Pacific231G

Looking again at the tracks round there that makes sense. So the pier railway was still in use while I was there. Interesting as it looked derelict and I never saw any signs of life. Presumably by then it was just used if they wanted to get some material out onto the pier. I can't remember if the crane was still on the pier. I think that had its own third rail running on the wall presumably to give greater stability.

Yes if you remove the trip pins they still couple perfectly well and you can uncouple them from above by twisting something like a cocktail stick or the uncoupling tool that Kadee supplies in the knuckle. I gather that a lot of American modellers now prefer to use them this way especially on the type of large layout where operators are switching trains at a number of local yards as they find it more realistic to be the brakeman (or whoever uncouples cars on American trains) cutting out cars anywhere rather than doing the Kadee shuffle over a magnet. The only problem I can see is that for coaching stock with corridor connections it would be quite hard to get at the couplers to release them but that doesn't matter if they are semi-permanent rakes. .

I'll be very interested to see the results you get from this.

I know some people have reported good results with these but must admit that my experimens with them have had very little joy. The Neodymium produce a strong but very focussed field but I found this was too strong where you didn't want it and weak where you did. I found that they tended not to attract the pins enough to open the knuckles but when they did pulled them hard over. They probably warrant further investigation. I've been using Kadees on my French H0 layout for years and with the surface mounted permanent magnets haven't noticed any problems with steel axles. I guess that the field strength at axle height is simply too weak and these magnets do depend on being very close to the ends of the pins.

There was some kind of political scandal about the planned redevelopment of the old CP station site that had led to the railway being cut back to its present terminus on the site of the old loco depot. I think this involved the Mayor (who ended up in prison for corruption though not necessarily for this affair) . I arrived there on a train from Digne in the mid 70s while on a France Vacance trip in February and though underused it was a magificent station- a real traditional "Embarcadere" with an arrival and a departure platform facing one another from opposite sides of an elegant train shed with storage sidings between them. Now that the tram line runs in front of the old facade it seems absurd that users of the CP - including many commuters- have to weave through a large car park and across a busy main road to reach the current station. I thought though that plans for the redevelopment did include some kind ot rail usage.

Small world I was at South Shields Marine and Technical College as it then was for my phase 3 with British and Commonwealth in 1969-70 though I'd had pretty well decided to go to University for an engineering degree instead. The Tyneside Electrics had been replaced by DMUs by then but we were in a guest house in Ocean Road so I did get to see the Harton Electrics close up from time to time while walking to the college. I think only Westoe Colliery was open by then and you could clearly see it from Ocean Road with trains moving around but the Marsden railway had been lifted though many of the locals remembered it well. I'm not sure whether the riverside staithes were still in use or if all the coal went via the exchange sidings but I distinctly remember seeing the very distinctive locos passing under the road on a fairly sharp curve. It did seem strange to have the beach and funfair overlooked by a colliery but (and slightly OT), next door to that the South Shields Pier railway seemed to have only recently fallen out of use as there was still rolling stock on the fan of three sidings in the service yard at the landward end. No sign though of the sand railway that it had connected to and I didn't realise there had been more of that railway than the elongated Inglenook Sidings on the pier.

American 00 (4mm/ft scale with 19mm gauge track) does still have a sufficient following for an NMRA SIG http://www.nmra.org/national/sig/AmericanOO.htm For them, just as with other niche scales such as S, the NMRA standards are relevant. However, though the standards allow for it, I doubt whether modellers in American 00 actually use looser tolerances than those working in H0. As there's more scratchbuilding involved it's probably the other way round. I'd agree though that the standards for American 00 are irrelevant to the use of Kadees in British 00. Here they're either used as a non-protoypical automatic coupler, set beneath the buffer beam of vehicles that would in reality use 3-link or screw coupling, or to represent the British use of AAR "Buckeye" couplers on coaches and other vehicles. As these are normally at 39 inches rather than the American 33 inch height it's really up to individual modellers how to use them. Has anyone come up with a working drophead coupler using a Kadee head or does the need to retract the buffers make that impossible?

