Pacific231G

If you liked that you'll love this. http://geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2011/08/08/mad-on-the-internet-full.jpg

Don't worry Bernard. Model Railway News and other publications couldn't tell the difference between 00 and OO and H0 and HO either; both appeared fairly indifferently and were I suspect down to the choice of the the typesetter rather than any editorial decisions. It's only because we read things on computer screens that we can even tell that there is a difference. . In H0/HO the difference of course is that HO is the American 1:87.1 scale and H0 is Europe's 1:87 scale (as defined by the NMRA and MOROP respectively) In Britain there was some considerable confusion about whether 0 gauge should be a number (as it came in the gauge series 3,2,1,0,later followed by 00 and 000) or a letter but in Europe it seems to always have been considered a number. Iin France 0 gauge modellers call themselves Zéroistes and their equivalent of the Gauge O Guild is the Cercle du Zéro (a neat play on words) They do though pronounce H0 as "ahsh ohh" The Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Modellbahnbau Spur 0 definitely uses a zero not a letter O.

I have a vague memory of seeing an 0-6-0 diesel shunter at Ft. William while watching trains around the old station in the mid sixties. I think it was shunting oil tank wagons but I'm fairly certain I never saw it handling carriage stock. I was mostly watching from the lochside path so may have walked a bit further up the line from the station throat.

Impacted as in teeth does have a specific meaning in dentistry. This is from the NHS website "An impacted tooth is simply a tooth that is blocked or ‘stuck’ under the gum and cannot erupt or grow into the correct position. Any tooth can become impacted but the most frequent tooth to be impacted is a wisdom tooth" We don't speak to one another from prepared scripts so spoken language, is often mangled. That's likely to be particularly true if what someone says, particularly a police officer, has potential legal implications. Situation is a neutral word so avoids a prejudicial statement such as "We have a crime here" - it's unlikely but not inconceivable that an automatic weapon could have been discharged accidentally A prepared statement from the police on the situation described would certainly be more carefully worded but probably just as tortuous. "The suspect is alleged to have fired multiple shots some of which hit a number of vehicles in the vicinity of the apparent incident." .

Ozexpatriate, on 13 Jun 2017 - 16:55, said: "Left full rudder" "Aye aye sir, left full rudder" Although US ships do use port and starboard for most things, in 1913 the USN standardised on orders being given in terms of the movement of the rudder (and so the ship's head) rather than the movement of the helm or tiller which had been given as port and starboard . NAVY DEPARTMENT Washington, D. C., May 5, 1913 ORDERS GOVERNING THE MOVEMENTS OF THE RUDDER. 1. On and after July 1, 1913, the present designations “starboard” and “port” governing movements of a ship’s helm are hereby ordered discontinued in orders or directions to the steersman, and the terms “right” and “left,” referring to movement of the ship’s head, shall thereafter be used instead. 2. The orders as to rudder angle shall be given in such terms as “Ten degrees rudder; half-rudder; standard rudder; full rudder;” etc., so that a complete order would be “Right–Half-rudder,” etc. 3. Commanders-in-chief and commanding officers acting independently may, in their discretion, institute the above changes at an earlier date. F. D. ROOSEVELT Acting Secretary of the Navy. If you're building a large navy with sailors most of whom had probably never even seen the sea before, having one less thing to remember in a crisis could well have saved precious seconds In line with changes in international shipping conventions the Royal Navy made a similar change in 1931 from movement of the helm to movement of the rudder but had a transtional period of twlve months when steering orders were given as "starboard right" and "port left"after which they apparently reverted to simply port and starboard but now referrng to the wheel, rudder and ship's head not the probably imaginary "helm". I think the Merchant Navy simply used "wheel port" and wheel starboard" to make the transition. The US practice of giving wheel orders in left and right is out of line with International practice which does use port and starboard (As with aviation, a specialist form of English is the international standard for shipping but there too the Americans tend to be out of line with us and the rest of the world) It all remnds me of Michael Green's definition of A Coarse Sailor.... one who in a crisis forgets nautical language and shouts, "For God's sake turn left".

"Going forward" sounds dynamic and thrusting whereas "in future" is far too neutral for the sort of people who like to think they're doing something important and significant during their endless "brain storming" "seminars" "strategy workshops" etc. ad infinitum. It also has one more syllable and that's important though not so important as using "At this moment in time" (seven syllables) instead of "now" (only one syllable) I sometimes think it would be worth doing an MBA just to be able to run rings round all those people who have one and actually believe it.

