Pacific231G

Part of the problem is that governments, being short term, tend to spend more when the economy is booming, thus overheating the economy, and to cut spending when it's at the bottom of the trade cycle.thus making recessions that much deeper. The time to build roads railways, hospitals etc.is when the private economy is in recession so prices are low and there are unemployed workers and infrastructure needing to be used. Conversely, when the private economy is booming there is little spare capacity and public spending, particularly on capital projetcts, will cost relatively more. I've seen this in companies too when investment in things like training are at their highest when the company is making most money but cut right back when times are harder. There are some things though, including education, health and defence and everything that make the country a decent place to live, that need to be maintained through good and bad periods for the economy. a healthy non-trade public economy also tends to damp down the extremities of the economic cycle. Far more fundamental IMHO is the problem going back a very long way that British industry simply didn't need to be that good, well-managed or highly skilled when it could rely on the empire for a captive market from which other industrialised countrie (and the nascent industries of the colonised countries such as the very skiiled Indian shipbuilding industry) were largely excluded. The habits of that period lasted far longer than the captive market of the empire. To be an engineer is a high status profession in countries like Germany, in Britain people tend to think that the bloke who comes to fix the central heating is an engineer rather than a technician and simply don't understand the difference. I think that is starting to improve but there's a long way to go.

I'm sure there are people in the USofA who firmly believe that the Second Amendment gives individual citizens the right to posses thermonuclear weapons.

Or you could just put them in a box with a fish that's a bit long time no sea. US crossing bells and DCC air horns on the next door layout at exhibitions could soon be a rather pleasant memory.

I generally prefer staffed checkouts unless I'm just buying one or two items (as in WHS) Quite apart from the self checkouts' frequent hissy fits they are far better check-out operators than I will ever be. It's not the operators that annnoy me so much as the customers who carefully pack all their stuff then, as if actually paying for it is a totally different thought process, hunt slowly in their bag for their cards before finally getting round to paying. I can forgive the elderly, infirm or those with small children for that but it's those who are very slow because they're chatting to someone on their phone that really drive me mad.Perhaps they should name and shame their slowest customers. For a friend of mine who had to wait over a year for her "urgent" hip replacement, online shopping has been a boon. The thing you have to watch for though is that the products tend to be near the end of their shelf life. In my local supermarket I've learned the trick of finding the later use by or best befores hidden at the back of the shelves but online ordering even with Wa**r**e seems to go the other way.

The comparison with amateur drama is quite an interesting one. I used to be very heavily involved in a local group that took theatre seriously (several of our members went on to become professional actors) Our choice of plays was based on what we found interesting and challenging in acting and production not what we thought would attract audiences so we avoided the usual amdram fare of Francis Durbridge etc. We did, often with people who'd never acted before, get well beyond the archetypical coarse acting standard of the cast remembering most of their lines and not tripping over the scenery . At least half our audiences were the friends of our members but we did build up a local audience who came to our productions for their own sake. We weren't the RSC, far from it, but we were on a spectrum that includes both Auntie Mary or cousin Eric.at one end* and the National Theatre at the other. That spectrum is probably true of most creative arts from photography and painting to music and pottery. Our hobby is odd in that, though there are of course many professional model makers, their work mainly serves other professions such as architecture, industrial design and even museums. Models that are purely an expression of the modelmakers art or craft mostly come from amateurs or sometimes professionals working in amateur mode (rather like airline captains who fly light aircraft for fun) The point of comparison is that in any creative activity the best work comes from those who are passionate about what they are doing rather than setting out to please someone else. FWIW my impression is that the layouts, large and small, reflecting that passion end up giving far more pleasure to exhibition goers, even those for who the subject may not be of particular interest, than those designed to tick various "good exhibition layout" boxes. * While working away from home I did briefly belong to an example of that sort of drama group. If my usual group was finescale EM that one was Setrack with Skaledale buildings and foam ballast but both groups enjoyed what they were doing.

"This is a Great Western Railway customer announcement Following a derailment at Temple Meads Station, the whole of Bristol has been evacuated and customers travelling to South Wales should travel via Hereford. We would like to remind customers who were intending to travel to Bristol that Great Western Railway offers an attractive range of alternative destinations."

I agree with you about loco sheds. They used to be rather de rigeur for model railways but the only reason I can see for having one is that you like them and the modelling opportunities they provide. I was going to include one on my current layout which is a very small French BLT (where termini generally did have a shed for the branch loco to start its day) but found that using the space for a private siding added far more play value operational variety.

