Barry Ten

There's at least one account of a Zeppelin being so lost that they weren't even over the right country. I think they thought they were over France but had in fact drifted over the Channel into England.

I think there was a rapid evolution in the early to mid thirties. The DC-3 is only two years younger than the Heyford but looks much more modern. The B17 dates from around the same time, also a much more sophisticated machine, in fact so complex compared to its predecessors that it was almost unflyable until the concept of the checklist had been devised.

Wyndlesham Cove was a leap ahead of anything I'd seen in Railway Modeller at the time. I recently had a look at it via the RM archive and it still looked really impressive.

It was at Pecorama when I visited in 1999, on my way down to Devon for the eclipse. Looked good in real life too, although I don't recall anything moving on it.

A question about Shap, if I may? If I was reading the baseboard joints correctly at the Manchester show, it looked as if there were rail joiners between the track sections spanning the joints? I thought this was a rather nifty idea for ensuring rail alignment, and the running certainly looked rock solid across the joints. If I'm correct about the joiners, are they just slid on and off at the appropriate times or are they retained in any way?

Roll up, roll up, for the Hornby announcement bingo card game: Nothing in it for me Wallet breathes a sigh of relief Why didn't they do this number instead of that number That's definitely the wrong shade of green even though I'm looking at it on a computer They say it'll be out by Christmas but they don't say which Christmas, chortle!

Without in any way wishing to detract from the great achievement that is Retford, and the marvellous fact that it's been saved for further development, I think it should be seen as part of a pantheon of similarly-scoped very large, prototype-based layouts, built to fine standards over an extended period ... it's just that the others aren't necessarily in the UK or based on British locales. For instance, there's the amazing Tehachapi layout built by the model railway club in San Diego, something like 7500 square feet and around 30 scale miles of handlaid trackwork, closely based on real locations from Bakersfield to Mohave, admittedly with some selective compression, but nothing egregious, and it's open to the public too. The nearest UK equivalent would be Pendon, if the upstairs and downstairs bits of Pendon were of the same layout. There's also Tony Koester's Nickel Plate layout, which has been under construction for couple of decades, featured regularly in Model Railroader and elsewhere, with about 10 scale miles of trackwork accurately depicting real locations along a specific part of the NKP and with a strict adherence to period... both layouts in HO, and if not P87 them built to pretty fine track standards. I mention these (as I've done before) not to detract from Retford but just to broaden the discussion slightly. Al

Well, better late than never... A close-up of the lovely coke wagon kindly donated by Neil. Meanwhile, recent weeks have seen glimmers of forward progress on the station modules: The LED lighting is in place (although I've still to add the colour-variable part to match the rest of the layout) which makes working on the model far more enjoyable. I've also splashed a rough coat of white onto the backscene which again helps with the working conditions. The trackwork in the station throat is now mostly finalised, wired up and tested, with a few tweaks being done such as moving the 3-way further from the baseboard end, which helped with the general "flow". The two roads to the turntable might look a bit odd, but the idea is that one loco can be on its way to the table, while another waits having already been turned, ready to couple onto an outgoing train. There might end up being a stub-road where that USA tank is, too. The turntable is, as mentioned, the old Peco product, salvaged from when it was last on a layout about 20 years or more ago. At the moment it's just being used in push-around-by-hand mode, and I'm undecided about whether it's worth the trouble to motorise it. It does the job, though, and alignment of the tracks by eye is enough for reliable running on and off. Looking the other way: We can begin to get some sense of where it's heading, although quite a lot is still up in the air. In the foreground we've got the main arrival track with its release road, which is now fixed down and wired up, with a Kadee magnet positioned where the loco would need to uncouple from its train. To the left, we've got the start of a pair of covered platforms which will be dead-end roads only, with no release pointwork. These could function as departure roads for loco-hauled trains, or as arrival/departure roads for multiple units and so on. After much deliberation I've gone with the Faller station roof kits here, even though they might be considered a bit generic and over-familiar. I had a card kit for an overall roof from Regions et Compagnies, but decided against using it as I didn't think it would have the necessary sturdiness for the application: whatever's here will want to have lights and catenary installed under it, as well as possibly the occasional bit of track cleaning. The Faller kit is at least designed at source to allow for access to the tracks, and they've even put in provision for adding catenary, with mounting pieces at the correct height, So Faller it is, and now that I've got two of them (to make about 60 cm of covered platform) I think a third will look even better. The plan is for the foreground tracks not to be covered, although the kit allows for a partial canopy over the platform on either side of the main roof. Finally, there's room (just) for another platform road right against the backscene, which could also be employed for parcels and postal vans, for a bit of variety. Although it'll function solely as a terminus, I like the idea of hinting that this modelled portion of the station is just part of a considerably larger affair, so I've yet to decide where - if at all - a station building will feature. Cheers for now.

Fit and Working Again - The Fall

Are you thinking of the washers going on the square ends of Markits axles? I'm assuming Tony just used EM axles and the washers were just slipped on over the axles to control sideplay. I use Peco ones myself; they do fibre washers in two sizes, one good for driving wheels and the other for pony wheels etc.

