Pacific231G

Sorry. I wasn't being entirely clear. Yes that is the case and it is 12o (according to Peco, Templot and my own protractor) but the long points have a shallower but curved frog and are then curved beyond the frog to get to that same angle. That's not necessarily unprototypical but would never be found on a crossover. While using the same final exit angle makes it easier to put together quite complex track formations it makes it hard to get the flowing bespoke pointwork that was very characteristic of steam era railways in Britain. Elsewhere, there seems to have been more use of standard pre -assembled switches and crossings *. I have a copy of the 1940 British Military Railway Engineering manual. Apart from using derailers rather than catch points, it follows standard British railway practice of the time for everything from track construction to interlocking and signalling but the military had standardised on just three turnouts, No. 6, No. 8, and No. 12, using a standard switch and lead for each. Given that most of us consider a No 6 to be rather generous its notes are interesting "The No. 6 will only be used in very congested areas such as docks and where small shunting engines usually operate; the No. 8 is the standard for general yard and station work; the No. 12 will be used only in places where high speeds are expected" I also liked "The laying of diamond crossings, slip roads, scissors crossings or similar complicated track layouts should be avoided wherever possible. These layouts require special fittings, are difficult to lay accurately and to maintain" It does seem that the Royal Engineers also had a favourite size of turnout, clearly not because it was a "very pretty size" though in engineering what is good often looks good. As well as minimising the need for onsite cutting of rail, standardisation made it far easier to maintain adequate stocks for use where they were needed, often in a hurry. It strikes me that the needs of a military quartermaster may have had quite a lot in common with those of a model shop owner. *Though they obviously inherited far more including a great deal of bullhead from the old companied, SNCF standardised on just five crossings (nos. 7,9,12,20 & 30 plus a no. 6 used only for symmetrical split lead points in marshalling yards) and three standard switches (with deviation angles of 0o18' , 0025' and 10 )

Thanks for that Martin, it's interesting. I'd rather assumed that for a prototype turnout with a crossing angle as tight as 1/6th you'd always need the sharper deflection at the switch. I agree about the 120 final divergence angle. It seems to be a peculiarity of their long turnout and, though I know why it was adopted by Peco, it does lessen the advantages in terms of avoiding buffer locking etc of using them in crossovers . Their short and medium turnouts have the same crossing as each other but different leads and, so far as I can tell, the medium turnout has virtually identical geometry to other nominally three foot radius turnouts I've compared it with. I did wonder about where on the prototype a crossing as tight as a no. 6 would actually be used.

Hi Stephen I think you misundestood the comment. It was made on one of the American forums and "premium product" means that though it was more expensive than some of its US competitors the extra was worth paying. Streamline was already popular and they seemed pleased that a version of it based on American trackwork had now been introduced. By the way, don't bet that the new bullhed track won't be used for H0.

Hi Martin Thanks for the comparative diagrams I've just been looking at the file in Templot. I don't know that Peco needs to feel nervous. Has any company offering a finer scale product been criticised for its previous offering being less fine scale? I looked at the reaction to the introduction of 83 Line in North America (I was thinking of using it for something else) and it didn't seem to lead to any criticism of the existing Streamline offering. Generally, Streamline was seen as a premium brand amongst RTL offerings and it was great that they were now offering a more specific scale development of it for American modellers. There was very little criticism of the bulky latching mechanism, the first thing that most advice to improve the appearance of Peco points goes for followed by the checkrails, and almost none of the switches being loose heeled. Streamline does "represent" proper railway track, though not as closely as many would wish, and it is a giant leap up from the various setracks. In any case some people will condemn anything OO as a toy not a model, (an absurd view IMHO). Something I have genuinely been wondering about is this. If the new points for BH or their equivalents from SMP etc. are roughly equivalent to an A6, this is a turnout that I understand would only be found in very low speed sidings. So, if you use a scale model of that A6 to represent a far longer main line turnout does it look the part, albeit compressed, or are there are other differences that should be taken into account?

