Pacific231G

I'd got with Mike's suggestion of a tuft of grass or something like a series of single bristles (possibly disguised as weeds) just long enough to act on the axles but light and springy enough to easily bend out of the way when pulled or pushed by a loco. That would be a simple and flexible solution.- you could have a few of them along the siding so that a cut of wagons will stay put wherever on the siding you leave them (Thinks..... I've got a couple of sidings that could do with that treatment and I'm sure I've got an old brush somewhere).

Hi Peter Both lines from Paris to Le Treport (via Abbeville and via Beauvais) were Nord and joined at Eu before going up the right bank of the Bresle. The terminus is called Le Treport-Mers but though on the Mers les Bains side of the river is actually in Le Treport. The Ouest just had a branch from its "new" Dieppe line to Eu. but I see no reason why, particularly if Le Treport had become more fashionable and grown to rival Dieppe, it couldn't have had its own line to Le Treport on the left bank. If that gave them their own route from Paris to Le Treport it would have needed a loco shed and, given how steep the river valley is, Eu would have been an entirely logical location for it. The Nord did have a loco depot at Le Tréport but I think quite a small one

Hi Peter I've PMd you a copy of the plan of the real Mantes depot. The original in the postcard look interesting and I assume it was disused because the much larger depot had been built half a mile or so to the West just after the junction between the lines to Rouen & Le Havre and to Caen & Cherbourg.

Hi Peter Wonderful project and do I detect echoes of Dennis Allenden's Ste. Colline? I have a copy of Les Depots Vapeur de l'Ouest published by Vie du Rail and that includes plans of a number of MPDs including Mantes. I think it's available in the French Railways Society library but if not I can always scan a couple of them for you. Loco Revue Hors Serie no 49 is all about building an MPD based layout and is definitely available from the library- I'm looking at it right now! As well as a number of plans it also includes quite a lot on the auxiliary buidlings and services associated with an MPD. .

Most preserved railways are (or were) single track branchlines and Google Earth generally allows you to trace the track layout of as many stations as you like. Preserved lines tend to acquire rather more trackwork, locos and coaches than ever existed on the original line and they might well have their loco sheds at what had been a minor intermediate station. Ropley in Hampshire comes immediately to mind and I assume the MPD there is more or less on the site of the original goods yard.From memory I think the same applies to the the West Somerset, the Kent and East Sussex and several others. On a working branchline a loco shed at a simple passing station would be very unusual without a particular reason In any case, Stephen Williams' books will probably tell you most of what you'll need to know.

I don't think that's quite true. According to the ORR http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/17621/dc-electrification-policy-statement.pdf there is a general presumption against any further third rail electrification unless very good reasons can be demonstrated for its use. That has covered some minor extensions and its use on new tube lines (with a fourth rail as well of course) on the grounds of compatibility. Open third rail simply doesn't meet current safety rules which are there to avoid workers and the public from being killed or injured not to make the world more bureaucratic. According to the RSSB, fatal and serious injuries related to electrification are sixteen times more prevalent per mile on the traditional third rail network than on lines with OHE.

I see Micheldever station from the air every few weeks (Popham Airfield is just to the north east of it on the other side of the A303) and I think all the pipework for the oil terminal, which has been out of use since the mid 1990s but was kept in reserve for some years, has now gone and the access tunnels blocked off. The WIAs have been a frequent sight in the sidings there for some years. I quite often see freight trains on the line between there and Basingstoke but can't recall seeing anything recently that wasn't containers (which doesn't mean that's all there is as I've seen car trains in Southampton Eastern Docks fairly recently and assume they go that way) I can also recommend The Dove Inn behind the station

It can be done Preserved Sprague Paris Metro train at the Baie de Somme Festival a Vapeur in 2013 In the Sprague set (which has been preserved by enthusiasts not a public body) one of the driving cars has a silent diesel generator to power the train's electrics and the shoes are of course isolated. I don't know if this approach- possibly using a coupled generator wagon- would be too inauthentic but it avoids the need for a live rail. I'm ashamed to admit though that, until this thread appeared, I'd never even heard of the Electric Railway Museum. There was news this morning that the John Milton Cottage Museum in Chalfont St. Giles is threatened with closure so life isn't easy for small private museums. .

Thanks Gary I've still got a couple of TT-3 wagons and a Jinty lurking around somewhere but nothing from the same era from Tri-ang in OO to compare them with so it's interesting to see them together.