Thanks for finding the NMRA standard document. I've checked the maths and they are both based on US prototype coupler height. The NMRA's tolerances are based on the prototype tolerance of + or - 1.5 inches so they will increase with scale. The difference between a tolerance of 0.5 mm and 0.4 mm is, to the nearest tenth of a mm, the same as the difference between 4mm/ft and 3.5mm/ft. In practice most modellers probably would use the same couplers for H0 and 00 despite the difference in scale - standard Kadee H0 couplers are a bit overscale anyway even for 00 scale- but the standard is scale based However, there are anomalies in the NMRA standards for coupler heights. For standard gauge American railroads coupler height is 33 inches + or - 1.5 inches* However, if you multiply the NMRA standard height by the scale you often get a different height. For American 0 scale of 1:48 it is 33 inches but for both H0 and 00 it scales and the other smaller scales it comes out as 34 inches + or - 1.5 inches. I don't know if there's a reason for this or if it's just an error that crept in many years ago. * AAR rule16 E12 gives an allowable range of 31.5-33.5 fully loaded and 32.5-34.5 unloaded from the top of the rail to the centre of the knuckle face.

According to Bachmann's US website "virtually all their equipment" is now fitted with RP25 profile wheels so I'd say that's a yes! It's actually a bit more complicated than that and it's taken me a while to get my head round it. So far as I can make out, RP25 http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/rp25.html isn't a single set of dimensions for each gauge but a specification that defines the profile of the wheel based on its overall width. This is gauge independent and as with rail there is a code based on the overall width in thousandths of an inch. Proprietary H0 wheels in the US are usually to code 110. RP25/110 is what manufacturers generally mean when they say their wheels are "RP25". That's a lot wider than prototype though without the "pizza cutter" flanges that we've all seen. In the US market finer scale wheelsets such as RP25/88 are available but that's still some way from dead scale. In H0 scale would be equivalent to code 64 (0.064 inch) but for "dead scale" the NMRA has adopted "proto" standards drawn from P87 which they acknowledge came from work in this country. There's more on this in an NMRA technical note http://www.nmra.org/standards/sandrp/pdf/TN_1_1_2.pdf

I used Fulgurex motors on my H0m layout but am not very impressed with them. They're incredibly noisy, don't seem particularly well built and, because they can barely throw my Tillig points, need to be very carefully set up. The point blades are not hinged, which was why I opted for a motor drive to avoid excessive force on the tiebar. The force needed to throw the point blades throughout their travel means that there is no overrun when the motor is cut so the spare switch used to power the frog has to be set up to switch before the one that controls the motor. This doesn't always work which led to shorts or, when I rewired them to use both spare switches (one at each end) as on-off switches, to reliance on blade contact to power the frog. I did install them as per Fulgurex's instructions with a torque tube but there is a lot of mechanical loss in this and a more direct drive to the point blades would probably work better.

Not just UK outline models either. I model European H0 and in theory should just be able to take Kadees out of the packet, plug them into the NEM boxes and start shunting, in my dreams!! It's irritating because, when I was modelling US HO way back in the late 70s and early 80s, fitting Kadees into the standard draft boxes of all sorts of stock was very rarely a problem. I didn't even own a pair of Kadee pin pliars. The RP25 wheelsets also gave far more accurate horizontal alignment. I think this all reflects the greater influence of the NMRA. If you're a manufacturer selling into the US market and don't follow their standards you probably won't be in business for long.

I doubt if they mean American 00 (4mm/ft scale 19mm gauge) as it's very little used. The 9.9mm height in H0 scale correspond to 34 inches which is (just) within the US regulation height for the centre of couplers. The 12mm height Kadee mention for 00 is a bit odd as it's way too high for the American regulation coupler height of 31.5-34.5 inches when scaled for 4mm/ft but far too low for the 997mm height of Buckeye coupler heads used on British rolling stock. I wonder if they thought the overheight Bachman "NEM" boxes were some kind of 00 standard.

There's a very thorough list of her activities both as the St. Anselm and the Stena Cambria on http://www.doverferryphotosforums.co.uk/ This doesn't include Weymouth but she did briefly work on the Newhaven-Dieppe service where the shape of the harbour also placed restrictions on the size of ferries until the ferry terminal moved. I'm pretty sure it was the Caesarea and the Sarnia that I travelled on to Guernsey and back during the mid 1960s

Well there's never just been the tension lock. The Simplex coupler patented by Sidney Pritchard in 1948 and adopted by both Hornby Dublo and Trix is still being sold by Peco and must by now be well out of patent. AFAIK Tri-ang adopted the tension lock to avoid paying for the rights to use the Simplex and it's probably only their and Hornby's later history that made it so widespread. The NEM standard hinged loop coupler which was actually the coupler used by Maerklin gained a similar dominance in Europe but again was never the only type used. That's partly I suspect because it's such a ghastly coupler to use if you want to do any shunting or have reasonably close coupling. Jouef used to fit a type of tension lock as did Fleischmann. A good number of British modellers have long used other types of commercially available coupler especially the Kadee and the adoption of NEM boxes simply makes that far easier. Though it may seem like heresy it's also worth remembering that a large proportion of buyers simply want to run model trains on fairly simple layouts and may be quite happy to run British and European outline models alongside one another despite the difference in scale. I suspect this is a far larger part of the market for RTR models than many of us realise so for the manufacturers it makes sense to make all their models that use 16.5 gauge track compatible.