Hi Yes it is simply a different interpretation of words and I've amended the post to reflect that. It wasn't really your use of the phrase that I was disagreeing with but the sentiment I have seen expressed on RMWEB that the job of layout exhibitors is to provide a continuous stream of "entertainment" to an audience who simply watch the action, much as you might in a concert or a theatre (though they do have intervals and don't usually perform non-stop for seven hours) Some layouts- notably the big roundy rounds- may do that, but expecting every layout to provide continuous action at all times- and that expectation has been expressed here before- seems a rather blinkered but apparently quite prevalent view.

Hi Mark If your dream layout appears at an exhibition, and I hope one day it will, I suspect I will look at it for as few minutes, admire the modelling and then move on to something that interests me more. That's absolutely fine because I'm certain that others will really enjoy it and above all it will have given you enormous pleasure and satisfaction to build and show it. However, If the scene your trains are running through is sufficiently engaging then I probably will linger; it wasn't the fairly simple operation that made Pempoul a continuing must see for me and it's probably not the trains, superbly modelled though they are, that most attract me to Pendon. There is, thank goodness, no "correct" way of building a model railway any more than there is a correct way of appreciating railways themselves. It's not even neccessary to be a railway enthusiast to enjoy railway modelling though most of us probably are. What I don't agree with is the idea that the main purpose of an exhibition is to "entertain the paying public" in the sense of just providng something for them to watch. When I'm the paying public, I go to an exhibition to be informed, educated and entertained in roughly that order. I want to meet fellow modellers and discuss layouts I'm interested in as well as seeing them in operation and hopefully getting some inspiration for my own modelling. I see the entrance fee simply as the cost of bringing those layouts together plus a modest profit for the organisers to make it worth their while doing so.

The lack of development of TT-3 and it's ultimate demise as a mass market scale was a shame. I'd always seen it as a good compromise where you could get a decent layout into the the small spaces of modern homes (Cyril Freezers's classic Minories was designed as a five foot long TT-3 city terminus) without going down to what has always seemed to me to be the birds eye view of N scale. TT models still seem large enough to feel present with. I think it was Arnold's introduction of a well developed range of N gauge products of frankly higher quality than Tri-ang that effectively killed off TT-3 as a mass market scale. I went from Hornby Dublo three rail to Tri-ang TT-3 as a youngster when it was the coming thing but I never got the good running that I'd taken for granted with HD and I would say that Tri-ang's track and wheel standards were decidedly coarse. I think part of TT-3's difficulty was that only Tri-ang ever mass produced it as a complete product and TT (1:120) wasn't taken up by Western European manufacturers anything like as enthusiastically as N gauge later was . Though you could buy white metal kits for various locos (I had a Ks condensing pannier tank) they generally seemed to rely on the Tri-ang mechanism as did most of those, at least initially, who used it for narrow gauge in 00n3. I think you can see this legacy today in narrow gauge modelling where, even in countries like France where metre gauge was far and away the dominant narrow gauge (20 000 kms of metre gauge public railways versus about 450kms of 600mm), Apart from those modelling Swiss railways relatively few narrow gauge modellers now seem to use it and overall H0e and OO9 are vastly more popular than H0m and OOn3. This is partly I suspect because of the far easier availability of N gauge mechanisms, wheels, etc. and possibly also because of the influence of Austrian manufacturers where 760mm gauge was and still is the "standard" narrow gauge. Fortunately for those of us who use 12mm gauge for modelling narrow gauge railways, Tillig do make good mechanisms and there is also enough interest in Swiss railways to sustain H0m. I did keep some of my Tri-ang TT-3 rolling stock with a view to adapting it for H0m but the standards proved far too coarse.

To quote Alfred Hitchcock "What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out" Without commenting on any particular layouts, I've seen a few that modelled a real location in full and exactly to scale that left me completely cold. The quality of modelling was mostly superb sometimes it seemed down to the last blade of grass but they just seemed to lack atmosphere. That may have something to do with the way we view the full size world, ignoring the gaps between the bits we're interested in but I suspect it's more about such "true scale" layouts not selecting the parts of the scene that give it life and character and not cutting out enough of the components that don't. That doesn't always apply. At Tolworth last year I really enjoyed Plumpton Green and I believe that was only slightly forshortened but there seemed to be enough going on along the full length of the layout. The fact that it was worked authentically using miniature LBSC block instruments and lever frames in full view just added to the interest. A nice touch was that the block bells in the adjoinng signal boxes - i.e. the fiddle yards- were replaced by lights so you only heard and saw the Plumpton Green "signal box". To no surprise my favourite layout at Ally Pally this year was Peter Denny's Leighton Buzzard. Despite its size, objectively I know that the platform, barely double the length of the station building, is absurdly short, it conveyed the essential features of a terminus in a country town and that sense was only heightened by it being operated in an apparently realistic way with working block instruments and signalling. I wonder if the difference in interest is that it is something of a spectrum with "model railways", that model as far as possible the entire operation of a railway, at one end and "railway models" focussing on individual models with the layout providing a suitable setting (catwalk?) for the locos and stock to be admired in, at the other. Where we are on that spectrum may determine the type of layout we generally prefer and neither of course neither is the moral superior of the other.

