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Paul, you'd obviously know better than anyone but, compared with Inglenook, I reckoned that Enigma probably offered more interesting shunting in the same four foot length simply because one of the sidings faces in the opposite direction so you have to make judicious use of the run round loop. For a factory with multiple loading points it also looked particularly convincing- as did your American H0 equivalent (in five feet?) . Having built it in P4 do you think it would work with Peco short Streamline points or equivalent? A friend of mine did build an H0 shunting layout using Setrack but had a lot of derailments. It's interesting (maybe) that Peter Denny used the same basic plan in EM - though with a longer total length- for his original Leighton Buzzard (Linslade) station and said that, for its size, it was interesting to shunt.

I just watched the opening of Bulldog Drumond's Secret Police (1939) on TPTV and it was hilarious. It opens with Drummond and companions in his car chasing a very American train through very Southern Californian scenery. Cut to a wide shot of a station with a real GWR train arriving (1st vehicle choc and cream the rest chocolate) obviously a stock shot. It then cuts to a very American looking carved station sign saying Rockingham followed by a sequence in which a passenger from said train is having a conversation with a porter (in what looks like GWR uniform but with a cat draped over his shoulders!) asks the way to Temple Tower to which Drummond and co are also heading . We then see the exterior of Temple Tower, where the rest of the action takes place, which looks like a fairly typical American millionaire's "European" castle. I can't believe that even the dimmest audience member could fail to spot the disparity. There's a similar disparity, but the other way round and an odd one, in the "Wild West Chronicles", a series currently running, which depicts Bat Masterson, as a newspaper reporter returning to the west to interview eye witnesses to a range of actual stories. Masterson was a real character who went west as a young man and for a time was the Sheriff of Dodge City before moving on to be a gambler and ultimately a Journalist in New York. Though Masterson did write eight articles about characters of the Wild West (though not about his own life there) his story finding trip back west for a mythical newsapaper called "The Journal" (Masterson was actually a sports columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph) seems purely fictional. The format does work well though and makes a change from endless historians being interviewed. The stories are all true, mostly not well known, and clearly well reseached. The filming locations were in California and included a couple of authentically American railway scenes involving actors, notably the real "Great Train Robbery" (Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid's hole in the wall gang) , which makes it very strange that the opening sequence showing Masterson ,now a journalist, on a train heading west, is vey obviously a train of four wheel open platform carriages hauled by a very German or Central European looking tank loco. This does seem odd, unless the opening sequence was an afterthought, as there is plenty of preserved steam from that era in the real American West.

Inglenook is always a good start though a bit limiting but there is a version, which will fit in four feet by a foot, where the five road siding is hidden and acts as a fiddle yard. Raymond Butler used this arrangement for a very attactive and self contained layout in 4ft by 13 ins. in H0 and followed the usual Inglenook sidings rules that the headshunt could take a loco and three wagons clear of the first point, the long, mainly hidden siding could take five wagons and the two goods yard sidings could take three wagons each. This is in H0 with French four wheel wagons about 4 inches long over couplings so should work in 00 with traditional British 10ft wb wagons. Raymond's layout folds over to form a two foot long box. (The medieval tower lifts off to reveal the front hinge) I do though rather prefer the two crossover plan, which also fits into four feet by one (or a bit less than 12") and I've seen it used in that length even in P4. (Paul Gittins' Enigma Engineering BRM 11/2006) For Enigma engineering the rules were that the run round could hold three wagons clear of the points and the four other tracks could take two wagons each. There was a fiddle yard to the right but the gate was closed during shunting operations (which were based on a card system similar to those used for Inglenooks. I also rather like this plan This was basically the plan that Chris Krupa used for his 009 Minbury Abbas layout which was 26 ins. long by 10 ins wide. Having seem it in action several times I admired this scheme so tried laying it out in four feet in H0 and it does all fit (again using longer European wagons) . The basic rules are that the front left headshunt (that ends with a loco shed on Chris' layout) will take a loco and two wagons while the right hand "main line" will take a loco and three wagons clear of the point and that length of train can also be hidden off stage, As you can see in the photo, Chris laid it out rather more attractively than my basic plan with the line laid at an angle across the board and slightly curved. The way I laid it out as a standard gauge line was on the basis that the line at the back is the main line so is straight while the sidings are a small, possibly private yard off it with its own headshunt. This layout can actually be worked with two locos and watching Chris operating it, it allowed for rather more shunting than an Inglenook with a passenger station to boot. To my surprise I did actually come across this plan in reality on a disused line in France where it had been the private sidings for a grain silo. Wagons were delivered and picked up by the SNCF pick up goods train but the actual shunting of the yard itself was done with capstans. However such installations frequently had their own small four wheel shunter. My plan allows for extensions at both ends to make it a main line halt with other trains running through between two fiddle yards for exhibitions. All three plans have been used succesfully in 00 or H0 in four feet of length so I hope they give you some ideas or at least food for thought.