. I've got a fair number of H0 wagons and locos adapted this way from before when it was usual to fit NEM interchageable boxes. You do have to be careful with the height as Kadees are fairly height sensitive - A Kadee height gauge is a pretty essential tool. One thing I do find is that some close coupling units tend to let the NEM box droop and that's fatal. I've always used Kadees since doing some American modelling in the 1970s as though they're not perfect have yet to find anything that works as well. It's just unfortunate that the UIC never succeeded in agreeing on a buckeye based automatic coupler so that European railways are even more stuck with screw couplings than ours.

I'm not sure what you mean by wrongly handed US overscale. The "Buckeye" coupler long used on much British passenger and some freight stock has the same AAR 10A head as the common "E" type coupler that's been used for years on N. American Railroads. On both sides of the Atlantic the knuckle is right handed (in other words if you look down on the vehicle it's this way round ?) The standard Kadee head IS somewhat overscale for H0- slightly less so for 00- but the company do also make a scale head coupler. I believe that is still a tad overscale in H0 so may well be spot on for 00. Apart from the drop heads used on older British coaches to allow screw couplings to also be used and the swing heads now used on many freight locos for the same reason, the biggest difference between Britain and N. America is that the coupler is mounted rather higher in Britain. If I've got my sums right it;s a difference of about 3mm in height between an American H0 coupler and a British coupler in 4mm scale. That doesn't require a different UK spec coupler but does affects how you mount it if you really want to set it exactly at British scale height. If you do that you'd have to adjust or dispense with the Kadee coupler pins and probably make your own height gauge.

I agree with you that there's no point in establishing a different coupler box height standard for 4mm but that's not what has happened. So far as I know the only 4mm scale organisation that has set a standard for coupler boxes is the Double O Gauge Association and what they've done is to simply and sensibly adopt the same dimensions as NEM362 for H0 and S scale. This sets the height of the upper inside face of the box at 8.5mm (+ or - 0.2mm) from rail top and all the other dimensions are the same. The couplers that Kadeee make for use in standard NEM boxes are designed to put the the coupler head at the same height (9.93mm to the centre of the knuckle) as all their other H0 couplers based on N. American prototype standards. This also gives the appropriate clearance for the trip pins and enables users of their couplers (like me) to use the standard Kadee height setting gauge. Since most of the couplers that use these boxes are non-prototypical and set below the buffer beam there's no correct scale height for them to be at so no need for a different standard for 00. Some people do use Kadee couplers to represent the "buckeye" couplers used on British (but not European) passenger and some freight stock but they are set higher than in N. America (39 inches compared with the American 33 inches) based on the height of the traditional British buffer beam. The increased height may make it difficult to use the Kadee trip pins but I think most people who use them do so within rakes rather than at the ends where screw couplings are still used. FYI http://www.rgsonline.co.uk/Railway_Group.../GMGN2690%20Iss%201.pdf‎ gives full details including dimensioned drawings for almost all the SG couplers used on Britain's railways By the way H0 is not an American scale. It was developed in Britain before the war- basing a scale on mm/ft is a dead giveaway of its British origin- and then adopted by almost everyone except the British.

I've just looked at the revised maps and it's Interesting that as it passes at least 200 metres south of the very few nearest houses in Wendover it will be buried in a green tunnel (essentially a cut and cover as I undersand it) but as it passes less than 50 metres from several streets of houses in the closest points of the rather more populous estates in Perivale and Greenford it will be in the open on the existing GW embankment. Am I being unduly cyncal in wondering how much more is being spent on reducing the impact for each of the good people of Buckinghamshire and other leafy shires than on the far more numerous citizens of London? For the record, my own house is about 300m from HS2 and I do want to see it built but it would be interesting to overlay the places where HS2 will be buried in tunnels or generally hidden at great expense with a constituency map. It does strike me that it'll be a rather boring journey with all those tunnels and cuttings and won't they increase the maintenance costs considerably?