Interesting Gary. It was Edward Beal who said they were the same in the first of his "Modelling in TT Gauge" articles in August 1957 MRC "One of the useful features of the Tri-ang engines is that the wheels- also like those of the rolling stock- are made to OO gauge tread and flange-widths.Stated in writing this may arouse a sense of antagonism in scale fans, but really on the actual model it is not any drawback. On the other hand, this means that the full range of existing OO gauge wheels in all diameters is at the disposal of the locomotive department." I would have expected a modeller of Beal's distinction to have got his facts straight but there were suggestions from Bryant that his knowledge of TT at that time was theoretical rather than practical. Bryant worked simultaneously in 3mm scale for Grassington and in TT-3 for his Pint Pot layout so he did have practical knowledge and it may be telling that MRC ended Beal's articles rather abruptly after the first four which were immediately followed by Mike Bryant's totally practical series on building the 4x2 Pint Pot layout. What a lot of people were saying at that time was that the BRMSB had totally missed the bus by not coming up with standards for TT earlier and so again leaving it for a toy train manufacturer to set them instead. I think though that there was a general misapprehension that the BRMSB was a permanently established fully staffed standards body rather than an ad hoc committee. David (Il Griffone) You've mentioned the BRMSB standards for TT. Do you happen to know when these were published and how close they are to the 3mm society's current standards? I only have the 1950 edition of Standard Dimensions published by META for the BRMSB several years before TT surfaced in Britain.

Long enough at 681 metres to justify a parallel tramway at one time. I did get to use it once when I was very very young and we had a family holiday on the IofW staying in a guesthouse on Ryde seafront. I vaguely remember the tramcar being crowded and to get to it we passed Pierhead station where I remember being very impressed by the four trains lined up on the platforms. The tramway presumably avoided the trains from Pierhead being crowded with arriving visitors going to Ryde at the expense of those travelling further afield. I'm afraid though that my only other memory of that holiday was the rain pouring down the windows of the steam train from Esplanade to Shanklin. apparently it was that sort of week in August. The 640metre (32 chains) Pier railway at Hythe is still running and providing a useful service and that's 40 metres shorter than Ryde Pier.

Though the distance between platforms is very short, the distance between the northern entrance to City Thameslink and the entrance to Blackfirars is much greater.. I've used City Thameslink to get to to various stations on the Brighton Line when walking to Farringdon or Blackfirars would have been a bit of a schlep especially with luggage.

People were clearly attracted to the scale and, as you say, several were working in it; however the lack of trade support, even for basic products such as brickpapers, did mean they were on their own so it was very much a niche rather like S scale. Trade support did come for TT after Tri-ang introduced it but it was all for the Tri-ang scale of 3mm/ft hence Mike Bryant's championing of "TM" scale and the huge feeling of disappointment amongst TT modellers (actual and hopeful) that the more compatible 12mm 1:120 gauge/ scale combination hadn't been chosen. What I hadn't realised until going through the 1957 MRCs was that Tri-ang simply used the same check rail clearance, wheel profiles and tread widths as for OO with no scaling down of anything apart from the gauge- handy for anyone modelling 00n3 needing to build mixed gauge track but increasing the scale/gauge compromise ever further. . For 3mm scale modellers that did mean they could use commercially available wheels of appropriate diameters but even as a youngster totally ignorant about the scale/gauge argument, I do remember thinking that something looked wrong about my rolling stock when viewed head on.

Oops, Typo well spotted and corrected -yes 1/9th inch to the foot. as opposed to the 1/10th inch to the foot introduced by Hal Joyce (H.P. Products) in the U.S. in 1945. Presumably, one reason why that didn't get adopted here was the extreme restrictions on imports at the time that seem to have continured into the 1950s.

I've now found my 1957 MRCs and, though in October 1958 Mike Bryant back-referenced August 1957 for his original article, it was actually in the July 1957 edition titled "TM Scale, Here I Come" Bryant had been experimenting with TT scale (defined by him as 2.5mm/ft rather than 1:120) on 12mm gauge track for some time. He wasn't alone in being dismayed when Tri-ang foisted 3mm/ft on 12mm gauge on the world but accepted that this was what the trade would follow. He therefore decided to go for 3mm/ft but with a gauge of 13.5mm so effectively following the EM solution to the all too familiar British gauge/scale problem. He ended his article with "Let's have some action on standards from the B.R.M.S.B.before they're too late - they usually are." In August 1957 the first of Edward Beal's articles on "Modelling in TT gauge" also appeared in MRC. In his own earlier handbook on TT he'd adopted the scale of (correction) 1/9th inch to the foot on 12mm gauge apparently devised by the Leeds MRS (something that Bryant disparaged in his July article) but concluded that accepting 3mm/ft scale made sense. As it was a slightly larger scale he felt that this slight change of scale wouldn't render his handbook obsolete. These articles ran for four months but though the fourth in Nobember was to be continued it never was- possibly because Mike Bryant's "Pint Pot" articles began in January 1958 with a taster photo in the December 1957 edition and were far more practical. There were no photos of his own work in the "Modelling in TT Gauge" articles and Bryant had already suggested in his TM article that Beal was writing theoretically. This may have been unfair because ISTR that the final iteration of his West Midlands Railway was built in TT-3 Having read the excitement with which the launch of TT-3 in March 1957 was greeted in Railway Modeller (granted that Peco were ready poised to sell 12mm gauge track components) it's odd to find almost no mention of it in MRC and adverts for TT track and letters to the editor appeared for several months before there was any editorial coverage at all of the new scale. Mike Bryant was offering a scale alternative to TT-3 to readers who, if MRC were their only source of information, would have had no idea what TT-3 even was.