Individulay wasn't replaced by Streamline. I had though thought that Peco had discontinued it for 00 and H0 a few years ago but I'm looking at an advert for it in last month's Continental Modeller. The currrent offering is Code 82 FB with wood type and concrete sleepers, point timbering, "Pandrol type fixings", sliding fixings for switch rails, as well as code 80 conductor rail and chairs. It's actually quite hard to find it on Peco's website but at least nine products still exist in the range. The Individulay range used to also include items like preformed crossing Vs, wing rails and check rails but presumably the market for these became too small as those using it were more than likely to make up their own. What I can't determine is when bullhead rail was discontinued for 00 and H0 and when Pecoway, as assembled track and points on fibre bases, was withdrawn. It's likely to have stayed in theiir catalogue long after they stopped advertising it but that too continued well into the Streamline era. . Possibly for the overseas market- double champignon was for example very widely used in France even by some metre gauge lines- but more perhaps for the dedicated minority of modellers working in British H0. I can't see any reason why the joiners wouldn't also be relevant for EM or indeed any other scale where Code 95 would be appropriate.

But think of the alternative. I just had a nightmare vision in which the Lawyers were funding their First Class seasons with fees from disputes between Network Rail and TOCs using different gauges on the same line.

Hi Martin There is no mystery about it at all. They put it on the market alongside their existing Pecoway and Individulay ranges and the competition from Formoway, Gem, Wrenn and others and very many modellers started using it. OO is a compromise so I'm not sure what "actually OO" means. OO means 4mm/ft scale models on 16.5mm gauge track . In any case it's not the only compromise that most modellers have to make- the incredibly sharp curves and "gasworks sidings" pointwork almost all of use are an even bigger compromise and clearly many modellers preferred the "longer finescale look" of Streamline over the "correct" BRMSB sleeper spacing. This is an original Pecoway 3ft radius turnout using BRMSB standards against a code 100 Streamline medium turnout. The geometry is identical but the Streamline point appears to be longer. This is an optical illusion of course but for many people it has clearly worked and it's surely a matter of choosing what best gives the impression you want not of "correctness". I've seen no sign at all in Railway Modellers from that period of any attempt to "push" streamline even less of a "pretence carefully observed" or of anyone being "expected to keep shtum" and I'm afraid that, though I'm sure that wasn't your intention, it does sound like a bit of an attack on Cyril Freezer's integrity. Given the number of EM layouts and those built with trackwork other than Peco that appeared in RM what's your evidence for a pretence? I agree that bullhead track has a particular "look" of its own that is very evocative and it's great that there will at last be a bullhead RTL track available but, at the time Peco introduced Streamline, BR was already committed to replacing all bullhead with FB. I doubt if anyone would have predicted then that there would still be a significant market for model BH track sixty or so years later.

In principle a Kadee coupler shouldn't work at all, at least not its delayed coupling mode, without some relative sideways movement of the two coupler heads but if you don't have room for the standard gear box there are more compact ones like the #252 and #233 gear boxes similar to the rather older one on the left hand wagon below. The right hand wagon, which is a modern Piko model, is fitted with NEM boxes in a close coupling unt and you can see that they are smaller. It's worth exploring the Kadee website http://www.kadee.com and their catalogue and primer are both available as pdf downloads. I've tried Bachman EZmate couplers that have a solid shank (without the articulation incorporated in Kadee NEM263 couplers) in some wagons retrofitted with fixed NEM boxes and the results were very unsatisfatory. I assume that all of Bachman's NEM boxes are in close coupling units so do have sideways movement Note that the standard NMRA draft gear boxes, moulded into the chassis of most US stock and also supplied separately by Kadee and others, are NOT the same as NEM pockets. Apart from being at a different height - the scale height of a real North American draft gear box- they also allow room for a centring spring arrangement of some sort and have a separate lid that is snapped or screwed to the body after the coupler shank has been inserted. Because US stock doesn't have side buffers, close coupling is less of an issue though the standard Kadee couplers come with short medium and long shanks. NEM boxes on the other hand are usually a single moulding of an open box into which the swallow tail of a standard NEM coupler shank is a tight fit and locks into place so the coupler is a rigid mount in the box. This as you say is why the extra articulation is fitted.

