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Hi Paul, Just to let you know, a post as been placed on the DEMU forum by Phil making members aware of your open day. I’m keen to come to see your Addison Road layout (mostly because I live next to Olympia and love the location!). I sympathise with your chicken-and-egg situation but unfortunately if you don’t have anything D&E to show to people you will definitely struggle! It’s the sad reality. There are a number of us (DEMU members) who are London based and participate in DEMU's London Area Group (LAG). We are fairly active as an area group and most of us have our own projects (which is probably why getting involved in a club is not that appealing to us?). Having said that, like many people in London, we all struggle from a lack of space so would benefit from the space that your club offers to run things like our resin casting days. In fact, my own OO D&E layout lives in a storage locker not very far from your club’s premises! It would be good to try to build a working relationship between DEMU LAG and your club. Perhaps let’s have a chat at the open day and see how far we get? Guy

Yes, when is this due? I was expecting to get an email or something from Locomotion asking for me to make the payment. Has anyone else heard from them? Guy

Hi Cav, Phil Eames has done an etch for these in 4mm for Calcutta sidings. Maybe you could ask him to shrink the artwork? Of course, that might take away the fun of scratch building them! Guy

Are you working from drawings for the cab Simon?

James, The layout just keeps getting better and better. Those are superb shots from the Salisbury show! The Empress State Building would be a great addition too. I love the road bridge... I cycle or drive over that bridge every week and it's more or less exactly right. You're missing some silver paint from my car on the (annoyingly placed!) bollards though and the pizza delivery guy's nipping down the bike lane (grrr!). Guy

I think the APT body profile is smaller in cross section than e.g. a Mk3 isn't it? The same is true of the P-train. You can see a better comparison in this shot:

Ok, better late than never, here's the APT-E's country-wide tour: Kinmundy was the first port of call: Heading south I managed to grab a glimpse at Crawford Bridge (pre-catenary): It was so quick, I could only grab a quick shot of it whistling through Tonbridge West Yard: Back up north, in a shot from the bridge, we see it stopped at a red signal just outside Wibdenshaw: Full throttle through Burton: ...and on to Farkham: The day ended with a visit to Shane's iconic trains stand: Shane and Kit compare the Rapido model to Shane's scratch-built masterpiece:

Good god man! Having had a good play with the pre-production model at DEMU Showcase you are to be congratulated Jason... that looks even more fiddly!!! I'm liking the sound of having blinking lights. Again, from playing with the sample: I'm not sure that a baffle is required. I really need to dig out my photos from Showcase and post them on here. Guy

Nice work Jon. Aggregates... yum!

Some cracking work there. Regarding the back scene, apologies, I'm not trolling, I'm just disappointed that with 3 layouts representing Olympia on the scene that nobody (yet!) has tackled the exhibition hall. I think this is architecturally much more interesting than Russell Road (as represented by yourselves and Loftus Road too). I've just had a look at my 1916 map to see the position of Kensington Crescent. My apologies for describing this as "fictious" but Kensington Road is very straight at this point so you are definitely using artistic license to bend it to the north (but that's fine... it looks great!). Thank god the HMRC building has gone. I had to go there on occasion and it was a dull and dreary place! Keep up the good work and hopefully I'll make it to your open day in July! Guy

To be fair Gazza, it does say that in the topic title!

Mine is a very poor runner with the Hornby decoder (even after adjusting the pick-ups). Snipping the capacitor off and adding a vanilla Bachmann decoder improved running but still not as well as I'd like. I decided that it was due to all the grease that was on it (out of the box) as this seemed to be working its way down to the pickups. I've stripped the whole thing down and de-greased it with a view to a re-paint and re-assembly. Watch this space... Guy

Hi Kit, Great to meet you on Saturday. I've got some fab photos of the E-train on Tonbridge West and also of Shane's display. I'll post them in due course. Guy

Although E-train and P-train never met in real life, Shane and I have something rather special planned at DEMU Showcase this weekend. You'll have to come along on Saturday to find out! Guy

It looks like your back scene shows a fictitious view of the east of the station? Given the 3 layouts that I know of of Olympia, it's a pity that nobody has done the Exhibition Centre as a back scene. I guess I'll just have to do it myself one day! ;-) Still, thanks for the blue diesel! Guy

Is that a rake of ARC PGAs I can spy in the background of the last shot? Looking forward to watching these with a pair of Cromptons on the front (one in blue, one in aggregate). Now something like the following scene would be perfect Paul: Image courtesy of Stephen.

Round up the usual suspects!!! Hahahaha

Kev, this looks great. I'm keen to do one myself following a similar method and have suitable donor acquired. Am I right in thinking that you cut out the existing grills with a cutting disk, re-shaped them to the size/shape of 81 grills and re-fitted them to the re-profiled body sides using styrene surrounds? Guy

JB, I think we will NEVER have easy-to-set-up OHLE that doesn't look toy like. The reason: if you want it made to scale, then you need a strong join between the wires and the masts and tension in the wires. This is really hard to achieve without all-metal soldered construction (which doesn't fit with the injection moulded plastic ready-to-plonk concept). Manufacturers producing metal masts might help with this but I expect they would be very expensive as they will have to be fabricated (die cast ones would snap and be over-scale). If you are not going to tension things, then the alternative is to over-scale everything... hence the toy-like systems that we have seen in the past. So, don't hold your breath waiting for a RTR/RTP scale system! Guy

Pete, Fancy doing an EMD? https://www.flickr.com/photos/35476094@N04/11937316175/ I'd love to re-create this! Guy

Any idea which 08 that is in the photo with TH325V? I'm trying to work out which one to do on my layout! Guy

Hi Phil, Which Zimo decoder are you referring to? Can you link the thread? I've searched and can't seem to find it. Guy

Jon, Don't give up on the laser cutting, I think it has massive potential (just look at what Tim Horn is doing for example). It looks like you've made a reasonable start there but (as you admit yourself) there is still a bit of a way to go (e.g. the alignment issues). It'd be good to explain some of the issues to the rest of us (who haven't tried it) so that we can understand what to avoid if we do try it! Guy

Just read through the thread... mostly looking at the fabulous pics on the first few pages (and the prototype shots too). I might come and badger you for some of these for the show guide! Not long till Showcase... good luck with the track repairs Paul! Guy

Good choice fellas! Best of luck with this. Guy