Flying Pig

I think freight engines spent quite a lot of time at part or no load waiting in loops or refuge sidings for a path. This is why superheating was removed from a number of freight classes - their work pattern just didn't maintain the constant high temperature needed for the extra cost of superheating to be worthwhile. Conversely, wouldn't an express passenger loco be running at high power for extended periods? Also, I wonder if timetabling a unique 8P is simply easier than timetabling a unique 8F.

Fair enough. Perhaps as a DBSO the trailer will look more the thing. As a general thing, I actually quite like blue/grey, but I thought the train needed something more classy - perhaps the reverse version like in the HST prototype would work? Apologies for not noticing the bogies on the trailer. I was just looking for styling cues so the power source doesn't really matter. I like the push-pull aesthetic as it retains the identity of the loco to some extent.

Sorry, several points of disagreement: - the train would be into service circa 1960, which is why I suggested BP stock and the Swiss RAe TEE ii as a basis; Mk2 stock doesn't have the 60s swish of either of those designs and the aircon subtypes are too late as you say; and absolutely not a mishmash of ordinary service stock - this is a premium design; - I don't think placing a guards compartment within the power unit HST style is going to work; you save a little space by losing the cab, but you still need to accommodate some of the equipment from the nose end and the saved space is better used hooking up a proper auxilliary generator to the rear engine and running ETH from the kick-off; you'll need grilles for the traction motor blowers and probably an access door somewhere near the end too; - the driving trailer doesn't need to echo the style of the loco: this isn't a unit, it's a push-pull set (check out the 68+Mk5 sets which look really good to me, arguments about buffers aside); personally I like the simplicity of the TEE design and it's probably closer to the Deltic aesthetic than the Blue Pullman cab which is another possible styling cue; unfortunately, the UK loading gauge doesn't permit the cab to sit above an observation carriage (also see below); - as a non-powered vehicle there's no point putting the driving trailer on 6-wheel bogies; as to whether it should have passenger accommodation I'm not sure - this is a 100mph plus train so probably it would probably have to be a van as were the Mk3 DVTs even 30 years later; - standard blue grey makes it look ordinary, but would probably have been appliedfrom the mid 60s anyway and even worse with full yellow ends; for the livery as built, I'd favour ice-cream-cart blue as Corbs originally suggested, with the nose end stripes continued along the train in the fashion of the LMS Coronation Scot sets.

Even more attractive than I remembered it despite the low res.

Good plan. As requested in my edited OP, does anyone have photos of Bishops Wearburn? It's mentioned in various showguides online and even in exhibition threads on RMweb but there don't seem to be any pictures.

More a question of local knowledge than mental deterioration. The gist of my argument is simply that mcg is an awfully lifeless shade of green (not sure what that colour had to do with this thread in the first place however). To get back to the subject, in my not-so-original view The Great Bear is quite likely and Thompson Pacifics an outside possibility, particularly if changes in manufacturing continue to make smaller runs more viable (and guess what colour they would all be - yuk). Continuing reworkings of the usual suspects are pretty much a certainty however as new tweaks become possible, per my first post and probably to the detriment of other worthwhile prototypes. Not Prince of Wales tanks and their Brighton equivalents, though - they really are left-field.

Nope - it can all be decoded, though you'll struggle if you live in Westmorland.

Here's the dreadsome tale of how that foul shade was revealed in all its awful park-bench dullness*. Only the hero Varnishe could restore it to a moderately attractive hue, but he had been banished to the Land of Mordon beyond D'ol Ffynn and none could find him since the evil Necromancer Te'm Z'da'un changed all the bus routes (I mean, it's 5 now? Really?). *It's true. I saw some poor Manor cast away outside the food court in Swindon Outlet Centre once in plain unlined green and it looked so dreary it even took my mind off the hideousness of the surroundings.

Someone will eventually work out how to get a pacific with outside rear frames round trainset curves, probably using quantum technology so that the rear truck can be simultaneously on the track and between the frames. That will require a complete retooling of all existing models. Owners with derailment problems will be told to adjust their complex amplitudes via CV 255+255i. DC users will moan bitterly on RMweb. The return crank will still point the wrong way and the motion bracket will still look like something made by Triang, so presumably at some stage those will be fixed with another retooling. The above mentioned closing of the Pacific Ocean will delay production of these models, as Chinese factories are subducted into the Earth's mantle. Would-be purchasers will not be happy and will vent their frustration on RMweb. The ski slope problem will inevitably continue to worsen, probably due to dark energy as the universe expands and hence beyond Hornby's control. DCC concepts will sell small self-adhesive black holes to fix the problem by bending spacetime locally. RMwebbers will moan that they cause derailments on 1st radius curves. In some distant future epoch, people will stop buying new A3s, the seas will boil away and the Sun will engulf the Earth. A modern spec V2 will come to market. RMweb users will moan about the price.