I have a photocopy of the Maurice Dean Portreath article from the August-September RM. I cant post the plan for copyright reasons but if anyone wants to see it for private research PM me. Dean's Portreath didn't actually last long as a visit to the Culm Valley line inspired him to use the same baseboards for a fairly complete model of the branch. For that he didn't use the "Dean Fiddle Yard" (as CJF referred to it) trick of hiding it behind the terminus with a link to provide a continuous run but instead had an imaginary "junction yard" fully scenicced in front of one of the two through stations. Maurice Dean seems to have been a serial builder of relatively small layouts with most only appearing once in print. I don't know if he was a regular exhibitor. His subsequent layouts that I've seen in RM and MRN were based on real locations but compressed. They included Wantage (00 in 4x2ft6in with very tight curves !) , Welshpool NG, Jersey and the Rye and Camber Tramway but there may have been others . He tended to use a solid baseboard and lay an oval with a passing loop (which presumably served as a fiddle yard for out and back working) then have the terminus effectively as a branch inside the oval as in Portreath and as used by Awdry for Ffarquhar. I was looking at Dave Johnson's Portreath article in a bound volume of RM recently but it only had the name and a GW theme in common with Maurice Dean's Portreath and was a well modelled but fairly conventional linear BLT-fiddle yard.

That's really good to hear. I hope I'll be able to see the layout at an exhibition sometime. I enjoyed your video of the layout. Good to see one properly shot and edited and it does show off the layout's operational potential.

I think I saw it in person but I was very young. From published photos of the original Ffarquhar I'd say you've done a brilliant job of recreating it and I can almost see the late Reverend himself at the controls. I wonder if you might get in touch with Christopher Awdry. I found the Cyril Freezer plan that I referred to in #38. It was "layouts for the modeller no. 3" in RM no 11 (still published by Ian Allan) in July-August 1950. It was "based on the principles laid down by Maurice Dean and followed by Colson" and was for a 6ft x 5ft layout with a central operating well and a through station with a goods siding where Awdry just had a halt. There's no reference to his visiiting Mauruce Dean in that article but he did have some photos (though no plan) of a similar layout built by E.F. Colson in a butler's pantry 6ft x 4ft-5 ft 6 ins in his Editor's Notebook in the January-February edition no 8. following a visit. Colson's layout was "based on and inspired by" Maruce Dean's Portreath. Colson and Dean both lived in Britsol a short walk from one another so I assume they were acquainted.

The goods facilities look a lot better with this plan and I can envisage one of those multi-storey goods depots like the one that used to be just outside Paddington . I hope i'm not being too negative but, unless you've got it to work well on another layout, I'd be very dubious about using curved fiddle yard sidings, especially with fairly tight radii. We tried it on an L shaped group layout a few years ago and, despite very precise track laying (not by me!), it was a complete disaster with longer passenger trains derailing first time every time .That fiddle yard used points to access a fan of sidings and I suspect a 1800 curved traverser would be even trickier. In the end we went for a more conventional U.

Littlehampton, particularly in earlier days, strikes me as having considerable potential as a very compact MLT. I don't know whether coastal trains in steam days came in from Brighton and went out towards Chichester and vice versa as they do know but if so that would make for pretty intensive operation. The station site was usefully narrow between two one-sided streets of terraced houses with a small MPD on one side of the platforms and a narrow goods yard on the other. It also had the significant added bonus of a short harbour branch that kicked back from the goods yard usually worked by Terriers. Apparently before the war there were even ferry services from Littlehampton to Honfleur and the Channel Islands (I've not yet been able to find out much about that but it gave the Steam Packet pub its name) The port assumed some importance for and after D-Day. The harbour branch closed in the 1960s. In its later years it handled coal and timbers but probably a larger range of cargo in earlier times. There are some aerial photos of it during the 1920s here http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/asearch?name=Littlehampton&gazetteer=Littlehampton&PARISH=Littlehampton& COUNTY=West%20Sussex Littlehampton also has a couple of particularly good fish and chip shops- I went to Oscas on Pier Street which had the longest queue and it deserved to but check Trip Advisor and beware of being mugged by the local Herring Gulls while eating them on the quayside.

Excellent. I'm impressed at this much progress in just a couple of months. It already seems full of appropriate atmosphere and I can almost hear the flat brummy vowels (I was born there!) . It's obviously a bit longer than CJF's plan so I'd be interested to know the overall dimensions and are the points medium or long?