You might find this interesting.http://forums.e-train.fr/trains/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31785&start=8190 This is page 547 of the "Paris a la Mer" thread that's been running in the loco-revue forum (roughly equivalent to RMWeb) since 2009. Essentially this is a collaborative project in which individual modellers from all over the country create a string of layouts (or sometimes just modules) that can be joined together in umpteen configurations representing an imaginary journey between Paris Montparnasse and the old Cherbourg Maritime station in the period between 1900 and 1930 The collaboration seems to have happened mainly via the forum and some of the results so far were on display at the Trainsmania exhibition in Lille at the end of April. The common theme is to model the Etat railway in its glory days and the project has been driven by Roland Arzul, a member of the Dieppe MRC "Littorail 76" who has a website dedicated to the Etat. http://roland.arzul.pagesperso-orange.fr/ At 556 pages (and growing) The entire Paris a la Mer thread is a bit daunting but pages 547 and 548 are largely about what was exhibited at the Lille show. If your French is up to it or you don't find the auto-translation too hilarious it's probably worth a good delve. What I saw at Lille was a very ambitious model of the old Gare Montparnasse complete with trams and a metro station, a model of the old Cherbourg Gare Maritme and a few intermediate sections. P.S. I think Paris a la Mer used the FFMF modular standard between layouts though there was some discussion about that. There was never an intention to have a continuous run (the clue is in the name) so module lengths would have been irrelevant. The old joke that "I like standards, there are so many to choose from" definitely applies to model railway modules. In H0 alone there were at least three represented at the Lille show and in the specification for their own Littorail 3000 standard (which is for visually separated proscenium "box" modules) the Dieppe Club,compare it with no less than five other H0 standards- NMRA, Module FFMF, Module 3000, Module Junior, Fremo 87 none of them completely compatible with one another and even the double track separation varies (45mm for Littorail, 46mm for FFMF and 50.8mm for NMRA).

I also know what railway modellers do but what I mainly get out of exhibitions is the chance to see what others are doing, discuss it with them, and seek ideas and inspiration that I might be able to use myself. For me, that's more about scenery, especially buildings, and interesting track plans. I'd prefer to see an interesting piece of operation than a sequence of trains passing by but agree about models representing something. There are a few layouts that I can just lose myself in like Pempoul where the trains passing through are almost a bonus or Bradfield Gloucester Square where it's the authentic working of a main line terminus that fascinates. We're all different in our expectations of course but for me inspiration and technique are more important than direct relevance. I model French railways in H0 but one of my favourite exhibitions is ExpEM. In theory there should be nothing there for me but in practice I always find plenty to inspire and interest me and most importantly that sort of specialist show generally provides far more opportunity for disussion and picking of brains. The sign that always irritates me is the one pointing towards another hall saying "More Trains" as if our hobby is just about model trains; there is far more to railway modelling than that.

Two friends mentioned last weekend that they'd had same problem, one used a card reader and the other connected the camera to the computer to upload photos. I think they both use Macs so wondered if the operating system had a glitch in it. It probably won't help the OP but, though I use a PC, I've started to lock the card so it's read only before inserting it in the card reader. I don't know whether that gives complete protection as I'm not sure what the locking tab on the card actually does but if the problem is housekeeping files that the computer writes to the card then this should stop it. What sort of camera are you using? I've seen reports that the Mac writes files to the card that help with indexing and file retrieval and Fuji cameras see these as an error https://www.slrlounge.com/psa-fuji-users-lock-your-sd-cards-when-accessing-files-on-a-mac-to-avoid-corruption/

Thanks David It was the expiry of Kadee's patent that allowed a number of "clones" to appear using the same magnematic principle though they couldn't simply copy Kadee and MicroTrains' designs. I've used MicroTrains Magnematic couplers in H0e and ISTR that delayed uncoupling was far less succesful than I'd found it to be in H0. I've also tried Bachmann's clones in H0 but still find Kadee more reliable. I guess that their sixty plus years of experience counts for something

I tend to keep and store locomotives in their original boxes (where I have them) along with their paperwork and bits where I have those and mostly do that for coaches as well. Most of my wagons with little second hand value, live in Bachmann Collectors Club boxes (or their plain equivalent) and two of those hold the Kadee equipped wagons and four wheel coaches that I use on my current layout. For some of the more desirable items among those I have kept the boxes but I'm probably kiddling myself- the wagons that might be worth something are generally the ones I want to keep anyway- that's why I bought them. I suspect that if I do flog off a bunch of unwanted wagons it may be better to do it as batches rather than trying to sell them individually. I'm gradually sorting my stock (H0) into those I want to use (even sometime!!) and those I really should sell-on and the latter are being stored separately- in their original boxes where available.

Before they started building Crossrail the main modern freight facility at Paddington was an aggregates depot!! In general though I'd agree that bulk loads such as coal (apart from loco coal) certainly oil and definitely chemicals were less common in the immediate precints of urban termini (though the coal yards could be very close, as at Marylebone) but the goods depot immediately alongside Birmingham Moor Street was handling a lot of building materials such as bricks and bagged cement as well as every kind of general goods. It depends a lot of course on the period you're modelling.