Can we learn anything from the exhibition scene in other countries (even though post Brexit customs requirements now make it much harder to actually take layouts to them from Britain and vice-versa as we used to )? I've noticed that in France most club exhibtions- which almost all the regular exhibitions are- seem to be biennial. Perhaps that puts less strain on a club's human resources while model railway clubs, though fewer in number than in Britain, also seem to have a higher proportion of younger members). The emphasis also seems to be on showing off the hobby, not on raising funds for the club. Possibly for that reason, local clubs seem to benefit from sports halls etc. being regarded as a public good for a range of leisure activities by local authorities rather than as a revenue generator. The large annual two-day exhibition held every January in St. Mandé (a suburban town at the end of the Paris Métro) is even held in the town hall. However, one of the best and largest biennial exhibitions - the one in Orleans- wasn't held in 2022 and won't be returning in that form because the city passed its large exhibtion halls to a private operator who naturally bumped up its rates (and cannot yet provide WiFi which is a no-no for traders) Loco-Revue (the largest circulation model railway magazine in France) did organise two large three-day exhibitions "Trainsmania" in Lille, the first and larger of them inn 2017 to mark its own 80th anniversary. They were planning to make this show biennial and held a show in 2019 and a virtual show during the pandemic in 2021, but decided not to hold one in 2023 given uncertainties about likely attendances. Trainsmania is the only sponsored Model Railway exhibtion that I'm aware of but there are multi-format model shows like the biennial RAMMA in Sedan (next one in June 2024) where the local mulidisciplinary model club (based in a large social centre) partners with the town, département and region and with Edtions Loco-Revue. I know very little about them but it might be interesting to also find out what MRCs in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany do in terms of exhibitions.

Indeed. I got that screengrab from a cabride video from Bordeaux to Pointe de Grave and another was the line from Bordeaux to Arcachon and on both there were quite a few grey painted masts both vertical and ogive. They looked like aluminium but I think that may well have just been the surface coating.

Though I did a two day Fortran course at University my first professional encounter with a computer was soon after graduating in 1973, working at one of the University of London colleges for six months before starting with World Service. Our research group had a load of data on punch cards which muggins- the research assistant- landed the job of re-sorting. It was a choice between about three very tedious days sorting the data cards manually or writing a program to do the job for me. The college had a "terminal room" for the IBM main frame at UCL where, along with card punching machines, there was a Texas Industries scientific calculator chained to the desk like a medieval bible. My program was only about 15 lines and I would hand it in on top of the data deck and a few hours later get a printout with the latest crop of syntax errors. I eventually got the program to run and, though it took four days, I eventually got a nice new deck of sorted data- far more interesting than hand sorting the cards. I bought a secondhand Sinclair Spectrum in about 1984, but it wasn't until 1986 that I started using computers for scriptwriting, when I worked on the BBC's MicroLive programme. I started, not surprisingly, with a BBC Micro but then got hold of the Toshiba 1000 laptop PC I'd used in a film demonstrating international e-mail (Telecomm gold and its Dutch equivalent if anyone remembers that far back). I actually still have the Tosh though I've not tried running it recently. They were very popular with journalists and I used it as a word processor for several years. It had no hard drive and just one 3.5 inch disk drive so you loaded a copy of WordPerfect from a working floppy with enough space on it to also save the work onto (though I generally backed up onto a second disk) .

