 or 10') tall room would definitely add to the available space, at comparatively limited costs (about 4.5 m^3 of concrete per foot height...or probably about $2000/ft height...given that the floor space is worth about $135 000, that's cheap...) If I could, I would start with where the stairs are going to come down into the basement- and if I could, I'd start with a plan that allows at least 1' gap on the outside of the staircase to the walls. If the basement is going to have a walk out, make sure that opening is big enough to drive a car into it. Ask me how I know? Next, washroom- if you are going to have a washroom, and laundry room, and a craft room for your SO, those "can" go in the middle of the space. I'd do some careful thought about how to arrange things through the rooms first, before I'd design like that. For example, if it is going to be a toilet & sink only, then running the railway through the room is perfectly appropriate. Less so if it is going to have a shower... The amount of layout you can build will depend on 3 things- $, willing accomplices and time you are willing to devote to the layout. To an extent, $ is the real determining factor, because if you have enough, then getting accomplices is possible by the expedient of paying. I'd also suggest considering what YOUR goal is- is it to build a layout, or operate a layout, or scenic a layout? If you've ever stuck your head in Jeff's Luneside layouts you will see fantastic scenic model railroads- the same sort of thing if you follow Jason Shron's Kingston Sub. Multi Deck layout, with the 2/3 scenes being somewhat set up to allow to be used as staging for the alternate trains would be my thought. So the big German station can be used to stage trains for the US layout, and vice versa. Hung off the walls, with a removable section across the walk out. Long Marton is built as a 8, with the middle bit being fairly thin (~1'), the station is on 3' baseboards, and the staging is on 30". It's integral with the Lego railway @ home, which causes some benchwork oddities. (the staging is between 2 levels of Lego...). I don't have enough height to go to more levels than I have- I was somewhat stuck with what I got, in that I'd rather have had an extra 1' or 2', but even where we put the addition on, I know that I am down close to as far as I could have gone without blasting. (& lifting the house is a non starter, like buying Lego Monorail = divorce I started with the track plan for Long Marton because I wanted a double track mainline station that was as simple as possible, in 1992 or so. I'd freelanced my previous station, and didn't like how it had worked out, so went on to borrow from the best (Midland) practices :). It grew to 30' because my current basement is 36' long, so 3' curves (they aren't, they are 30" & 28") = 30' to work with, which works as 30/6=5, so 5 sections to make Long Marton on.

Yes, one can get some quite big 2' gauge locos... It's a 93 000 lb 0-4-0 on 2' gauge. 16 000 lb Tractive Effort...

Perhaps being long enough ex-pat, and having moved here when I was 4, my expectation was different when I walked into John's Photo & Hobby, or Georges Trains, or Southern, or Hobbytime, or BC Shaver, or mail ordered from Model Railway Imports, The British Connection, Britannia, or the guys in the North Shore (who had Bachmann for a while). I never expected that ONE supplier would have everything I wanted, and that things like grass flock would come from Woodland Scenics, my controller from MRC (Tech 2, 2400), my electrical from Atlas, track from Atlas (or other suppliers if money was tight...), cab control switches bought from Radio Shack, Peco rail joiners & tacks, (& eventually track, ~1989 or so), and trains from Hornby, Bachmann, Dapol, Lima, Airfix (GMR), Parkside-Dundas, Comet & a wide range of other suppliers. I understand that by UK standards, it's a bit of a shock that Rapido don't make a power pack- but by North American standards, it's normal. Prior to DCC being the answer, the answer for more serious modeling power supply was either homebrewed (for O gauge/ect), or MRC Tech 2 of some sort. The North American market had a much larger division between "toy trains" (sold by Sears, Eatons, Consumer Distributing, ect... and hobby stores), and "Model Trains", sold by specific hobby stores, I think in a large part because O gauge had been the scale of choice into the 60's (with 0-27 being most common...). Lionel is NOT a scale model . You're not buying a brass loco at Sears... they were two completely different worlds. "Thus I would say that at this stage Rapido UK still counts as a small manufacturer" Should I call Hornby a small manufacturer because perhaps my local store has 1 red box, and 2 Bachmann Branchlines boxes? That the nearest retailer with on the shelf stock is 5.5 hrs away from me ? The answer is no - you'd not think that either Bachmann Branchlines or Hornby are "small" manufacturers, even though their availability or appropriateness might be limited. I don't think you're going to run The Canadian (7 coach styles modeled, in 3 liveries...) with either of it's 2 loco designs (F40PH and FP7A's) on a UK N gauge layout tomorrow either...

While not "complete range", Rapido have made: track, scenic elements, paint, locos (steam, Diesel & Electric), passenger stock (including DMU's), freight stock, DCC decoders- basically, more than say was ever offered in TT. The only thing Rapido has not made is a control system, and that's because they are quite happy with NCE's products... I wouldn't consider Rapido a "small" manufacturer any more...

They do exist...most in Brass by various makers. Expect to pay >$600 for them, and for them to run like a dog of the worst order...at least for the older ones. Ebay USA/Canada is your friend for this kind of thing.

At least both HMCS Haida and HMCS Sackville have been out of the water relatively recently, and had plating work done in both cases. Sackville is small enough to go on the sincrolift in Halifax, and the dockyard has a lot of time/effort to support her. Haida gets lots of support from HMCS Star (the Naval Reserve Unit in Hamilton), so they are in fair material condition as well. Both are very lightly built... James

Ex-Purr-minate ?

If you go back and look, you can find some photos of Jeff's earlier work, and it looks like mine...to say, not that well done. What it takes is time, and the willingness to go back and redo until you are happy. (by "earlier work", I mean pre KL 1, not even KL 1...) One area which has resulted in huge changes is taking photos- it's basically free to take photos of what you have done, so do so, and look at them in comparison to photos of the real thing. That's telling ! James (who at times feels the same way...)

So, progress over the last little bit: Getting better tools by Peach James, on Flickr I went to Princess Auto ("we're not satisified, till YOU'RE not satisifed !") and bought a new welder. What a difference having 2x the power makes. Then made up the track for crossing the driveway: Which will likely be the only 20' section of track, and the only one with angle iron used for track. It distorted when I was welding it- so I'm going to have to make up a pair of short 30' curves to bring the track back to straight at least on the house side. Then, we planted it: Form stripping this morning, and then let it sit for a few days to harden before re-grading the driveway above it. Dirt has been re-stacked, and the bridge dug down to it's final level as well- It's low enough for my fat head on the lawn tractor, but I still have to duck to get under there walking through- 5'6" clear or so. I guess I need to make a clearance plate?