brightspark

So that is 2 people who are now inspired to have a crack at an inglenook based on seeing my small effort. It has been suggested that a layout like this would be a good introduction to finescale modelling. It was my intention to take it to exhibitions (when they start and if I get an invite) and let members of the public have a go at the challenge of operating it. I think that it will accompany me with the EMGS stand that I happen to be looking after. (There are several stands dotted around the country.) Meanwhile I have been testing the layout out with my existing stock. This is a large collection of wagons already converted /built to EM and fitted with AJ couplings. So far most of them have needed some adjustment and far to many have been put into the cripple box as requiring overhaul or rework. These will probably take priority over other projects as exhibitions have been booked and these will need to go into service on Swaynton. This also gives me the opportunity to really test the layout out and work out desirable and non desirable features. So far I have found that the uncoupler handles need labelling and stops so they can't be turned the wrong way and jam/ break the mechanism. The track can be made quite rough. The 48DS will take quite a lot of rough uneven track even where the larger locos fail. So there can be loads of fun here. I have levelled out some of the sidings. But I think that it will be desirable to give them some slop so that any over-enthusiastic shunting, for instance, too hard buffering, too fast moving, causes problems like wagons running away. One thing that I don't like is the speed of the Hornby model. I am running the layout on DC, and I think that it is a shame that the model has such a low gear giving a too high top speed. Without converting to DCC, does anyone have any ideas how to restrict the top speed of the model? I am currently using an old AMR hand held controller, which is lovely to use, so I would prefer not to adapt that. Andy

Hi Alan, "High standard of modelling"! are you sure? Dodgy old baseboards, awful trackwork, locos that don't run properly and stock that won't couple. But thanks for your supportive words. I have sent you an email with details of tonights NWSAG EM meeting if you care to join us. This shunting plank would work well with Cliddesden Buggleskelly good yard. You could have Gladstone as the engine (Roxey Mouldings?) and a collection of wagons labelled SRNI and no's 1 to 8. Andy

That Dutch shunter looks very close to the Triang Dock shunter. OK I'll wash my mouth out. Adam, I think that you are right. After looking at the picture on a larger screen it is the same size as the other tanks in the picture so 3000 gallon. Ian, I am not sure that the lack of bunding is an indicator. Does anyone know when bunding became a requirement? A work colleague had a look over my shoulder at this and his first thought was it was a milk tank as it painted white. But water for cleaning does seem likely. as it is slightly higher than the tank still on its chassis. But there are water facilities in the shed with good drainage between the track. So is this to supplement that? Notice in the film that the rails are painted a silver/aluminium colour. So I will give it the location of Anshurst then. I like the look of the Billingshurst railhead as it is quite open so suitable for a shunting plank. I will leave the London based depot to the next project. I have even thought up a name for it, it will be Express DairSy Sidings XXXXX.

It's a wonderful looking thing. The photo is interesting. First it was taken after the rebranding, with the swooshy E. The 48DS did get painted in that livery (another Hornby variation perhaps). To the right of the loco is an tank on brick columns. It is obviously an old milk tank, 2,000gallon? I was thinking that this could be a fuel tank. But there doesn't seem to be much oil spillage around it. Above the roof behind the two tankers is the top of the company offices, with a very fine fire escape. On the right hand side of the picture is the base of the chimney. Although the building were demolished the chimney still stands as part of the Mosque. Have a look on Google earth and see if you can spot it. Meanwhile here is a link to a film about milk production held at the Yorkshire Film Archive. At 8 minutes in you get to see the R&H shunting 4 full tankers at South Morden. That is 3000 gallons a piece so I estimate that's 13 ton load per wagon plus say 11ton tare gives a total load of 96tons. Please correct me if I made an error there. But that seems quite good for gutless locomotive and it doesn't look like it was struggling. Also seen in the film, at 5minutes in, is the receiving depot at Billingshurst in Sussex. This is the kind of thing I want to represent on the shunting plank. Which takes me to a possible name. I am thinking of Anshurst. Hurst being a common Saxon place name and An or Anse being Saxon for the number 1 or first. (according to basic research done on the interweb) Andy

I think that on the next project I will go back to push rods. On a project I did years ago, I used model aircraft linkages and a wire that was possibly aluminium. On reflection I think that the one that I replaced did have a larger S bend. So perhaps that is the problem.

