Ron Ron Ron

A photo taken at the Old Oak Common Crossrail depot. A line of Class 345's waiting to be put into service........ https://www.railforums.co.uk/attachments/71d308d3-146b-4226-ad7d-3243db4e35df-jpeg.55100/ .

A 1999 view from the McLaren Building, looking towards the then Parcelforce Depot behind the Curzon St. Station building. (image courtesy of Alan Williams) In more recent times (image: Darren Quinton)....... 2012 (images: Graham Young)...... Work has now commenced on clearing the site of the new HS2 station (images: HS2)....... The Curzon St. HS2 station site (image: Graham Young). The archaeological dig is taking place beneath the white tented structure. The buffer stops will be located above the tented structure in the photo, with the Queensway entrance and forecourt beyond, fronting Moor St. Queensway and adjacent to Moor St. Station. Artist's rendering of the Queensway entrance, adjacent to Moor St. Station (image: HS2)....... .

If it helps understanding of why the "Discussions" and "Help & Questions" are separate sections, it might be helpful to tweak the sub-section titles again, rather than amalgamate them and create a mess.. For example, something like "DCC News & General Chat (or Discussion)" and "DCC Help - Advice, Questions and Problem Solving." Note that the UK Prototype section was also split for similar and justifiable reasons, into "UK Prototype Discussions", "UK Prototype Questions" and "Preservation". "UK Prototype Discussions" had "(not questions)" added later on, for clarification and the hard of thinking. That seems to work very well. .

STOP !! ​Well it looks to be a popular move, but personally I am totally against amalgamation of the sections. Reason.... Where we are, arises from past experience. In the beginning we just had a single DCC section. However as interest and postings in this section grew, it became very unwieldy to navigate and topics quickly got swamped or lost in the ether. There was a suggestion to split the DCC section into sub-sections to better organise it and make it easier to navigate and that has been the case for a while now. The titles of the sub-section headings have been tweaked on occasion, in an attempt to avoid confusion about where to post and eventually, after those changes, this seems have become effective most of the time. Still, I think it could be organised, or the titles worded, a little better. There's always room for improvement. Some benefits of separate sub-sections..... Help and Questions - is self explanatory. It's a place to ask for help or raise a query. It's also a place that can be recognised by those who can offer help and advice. That section was decluttered from general DCC chat, discussion and product and news items. Sound - A useful place to put all sound related topics and requests for help and advice that relate to the use of sound decoders. By separating this out, those who are not interested in sound don't have these topics cluttering up the general Help and Questions section. DCC Discussion Topics - the (not questions) suffix was added by request, to help people from posting in the wrong place. This section could have been given a clearer title, as it has not entirely prevented mis-posting, sub-section wise. It was suggested as a separate section to accommodate news items, announcements of new products and to house general discussion on matters DCC. When everything was combined in one DCC section, if you were following a particular discussion topic, often you would return to the DCC section to find it had almost disappeared behind a whole avalanche of DCC questions and requests for help. I particularly found it a bit irritating to find a topic I was returning to after only several hours, or a day or two, had gone back a page or even two pages, in a relatively short time. Similarly requests for help and questions fell back in the queue and sometimes only got one or two answers, before vanishing in to the ether. Not very helpful. DCC Fitting - I believe this was included after various requests to have a reference point for fitting in certain locos. It does seem to have become more like a general Help section though. The Down side of combining everything.... A return to a lengthy and what is likely to be a muddled section. Difficulty picking out the wheat from the chaff. Topics are likely to vanish back in the pecking order in very quick time. The likelihood that there will be fewer respondents to requests for help and advice as topics get buried in a sea of fog. Experience of other forums, both here, in mainland Europe and North American demonstrates this to be the case. Anyway, that's my two penneth worth. This is Andy's forum and no doubt having asked the question, he'll go with the opinion of those who answer. Again I repeat, personally I think it will be a mistake. There are several other sections of the forum that are in a much more muddled condition than the DCC section. Dare I say that those areas are in far more urgent need of an overhaul than this one? I don't presume to interfere, nor have I troubled Andy or any of the Mods by suggesting those areas are rearranged and/or re-labelled. I thought I might already be troubling the "team" too much when helping police this small area of the forum. Therefore it's nice to receive thanks from Andy for my humble contribution. Ron. .

Chateau Migraine, tucked up in the top right hand corner of the floor plan (E004), was another very nicely modelled and well presented small layout. There's a YouTube video of it taken at Modelspoor Expo, last month..... (select full screen)

I always take a peek at the various electrical and electronic goods stands at this show. I rather liked the look of the Smart Screen, from Train-Tech, who regularly exhibit at Warley. These can be fitted within a station, or in a train and can be programmed as you wish. The scrolling destination display looks the part and I can well imagine a good few contemporary era layouts (D&E) employing them. I didn't think much of the optional Smart Screen housings though. Far too crude looking. Most people could fabricate a better solution. http://www.train-tech.com/index.php/smart-screen

A useful addition to Lime St., would be new crowd barriers suitably designed for correct height / optimum viewing. It'd make an interesting sight, watching the faithful kneeling in reverence before this amazing model edifice. .