Hi Jon Re the colour of apparently rusty catenary masts. This is the end of the line at Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde , where the ferries to Royan go from. I've seen a lot of 150v DC catenary masts (both vertical and Ogives) that colour in S.W. France. The line is operated by EMUs but also serves the port of Le Verdon which part of the Bordeaux port handling container, timber and cruise ship traffic. OT, There used to be a fascinating private SG light railway at Pointe de Grave operated by the Bordeaux port authority mainly for stabilisation works (dumping sand and rocks to prevent coastal erosion) but also used for taking buoys etc from their works to the quayside. Its "main line" to Soulac-sur-mer" is used for a tourist operation using ex SNCF draisines but the first time I went there in about 2000 a transfer yard alongside the SNCF line (a few hundred metres behind the image above) was still partially intact (there's now no trace of it) as were sections of the port authority railway that crossed the SNCF and then spread out to the various works and quays to the east (to the right of this view) Looking at Google Earth most of this along with the various sub branches that came off the line to Soulac seem to have been tidied away.

No idea I'm afraid but I assume that, like everywhere else, there are Japanese modellers who prefer to pursue their own niche choices of scale/gauge. For some people, modelling in a scale where where everything has to be scratchbuilt is a positive attraction. 1/43 is interesting (though OT for a discussion of TT120) as it's generally the flavour of 0 scale used in Britain and France as opposed to the more common 1/45 in the rest of Europe and 1/48 in N. America. Speaking of restricted space requirements and scale, I was rather amused to find this by Henry Greenly in an edition of Model Railways (the world's first dedicated railway modelling magazine) from 1909 describing the "gauge No. 2" (2inch gauge ) model railway of Mr. H.F.R. Franklin."The first thing the model railway engineer must settle upon is the site for his line and how he can to the best advantage utilise the space available. Except where cost and space is limited, gauge No. 0 need not be considered...Gauge No. 1 is quite suitable and can be well recommended for all rooms of medium size" Mr. Franklin's indoor live-steam two-inch gauge layout was about 14 x 10 ft with a double track main line and a minimum radius of about 4ft 3in, more or less equivalent to the 12 in. standard radius used by Tri-ang for TT-3, though Greenly did go on to say that in 2 in. gauge "scale models of large modern engines - of the six-coupled type, to wit- cannot be made to traverse curves of 6 or 7 feet radius. Franklin's largest loco was a 4-4-0 GER "Claud Hamilton".

I believe that some Japanese modellers do indeed use 1:120 scale with 9mm gauge track to represent 3ft 6in gauge (as do some New Zealand modellers) but I've not heard of anything being commercially avaialable. In principle that would also enable the use of TT scale with 12mm gauge for the standard gauge Sinkansens. However, Japan with its very small homes is unusual with N being far more popular than H0 (almost a niche scale there) mostly with a scale of 1:150 for Japanese trains but 1:160 for Shinkansen. Although the hobby is very popular in Japan, a lot of modellers don't even have room for an N gauge model railways so TT wouldn't help. Microlayouts were (and I assume still are) popular in Japan often using 9mm gauge for H0e narrow gauge though the 30" gauge (762mm) used in Japan is not that common. When the county's standard gauge is 3ft 6ins (1067mm) the advantages of using a narrower gauge become less.

Nice thought Colin but I think the satellites used for uplinks are all geostationary. There used to be a whole farm of satellite dishes on the roof of a low building to one side of TV Centre and I never saw them tracking. BTW I'm quite amused watching Fireball XL5 on TPTV. There the whole "Space City" HQ building goes round and round rather than just the radar dish! The horizontal ski jump launcher is also quite good fun (I suppose that is a sort of railway!)

Hi Nick and Paul OnTopic In 2001, the setup modelled by you Paul would be pretty typical for a live report- You could add a stand light or two or even just the director pointing a "hand basher" at the reporter (been there done that many times) but I don't think they'd add much and the scene is fine without it. OFFTOPIC - so read no further if you don't want to. Nick, it IS possible to get broadcast quality pictures and even sound from a Smartphone. In fact, in May I produced a practical session for the Royal Television Society on this very topic (with ex BBC News camerawoman and mobile journalism trainer Deirdre Mulcahy). However, though they are useful for when the reporter gets to a story before their crew, is on holiday when all hell breaks loose , or wants to film very discretely, a Smartphone (which does have limitations) is no substitute for a properly equipped news crew which, for a mainstream news channel, would normally include a reporter, cameraman (or woman), sound recordist and possibly a producer. If you try to use a crew that's too small (e.g. just a camera operator and reporter) then things actually take longer and screw-ups (like recording an interview and finding a buzz or nothing at all on the audio) are far more likely. Jack of all trades applies to TV production as much as to anything else (though the crews of 15-20 or more that ITV sent to Downing Street for simple interviews with Thatcher did the TV industry no good at all) ENG/mobile trucks are by no means obsolete even today. If you're in the field (espcially if it's a very large field) you can't alway rely on getting a 4G or 5G connection so modern ENG trucks can often switch automatically between those and a satellite connection. Also, a lot of news reporting is not running round chasing breaking stories. For things like news conferences, launches, live interviews and many other events you need an established contact whether via VOIP, fixed lines or satellite. If the ENG truck is something like an SUV then it can of course be what the reporter and crew use to get themselves to the location. If you still think ENG vehicles are obsolete, take a look at this which was first seen at IBC (The International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam) in 2018 https://www.mastervolt.com/references/the-bbc-megahertz-ev-van-the-first-ever-fully-electric-newsgathering-vehicle-powered-by-a-mastervolt-installation/ It is all a far cry from this veteran Portugese OB vehicle from 1957 that I saw restored and displayed at IBC in 2014 I think it was a four camera unit but have no idea how this vision mixer worked. Possibly X is cross fades and H and V are horizontal and vertical wipes/split screens .