So the next stage was to arrange a means of operating the layout. First the two points. Or to be pedantic, the turnouts. In a box of stuff I acquired from the late Gordon Wedell, marked up "A miscellany of signal parts", were various point levers, from manufacturers GEM and Wrenn. There were some early type Wrenn ones (the weight style made from a soft alloy, possibly white-metal), but when I tried to use them I found that the metal was too weak as they started to wear too quickly, and then broke. So I moved onto a later lever type of a design like a normal signal lever. These operated a wire in a nylon tube, that was also in Gordon's box. This was attached to a lever made from old rail that transferred the motion via a 1mm steel pin (a paperclip) to the baseboard top where another lever was attached to the point tie bar. A microswitch engaged with the throw of the lower rail type lever to change the polarity of the crossing vee. Photo of the rail built lever and microswitch. (purchased many decades a go from Electrovalue in Englefield Green) With that arrangement in place I set about laying in the wire loom. I found that this arrangement of controlling the points was less than satisfactory as the point blades did not fully throw over. One of these I managed to improve by a bit of strengthening of the rail and better fixing of the nylon tube. The other required a rebuild and this now looks more like the arrangement on page 91 of Cameo layouts. In that instead of transferring motion horizontally and up through the board with a shaft, I hold the lever vertically. In the horizontal position the rail has too much flex about the axis. But by using a vertical transfer lever this is considerably reduced. It was at this point that I also considered how I was uncouple the wagons. One thing I dislike when watching layouts is where the shunter has to play find the uncoupler. This is normally an electro-magnet hidden in the track. Get the positioning right and it works and looks a treat, but get it wrong and it becomes a source of frustration as well as looking silly. Who wants to see a train constantly running backwards and forwards until it uncouples. My experience of operating St.Merryn is that this takes good markers on the layout and plenty of practice. But I wanted something a little less precise so that anyone could operate the layout first time. For that reason and to make the wiring simpler I wanted to avoid the electro-magnet and find some other method. A few pages on in the Cameo book on from the point control diagram, on page 97, Iain Rice describes a nice method that uses a permanent magnet. I happen to have some Spratt & Winkle magnets and set about using this method. This is fix the magnet onto a bracket that hinges down and away from the track bed when not in use, then swings up to uncouple. Note, that the magnet is a little slow to drop as the board was on its side and I had to lower the board while trying to hold the camera. Not easy which is why it goes a bit out of focus. The joy of this method is that the landing area to uncouple is an inch long as opposed to the 3 to 5mm of the usual pin of an electronic affair. The only thing that I would do differently is ensure that the magnet falls further away by making the arm longer and adding more spacers under magnet, because I have found that when in the lowered position some coupling tend to still get attracted. Here I decided to have a little fun with anyone who operates this layout in the future. The usual thinking is to put a single uncoupling magnet at the neck of the yard, that is at the end of the head shunt by the first point. But again I think it looks silly to have to reverse the whole way down the yard to uncouple. You normally don't do that on a real railway. So I put an uncoupler at the start of each siding. Just at the point where you can can only get in 3 wagons. This also means that there is no opportunity to leave a wagon on the second point as a bit of extra shunting space from the long road. 'Oh no, that wouldn't do. Sir, doesn't approve of that' , is the story if anyone asks. But this is to ensure that puzzle rules are followed. I did toy with the idea of adding further magnets along the sidings and if really required a 'cheat' magnet in the neck. But early trials in operating the layout have proved this to be unnecessary. So that dear reader brings you up to date so far with the layout. The R&H 48DS has been converted to EM, and I am currently going through my collection of wagons to adjust and correct the AJ couplings so that they work. Of these I have so far 8 wagons that I use to shunt with. Using either the 48DS or an elderly model of a Johnson half cab made from a Hornby Jinty and a Crownline conversion kit. Other locomotives may appear, but so far only testing purposes. They seem to be too large for headshunt. Play safe Andy

