PaulRhB

More cake for me 😁

I have to say the older livery looks so classy even today, reminds me of the MOB and RhB-ACPE but I also like 142 in the red and white. Never been a huge fan of the orange and silver period 😎

Beddgelert, nice walks through the Aberglaslyn pass alongside the river and Welsh Highland are only a short walk from the village. Glaslyn Ices homemade ice cream with their pizza cafe next door on one side of the stone bridge and a nice restaurant Bistro Yn Yr Hebog with outside dining by the river on the other side. This should show the bistro garden bridge and Glaslyn Ices on the far side of the river https://maps.app.goo.gl/qXj79CFiuZ5Sg8FY8?g_st=iw Take the train up from Porthmadog or parking on the right about 200m west of the stone bridge in the village centre on the road to Caernarfon.

First off the show and layout can be 50-200 miles apart so not always possible. Second lots build layouts that don’t fit up at home. I have a 34x11 ft layout, and a 12x9ft one that won’t fit up as my largest room is 18x8ft plus has furniture on the walls. Both layouts were up and running at showtime on their first outings because I tested them in pairs. Your example is someone whose ambition somewhat exceeded their ability and the repeated showings prove that despite what people promise it doesn’t always work out. My layouts have faults, I’ve had to modify things before opening due to damage, unit failure, fault that didn’t show up in testing and recently because I only got power five minutes before opening so hadn’t been able to test and snag simple errors like plugs not all the way home. On a mates layout a controller software update left half the locos unresponsive due to a glitch in the decoder software on one make! There are loads of ideals to aspire to but as in the rest of life not everyone hits the mark every time. Ask politely online and you may well get the info too.

I’ve exhibited layouts that were incomplete a month before the show because that’s when I had the time and deadline to overrule the other things demanding my time. You promise it’ll be ready and off you go. 20 days building to show! If you know what you need to do and have the bits to hand. Also not the first time 😆

I think you’d be surprised how often an exhibitor doesn’t give that much info even when asked and also that not everyone uses spreadsheets or in the way you expect 😆. For our club show I get photos of meticulously hand drawn plans that I redraw up on the computer. The spreadsheet obviously makes sense to our show manager but also contains previous and potential layouts as his backups so I have to be extremely careful reading off what’s in the current show! Again it’s a case of the people doing this are enthusiastic but not necessarily the ones you’d employ to run a show so you deal with the quirks much like you deal with the exhibitors quirks too. I did a show earlier this year and the information was a bit like dragging blood out of a stone in the lead up. Apart from my layout listed as HOm Harz on the website I had nothing until a couple of weeks before let alone punters having info about the layout. But when I got there they were great, as was the show, and chatting to the show manager on Sunday he’d been so busy with work in a crucial job after taking it on he’d struggled to cope. Now I could have thrown a tantrum in the lead up but I’m glad I didn’t as it was a great weekend and proof that even the exhibitors coordinating five helpers, four cars and 40ft of layout sometimes need to have a little faith. I did because I did a bit of digging, I’d communicated in less fraught times on here with the show manager in topics and liked his posts, a friend who’d done the show before had also confirmed it was a friendly group so with a record of putting on good shows I dragged all the stuff out and we had fun. You don’t load up this pile lightly either and it’s much smaller than other club layouts I’ve helped with. There are six of those layout section boxes to be dragged down two flights of stairs! So I’ve been on all three sides of shows and to be honest the only crap one I went to was as an exhibitor and they’d given all the info up front, just their show manager was a nightmare! Everyone will no doubt still think it’s easy to add that but just my insight into why in reality it doesn’t always happen even with the best intentions.

Lando has had consistency though with seconds when the RB was still recognised as the faster car. Now the tables turned Max couldn’t overhaul them and struggled to get past Lewis! Lando doesn’t do the shoulders out at all costs so may not have the ‘killer instinct’ to the degree of Max but even without it he’s right up there and still improving. Lando may not be quite as natural as Lewis or Max but he’s got the work ethic to make up the difference and deals with pressure better than Max 😉 Lando shows more sportsmanship than several of the greats.

A little better for Om as it’s 1/45 and if placed away from telling items or behind it can actually add a bit of forced perspective.

Ah you’re thinking about hooking the chain into it? If you can find three links of the right side the might clip in easily and you could couple with tweezers.

Yes they work well they just look massive between two wagons when you join up sets as the gap is so different. That’s all I’m really trying to sort out 😁 I made up an open ended V on the end of some wire you just slide in from the side under the main body so needs less space than tweezers to open the choppers up.

Yes but you still need to lift one wagon up to uncouple, and they actually clip in to the ‘loop’ one on the other wagon and it doesn’t look any different really either.

Yes but you still need to find a nice hook.

I was thinking along similar lines but lining up the hook might be a pain. The ideal would be a laser cut or etched sheet with a few on that would represent a chain but actually be a fixed arm like this.

In my quest for a small working coupling I tried a normal metal staple in the loop of the NEM couplings supplied, (Peco sell packs of fixed-hook and eye couplings as GR 105), Bent as shown and then can be worked with a magnetised screwdriver.

There, fixed it . . .