In total agreement there. Not to mention the barbed wire fence you had to stand behind to view the layout. A nice little touch that may have gone unnoticed by a number of observers.

In a glass cabinet, as Darius has shown above in post #558. This cabinet was located inside the Bachmann Collectors Club area, so unless you were able to flash your members club card, or sign up for membership on the day (they had a membership joining area for that), you wouldn't have been able to gain access. It's no great shakes, as there were only a few "new" tooling in there. Apart from the Class 117, in the adjacent cabinet was an un-painted example of the new Class 159. This is a very detailed model. One of the nice Bachmann chaps took one of the coaches out of the cabinet so we could see the under frame. Wow!!! There is an amazing amount of detail under there, which won't be completely visible when the train is standing on a track. With all the new kids on the block aiming for and delivering increasingly high fidelity models, this is now the only game in town. Bachmann are fully aware of this and obviously don't want to be left behind. This poses even greater challenges than before in getting the price/detail balance correct. .

So, is your message that we should now all wear seatbelts when attending Warley? So the suitcase draggers could be said to be literally taking the p*** .

In the case of the boss of Bet365, there are two distinctly separate arguments and I strongly believe they shouldn't be conflated. Firstly, the question of the morality of gambling and its potential and real impact on people; along with the questions surrounding how these gambling companies operate and promote their services. Secondly, the CEO's extraordinary annual payment. Setting aside the nature of the business (gambling) and just looking at the second argument, I see absolutely no problem at all. Denise Coates isn't just an employee CEO, being paid a large salary (+ extras). She founded and owns the company. It belongs to her and I believe she has every right to receive whatever is deemed to be appropriate. I think this is entirely different to the situation where a senior manager is "hired" in. .

there were using dcc with the touch cab or jmri or roco z21 that allows smart devices to be throttles It's OK, I do realise that. On a couple of layouts, I couldn't see what DCC system they were using, as the operators only had phones in their hands. On other layouts, it was a mix of regular handsets and smartphones. On another note, sound fitted locos/trains appeared to be the norm, rather than an exception. .

Another contender for top 5 (IMHO) was...... Halte Tombroekstraat A small, but beautifully modelled and displayed, working diorama.

I confess, I am not really a fan of N gauge or 2mm modelling. It has never floated my boat, so to speak. At this years Warley, personally, I thought there were far too many N layouts. However, there was one that stood out head and shoulders above not only all the other N gauge layouts, but above many, if not most of the others too. Wickwar - by the Farnham & District MRC. A beautifully modelled railway set in the landscape. Hearing one of the operators talking about the design philosophy and their approach to building the layout, it chimed with my own views on such matters. I'm a fan of the approach that says, rather than building a railway and adding scenery, build a model of a place and fit the railway in where it belongs, as representing the prototype. In Ron's book, a contender for one of the top 5 layouts of the show. Web site here..... http://farnhammrc.org.uk/?page_id=399&wppa-album=6&wppa-photo=671&wppa-cover=0&wppa-occur=1 .

Just one observation. I noted quite a few layouts being operated using mobile phones as handsets. Ron

Managing to get close to Lime St. and spending some time waiting for something to happen and thinking, all I can see is a roof; I suddenly became aware of a small lad along side me telling his mother about the details he could see. I then realised he was at the right height to view the layout properly and could look into the station from below the roof line. I crouched down for a couple of minutes and it gave a completely different perspective. Maybe the whole layout should be raised by a foot or so? My conclusion... 90% of those who viewed the Lime St., including many on here singing its praises, didn't see it at all. By only standing up, I think most of you actually missed it. P.S. Yes it is a bit boring to watch and difficult to view. A great piece of modelling though.

There is an Underground entrance inside, as well as the one outside. It's just not signposted that well.

Does this take us back to the conversation about trains being presented the right way round? Ron

Some people do talk a load of old cr*p. Back to the HST's... Late last year and earlier this year it was reported that GB Railfreight had been considering the use of converted HST's as fast parcel trains. That story seemed to have died a death, however this recent report appeared in RAIL Magazine a couple of weeks ago..... https://www.railmagazine.com/news/fleet/exclusive-gb-railfreight-revisits-plans-to-operate-unwanted-high-speed-trains .

That doesn't make sense. I take it you mean PowerPro? (Sorry. I'm just being a pedantic a**e.) .

Which little shutters?

Contactless payment and Oyster cards on HEX..... https://www.heathrowexpress.com/news/2018/10/31/coming-soon-contactless-travel-on-heathrow-express .

Out of curiosity I looked at the HEX web site and RTT. HEX website indicates all trains operating normally. RTT indicates all HEX services ran today and mostly on time. RTT showed a small number of cancellations (3 return trips) of the TfL Rail operated shuttle between T4 and the Central area station (T2 & 3), for a couple of hours this evening. But that was it. .

Sibling Class 395 Javelin Is this a first attempt? A few spectators getting in the way......