If you're going into the garden you might want to consider 0 gauge. From 1948 to 1966 Bill Banwell (who with Frank Applegate effectively invented the terminus to fiddle yard with their Maybank layout before the war) used to exhibit parts of his 0 gauge Maycroft layout as a demonstration outdoor layout at the MRC's Easter exhibitions. One of Maycroft's stations was housed in a mocked up garden shed (with front and side wallsl but no roof and open at the back for viewing) with a loop of "outdoor" track running in front of it in a mocked up garden*. The rest of the time the station (one or other of two) lived in a real shed connected to the outdoor running tracks of the layout. Bill Banwell was one of the real pioneers of the hobby but unfortunately wasn't much into writing about it and I've only ever found one article by him- a description of Maycroft. A very detailed (and inspiring) article about Maybank in the August 1934 MRN was written by someone else. *According to an article about Bill Banwell in the December 1975 Model Railways, the "garden" was laid on tarpaulin to protect the floor of Central Hall and one year included a small lawn. The grass had to be cut every morning before the exhibition opened as the heat and light in the hall caused it to grow about two inches each day though by the end of the week it was finished.

David. Do Dapol's knuckle couplers work on the same principle as the MicroTrains Magnematic couplers and are they compatible with them ? MicroTrains was the brand name for the N gauge version of the Kadee coupler before becoming a separate company when Keith and Dale Edwards (Kadee) went their separate ways. I use Kadees in H0 scale and used MicroTrains couplers for an H0e layout a good few years ago so wondered what else is now available that would be suitable for an H0m layout I'm working on.

Errr. I didn't actually say that it was more interesting, every layout I've ever completed has been some kind of variation on the terminus- fiddle yard theme, but it certainly is a different approach and therefore a worthy alternative to the watching the trains go by roundy-round and the BLT. Some of the larger exhibition layouts would have room for genuine A to C via B operation but you only ever seem to see that on often relatively small NG layouts. I wonder if our propensity for stations has something to with control of trains in Britain (and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent in the rest of Europe) being by the signals but in N. America, particularly away from the trunk lines, being more about the train crew often being responsible for the complete operation of their train according to a train order. It's interesting that the terrminus to fiddle yard was very much a post-war development apparently based on Bill Banwell and Frank Applegate's pre-war 0 gauge Maybank layout. This was itself a response to them as youngsters not having space for a "complete" layout but instead having access to an unusually long narrow shed. As soon as they got their own houses after the war they both seem to have gone for 0 gauge garden railways with plenty of scope for long runs. I couldn't agree more with the virtues of large scale shunting layouts at exhibtions. They seem far more useful as inspiration for youngsters (and grown-ups!!) than the round and round "Thomas" layout.

1. I've never come across Railway Magazine Modeller, presumably because being free it's not stocked in WHS and there are almost no model shops near me. Can anyone describe it please? 2. I think you may be right and I thought that was Hornby Magazine's original intention. The French publisher Editions Loco-Revue do a bi-monthly "beginners" magazine called Clés pour le Train Miniature (keys to the model railway) which is smaller and less glossy than their main magazines Loco-Revue and Voie-Libre (focussed on narrow gauge modelling) but also less than half the price. This focuses on getting into the hobby and achievable layout projects. It is available from newsagents and I've bought the odd copy in France. They're obviously not trying to compete with their own main titles and the idea seems to be to attract new people into the hobby with the expectation that once established they'll graduate to these.

Someone. I can't remember who, made the observation that American modellers tend to model railways while we tend to model staions (I'd add to that "...and French modellers tend to build scenes for trains to run through") There is of course massive overlap in that. It's easy to put the transatlantic preference for complete railways down to available space but there have been plenty of plans in Model Railoader, particularly early ones, that manage to cram entire short lnes with several depots into spaces that most of us would probably devote to a single station. The results may have looked rather like spaghetti but even in say 4ft x 8ft the operator could take out the daily peddlar freight (pick-up goods) from the junction and work it up the line serving various industries and small depots along the way. It's not of course an exclusively American approach. One of my favourite early layouts was Maurice Deane's Culm Valley Branch built on a hollow 6ft 6in x 6ft main board with a 4ft 6in x 18in extension which allowed operaton from a yard representing the junction to Uffculme, Culmstock and Hemyock all three being operationally accurate models (though considerably compressed of course) of the respective stations. The yard was in completely open view and modelled as a yard rather than offstage though directly in front of and slightly below Culmstock station. Though it goes against the desire for photographic realism I think there may be something in the idea of emphasising modelling the proper operation of a railway and they're not entirely mutually exclusive.