That's going straight into my own loco-building vocabulary, thanks! 😀

Please check the manual first, as I think the relevant button is labelled "zero" or similar, at least on my controller.

If by re-indexing you mean setting all the stop positions again, you don't need to do this. You just have to press the reset button and allow the turntable to recalibrate itself by rotating around until it relocates the optical sensor and thereby "knows" what angle it's at. Once it's done that, it's fine again. It is helpful to occasionally lift the deck out to clean the wiper contacts I find, and I wouldn't want to have to do the indexing each time!

I'm pretty sure the various Walthers turntables in N and HO are made for them by Heljan, but not sure how much they differ from the Heljan ones marketed in Europe and the UK. My 130' one in N has been very reliable. I did have to take it apart once to clean a bit of grit from one of the gears, but that was my fault for not keeping modelling debris out of the well.

I actually had Lendons do this repair on two Schools of mine, both of which had had mishaps.

And another:

Another vote for the basic Smiths type. I only spring them when I'm putting them in bogie stock. Even then, I cut the spring in half, roughly, and then re-extend it until it's about the same length as before. This seems to give enough slackness for the springing effect to work. Out of the bag, they're far too stiff to have any practical value. Other than that, I almost always glue them in and I've found most wagons can be safely propelled through the diverging route of a Peco double slip, which I think is around 2 foot radius. Very occasionally there'll be a troublesome truck that needs a bit of extra attention, such as eliminating as much play between the axles and axleboxes as possible, but by and large 3 links are quite tolerant of tight radii.

Folliowng Dave's lovely Black 5 on a van train, here's my RTR version of a similar train. Wrong headcode alert! The loco is normally rostered on express parcels. The loco is a Hornby one, renumbered to an S&D loco and with some mild Brassmaster's detailing.

Me too, in more ways than one. When I was casting around for a name for my layout in its GWR guise, I found an online list of Thomas Hardy's fictional locations, together with their real-world counterparts. When I saw King's Hintock I felt that it sounded very GWR and immediately adopted it for my statiion. It was only later that the penny dropped that John had got there first and my subconscious GWR association was entirely due to his own modelling. By then I felt I'd gone too far to change it (a mate had even put a sign to King's Hintock on his own similarly-Hardy-inspired layout) but I always felt slightly awkward about presenting it on RMweb in case it looked as if I was being disrespectful of John's legacy. I was very touched by the photo posted on RMweb by - I think - one of his sons, showing his modelling glasses still in place on his workbench after he'd passed away, as if he'd just stepped out of the room for a minute.

Also a hundred years since the Castle class was introduced. When I first started taking a proper interest in railways, centenaries were of things like the Tay Bridge disaster. Eek!

I think (if one wants to go down this road) that one has to take a broad-brush approach and accept that some details will never be right. I run my S&D layout with GWR lower quadrant signals and just pretend that they're Midland or LSWR ones. The signals are all removable with simple servo connections but I'd still need time to make the correct ones, not to mention reprogramming the servo board, so for the time being I just squint at them and get on with playing trains. It's definitely not an approach for the purist, but since it's just me at home and the odd photo on RMweb, I can live with it as it allows me to have much more fun.

That's sort of what I do with my home layout. The platforms, railway buildings and so on are all removable, so the layout can be swapped from (eg) GWR to S&D in about 20 minutes. These two shots are actually taken from quite similar angles. In S&D mode, the station is on this side of the tracks and the forecourt sits over one of the longer sidings of the goods yard. Where the cattle dock is in GWR mode, an S&D shed is substituted. Lamps, platform benches and so on are changed. The platforms are removable in their entirety but since both companies used a similar shade of stone on their fences, I've got away with retaining them for now - however the longer term plan was to build completely separate platforms with Midland fittings, LNER etc, if desired. I build some of the scenery on removable modules too but only one now remains swappable, however the idea is certainly feasible.

Would fruit vans have been seen mixed in with similar rakes, or were they considered not suitable for parcels and so on? My own rake of 12 T vans is a real dog's dinner of types and I wondered how authentic it might be.

A year in modelling? Not the most productive one for me (even though it was a good year overall) but I did get a few things done. I started the year with a detour into planes, with this F86 Sabre-Dog in 1/48th scale. For some reason I often feel like building a plane early in the year. I worked on several locos this year but the only one that's progressed to completion is Queen Maud: I built a new set of Comet frames to under this old Hornby body, which in turn had a fair bit of work done to it to sort out the footplate and boiler details. I also dipped into 7mm, completing a pair of GWR wagons: Other than a few other wagon projects in 4mm, most of the other modelling I did was focussed on my French module which I had to get ready for the RMWeb open day at the end of April. I'm looking forward to 2023 and more great inspiration from RMweb and Wright Writes. Best of wishes to you all. Al

I'd venture it's a spoof of the kind often found in Viz, one of the better periodicals.