Hi Barry Cogirep really captured the atmosphere of run-down urban industrial so I'm really looking forward to seeing this one. The idea of the "main line" disappearing behind buildings then reappearing is interesting and should provide opportunities for a series of vignettes within the overal scene. I'm also impressed by how the Regions & Compagnies card kits turned out. I've looked at them at shows in France but have always been put off by the price.

I think, as TBG says, that it's more that there were far fewer shows in those days. As a youngster - a bit earlier than 1976 - I remember going to Central Hall with my Dad from Oxford and maybe going to one local exhibition each year but that really was about it. In those days you could of course drive into central London and expect to park on the side streets around Central Hall. The MRC Easter show was the major events in many a modeller's calendar and would often get extensive preview and reportage in the modelling press but exhibitions in general seemed to play far less of a central role in the hobby. For many modellers, having their layout invited to the MRC show (was it the same for the other "majors"?) was the highlight not just of their year but quite possibly of their modelling career. Because it was such an occasion, clubs in particular could be mob handed, often with rosters of operators to cover multiple days. One private layout I know that would have required three or four five or six operators involved something like twenty forty people or more across the six days. One-day local shows tended to be just that with layouts coming from the local region if not area. With far more local model railway shops (mine was Howes in Broad St. Oxford) I think fewer modellers expected to make their major purchases at exhibitions.

Interesting stuff on wheel behaviour on curves Edwin but surely the length of a particular track formation will depend on both the gauge and the loading gauge. For a particular crossing angle, If the gauge is larger you need more length to get the curve of the diverging rail from the switch heel to the frog and if the distance between tracks is greater you need more length, at a particular angle, to get between the tracks. In theory, because he was using the wider gauge more for stability than increased vehicle width. Brunel could have narrowed the distance between tracks but he would have been prevented from that by the minimum six foot way rule. Even now, the formations of former BG lines seem to include wider elements than those that were always SG. This does lead to something I'd never considered before. Until comparatively recently, Britan's railways made far more use of bespoke track formations than railways in Europe and especially in North America who tended to make up even complex formations from discrete items such as turnouts, diamond crossings and slips which could be individually identified (and in documentation often were) I'd always assumed that this was due to lack of space but would the narrower distance between tracks simply have made it more difficult to assemble formations from off the shelf items? Due to a bridge strike a few months ago I had far more time than I wanted to contemplate this scissors crossover just outside Waterloo It's not clear in this aerial image but I was struck by how much of the formation was incorporated into single solid castings like the one I've highlighted. Would this have been a standard(ish) casting or one cast specfically for this location?

As long ago as 1912 the Berne Gauge used for international traffic in Europe, had a maximum width of 10ft 2ins though some railways had slightly more generous loading gauges. Even as a standard gauge railway the Metropolitan Railway had a larger than normal (for Britain) loading gauge so that when a load of their steam hauled stock was made redundant by electrification in about 1910 they couldn't flog them to other railways in Briain. The result was that sixteen MR coaches emigrated to France where they worked on a local (i.e light) standard gauge railway near Bordeaux until the late 1960s. To make them even more "foreigh" they were often hauled by diesel locos bought after the war from the American army (USATC) .

For turnout the switch would probably be the same length but for the same crossing/frog angle the lead between the heel of the switch and the throat of the frog has to be longer simply because it has further to go. I have a copy of a 1940 military railway manual that gives an average length for cilvil turnout leads of 1.42GN where G is the gauge and N is the frog or crossing number. The same book quotes realtive volumes of earthworks as 100% for standard gauge, 75% for 3ft 6in gauge and 70% for metre gauge. Clearly that will work the other way if you increase the gauge even if the loading gauge remains the same (as it often did for 3ft 6in gauge). The figures for the total weight of track per mile, including 90lbs per yard rail, sleepers, and everything else above the ballast, are 170 tons for metre and 3ft 6in gauge, 230 tons for standard gauge and 260 tons for 5ft 6in (Indian) gauge track. Since the weight of rail is the same the main difference will, unless I'm missing something, be the weight of sleepers. If curves can be smaller on NG railways than on SG then it surely follows that the minimum curvature would have to be greater for BG. Given that the centripetal forces should be the same for a given speed and weight irrespective of gauge then there must be other factors at play.