Hi Garry I've been going through a bound volume of MRC and Mike Bryant's book (published by MRC) was first advertised in the May 1958 edition, the same month that Wrenn's TT track finally reached the market after a production delay and the month when part 4 (of 5) of his series describing how to build the 4ft x 2ft "Pint Pot" layout also appeared. In some ways the book was already out of date when it was published as a lot more commercial product had already become available by then including the Tri-ang Castle that had reached the shops in time for Christmas 1957, Welkut track and presumably the long awaited Wrenn track. What I didn't know until about half an hour ago when I found his article on it in the October 1958 MRC was that Mike Bryant was also instrumental in developing Three Millimetre Scale (using a gauge of 13.5mm) and had been working on that alongside his efforts with TT-3 since at least August 1957 when he wrote an initial article on it in MRC. I'll see if I have that edition.

Though it doesn't have a publication date the book was clearly written very soon after the introduction of TT-3 by Tri-ang in 1957 as the only other track then available was ready made from GEM and as spiked components from Peco both of which launched at the same time as Tri-ang. There is an advert in the book for Welkut (standard and fine scale though I'm not sure what that meant) so that must have launched between writing and publication. At the time of writing the only commercial chassis available was from the 0-6-0T Jinty. I strongly suspect that the 4F shown in Fig. 16 as awaiting detailing was the only other loco that Mike Bryant had by then built and I don't think that when he wrote it any loco kits were yet available. On the back cover of my copy the K's advert has just three wagon kits available and describe their 0-6-0 Pannier Tank as "available shortly" (I had one of those and built it not too succesfully for the Jinty chassis that I still have somewhere). Kitmaster didn't arrive at all until 1959 and I think their TT-3 Royal Scot kit appeared a year or so later. There was a lot of excitement about TT-3 when it was first launched and MRC would have wanted to "catch the tide" and publish the handbook as soon as possible even though very little was yet commercially available.

They did and I've got three pre-assembled Pecoway points and a kit for a fourth as well as some of their templates ( called foundation tape) for both points and plain track. I've checked the points against the BRMSB standards for 00 and they seem to comply though I'm not sure what constitutes "correct" sleeper length and spacing when the gauge is different. The 1950 BRMSB standard actually specified the same width (3.5mm) and length (32mm) for both H0 and 00 sleepers which seems anomalous and a length of 36mm for EM and EMF (both then 18.00mm gauge) It is however silent on the subject of sleeper spacing. Pecoway plain track had a sleeper spacing of 9.8mm which equates to 30" in 4mm/ft scale and the sleepers were 32mm x 3.5mm The BRMSB spec for FB rail was 2.25mm equivalent to about code 90 though for BH it was 2.5mm (98thou so effectively code 100) and that applied to 00, H0, EM and EMF. The Pecoway FB rail I have is all code 100 as is the rail used by other manufacturers of components for hand laid track I have from that era. In those days Code 100 does seem to have been the standard rail height and Code 75 was still in the future. Peco did though offer a "Hi-iron" rail available for Maerklin and Trix and I assume that was the code 125 rail you remember. The point kit was 11s/3d inc purchase tax and the ready to plonk (carefully lay on a well prepared trackbed) points were 16s/11d. These appear to be from the early 1950s so I'm sure were a great deal more expensive compared to average earnings than the equivalent Peco products today. I rather agree about the lack of need for a small radius point in BH but I hope they also produce a nominal three foot radius turnout as well as a medium (i.e. 5ft nominal radius) symmetrical turnout.

How do you appropriately address someone with a PhD Big Mac and fries please (In the days before tuition fees someone analysed the average (I don't remember whether that was mean or median) return on investment for various degrees, the investment being the years when you couldn't work, or at least only part time. In terms of lifetime earnings a first degree turned out to be a very sound investment, a master's wasn't bad but a PhD had an overall negative return.

