Flying Pig

We've discussed this more than once and the idea of concentrating them in the mining districts on MGR workings had some support. Slow speed control for loading and unloading would probably have been a non-starter so a separate shunting engine would have been required, but air braking to work with HopABs shouldn't have been a problem. I find the idea of 9Fs trundling around Nottinghamshire into the 1980s quite appealing, however improbable, and it would make an interesting layout.

Yes, but in nearly all cases using steam to make electricity on board (e.g. here and here) and not t'other way round.

I take Stationmaster's point about shunting the creamery: would it be possible to swap it with the loco shed? Or would this change the character of the station too much? Personally, I think a largish structure with a tall chimney might work better there than smack in the middle of the board. I reckon it would be worth investing in a metre of flexitrack to make the sidings at the bottom of the plan flow a little better. And I'd probably make the dock siding a shade longer as it does look awfully short as drawn. Finally, there seems to be a bit of a squeeze in the track spacing of the loop, again right at the bottom of the plan, which may not be a good thing given the curves involved. My solution is as below: remove the straight at X and add a couple of sections as shown in red. As far as I can tell from a cut-and-paste analysis, this preserves the spacing quite nicely. I've also resited the trap () point on the bottom siding to allow for the corresponding reduction in space outside the main line (and permit a more flowing entry to the siding). I might actually shorten this siding - it just looks too long to me and disturbs the balance of the plan. Edit: origin of "And I claim my five pounds".

You are Paul Lunn AICMFP. Seriously, it's great to see a minimum space, Setrack layout so closely based on adapted prototypes. I hope you have fun with it.

What Grahame said, in spades, particularly the observation.

Lambourn is another GWR* terminus that's quite a popular modelling subject. See for example MRJ issue 23 (P4) and issue 32 (2mm finescale); I believe there's also been at least one 00 version in the press. *Other railway companies are available of course, though perhaps not so well supplied with rtr branch motive power.

The slip is needed to allow the sidings to be shunted from the longer headshunt (red routes and L below). If you split the back road as I've shown you have effectively four sidings to shunt which should be enough for anyone. The short headshunt (S in blue below) is only used for running round, though the section of loop I've labelled K could be used as a brake van kip.

Since everyone seems to be at it, here's a variation on Pacific 231G's plan that allows the sidings to be shunted directly from the back road, which may of course be too convenient for some tastes! That's a single slip by the way.

Care! One feature of Piano plans is that you must have sufficient headshunt at at least one end of the runround to shunt wagons to and from the front road where all the sidings are. The other headshunt can be reduced loco length of course.

That's an excellent job, Jo, but the Powerhaul livery is way too fussy to my eye and the symmetry doesn't help here. Something more like this, perhaps: Still too much like every other livery on the railway at the moment, though, and nowhere near as effective as the simplicity of the original Freightliner green. The best recent "47" livery IMO is the Arriva blue - symmetry not so bothersome in this case, maybe because it's broken by the branding.

There's a good view of the south end of the station at about 1:20 in . ...and if you tried, you'd have any number of folk telling you that you should be adding crossovers and slips to make a more flexible (and more anodyne) layout. Just goes to show the value of starting with a prototype. The Great Northern did the same thing with the bays at Lincoln Central - they must have really liked carriage shunting.

Not as eek as Network South East but still more Traveller's Fare than Pullman. I suspect the vehicles would have suffered a minor facelift before repainting (you can imagine the interior yourself...).

I only tweaked steaming_chris's Mountain, but here's an attempt at a 4-6-4 wearing the proposed tin bath anyway - a bit rough around the tender I'm afraid and not particularly to scale (though I did resize the drivers by 78/81 ). Since we're stealing Jubilee names, I've kept to the sequence and it's 6269 Admiral Codrington. Source here released under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence. To be honest, I'm not that keen on the looks of the streamlined Baltic - it looks better naked, particularly with the Ivatt cab.

Which is probably why nothing bigger was ever actually built - there really wasn't a need (though I think 3500 ihp is probably nearer the mark). I think that's the point

Errm... it was a handwaving guess based on my very limited knowledge of boilers: too long and skinny and the front is too cool to produce much steam, but there's a great deal more to it than that, most of which is beyond me. Actually, I think the LMS might have gone back to the smaller wheels of the Princess to allow a slightly fatter boiler within the loading gauge (wasn't this proposed for the 4-6-4?). It would almost certainly have been a bespoke boiler and firebox design and I'd guess that the motivation would be higher sustained horsepower from the bigger grate and boiler. The grate area would certainly be getting into mechanical stoker territory, so perhaps a later rebuild with gpcs to reduce fire-throwing would be in order. Looking forward to MkII

A Stanier Mountain* is a very tasty idea (and would look great with steamrailuk's 8-wheel tender). I thought it could do with a wee bit more firebox and a shade less tube length, though. Long Mynd perhaps.

A matter of personal preference, of course, but I don't think NSE flatters any locomotive: it's really a multiple unit livery. On a loco, particularly a shortish one like an 86, it becomes two ends with not enough in between.

Wouldn't it be operated by Southern, whose current livery looks rather good, at least on an Electrostar? It might suit the boxy 5Bel rather less well of course, but probably no worse than NSE which never looked right on the older units to me. Paul - any chance of Southern Trains and perhaps jaffa-cake on the Brighton Belle? I'd try myself, but I found the source image you used and I'm very impressed that you managed to make anything of it - it's well beyond me!

That's the other thing they win on - they are *very* nippy which counts for a lot on a crowded route with plenty of stops. And the do look good in the both the liveries they've carried (better than the clones IMO). It's just a pity Bombardier built them in H0 scale.

That's a nice carriage heating unit you have there

That would be Fictitious Liveries - there's a Peak in Provincial sector livery here. I also came across a picture of the real Provincial-liveried 47 on the Derby Sulzers site - here. Chris, I love your models and the Class 210 is a cracker. Are you planning to run 150s with it, or is it going to be a one-off amongst the EMUs? As far as livery goes, tired blue and grey seems appropriate and since your layout is a might-have-been I don't see why you can't reform the unit and put NSE stickers on the driving vehicles if you want.