Flying Pig

Were the 323s the first AC-motored EMUs in British service or did another class beat them to it?

You know you're getting old when someone describes Centro as "heritage".

For minimum space passenger operation, check out Westonmouth Central:

A blessing! A blessing from the Lord! Good choice - numerous type, useful on layouts as opposed to display cases.

Of course, but probably better concocted as a non-working scenic feature. Real traps were compact and very diverse - often not possible to represent convincingly with ready to lay track.

I look forward to a batch of Deltics named Green Warbler, Greenish Warbler and Two-barred Greenish Warbler (all about the size of a blue tit).

Good luck with that 😁

The V hanger, lever and lever guard (and the door banger seemingly) appear to be a single moulding and are frankly crude compared to previous Peco and Farish efforts, not to mention the rest of the underframe, which is otherwise well executed. Fortunately not difficult to fix, but peculiar nonetheless.

I thought it was the Setrack ones that could be troublesome?

What's the problem with Code 55 curved points all of a sudden? Peco tell me they are 18"/36" which seems quite generous.

I'm thinking of something that resembles traditional freight, serving a small number of customers. Not sure whether that can be stretched to the OP's timeframe, but this thread might help:

My understanding of Creep Control is that it deliberately operates in the "creep zone" with the wheels slipping, because the coefficient of friction is greatest with a small amount of relative movement between wheel and rail, counter-intuitive as this may be.

I like this one very much, but I'm not entirely convinced by the goods sidings: fewer longer sidings with the pointwork as close to the throat as possible looks better imo (even if real sites didn't always follow the rules). Also, the factory building is a bit dominant (and in real life would need to extend well off the board). I'd suggest something more open - maybe a cement terminal with a couple of sidings for the other remaining traffic in the remains of the steam age goods yard. Barnstaple would be worth a look as a late-surviving freight terminal and has been discussed on here.

When a friend's children were young, he used to get quite irate about the drivers speeding past his rural home. My favoured solution was a herd of inflatable cows, powered by airbag technology, implanted in the road surface and deployed on the approach of a speeding miscreant. Not sure how you reset the system for the next offender (who will probably only be seconds away).

Following on from Keith's suggestions, here's an idea. It has only two sidings which gives it a less cluttered look, but may not be enough for your needs. Edit: it also avoids using a slip, which can be tricky in N.

Plenty of room for a runround in the freight sidings. Once the outbound train is assembled the loco runs round and propels it into the headshunt before departing.

This is what a considerably rationalised Kings Lynn looked like circa 1990 (from the Quail map).

No you (as always) present your opinion as the only one. I haven't even expressed my opinion about the model. Not in the mood.

See, where you're falling down here is forgetting that other people are not you and have different opinions about what is desirable.

Potato tomato. They're all toys at the end of the day and the same people are demanding authenticity and gimmick.

When I was a lad, the great majority of layouts I saw were set pre-WW2, but even then post 1928 LMS liveries were the rule. As for pre-Stanier rolling stock, you had to build kits (there was practically no authentic rtr LMS stock of any kind before Airfix and Mainline came along anyway). There is much more available today, but there are still many parts of Britain that can't be represented with a reasonable degree of authenticity using only rtr items before about the mid 1950s. The sheer variety of older passenger and freight stock still in widespread use defeats this. A slightly different question imo, as many of these designs lasted right through the popular transition and early diesel eras.

Simply untrue. Gimmicks are an established part of high end models and many people demand them.

I imagine something like a papal conclave in deepest Devon.

The de facto 00 implementation of the NEM standard is bonkers anyway. Why does it combine NEM 362 and something like to NEM 363 (documents here) in the same mounting when they were intended to be alternatives? Two interfaces where only one is needed is always going to be more bulky and obtrusive. Also we lose the benefit of NEM 363 where space is tight and end up with couplings that stick out too far.

Last time I looked at the points you had to plug in all the chairs but I see that is no longer the case. They still require a bit of assembly though (even soldering) which makes them kits, even if simple and exceptionally well-designed kits.