Hi Kylestrome, please read the bottom of the opening post. At some point, I will make up a suitable sign for the layout. I think all dairy based layouts should try and get Daisy mis-spelled into the name so that it becomes as much of a cliché as the bus on the bridge. Andy

Then Charlie, who did the shunting, burst in to the foreman's office shouting "That loco with a bit more power that you promised is rubbish!" "Why?" asked Mr Brown, the Foreman, who had gone to a lot of trouble arranging a more powerful engine with the local signalman. "I can only move one wagon at a time!" explained Charlie. "What do you mean?" asked the frustrated Mr Brown. "I was told that it has a lot more power. It should be able to shunt more than one wagon?" "Look for yourself" exclaimed Charlie, pointing out of the office window at the chaos outside. "It's too bleedeen big to get more than one wagon up the headshunt!"

Hi Adam, Thanks, you are quite right and that is the plan. As Adam says, all of the available RTR milk tanks are rather generic and do not represent any particular prototype. There is a David Geen kit, but this doesn't represent a type used by Express Dairies and are no longer available. Rumney Models do offer kits that are able to offer variants, but seem to be based on the Geen kit. However all is not lost as Justin has published a handy list of milk tank types and who operated them. There does not seem to be a single source of information of milk tanks and there function, so I have spent many happy hours searching through my library as well as the web and RMweb on the subject. I concluded that to produce a set of milk tanks would require a lot more research and scratch building which would take too long and away from the objective of actually playing trains. So figured that despite being generic in design that the RTR is a good as it gets for the moment and more importantly would be about the correct length. So I set about acquiring 8 milk tanks suitable for a ED depot. I ended up with 8 Dapol tankers in 4 liveries. The paint finish is acceptable and the tanks themselves seem to be the correct size. The chassis and detail can be modified or replaced later. But the key point here is that I can now determine the length of the sidings for the Inglenook. The result is that I can just fit in to 4' an inglenook with 2 A5 points. I then set about building, without even stopping to take photos, as I didn't want to lose momentum. Construction started with a sheet of 4mm ply that I had cut into a wedge shape and screwed on top of the Sundula. I did consider removing the awful stuff, but it has good sound insulation properties and adds an extra ½" to the baseboard depth under the track. Onto this I stuck two A5 track templates and started building. The track is an heathen mix of old ply and rivet with the odd bit old copperclad. The head shunt is an old length of K&L. I really wanted to use up all those old bits of half started projects. The result is this... As I put this together I found that the plan changed. My intention was to have the long siding at the back of the diorama, but it quickly became apparent that this wouldn't work or look right. So this now sits at the front and the loading platform will be the short back road. I also considered adding a small fiddle yard. A short piece of track hanging off the end as on Trerice. This could go at either end, either extending the head shunt, where I would have to hide the hole in the backscene, or from the long road. But I stopped myself just in time, it doesn't need to be there and would start to become a too larger project. Hmm perhaps I could link it up to.... No stop! This is to be a 4x1'. However a criticism of the inglenook is that it is an unnatural restriction, so I will put at the end of the headshunt a gate that justifies the shortness of the scene. Although 8 milk tanks will take some explaining, even 5 going out on a train is an awful lot of milk. To be continued...

