Claude_Dreyfus

Sounds like the Brazilian fans have giving up supporting Brazil; at least some of them are applauding the 7th German goal...

But Klose clearly is... That goal makes him the leading scorer in World Cup history; ironically overtaking Ronaldo in the process...

I know...very remiss of us! Although we are using conventional track - it might even be code 40 (I'll need to check that one) - there will be an inner rail (you can see this clearly in the first picture, with the piles of track), which will be added to the curve probably next week or the week after. Hopefully once the roadway is in place, it will look okay...

Due to the design of Friedrichstrasse, some of the first track to be laid is for the tram lines. The trams will run the entire length of the layout, in a dumbbell formation. The decision was taken to build this by hand, the rails soldered onto copperclad sleepers, which will be set into the roadway. Firstly a number of track lengths were produced by Tony G. The sleepers are spaced far apart to give extra flexibility - more are added as the track is laid. The rough track plan for the tram had been marked out on the boards, and last night the first of the track was put in place. As can be seen, there is also an inner rail, which will help when setting the track into the road. It is easy to set when the track is straight, but more of a challenge on the curves. Wit this in mind, the curves are initially laid with the outer tracks. The inner tracks will be added, but fixed to additional copperclad sleepers to prevent disrupting the soldering already in place. These additional sleepers will then also be soldered to the outer tracks for extra stability. Here the tram crosses the baseboard join at an angle. Only the outer rails are in place for the moment; hopefully the inners will appear over the next week or two. This is the loop in position, with the main viaduct/Embankment section in place. The scribble in the middle is likely to be some cafe of sorts. There was a flurry of activity going on here. At the far end, the niceties of electrics and control were being discussed. The middle group are concentrating on the track laying; that very cute little tram is warily eyeing up the soldering iron being brandished by our chief plate-layer. I'm glad to report no trams were harmed in the making of this layout. The paper and rulers in the foreground represent the first of the buildings being considered. The tram line turns in what will be a fairly busy square. The scribbles on the plan in the foreground are the initial plans for some Communist Workers Paradise - or in other words concrete apartment blocks. The design will be based on the Plattenbau design, but will actually be a unique structure designed for that specific location; as can be seen, it is located on a corner, squeezed in between the railway and the road. This will be one of the projects I will be contributing to the model. I suspect the lower level will be shops, but have not yet decided, and the entire structure will be about 5 floors in height. The buildings in general will be a mixture of old and new. Kit built and scratch built - the club own a silhouette cutter, which will make the latter an easier task. Next week will hopefully see more progress on the tram track, perhaps with some test running taking place!

Wikipedia Commons - Andreas Steinhoff Those who have been following the Liphook & District MRC blog here, will be aware of the ongoing construction of our latest layout; an H0 offering inspired by Berlin Friedrichstrasse. I say inspired by, as it will not be a slavish copy of the station and its surrounding area, more of an impression. Its setting will be the 1950s and 60s, and it will include S-Bahn tracks as well as a tram line. More details on the layout construction thus far can be found on the blog, but to get us up-to-date, this is what we have been up to... The layout is a circular design, covering an area of 8' x 16'. The construction, which started in May 2013, began with the fiddle yard boards... The fiddle yards are quite narrow - only 1'6" in width - but are designed to be modular to fit with with any future club developments. The boards are covered by a thin layer of foam to help reduce noise. The tracks are accessed by PECO three-way points. Following the track laying on the fiddle yard boards, the main layout boards were fitted. The scenic section is on a viaduct, so raised sections had to be added... ...with the outer track circuit added shortly afterwards. Some very basic scenic work was added at this stage. There will be a river crossing the board, which has been added to the boards, as well as the superstructure of the road bridge, that will run behind the railway bridge. So this brings us pretty much up-to-date with the progress of Friedrichstrasse. We have been at it for just over a year now, with the target of having trains running by the end of this year.

Highly unlikely. There are plenty of threads on RMWeb discussing the popularity of overseas models, and the general consensus seems to be the majority of UK modellers want to model 1950s/60s UK. Even if you had an explosion of affordable Chinese models, you could spend ten years building your layout and still only have a handful of other Chinese layouts on the circuit at best. You are right, there are plenty of decent r-t-r Japanese models, but the number of Japanese N guage exhibition layouts can be counted on the fingers of two hands. For the number of Japanese H0 layouts on the UK exhibition circuit; well you can count them on the number of fingers on one foot... One completed you layout will be somehting very different, and I wish you well with your project. I look forward to seeing this develop.

Oops... http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28086231 Bearing in mind in the circumstances of the Dutch win, perhaps it was not the most appropriate of tweets. "It was meant to be a joke..." glibly pointed out the KLM spokeswoman. Note to Royal Dutch Airways - stick to what you do best, which clearly ain't humour...

Hmmmm. Now thats a fiddle yard!

Yes, these are showing okay. I will be interested to see the progress on this as I have an active interest in Asian layouts - although my main poison is Japan. There are even less Chinese layouts on the circuit than Japanese.

I am currently working out in Malaysia (didn't ask about model shops in KL, I know what the answer is!!), and their focus has been on the poor showing of the Asian teams in general. 'Shame on Asia!' grumbled the Malaysian Star on its back page, before going on to complain about the total haul 3 points and seven goals from the world's biggest continent (correct as of yesterday's standings). They did include Australia in their stats as well. So it is not just England, Spain and now Italy getting flack...

This would never happen, but an interesting experiment would be to pick players for the national team who only play for bottom-half Premiership teams, or the Football League. Not internationally though, at least thus far...Portugal have not had a great world cup. Individually he is a very gifted player, but so are many of the England team.

Again...all of the above. Oddly enough, Wayne Rooney has been the player most criticised; however Gerrard seems to have been the weakest link for England in this competition. I know it is not completely fair to single out a single player, but Gerrard and Rooney are the senior players in the team. Still, it is valuable experience for players like Sterling, Barkley and Sturridge.

When Gary Lineker said that England needed to follow Spain's example if they were to win the world cup, I don't think he meant not qualifying for the second round...

He was on a program the other night, 'celebrating' 1988 on BBC2...

If I were Dictator, I would mandate a physological and intelligence test before anyone could open a Twitter Account... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-27872023 Firstly, these people are too stupid to realise they have the wrong Phillip Neville, and two - and considerably more important - does the footballer Neville deserve threats and abuse of this nature for not being a great commentator? "I hope you die"...err, really? I do wonder if these guys are the same species as the rest of us....surely nobody can get through life being that thick?

Sadly, England were just not quite good enough; just a little bit careless with the passing and it did not work for Rooney; again. It was a better performance than recent competition showings, and things are looking positive for the future.

This is a rather nice mixture... https://flic.kr/p/g4gph6 A few Southern Region Pictures A view long gone An unusual combination... Another class 74 out and about Class 73 at Winchester

Dave, Would you consider producing track machines or similar plant in the future? The Tamper you produced in your pre-Dapol days is much missed!