That's the one, thanks. Unfortunately there don't appear to be any pictures online.

I'm pretty sure it's not as that's a layout I've seen quite often and is rather bigger than the one I'm thinking of. Thanks - sounds promising. The reason I'm trying to find this layout is that if I'm remembering it right it seems to be close to what the OP of New N Gauge Layout in the Layout Planning section is after.

You'd want something more up to date than a Mk1, surely? Perhaps something like the Swiss TEE sets, with some of the good points of the Blue Pullman vehicles. Better riding than the BP would allow safe delivery of brown windsor soup at unheard of speeds.

Nope. I nearly put "definitely not Fencehouses or Wansbeck Road" in the OP. Wish I had now! Both excellent latouts but not what I was thinking of (and both 2mm FS not N).

If you do anything so heathen may the ghost of Uncle Mort mither you to kingdom come.

It was largely a joke, but the advantages of a semi-permanently coupled top and tailed unit would be reduction in the total number of units, fewer light engine movements at places like Kings Cross and a slight decrease in platform occupation - pretty much as with the HSTs. Unfortunately that would come at the expense of splitting the class 55 control system over two units - non-trivial, particularly when ETH was shoehorned in. Managing train heating boilers would also be a major pain. Splitting a class 55 for the hell of it is just making problems. The livery was applied to match the all-Pullman train. It sits rather better than Deltic blue.

The Belpaire version appears in Andy's post right at the start of the Bachmann radial tank thread, though that isn't the version actually produced. Coachmann kitbashed one very nicely from a Bachmann model, but sadly I doubt the relevant posts still exist. I prefer the original roundtop engine for appearance. The Hughes version suffers from the rather clunky late L&Y design aesthetic and I don't think it would have been improved by a taper boiler. For some reason the Hughes engines were on average withdrawn earlier than the originals.

Run top and tailed they make some sense and we did them on the old Cuts and Shuts thread that prefigured much of what has. been said (often repeatedly ) on this one. Otherwise I think EE's Deltic fantasies were best left unbuilt. The class 55s existed for a specific purpose: to provide Fiennes with the 3000hp single units he needed to run a competitive timetable in the absence of electrification. Outside that, other power units could do the job more economically (and more quietly), as the Baby Deltics demonstrated quite well.

Aww - I thought you'd hit the nail on the head for a moment there, Clive, with a production version of 10000 - basically an EE Type 3, five years or so before it actually came along.

No, absolutely not Fencehouses.

Thanks - I've obviously got the year wrong.

Edit: Anglian solved my puzzle with this post. Does anyone have photos of Bishops Wearburn as I can't find any online. I'm trying to recall the name of an N gauge layout that was on the exhibition circuit ten years or more ago. It was at Warley at least once - I believe that may have been in 2010 when all the 2mm layouts were there for the Association 50th anniversary, but I'm fairly sure this one was N. The layout in question was a former NER main or secondary line set in the North East in the usual BR transition period, a fictitious location I believe. It featured a short viaduct over a river or canal in a steep valley at the right hand end with a stone mill next to the water - in fact the name may have been "something Mill" (but possibly not!). I can't remember the rest of the layout even though I distinctly recall liking it very much (age). I can't find hide nor hair of it online so I may be confused and deluded, but does anyone have similar and perhaps more complete delusions?

I was thinking more of the wagons used on the Wollaton Wagonway, which was active in the early years of the 17th Century, predating the Gauge Commission by more than 200 years. Somewhere I've seen reference to coal wagons with demountable bodies that could be transferred to barges, but I can't find the information right now and it's quite possible I'm confusing two different systems. This is well OT though, as they didn't use locomotives, imaginary or otherwise.

Vehicles which were in some respects more primitive than the ones in use 200 years earlier in the Great Northern Coalfield. And weren't intermodal coal wagons being operated in Nottinghamshire prior to 1610?

Once the low apples had been picked by correcting the gross inefficiency of 19th Century traffic working, not continuing the process by addressing the wastefulness of double-heading the mineral traffic seems in retrospect a bad mistake. Certainly by the mid 1920s the working methods were archaic. So, Austin 7 with a Horwich cab and a bigger tender anyone? It would probably look like the big Lanky 0-8-0 Wasted effort, sadly. The word is obviously French (who else would develop such a device) and badly misspelled.

All true, but the fact remains that from a train working point of view low capacity loose-coupled minerals were a pest. Possibly the collieries were the real problem: concentration of coal delivery could perhaps have been achieved earlier with suitable commercial incentives and penalties (to the detriment of the small coal merchants of course). Unambitious - the Midland had already reached eight...