Flying Pig

Ditto the handrail, which was very neatly done in the engineering sample, but is untidy to varying degrees on the painted models.

According info published by the 2mm SA, a 2mm tyre is 1.3mm wide. This is getting close to scale width in 1:120, so unlikely to be compatible with Hornby or Peco points built to much coarser standards (NEM TT tyre width is about 2.4mm for comparison).

One of these.

Also, there's Minories and not-quite Minories. Minories sensu stricto was designed around a couple or three Triang Jinties and a few suburban carriages representing an intensive suburban service and playing on the fact that all the trains looked the same and the hope that busyness would overcome monotony. But the great majority of planned and executed Minories layouts use the same track layout in a Sheffield Exchange or Bradfield Gloucester Square mode as a provincial station with a wider variety of trains - in fact a much wider variety of trains than is credible at a similarly sized BLT. So, foot for foot probably the least monotonous use of a small space.

Digital Crispin?

Dictated as much by the NEM standards as anything else, I think (though Hornby do seem to be at the coarser end in some cases). No point adopting an international scale and then making your trains incompatible with existing users' layouts.

Barry Norman's Petherick struck me with its depth when I first saw it crammed into a small chamber in the de Grey Rooms.

I do wonder if the LNER wagons did less well than expected and killed off that line of development. Do please continue to drone about this, because it irks me too. My particular bugbear is the lack of any rtr representation of the LMS clasp-braked underframe (and the Parkside kit is at the top of my not to modern standards list - actually it isn't particularly good by 1970s standards - and the excellent Rumney kits are not for the beginner). I was hoping for Bachmanm to close that hole and something to the standard of their LNER wagons would have been fine as an rtr model.

Philistine 😁 I don't think Heljan spent much. All we saw was a CAD render that could easily have been their 7mm model mildly tweaked (coarser wheels - some of the other details looked suspiciously fine for 2.54mm) and a bit of advertising. No indication of detailed design work or prototyping. Just a toe in the water, quickly withdrawn when they saw the Hornby announcement. I've a feeling the Heljan model would have been considerably more expensive than the prices Hornby have set so far and Heljan didn't think that was a profitable contest to enter.

To avoid an endless list of locations, shall we go back to Margate Sands and note that two out of the three 'fiddle yards' are actually on scene: the station itself and the carriage sidings (just like the Bradfield model which inspired this discussion). A more stringent criterion is therefore "a set of four 'fiddle yards' connected by points, at least three of which can appear as components of a compact layout". To address the second part of @Nearholmer's post above, a read through the Bradfield thread shows how one of the strengths of the layout was its very well imagined operations. Imagination is vital for operating any model railway that is restricted in size.

They are being offered in various liveries, but the design is GWR. The BR standard design was similar, but had pressed steel ends; LNER vans generally had sliding doors.

Sounds like they'll be on ebay by tomorrow evening at that rate. Anyone interested?

Ok, but knocking off wagon kits with new rtr has been a general theme of the past couple of decades. Why should LMS subjects be especially unpopular? I don't think they are unusually well represented by kits and some of what is available is not to modern standards.

Yes, I recognised it straight away.

Can you unpack what you mean by 'unMinories'? Technically, you are correct in that Minories does not allow a simultaneous departure from platform 2 and arrival into platform 3, but it wouldn't be against the spirit of the Minories concept to allow that. If there had been a single slip in the Peco range in 1957, perhaps CJF would have done so. It is certainly not an uncommon feature of the prototype to use a crossover and single slip, rather than a double slip on its own, in order to create parallel paths. The disadvantage in model form is that it makes the throat one point longer and eats into platform 2 - perhaps why Bradfield actually used the double slip.

Nearly, but this would give more parallel moves ;)

Ratio coach seats seem to be considerably cheaper, if an interior is desired.

Also used to control trains on falling gradients by "pinning down" prior to starting, a practice that continued well into the TOPS era in a few places.

I keep seeing this idea, but it does not convince me as a steam era British layout. I think a single slip at the end of platform 1 would be more likely, even though loco shunts are blocked by a departure from platform 2. Any evidence to the contrary is welcome of course. Edit - using the slip saves a facing point lock on the inbound line.

I once read the first few pages of Chapelon's La Locomotive a Vapeur (in English translation). He was clearly unconvinced that more than three cylinders were ever necessary and referred specifically to GWR and LMS practice.

Shows you how little influence ChatGPT really has - I look around and I see things crammed in everywhere.

Fixed that for you. It's so depressing when people get things wrong.

I think this one would work better with the railway on a viaduct and roads below. No ramps needed for access: road entrance to the goods shed is at basement level; coal discharged via drops (see e.g. Halifax). It's verging on the overstuffed though.

Here:

I think you're right, but I was just pointing out the brakes because I believe the OP's layout is set on the former Midland railway in Derbyshire. Conversion to a more LMS appearance would be fairly simple, but might involve a degree of violence to the models depending how far you went.