It's other major disadvantage was that for a small increase in loading gauge, well within what standard gauge could and in other countries does accomodate, the infrastructure costs would have been significantly higher. Minimum curves would have been larger, sleepers would have had to be longer and possibly of greater cross section to handle greater bending moments; points would have been longer for the same crossing angle so yards and other formations would have been longer and therefore requiring more land and so on. On rolling stock axles would presumably have also had to be heavier, again to withstand greater bending moments. Brunel was clearly interested in straight, fast main lines but had he won the gauge wars then I suspect we'd have slightly larger trains and possibly rather faster earlier. Trains would also perhaps have been rather safer in their earlier days thanks to the increaded stability with more of the vehilcle's weight between the rails. On the down side, because of the extra cost, we'd probably have had far fewer secondary and branch lines (but possibly more narrow gauge public railways) and railways would have been far more of an inter-city affair with fewer industirial branches and private sidings . Going back to the OP, it does seem that gauges often creep out a bit. 7ft became 7ft 0.25ins, 4ft 8ins became 4ft 8.5ins, 16mm became 16.5mm and 18mm became 18.2mm. OTOH I've often wondered whether Spooner's slight narrowing of 2ft gauge to what various sources give as 1ft 11 5/8 ins, 1ft 11 1/2 ins (the ffestiniog's current gauge) or 1ft 113/4 (the gauge in the FR's 1869 Act of Parliament*) was simply 600mm expressed in the imperial units he'd have had to use. It's supposed to have been the same as the gauge used in the quarries but I wonder how much variability they had. * Clause 54 "The gauge of the railway shall be one foot eleven inches and three quarters of an inch"

Which also tends to be attractive to engineers but ends up only being used in small specialist applications such as at airports. The atmospheric railway did turn out to be a blind alley, at least in Victorian times, but my point is that the engineers who adopted it weren't fools for doing so.

Why should Brunel have known something that other railway engineers did not? Though the atmospheric railway has always been quoted as Brunel's great folly he was only one of several railway engineers to adopt it, Ttwo atmospheric railways, near Dublin and in Paris, operated succesfully for ten and thirteen years succesfully. A modern atmospheric railway is in use at an airport in Brazil. With the Samuda brothers and Samuel Clegg's succesful two year demonstration from 1840 of their patented atmospheric traction system on a half mile stretch of unopened line near Wormwood Scrubbs, a number of railway engineers including both Brunel and Robert Stephenson, became very interested in the idea which did have some apparent and a few real advantages over locomotive hauled trains. Track would not have to withstand the pounding from a reciproacting engine nor carry the weight of a steam locomotive, boiler explosions- then a very real risk -would not endanger passengers, fixed engines could be more efficient than locomotives (as was later proven by electric railways), the risk of collisions, at a time before the telegraph block had really been developed, was greatly reduced because only one train at a time could be powered by the evacuation of the pipe ahead of it within a section, on lines with steep gradients the system would overcome the difficulties encountered with the rather weak loconotives of that time. In urban areas the nuisance of smoke and noise would be significantly reduced. Without the benefit of hindsight these would have been compelling arguments for both engineers and promoters of railways. The Dalkey Railway near Dublin opened in 1843, A section of the London and Croydon Railway opened with atmospheric traction in 1846 with the South Devon opening the same year and a steeply graded extension to the Paris-St. Germain railway opened in 1847. It was the Croydon railway that suffered from rats, attracted to the tallow used to seal the longitudinal valve and drawn into the tube by the vacuum, but this was never a fundamental problem, rather it was two failures of stationary engines that seem to have doomed the system which closed within a year. The South Devon also had difficulties with underpowered stationary engines as well as tearing of the leather that formed part of the pipe seal and in the end it was Brunel who recommended its abandonment. The Dalkey Railway continued until 1853 and the St. Germain extension until 1860 both having operated succesfully unil the arrival of sufficiently powerful locomotives to operate these veery steep lines by adhesion. The atmospheric system probably did only have application for specific situations but had it been developed a little more fully one can speculate on its potential in pre-electric days for underground railways like the Metropoitan. With modern materials a Brazilian inventor has developed a new atmospheric railway and AFAIK two are currently in revenue service, in Porto Alegre Brazil and Jakarta Indonesia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rREz82HWJQs .