If memory serves I'm pretty sure that, more often than not, the station pilot at Oxford in the last years of steam was a Hall. Am I right in thinking that a station pilot was different from the locos at larger termini dedicated to moving trains between the platforms and the carriage sidings where they were cleaned and serviced? As I recall, at Paddington these were often pannier tanks. Though there's no reason to only use the plan for this, Cyril Freezer based Minories on the idea of the inner terminus of a busy suburban line where an incoming train's loco would wait to be released by the departure of the train it had recently brought in then move to throat end of the station ready to take another train out. During this it would also take on water and the whole process was more efficient if tank locos were used. This led to some interestingly intense working that was rather kiilled off by the introduction of push-pull and MU trains. Before that happened, a lot of work was done by traffic departments to rationalise the use of platforms and locos in order to squeeze as many trains in and out of increasingly busy termini at peak times. At one terminus I know of, and probably others, they even installed water cranes at the buffer end of platforms so that a loco that had just come in could take water while it was waiting to be released and so be ready to move straight to the head of the train it would take out. It all seems to have been a bit like planning F1 pit stops to shave a couple of minutes here and there.

Ahh, but isn't that an example of misusing stupid to mean ignorant?

I'd understood that, apart from tourist and commuter trains, passenger rail travel in NZ had effectively closed down. Is that in fact the situation or has there been a revival in recent years?

Thanks Dave. I suspected it might still be used in other British dialects but couldn't find any references to that. Clearly the 1990 OED was wrong and it should have been "US, Canadian, Yorkshire, and.....past part. of GET

"Used to" meant rather further back than the 1950s; several hundred years further back! "Gotten" seems to have largely died out from mainstream British English by about the 1700s but it had been used in England since the fourth century so long before most Europeans even knew that the Americas existed. Presumably because it had died out before they were being colonsed, gotten doesn't seem to be part of the Australian or New Zealand dialects of English so may only be widely used in N. America.

Disinterested and uninterested do have very different meanings; I would be worried if a judge were uninterested in a trial but alarmed if she were not disinterested in the outcome. However, the difference between less and fewer is not so certain. I use fewer for countable quantities and less for other quantities as in "there are fewer triangles of chocolate in the new Toblerone bar" but "there is less chocolate in the new Toblerone bar". and that's what advocates of "correct" English will say is correct. However, my 1990 OED defines less as "smaller in extent, degree, duration, number etc." so it would be within accepted usage to say "There are less train spotters now than there were in the 1950s." I prefer fewer in that sentence and I'm sure you do as well but it doesnt make "less" wrong. Lexicographers will always make it clear that their job is to map the language as it is, not to define how people ought to use it. Many people do use "literally" in a figurative way so the compilers of the OED would not be doing their job if they failed to record that. I don't like "I literally died laughing" either but it can't be taken literally except perhaps in a seance. Similarly if an actor says "The audience was dead tonight" we all know they weren't in a theare full of corpses. Some people seem to be very adept at typing on the phone (sadly including some drivers). Personally I find it infinitely more difficult than using a proper keyboard and I don't think I've ever posted here from my phone. (That figurative misuse of infinitely is one of my own pet peeves; if it were infinitely more difficult then it really wouid be literally impossible. I do though find it a bloody sight harder)

I've seen it spelt center in London and it was "correctly" spelt. What's wrong with "gotten"? It's a past participle of "get" with a slightly different meaning from "got" and used to be in everyday use in Britain. Though it has largely died out here, it still appears in phrases such as "ill gotten gains". In American English it seems to have been seen as rather rustic but that may have just been snobbery and it is still a living word. I don't see anything wrong with a word we've lost returning. I also don't know whether gotten remained in other English dialects such as Australia or New Zealand but it wouldn't surprise me.

I detect a cunning plan here. Streamline was supposed to make layouts look larger by using scale 3.5mm/ft sleeper spacing, advertised as "The Scale Longer Look" as I recall. Conversely, a wider "steam era" sleeper spacing, will make layouts look more cramped. People will build larger layouts to compensate and so will need to buy more track. G&Ts all round.

Curious. I was of course only using it as an example but I think there WAS an anomaly in the TAF I based my fictional one on. To avoid going completely OT I'll PM you.

Not any more I haven't. (Editing posts does have a slightly 1984 Ministry of Truth feeling about it)

If it were, we'd have to abolish cars (and bicycles).