Pay for actors overall is definitely not high but a small proportion of them who are very much in demand can negotiate correspondingly high fees. Very early in my career I ocasionally worked on radio dramas in a lowly capacity handling sound effects and was astonished to discover that I was getting paid significantly more for my weekend's work than any of the actors, some of whom were quite well known from TV.

Definitely! I had this book when I was trying to work in TT-3 as a youngster. I got hold of a copy of it a few years ago and it is still very interesting What I did find frustrating about the handbook back in the early 1960s was the lack of information, particularly a trackplan,about Mike Bryant's own TT-3 layout even though it appeared in several photos in the book. What I didn't know then, and rather wish I had, was that the layout had been the subject of a series of five articles "A Large Quart in a Small Pint Pot" in MRC in 1958. In these he gave blow by blow instructions for building his 4ft x 2ft layout which consisted of an oval with a return loop and a high level terminus. It would have been - unwieldy in 00 but very manageable in TT and had I seen it at the time I think it would probably have suited me rather well. Even for a beginner the articles along with the handbook would have been enough to get a really good start in the hobby. This was Model Railway Constructor Handbook No.1 so did they publish others? As for Minories, though I think Cyril Freezer had been playing around with the plan for a while, he first published it in the April 1957 Railway Modeller specifically to demonstrate the potential of TT-3 scale by fitting a complete double track city terminus into a five foot long folding layout. Though his description didn't actually say that, Minories appeared only a month after RM's coverage of the launch of TT-3. Peco (and Gem) had been working with Rovex to launch their own 12mm gauge trackwork at the same time. Apart from a selection of goods wagons, the first rolling stock offered by Tri-ang was the LMR 0-6-0T "Jinty and a couple of suburban coaches. Main line stock was still a few months away but, if you were prepared to accept the Jinty as representing a suburban passenger tank loco, the operating pattern of Minories did lend itself to using that stock for a far more intensive operation than a typical branch line terminus in the same space. It was also a lot more manageable than the 10ft x 8ft plan based on Bristol Temple Meads that Cyril; Freezer drew up for the launch articles in the March edition. According to these, Sydney Pritchard had been experimenting with TT for some time. The article "TT is Here!", whch I suspect that Pritchard may have had a hand in writing, goes into the same justification for using an oversize scale for the gauge for Briitish rolling stock so familiar from OO "We believe that our more experienced readers are fully aware that it is essential to use wheels with overscale treads and flanges if succesful running is to be achieved." The March 1957 article does also refer to "TT-25" in showing a selection of the American locomotives produced by H.P. Products Inc.The 2.5mm/ft description of the scale would not of course have been used either by all imperial America or all metric Europe and 1/10 inch to the foot or just 1:120 is just as simple (and to be strictly accurate it should be 2.54mm/ft) .

Indeed. It's in complete contrast to a memory I have from the winter of 1967-8 when I'd visited Tavistock by bus from Plymouth only for unexpected snow to start and the buses to be cancelled. Tavistock North station was a haven of warmth with a friendly station master, nice cosy waiting room (I remember a roaring fire but it was probably only gas as I think were the station platform lamps) until the two car DMU from Exeter and Oakhampton emerged from the driving snow and took me back to the city. Needless to say the staton closed a few months later.

Unfortunately for me the September issue of Model Rail was out before the end of July. That meant that I couldn't get the August edition from my local WHS on Monday (still July) so presumably will have to get it as a back-number. Publication dates do get a little crazy sometimes.

Hi Jim Probably worth getting hold of a copy of the current (August) Model Rail as it's a special on compact layouts. I don't usually see it but someone brought it to a meeting today and I'm definitely going to buy it.

Hi Jim You do only need one power connector on all three of your plans so you don't need the one you've marked with a query on the third plan. In fact you could wire all three plans with a single feed even with live frog points . I do though think that you've got one siding too many on the first and second plans as it makes a couple of the sidings long enough for only one wagon which actually reduces the shunting possibilities. Inglenook has room for three wagons on the two shorter sidings and five (the completed "train" eventually) on the longer siding and generally speaking a smaller number of longer sidings gives you more shunting than a larger number of shorter sidings in the same space, partly because points take up space but also because longer sidings allow for shuffling wagons into the right order. So long as you're only using a single controller, wiring isn't really the dark art that people seem to think (well not until you get to slips) . Even with live frogs the simple rule is that power should always be fed to the toe end and never to the frog itself. If you look at any of Cyril Freezer's plans in the Peco plan books he always showed where the feeds and breaks should be to achieve that which is useful even if you don't follow those exact plans. I think you're right to start with something simple and a development of Inglenook will get something you can enjoy operating very quickly. .