Hi Paul I've been looking into that a bit more and in Europe production facilities companies seem to vary between those who mark their vehicles with their own name, boldly or discretely, or leave them unmarked. I still don't know how well developed the facilities market is in China, but I did find CTVS (China TV Services) and a few others. It looks like broadcast stations there probably do still own more of their own production facilities than is now common in Europe. Some images of CTVS trucks show them with a discrete logo that would be easier to apply than the one above and curiously neither of them include any Hanzi text. For obvious reasons, TV News organisations generally have their own ENG/uplink trucks which likely would carry their own logos though nowadays in the UK and Europe they tend to be more discrete about attracting attention to themselves than they used to be (in some situations they can become targets) In the USA, where the local TV news market is very competitive, remote vehicles (the US name for OBs) are generally used as billboards so proclaim the channel/station very loudly In China now it looks like they do carry logos or names but not very loudly but I've no idea about the situation in 2001. I do have a friend who was very high up in the BBC's coms set up and I'm pretty sure worked on their coverage of the Beijing Olympics who might remember. If you want to look at a selection of Chinese OB vehicles there are a number here though the logos etc are current not 2001 https://www.live-production.tv/search-results/category/mobile-production/country/China .

for my H0 (Peco) and H0m (Tillig) layouts I've found the Peco track rubber to be a bit abrasive but the track rubbers sold by the Double O Gauge Association (I'm not a member) seem far better in that regard. For the Dartmoor and Valley Scenes, Pendon uses specially built bogie wagons with a small rectangle of hardboard rough side side down mounted on a weighted carriage. However, the scenes there are behind glass so won't be subject to the usual household dust. For cleaning behind point blades etc. I generally use cotton buds with IPA.

Well indeed and I know from studying the internet that it wasn't Britain that won WW2 all on its own but America. Britain joined in very late and there was almost no involvement from Canada. It's all on the web so it must be true. Even here I've learnt that H0 is a scale invented by foreigners, that those using P4 are morally superior to other modellers, and that the GWR wasn't the very best of Britain's railways (actually I know that's not true, not least because the GWR could do with ten wheels what lesser railways needed twelve for)

Except that the pyramids weren't built by slaves (so forget the scenes of Israelite slaves in Cecil B de Mille's Exodus) but by paid workers, mostly poor farmers who supplemented their income by work on the pyramids during the wet season when their fields were flooded. It was the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus in the 5th Century BCE, who claimed that the pyramids were built 2000 years ealier with the labour of 100,000 slaves. However, in the past fifteen or so years, archaeologists have found considerable evidence of a specially constructed village where the workforce of about 10, 000, who worked in three month shifts, were housed in long dormitories. Food remains show evidence that they were well fed with meat and bread while those who died while engaged in the work received simple but honoured burials complete with beer and bread for their journey close to the sacred sites. There were slaves in ancient Egypt but they didn't get to build the pyramids.

I've just had a leaflet inviting me to vote for one of a list of names for the Northolt TBMs. Thankfully Moley McMole Face isn't one of the options. This lis obviously a rather pathetic attempt to garner "local engagement" and therefore support for HS2 during what will inevitably be local disruption. I am actually very much in favour of HS2 (and no the money wouldn't have been spent on other railways) but I couldn't give a monkey's what the TBMs are called. TBM N1 and 2 would be fine with me. I'm not actually sure if I'll ever actually get to travel on it and even if I do it looks like being about as scenic as the Channel Tunnel given the hideously expensive measures to hide it away in tunnels and cuttings. I was at the French Railways Society Summer rendezvous in Lenham on Sunday which meant travelling alongside then under HS1. I barely noticed it and I look for railways.

