Flying Pig

This is a plan I drew years ago, which places the colliery and the exchange sidings side by side. That's very much a modelling dodge but it folds what might be a very long installation into a compact layout which doesn't require fiddle yards both ends. It also means you can swap full and empty wagons in the fiddle yard without messing about with loads. The fiddle yard is a short cassette deck meant to accommodate nothing more than a colliery shunter with a short cut of wagons, or a main line loco and brake van. There's no need for full trains which saves on wagon stock.

In which case I have to wonder how meaningful it is to call a C1 a 'small engine' based on that calculation.

I'm struggling to understand how a loco so big could only be a 2P. Using the usual online sources, they were more than 25% heavier than an LMS 2P, had 50% more grate area and 70% more total heating surface.

In your original scenario, the exchange would have to be done by the Down goods, because the loco of the Up goods would be on the wrong side of the wagons. This does have the advantage of giving the Down goods something to do, as otherwise the goods yard is set out for shunting from the Up line. If a private loco is taking traffic from the Up side headshunt then that will be a job for the Up goods as well. Though you could do both of course.

Possibly extend the private siding under the bridge to suggest a more extensive system and use something like a 48DS? No fiddling required, just a hidden spur.

I think the question was about how it will be worked on the model, where those methods aren't really available. It is inconveniently sited at the back of the layout, so anything that involves hand operation will be tricky and risk damage.

Assuming the Manchester to Leeds route was built at about the same time as it actually was, it would have affected railway development in Manchester from the 1840s onwards. I think it is likely that the MS&L would have an independent route to Liverpool with trains continuing to that city as they did in real life.

Air accident investigators learnt years ago that this sort of confusion kills. Operating the wrong control may not be so dangerous in a road vehicle but distraction still is.

How does the location of the home signals affect the clearing points?

No, discuss what you like if you find it interesting or think others might. There's very little on this thread that is new anyway. As was noted above.

The usual phrase is that all concerned must "come to a clear understanding" about what is to be done.

Except you may end up with a layout that looks like it should be wearing Lederhosen, or which screams post-1970 when you want to run a 1950s steam service. Track layout is part of the overall ambience.

Only if the bodies start piling up and there's an unnecessarily gloomy and tragic backstory.

Ok, so it's actually more like this? I think you need two platforms but as you say they will be rather short. Could you move both the crossover at BC and the double junction leftwards by deleting the pink section and then put a four platform station on the lines to the right of the junction? You should also flip the siding round so that it joins the main line by a trailing point.

If nothing else this would be fun (it would need a co-acting arm lower down), but the sighting is still very poor due to the short distance between the tunnel mouth and the signal. Can you convert the tunnel to another bridge and fudge the scenery so that it looks like the curve isn't so severe? Your drivers might then have enough of a chance of sighting the signal over and through the bridges for disbelief to remain in suspension. A couple of examples of multiple shunting signals on the GN in Yorkshire: mostly shown as stacked miniature arms at Hammerton Street (1953) shown as stacked discs at Armley Moor (1960)

Briefly I don't think a single platform would be enough but I can't really say any more as I don't understand why there are so many routes and why some of them are one way only. I can understand AF and HD together as a double track route and E as a single track branch line, but G and J don't make much sense to me. Can you show us how this fits into the main layout?

The Peco SL-99 symmetric three-way point vies with the double slip as the most inappropriately used item in layout plans, because they are both great space savers. Personally, I think SL-99 should be killed with both fire and hammers, since, while three- and four-way (and possibly more-way*) versions existed on the prototype, in model form it seems to be just too tempting. *here is a model of a 5-way in P4 (probably impossible to fit all the flangeways in 00).

There have been some instances of solidified grease mentioned in recent threads, so if you can remove the bogies and check for full and free movement of the gear train before applying power to test the motor that would probably be a good idea. You obviously don't want the motor straining against a jammed mechanism.

Carry the main lines over the branch on a bridge and set the tunnel mouth back a few scale yards behind the bridge with a short cutting between the two. If you check out EverardJunction's Autumn 23 update on Youtoube you can see where he's done this with the main line on an embankment in front of rising ground and it is very convincing.

They could work on liveries like they have done since 1980. Which locos were the last to be replaced by modern traction may reflect other factors than which were the most useful ten years earlier on a mostly steam worked railway. So it may not be the best yardstick by which to judge design decisions made at that earlier period. The French example just sounds like an outlier, as if you took it as indicating the most successful type, then all design work could have stopped in 1916.

That's a very pretty model. The wheels and rods look particularly good - are these finer than in previous models or is it just the finish?

Wheelbase yes, so the overall proportions will look right, particularly when mixed with 10' wb wagons. But the Peco model is a wooden underframe and not absolutely correct for a 16 tonner which should of course be steel (though a lot of the more obvious details like axleboxes and springs, brake lever and buffers carried over). Well worth a try to see how it looks on the layout when the underframe is painted black though.

That's not fair - Peco invented glacial timescales (I believe the saga of the N gauge Collett Goods actually spans decades). They've done quite well at popping out lineside items for TT120 though.

Unless the designers did something radical, a BR Standard 8 would be very similar to a Stanier 8F or an Austerity. What were the complaints about the 9F that a loco like that would remedy?

Hornby's attitude always seems to me to be one of confusion: hence this topic. When they try they produce very good models indeed.