DavidB-AU

Or birds. It's quite common with parrots and fermented berries. It became an annual event in Darwin with drunk rainbow lorikeets. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-15/darwin-drunk-lorrikeet-mystery-illness-solution/7508110

Sort of. There is a layout of Didcot A power station. https://admrc.org.uk/club-layouts/didcot-a-power-station

EMD 567 ear candy.

VIA rail has some coach and gallery club cars dating from 1947.

I've submitted changes that have still not been updated after many years. A street near where I live used to be a through street but was turned into a dead end specifically to reduce the amount of through traffic. 4 years later it's still shown as a through street on Google maps and delivery/Uber drivers often end up getting lost. However my car's Garmin GPS had the update within 3 months.

Not the first time! Queensland grazier makes sign to redirect lost travellers following Google Maps

WAGN and GNER should have merged into WAGNER.

The same was said of Bakerloo in 1906. I'm disappointed Goblin didn't become official! EDIT: In the Guardian article the "other side" said this was a missed opportunity to sell naming rights to the lines. Does anybody seriously think the Allianz Line or the Etihad Line or the DodgyOnlineCasino.Com Line would be better?

I can only speak for Australia but I can speak as a past exhibition manager, British (and American) outline layouts are very common here and the 90% of the paying public coming through the door don't mind. Most "serious" modellers don't mind either. Until the 1990s most got into the hobby through Hornby or Athearn. Like anywhere else there is a tiny minority of modellers who will dismiss anything that isn't their chosen scale/prototype. I had some peripheral involvement in helping Ross Balderson build his magnificent Sydney Central in N, assembling some of the controllers for him to meet an exhibition deadline. There were people who flew from other continents just to see this layout, but some locals who I will not name turned up their noses at it because "not HO, not interested". EDIT: I will add that exhibitions should have variety. Unless it's specifically themed like large scale/garden railways or narrow gauge, the public need to see more than a hall fall of BLTs and modern image tail chasers. This is one reason I spent so much time looking at the large German modular layout last time I went to TINGS (before covid).

I remember an American telling me about 20 years ago that 2-rail O was dead and the rest of the world should catch up.

He produced a couple of plans based on European prototypes. One of the Swiss alpine designs was in one of the plan books. There were endless letters in RM in the 80s questioning the sanity of anybody who would want to model "modern image", even going as far as ridiculing Ian Futers modelling P4 that wasn't pre-grouping. I also remember one letter confidently predicting that nobody would ever want to preserve a main line diesel. I've attended exhibitions in 5 countries on 3 continents and there are always elements of "I don't like this therefore it should never be exhibited". Thankfully they are a minority. Personally I enjoy seeing any high quality layout of any prototype in any scale. I never take the view of not being interested in a particular layout because I don't know anything about the prototype. That's an opportunity to talk to the layout builder(s) and find out!

That's how his channel started. He even posted about it on RMweb at the time.

Much the same happened in South Australia in 2016. One of the interconnectors with Victoria was offline for upgrades at the time. After a storm blew over transmissions lines in the north, over just 90 seconds a cascading failure caused almost all of the SA network to trip to ground until the other interconnector to Victoria shut down. The only place on the grid that still had power was Kangaroo Island, which was able to start its own power station before both of the submarine cables to the mainland failed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-11/power-supplies-in-south-australias-mid-north-stabilise/7920250

How long did it take you to hatch that one?

I agree about the mirror image to avoid all the facing points into dead end sidings. If you're going to use setrack I'd suggest looking at some C.J. Freezer "spare room" layout designs from the early diesel era. Many of these were designed for Triang track, which although it has slightly different geometry it gives you a feel for what can be done and what should be avoided. They were designed for somewhat realistic operation.

The one where they have to evict Harry Potter to make room for you.

On Saturday I and about 4000 others watched Blade Runner with the magnificent Vangelis soundtrack performed live. This was only the second time I have seen and heard a Yamaha CS-80 in the flesh (the first was for Jeff Wayne's War of The Worlds on stage in 2007).

There are a lot of very short sidings. Bear in mind that every set of points takes away storage space. Also avoid facing points into dead end sidings where possible. I'd have some concerns about being able to reach the bit on the right in the event of a derailment. Look at prototypes from that era to give you an idea of what track arrangements were in use at the time.

End of an era in Victoria with the last scheduled loco-hauled H set running to Geelong last Friday. As of the last timetable update in November there were only 2 return services each weekday using H sets, one from Bacchus Marsh (replaced by Vlocity DMUs in December) and this one. That's end of 40 years of interurban service which followed 30 years of suburban service as Harris trains.

Right, you asked for it. What does the fox say?

The best catchphrases went on the stamps.

More from the same gallery of 91s hauling additional bank holiday trains.

The space lends itself to a peninsula or even two. Some American N examples in smaller spaces. https://i.pinimg.com/474x/8c/85/9f/8c859f218d1f3ca0c8c8adf8d2f57166.jpg https://static.wixstatic.com/media/fce877_b2cd2f1dc8fa4c0ca1b18e2672f85668~mv2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_640,h_558,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/fce877_b2cd2f1dc8fa4c0ca1b18e2672f85668~mv2.jpeg

That's a huge space. C.J. Freezer would put quite a complicated OO layout into a smaller space. (Low res 16x8 examples in OO for illustration only but to my way of thinking they are too cramped.) You could fit a continuous run around the walls with a peninsula up the middle and adequate access space all around. As a folded figure 8 that would give you a main line run of 90' give or take, or about 2.5 scale miles. Or a continuous run around the walls with a triangular junction into a terminus on the peninsula. As an idea of what you could fit onto such a peninsula, in N you could fit Liverpool Lime Street up to the second tunnel in 15x2' without any compression. But resist the temptation to cram in as much track as possible. Sometimes less is more.