The funny thing is that though I designed my own layout http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/102278-shunting-is-it-all-its-cracked-up-to-be/page-2&do=findComment&comment=1993721 to work as a shunting plank I still tend to fit a fiddle yard, even just the simplest one which is plain track and a loco lift, I find it rather unsatisfying for the train to not arrive and depart, even though I know it's only going just far enough to clear the "stage". To do that in minimum length I always rather liked Rev. P.H. Heath's "Piano Line" though that benefits from a couple of extra sidings.

I also have a BLT layout (that should probably be TLS - terminus du ligne secondaire because it's French H0) that is very small - only a tad over 5ft long plus fiddle yard (if I'm not using it as a shunting plank) and it's basically an inglenook with a loop (also long enough for five wagons and a third kick back private siding (to a wine warehouse) From this and operating other people's layouts I've come to the conclusion that having three "destinations" for wagons makes for a lot more interest than two and the third being a kick-back makes shunting quite a challenging and therefore interesting process especially if a passenger train has to arrive before the goods has finished shuntin as you have to have completed all the loop moves before it arrives. I've been looking at a real small terminus that would also have handled wagon loads of pit props for South Wales collieries. It's actually in SW France and the pit props were produced in local sawmills in the forest then shipped to S. Wales in vast quantities by train and then by ship from Bayonne and Bordeaux and then by rail again. Apparently the maritime pines grown down there produced pit props that gave plenty of audible warning before they gave way which made them very popular with miners.

Really nice layout David I've been following this through the planning stage and it's coming out really well. I have teenage memories of Fort William station from family holidays to the Western Highland in the mid 1960s (I think my Dad must have liked midges- and rain !!) With steam ending and sorely missed it was the first place where I actually enjoyed watching diesels (class 27s?). For such a simple station, when things did happen, the flurry of loco changes along with restaurants, sleepers and the observation car coming on and off made it fascinating. I think you've really captured the atmosphere of the station as I still remember it.

I shall await developments with interest. I've translated the Bernard Valett's article so have PMd the text to you.

While looking for something else about modules I came across this. http://littorail76.chez.com/pdf/bossons.pdf It's in French but the photos and dimensions are pretty self evident and colle vinylique is just PVA glue, His use of magnetic buttons (presumably Niodymium) as baseboard joiners is interesting as is the use of gesso to protect the cardboard, I've built baseboards using foam core board (carton plume in French) and generally use the thinner version for the walls of buildings in H0 but have never thought of simply using mounting or other card for baseboards.

The traditional way round that was to make the leading character Canadian which would be fairly credible in most branches. Most Americans would probably not spot the difference from the version of English actually spoken by the American star. The American belief that they won WW2 all on their own is annoying but of course we suffer from the delusion that "Britain fought alone" between the fall of France and Pearl Harbor. That is pretty insulting to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many others and particularly to the two and a half million Indians who fought with us in the largest volunteer army in history.

Hi Jack You might be able to get S scale track which at 22.43mm (0.833inches) scales out at 976mm for 1:43.5..I think Shinohara do track for it but that would be to US standards. it's a fairly popular scale for scratchbuilders in Britain- there were two or three S scale layouts at an exhibition I was at at last weekend- and the S Scale Society http://www.s-scale.org.uk has track components and wheelsets but only for its members (£25 a year) I don't know how they'd react to someone joining in order to get components for Om but the 3mm Society were quite happy a few years ago when I did that to get 12mm gauge components for H0m. Are GEMME still active in France? I used to be a member when they organised Expometrique. They seemed to go a bit quiet when Travers des Secondaires broke away and took the exhibition with them and I lost touch with them.

Bonjour Jack Thanks for this very insightful posting. I stopped subscribing to Voie Libre when too many of the articles became H0e,0e or even about British 009 layouts and there seemed to be less and less about the metre gauge railways I was really interested in. I suppose H0e requires far less space than H0m and because N is so popular and TT is not there is far more available just as with 0e and 16.5mm gauge mechanisms. It's curious though given that there were about 21 000kms of public metre gauge railways in France but only about 450kms of public 60cm railways (and just one 12km line using the 760mm represented by H0e) Loco-revue did run an interesting article in March on using a wagon card system for operating goods trains on a layout with just one junction station so perhaps there is hope yet and even a simple layout can provide interesting operation. I've also noticed that a number of home layouts featured in L-R use Kadee couplers which does suggest an interest in shunting and operating trains rather than just running them through the scenery. It is true though that of the eighty layouts at Trainsmania, I only saw shunting on perhaps six of them (including on a couple of the "Croisées de l'Etroit") and two of those were the British built layouts "Pempoul" and "Mers les Bains" . Perhaps it's time to introduce French modellers to "Inglenook Sidings"