For some time, I have been intrigued by the Express Dairy sidings at South Morden. Sketching plans that grow larger than the back of the envelope. With the expected release of the Ruston & Hornsby 48DS in Express Dairy livery by Hornby, I suggested to SWMBO that this would make an ideal Christmas present. And so in June it arrived and I am delighted with it. However I realised that I really don't have the capacity to build a large layout., so perhaps this was the opportunity to build that small shunting layout that I had always meant to do but always became larger and larger as the planning went on. But then it occurred to me that I should just bit the bullet and get on with a restriction that already exists. So from the back of the garage I pulled out a couple of baseboards from a layout that never got properly started back in the early 1980's. These were made before I fully discovered the delights of motorcycles and women, so they are of the 2x1" timber frame construction with good old Sundula on top. (baseboards - not the motorbikes or women) Each board is 1' x 4'. The first board I found was very handy for my home office as I can elevate above the modelling table and it holds 2 monitors and a docking station. Handy for when working from home. This effectively reduced the layout footprint by half giving me the challenge I needed. The remaining board was therefore going to be my layout and I decided that this would be the size of my envelope. The restricted size meant limited possibilities and I studied Mr Rice's written wisdom carefully sketching and resketching until I realised that what I was really looking for was an Inglenook shunting puzzle! This smaller project suddenly gave me some clarity as to the scope of the project. This means that I could put together the stock for the larger future model based on South Morden, test out my existing stock actually prove that I could build a working layout try out a few ideas. Plus I can play trains as I have really missed operating layouts (other peoples). So there you have it. "Express Daisy Sidings - name to be decided" is basically a 4x1foot Inglenook shunting plank in EM and will be based on a Express Dairy milk receiving station. The Name The Express Daisy Sidings name is of course a misspelling of Express Dairy Sidings. I read somewhere that the name was vandalised (written over) on the signal panel at South Morden or St Helier. Hopefully we will see a few Daisy sidings out there. I also need a name for the location and will change that in the title above when a suitable name comes up. I am open to suggestions, perhaps as the layout progress's it may become apparent. TTFN Andy

Congratulations to James Smith for getting his first article published. I hope that he follows his Grandfathers footsteps and this will be the first of many.

HI All, I am a bit late to this conversation. My wife gave me a Express Dairies version as a late Christmas present. She wasn't so impressed that I pulled it apart. But is delighted that it now back together having been converted to EM using Gibson Lo-Mac wheels . This was suggested in an earlier post. I think that P4 would work just as well. The only thing that I dislike is that my model kept shedding detail parts. So gone are most of the lifting eyes, but that's ok as they look like they were removed from the prototype. But I am a bit miffed that the rear lamp has gone AWOL... that is if it was fitted by Hornby as there seems to be no sign of glue around the location hole. No problem I will make one up or take a mould of the front one and make a copy. Now to find a suitable driver. I was also inspired build a small layout for it and will start a thread on that, just as soon as I find the right place.

Hi Stuart, Sorry, I haven't logged on recently so didn't spot your comment. I have kind of been distracted recently and time passes so quickly.... However the photographer is not the one in the video. But thanks for putting the link up, I have been watching them all. It was also good to be able to finally put a face to Martin. It is also quite delightful to see his layout 'Rye Harbour'. I must have seen this at IMREX in 1982 as I still have the programme. He says in the description that this is an enlarged version of his previous OO layout Arcadia and this was his first foray into EM. It has been pointed out to me that I have been in possession of Hope Mill for 5 years now...and what am I going to do with it? Well it is packed up and on a trolley. I occasionally go down and have a look at the odd board, but as said before, the thing is too heavy to manage on my own. My head tells me to break it up, salvaging what I can for another layout. But my heart says don't do it. Oh well, until I have a proper plan, there she stays. I have however taken a few trips down to Kent to research the area. I come away each time suitably inspired. Perhaps I should start off with another smaller layout using some of the bits from Hope Mill. Hmmm another Rye Harbour?

MRJ211. An article by Karl Crowther using the David Bradwell chassis kit to upgrade the model.

Balcombe in P4. Scaleforum 2019 about 7 minutes in.

One of these locos stood on a roundabout outside Carhaix-Plouguer until the road was redeveloped. I understand it still exists but the owner just wants it to rust away. However, if you are near that area then head towards Bon Repos on the D2164. Follow signs for the Abbaye, which is a tourist attraction and has good parking and and a Cafe. On the opposite side of the road not too far away is Bon Repos station which is being restored and is the the home to a restoration project of the RB or at least part of it. they do have big plans. They have secured the trackbed from Bon Repos to Gourec. I spent a little time there back in 2015, the leader of the project has high ambitions but admits that the French are not very enthusiastic about old things. When I mentioned Gordon Gravitt, his face lit up as his book is the only source material that they had for restoration. I put Gordon in touch and he and Maggie visited a couple of years ago. Hopefully there should have been some progress over the five years since I was there as they had just started to clear the overgrown trackbed and started to lay Meter Gauge track.