The UK isn't one of its member states. MOROP was set up as a pan European organisation in 1954 following the 1952 Congress of Ruedesheim in which various national associations of model railway clubs, something that Britain has never had, met to agree common standards. Because 00 scale on 16.5mm gauge track was peculiar to Britain which had no national body to represent it on MOROP (even if anyone in Britain had been interested) it was never included. The NEMs do include scales more or less peculiar to one of MOROP's member countries. European 0 scale is generally 1/45 but the French in particular use the British scale of 1/43.5 so that is included in the standards and the Germans refer to the "industrial" narrrow gauge H0i as H0f . THe coupler box defined in NEM 362 is exactly the same for S scale (1/64) as for H0 in terms of its height from the railhead, dimensions of the actual box, and how far back its forward face should be from the buffer head, so it would seem perfectly sensible to use it for 1/76 scale 00 as well. It was based on the height of the top face of the standard NEM hinged loop coupler which AFAIK was a Maerklin design as that came long before the NEM box for interchangeable couplers. The box wasn't intended for Kadees but for the various couplings that European manufacturers had introduced to improve on the ghastly standard device. Kadee simply designed a coupler for NEM boxes that would put their H0 coupler head and pin at its correct height and so really open up their European market. Unfortunately some of the manufacturers did wander a bit from the fairly strict dimensions in the NEM 362 though that seems to be improving. Because they're really about making commercially produced products compatible across Europe the NEMs only cover the main scales from Z to 10 with narrow gauge models using the track standards from a smaller scale (0m, H0e, H0i etc) They don't include 00 though NEM010 on scales does mention the "Anglo Saxon" scales based on mm/ft and American H0 is supposedly to a slightly different scale of 1/87.1 (3.5mm/ft) from the European scale rounded to 1/87 that was agreed at the 1952 congress.

You may find Harry Maynard worth looking at http://www.modelshopuk.com I've bought a few things from him at SNCF Society get togethers and his prices (especially with a 10% discount for SNCF society members) are rather lower than Pierre Dominique's. Pierre Dominique seem to have a good reputation. I've not used them for mail order but have bought off their stands at a couple of French shows where they did hold a good stock.

While looking for more information on stone tramways I got hold of a digital copy of the 1838 Second edition of "A Treatise on Roads" and was amused to find this passage basically saying that paved roads were quite sufficient and the new fangled high speed railways were quite unnecessary. Does the argument sound rather familiar? What seems to have been the great error on the part of those who have introduced the modern railway system was making excessive speed the main object of it. It is this which has led to the enormous expense, lst, as to the gradations of the lines ; 2ndly, as to the strength of the construction of railways ; and 3rdly, as to the engines. But the attaining of the speed of 25 or 30 miles an hour, at such an enormous expense, cannot be justified on any principle of national utility. The usefulness of communication, in a national point of view, consists principally in rendering the conveyance of all the productions of the soil and of industry as cheap as possible. This keeps down the prices of food, the prices of raw materials, the prices of finished goods ; and thus increases the consumption of all productions, the employment of labour and capital, and generally the national industry and national wealth. But a speed of 10 miles an hour would have accomplished all these purposes, and have been of great benefit to travellers, while it could have been attained at from one half to one third of the expense which has been incurred by the system that has been acted upon. It is no doubt true that travelling at the rate of 25 or 30 miles an hour is personally very convenient, but how it can be made to act so as to contribute very much to the benefit of the country at large it is not easy to discover. Economy of time in an industrious country is unquestionably of immense importance, but after the means of moving at the rate of ten miles an hour is universally established, there seems to be no very great advantage to be derived from going faster.

We went to Guernsey in I think 1966 having had a camp next to Stalag Luft 3 Pontins at Osmington Mills the previous year but though we went into Weymouth I don't recall seeing the tramway on that occasion. The first time I saw it was when I travelled on it. The Guernsey campsite was possibly in the parish of St. Martin but I don't recall if it had established facilities or was just a field.

If you can get hold of a ship's IMO number this remains with it throughout all its changes of ownership and name. A sort of maritime equivalent of a car's VIN number

What's interesting is that what's left of the harbour branch seems to be virtually all of it apart from a couple of long disused sidings including the short loop that served the cargo loading stage a few metres before the harbour station. Thanks for posting these. Since we were told that the branch was going to be removed or at least filled in before the Olympics it seems to be in surprisingly good health. I did get to travel on the branch once in the mid 1960s en route to a scout camp in Guernsey and have walked it several times since. It would be great and possibly not impossible to see a train on it again. Does anyone have any idea what the substructure of the branch is (wooden sleepers?) and what sort of state it's in? Sadly, the not dissimilar harbour branch in Dieppe has been removed almost without a trace along with its gare Maritime and it would be a shame if the Weymouth tramway suffered the same fate.

This is an incredible resource and Michael Clemens is really generous to have uploaded so much rich data. I'm now going to figure out all the trains my grandfather worked through his box in the 1950s.