Indeed. I'm afraid there are plenty of people on the right of politics who believe in the ability of the "Free Market" to solve all problems with the same blind faith that Soviet aparachniks had for "The Five Year Plan". Neither has ever been capable of pragmatism or seeing either the market or rational planning as a useful servant but an apaliling master. I came across this a lot in my career (in public service) but also as an FE College Governor. The mantra was that educational institutions should be run not in a business like way, i.e efficiently and with goals, but as businesses where the bottom line was far more important than fulfiiling our actual mission. So, though Britain is notoriously short of engineers we had to close our expensiive engineeting courses (we were in an area with no major industrial employers) but our hairdresing courses thrived.

I don't disagree that there is such a market, clearly there is, and starting with "iconic train" sets undoubtedly made sense as a launch straregy for a new (to Britain) scale. BUT, for the scale to be successful in the longer term, and it deserves to be successful, it needs to develop fairly quickly beyond the train set market into a full model railway range so that those starting out with it need to see where they might be able to get to. Most established modellers, likely do have too much "stuff" to change horses, so it is more about giving the new entrants that TT120 has drawn into the hobby a pathway, or rather a series of possible pathways, to move on with. Watching trains going round and round on a (far more conveniently sized) table-top may satisfy for a while but I know several people in my wider circle, beyond "serious" railway modelling, who set out to build the super-duper Hornby train set they'd dreamed of a youngster with several circuits laid out on a board (what Loco-Revue rather charmingly desribes as a "locodrome") and simply lost interest after a year or so. The comparison with TT-3, though there are major differences as you say, is that, while Tri-ang were selling 3mm scale train sets, those buying them could very soon see in the magazines etc. model railways built by "serious" railway modellers in the same scale. A very good example was was Mike Bryan'ts 4ft x 2ft "Pint Pot", run as a five part beginner's project layout by MRC from January 1958 so just a few months after Tri-ang TT-3 actually became widely available. It wasn't Pendon but it was a layout that anyone could build and would then have a "proper" model railway with good operational capacity (branch line teminus with continuous loop and reverse curve) rather than just an extended train set.

I agree and it seems to reflect a perceived market for "iconic" locos and trains that fit the trainset market more than the developed model railway market. This isn't exactly new though- my own first Hornby Dublo model railway (it was permanently laid on a baseboard) had a Dutchess of Atholl, three coaches and about three goods wagons. In many ways the original TT-3 offer of a Jinty, suburban coaches and wagons followed by a Castle, and then other locos and main line coaches was better suited to layout builders. I see much the same with Hornby International's H0 brands with "iconic" (and well represented in preservation) locos like the 141R and the 140C on offer but the one thing you can't rely on buying is a balanced stud of locos to operate a model railway in a realistic way and, while it's truie that a far higher proportion of modellers have moved on from the steam era, the Jouef brand doesn't even offer a diesel shunter. The fomer Jouef brand did offer a wider range of motive power. Fortunately, for H0, there are other brands available.

I've used a fibreglass pencil to very carefully remove the very German markings from Tillig H0m wagons. They have some with a short wheelbase that fits very well my French "d'Intêret Local " but not when they have DR markings all over them. It took quite a long time and the paint below was slighty roughed up. I have a couple more still to do so will try using a drawing rubber. Getting the white print from between the planks was the trickiest part and I'm not sure that a rubber would manage that but it might be better for the main parts.

I also really enjoyed your layout at Lenham yesterday, Rod. A lot of the detailing (like the tables outside the Auberge) was very effective (and nobody playing boule! - the French equivalent of buses on bridges?) I'm glad to know that you got the catenary and Ogives (Ex DutDut Productions) from Ardennes Modelisme as there seemed to be a hiatus in 2020 after (according to the LR Forum) Jérome Collard bought Atelier Belle Epoque from Olivier Tanou. I think he used the combined name Atelier CJmodels for a while until registering Ardennes Modelisme as his company name but still uses it for the website. I happened to be looking this up a few days ago having wondered what had beome of ABE and am now hoping that more of that range become available. Were you able to order them directly from France for delivery here? (I was looking for replacement Jouef buffers recently and the company that had them had a list of countries in their ordering address field that included the Russian Federation and most other European countries including Eire but not the UK so the order couldn't be made)

Yes, sort of. I think watching things at Liverpool St. Met (while waiting for trains?) provided CJF's inspiration for the turnover loco schema (Also used by Geoff Pitt on Horn Lane though only on one platform AFAIK) but it was some later doodling that led to the particular crossover arrangement.