CF- the scenic areas are too tidy? I fear that the correspondent is looking at CF and comparing it to the London of today. As a reminder, in the period CF is set in, there were less people. The streets were also clean because there were street cleaners. That and people didn't produce as much rubbish as they do today. And what waste there was was reused were ever possible. I also wouldn't expect to see much dung there either. My late Father, raised in the East End before the war and so in the period of CF, would earn money by going out to collect it and sell it to neighbors for their gardens. He said that the collection was so competitive that "No horse dare flick its tail, let alone raise it, for fear of 'aving a bucket shoved up its arse!" If I could add a small critic, it would be nice to see some more variety of trains passing across the scene, instead of seeing the same ones continually circuiting. On a positive note, the running is superb.

Corrections and Notes. Oh dear, Apologies I am going away from the OP... However.. I received an e-mail from Richard Stevenson, who is following this thread but is not a member. He has put together the history of EM gauge, and sent me his latest draft. An earlier version appeared on the old EMGS website, but was not included on the current version. Having read that and about the developments of 00 here, I think that the story of track standards is quite an interesting tale, if a little technical. However, Richard made a couple of points in relation to my earlier (half informed) comments and I quote parts of his e-mail to aide clarity. "the MRC's [Model Railway Constructor] "British Model Railway Standards Bureau" proposals of 1936... is not to be confused with the 1941 organisation, which is the "British Railway Modelling Standards Bureau" (Note the changed order of the initials), although the former clearly was the starting point of the development of the EM and HO standards of the latter." "I am still not entirely clear about the sequence of events leading to the increase in gauge to 18.2 mm. The table with the 0.2 mm tolerances appears to have been a very late addition to the "Technical Note", some time after the 18.2 mm gauge SMP track had appeared. Possibly the original intention was simply to allow the SMP track to be within tolerance rather than increase the nominal gauge." "MJ [Metropolitan Junction] has quite generous gauge widening on curves, up to 18.4 mm in places. I suspect that Mr Williams was aware of Peter Denny's 1950 article. There is not much straight track on the early parts of the layout and most of that was in a poor state and had to be re-soldered. There is still a short length of straight track which has not required the application of a soldering iron and that has a gauge of 18.1 mm." This is exactly what happened. The model railway club that I was a member of at the time were building a new layout. Some of us were pushing for the installation of finer (code 75) track. The older members who had collections of Wren, Triang and Hornby Doublo etc resisted this as they didn't want to re-wheel their stock. The final nail came we ran a test using SMP 00 track (ok not Peco, but we were being set up to fail) with a Wrenn loco. The clatter of flanges on chairs did the job and code 100 was used. (Then there were mutterings that the club should be using 3 rail, but the door to the clubhouse was rapidly closing behind me as I found my way to EM) Finally, I'll leave you with this, taken from Richards unpublished notes. It is about a survey conducted by the Model Railway News as to what the common 00 standard should be... "In the November 1926 issue a postcard ballot was called on readers’ preferences, the alternatives offered being 3.5mm scale with a 5/8-in gauge or 4mm scale with a 19mm gauge. In December 1926, MRN printed the results of the ballot: "At the time of writing we have received 131 votes divided as follows: 3.5mm and 5/8" gauge, 106 votes; 4mm and 19mm gauge, 13 votes; 4mm and 16.5mm gauge, 2 votes." " [5/8" is 15.88mm] 16.5mm at 4mm scale, it will never catch on! Andy