If Addison Road is one of the layouts that would make you want to attend a show - and it is a superb piece of modelling- Leighton Buzzard (Linslade) definitely does that for me. Thank you so much for bringing it down and it was also good to get a chance to talk with Crispin. Despite its vintage the layout really does show how much operation can be got out of a very small layout. One thing I got a chance to look at properly this time was the block system and Peter Denny's very ingenious and simple block instruments. As always I, and I'm sure very many others, really appreciate and value your work in keeping the Buckingham Branch alive as a "going concern" Leighton Buzzard and a few others apart, this year's layouts generally left me a bit cold compared with last year's but I suspect that's just a reflection of my own interests rather than on the quality of what was there. Nevertheless Ally Pally remains one of my favourite shows and the great Hall is a magnificent venue, so much better than the typical sports hall.

I'm looking at a signal box diagram for Cheltenham St. James from RM in April 1970 and it's certainly an interesting station. An almost identical plan is available here https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=497 and a detailed map here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_03_2017/post-238-0-52314500-1488969663.jpg What I don't know is whether there were carriage sidings elesewhere in Cheltenham or whether the sidings and middle lines at the station were sufficient. The station closed in 1966 so it's in your period Dan. I'm surprised though that having separate arrivals and departures platforms survived so late but arrivals at only two but departures from all four platforms sounds to me more likely than the other way round. What I but don't know was how busy or otherwise the terrminus was under BR and whether all four platforms were then being used. It definitely deserves more investigation as such an arrangement could shorten the throat of the terminus I want to build. Having a departures only bay is something I also played with on Minories and it's fairly simpe to arrange with no extra length.

Hi Dan I still think you need a facing crossover to connect platforms 1 & 2 to the inbound main line even if that's only used for ECS and light engine movements. Without that you're going to have a lot wrong line working and a long distance express is unlikely to be shunted straight from the arrivals to the departure side. Do you think someone should tell Peco that there is no such thing as a "catch turnout" They were cleary so browbeaten into not referring to points (as they always used to) that they've gone too far the other way.

So long as you have the flexibility in the track plan you can choose whether to operate separate arrivals and depatures platforms or more conventionally with all platforms being used for both. It shouldn't affect the building of the layout and, if the coach sidings and MPD are off-stage, it may not affect the signalling either. I think some termini, notably Paddington, had a sort of mixture with the most prestigious trains departing from Platform One and probably arriving alongside the cab road but others especially local stoppers departing from the same platform they'd arrived at. I wonder if anyone here has a working timetable that would confirm that. This wonderfully evocative image from 1962 is a scene I can remember from various trips from Oxford in the early 1960s with the pannier tanks running back and forth between Old Oak and Paddington among the busiest players. (pannier tank arrived platform 4 with ECS creative commons Ben-Brooksbank) Though 8436 is apparently trapped until the train loco couples up and takes the train out, you can see that the train is already loading and from the steam rising between them that it is providing the train with steam heating so the passengers aren't boarding an unheated train with freezing cold compartments (I've experienced that too, ugh!).

It depends on the site and the traffic. Urban land tends to be expensive so many termini had their carriage sidings and motive power depots some distance away as with Old Oak Common for Paddington but also, because of the very narrow site along the lochside, Fort William. These carriage sidings would have had their own run round facilities I don't think an ECS movement over any distance on running lines would have been propelled so ECS (and light engine) movements can legitimately be main line runs into the fiddle yard. There were though often relief lines to keep the main lines free of stock movements. In contrast, Penzance had just two blind carriage sidings just beyond the platforms on the down side accessed by a line that cut across the platform lines with the aid of a couple of single slips. Rakes woulld have had to be backed into these or drawn out and this would have been a shunting rather than a timetabled move. Holiday and other excursion destinations such as race tracks tended to need quite a lot of carriage sidings to cope with the peaks when a horde of passengers need to arrive and depart over a fairly short period. Unlike an urban terminus built on very expensive land, the space for these could be closer to the station. I remember the Beeching Report making a big fuss about the number of carriages that spent almost their entire lives sitting in sidings to work maybe only a dozen services each year. (If people wanted holidays they could jolly well go by car or coach) For our purposes though these services, often summer Saturdays only, provided a fascinating variety of older coaches long after they had been displaced from principal services. .