Hi Clive Hmm, for me a true Minories needs to end with buffers and use CJF's neat crossover arrangement (though other arrangements can have a Minories feel- like Hammersmith) So, as far as I'm concerned, Tom Cunnington's Minories (GN) is no longer a true Minories in its current format with through platforms and goods trains charging through. It's still a perfectly good layout but only when it's exhibited as a terminus (which I understand it still can be) is it properly Minories. Despite the fourth platform and its three way point this (Geoff Pitt's Horn Lane LT) to my mind IS a true Minories and about the only situaton where using small radius points for the characteristic throat doesn't look silly (the whole point of CJF's neat crossover arrangement being to avoid immediate reverse curves an advantage that gets lost when the points are too small relative to the length of coaches.)

Mordor's throat is Minories plus but the effect is rather spoiled by it not being an actual terminus as the tracks continue past the station to the car sheds (fiddle yard?) beyond. Mind you, I'm probably biased as the only time I've ever been there, was for a rather dull meeting with the local council. It seemed an awfully long way down the Misery Line and when you got there you were in Morden. I think the closest in overall feel to a real Minories that I've come across, certainly in London, is Hammersmith on the H&C. It has a short throat running onto a viaduct, is surrounded by urban buildings and has three platforms with still a Metropolitan/GWR steam age feel. This was especially so when it had actual loco hauled trains as it it did during Steam on the Met in 2014 (alright it was only one train!) but, with its GWR platform seat and valances, it still holds that impression when it's ony handling modern stock. It even used to have a goods yard (albeit a coal yard) It's a funny thing that while main line termini rarely seem to have just three platforms, they're quite common at UndergrounD termini. Ealing Broadway (District), and High Barnet come immediately to mind though the first lost its Minories like status by abandoning its real station building above and beyond the buffers (were they thinking of extending the line to Greenford Broadway etc?) and High Barnet is just a BLT with tube acretions. Though it would have bu**ered up most of my own commuting journeys, the one I've long fancied was the GWR's planned and authorised (in 1905) terminus at Shepherd's Bush of the Ealing and Shepherd's Bush Extension Railway. Looking at the site it was planned to occupy with a presumed subway connection to the then terminus of the Central Railway (which at that time was planning to loop south and then back into Central London to the discomfiture of the District Railway) I guess it might have been quite similar to their joint station at Hammersmith but with proper trains with GW locos on the front (OK probably prairie tanks rather than Halls and Castles) terminating there from west of London and maybe further afield. It was reckoned, with the CLR, to give a better connection for commuters and to the W. End than that terminus near Paddington Basin but in the end they decided that connection would be even better on the GWML at Ealing Broadway so gave the CLR running powers on the E&SB from a connection to its later Wood Lane terminus i.e the Ealig branch of the Central Line.

Olivier Taniou sold ABE to Jérôme Collard (CJModels) in I think 2020 who combined the two brands. He now trades as Ardennes Modelisme though his website reflects the original brands https://ateliercjmodels.comThe Vernueil station doesn't appear in his current N gauge listing as such though, apart from stone quoins and door and window surrounds it does, from the star-boutique advert, appear to be identical to the Ouest three door station building (which has an ABE product code) on offer for €49.00 + postage. However, the Star-Boutique image is marked as generique so there may be differences, ABE's models were always very specific. The etched brass fret for Verneuil's doors and windows is still on offer for €20.50 and the optional two open doors are a very nice touch. It may be the same fret supplied with the Ouest station building as doors and windows could be pretty standard. The rust colour of catenary masts is a nice touch Jon. I noticed it on secondary lines in the Pyrénées some years ago and at first thought they were just old but seeing it on the remaining Ogive masts on the Midi main line in Landes suggests that it is the colour of a protective coating (paint?) I'm looking forward to seeing the layout at Lenham on Sunday.