Actually I am very much aware that MRC (Model Railway Constructor - a magazine,[for the benefit of our younger readers) and the BRMSB was a one man band. Or at least a small cartel of enthusiasts who should be praised for their determination in getting some kind of standardisation of OO. I have a very incomplete collection of magazines from that period so thanks for pointing out the issue that I was hunting for. I am not so sure that 19mm became EM Gauge as somewhere (probably another magazine I can't find or don't have) they were listed side by side and as said else where 19mm is known as American 00. I don't know about Peter Denny, but Metropolitain junction was much closer to 18mm. I think that there is some confusion about gauge widening (on curves) which for EM (18mm) goes to out to 18.2. The 18.2mm gauge track standard (for straight track) seems to have appeared after Ratio introduced their track bases, which were set at 18.2. There seems to have been some revision of EM track standards at that point (late 70's and early 80's) before settling down the current set of standards. O f course this is the kind of confusion you get when you make compromises. The ONLY way forward is model S4, where there are no compromises. Finally I just want to say that this is a very enjoyable and informative thread. Working to the other 'compromised' track standard, I was not aware of the recent changes to 16.5mm. And no I am not going back...its still too narrow, unless you model Glasgow tram.

This why the BMRSB was set up as 00 standards were all over the place. I am hunting through the old magazines to find out what they ended up with. But of interest in MRC June 1936, it was determined after some experiments that for 00 = 16,5mm gauge track the BMRSB recommended standards are. Dimension A (wheel width) 2,25mm Dimension B (Back to Back) 15mm Dimension C (Flange depth) 0,75mm Dimension D (Flange width) ,5mm The outside faces of check rails should be 14,5mm The gap between running and check rail should be 1mm Also of interest 19,00mm track, referred to as "true 4mm scale track, the back to back is 17,5mm with check rails set at (outside face) 17mm.

An interesting subject full of myths and misinformation. I found this an interesting read and may help fill in a few gaps. https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/ripley/ A part that I found interesting was that with the opening of the railway that it was the road system that suffered. I was always taught that it was only the canals.

I am quite pleased with this.

So here is 838 dirtied up and with crew. I based the weathering on a photo of 30840 at Woking in 1964. It looked similar to other photos of S15's but in colour. The photo is on page 9 of "The steaming sixties, No6 From Woking to Weymouth" by George Reeve, Irwell Press. What struck me is that the weathering was made up of streaks running from the top down and dust from the bottom up. But still, what was described in another book, "reasonably clean". The photo also has the fireman with a knotted hanky on his head. I seem to recall being told that crews from different sheds had particular dress codes. Nine Elms men wearing a tie with a safety pin holding the collar tight and Feltham crews favouring the knotted handkerchief. Has anyone else heard of this? Andy

I feel quite honored as two of my models have featured on Wright writes in just a few pages of each other. The Standard 5 is mine and is (less obviously) EM...which is why it is sitting on a bit of EM track in the six foot of LB and of course couldn't be run. For those interested this was my entry into the RM web Kitbuild challenge from way back in 2015. The link takes you to how I built this and my many diversions away from the printed instructions. I also see that my S15 has also been mentioned. Some people have even read my ramblings and found them favorable. I hope that you don't mind Tony, but here are a couple of quick snaps of the S15 that I took this evening. 838 now having a crew and (if I have pulled it off) a little bit of workmanlike dirt and sweat. Andy Avis

Thanks for the kind comments playmates. Hi John, yes I am pleased as to how it turned out especially as it has attracted such kind comments. As Richard says, they are easy to put together, and are intended for OO. But don't be put off by the thought of going to EM or P4. If you are building kits/ scratch building, then life can become a little easier in the wider gauges as you have a bit more room in the chassis and less compromises to make when dimensioning. The only problem with these old kits is that dimensionally they can be a bit out. It just depends on how much modelling you wish to do. The hardest bit is taking the first step and accepting that you will make mistakes. But you will learn from them and become better. Hi JRG1. I am glad that you enjoyed it. I have read the notes that D.A. Williams wrote of his build of the Jidenco Claughton that circulates Met Junction. He described it as 95% scratch-built. I see that this thread is mentioned in the Tony Wright thread [page 1931]. By the way, the loco now has crew and a suitable layer of dirt. I really must take a photo.