Bloodnok

Were you betting on black with a silver roof, a silver band along the middle, and large silver numbers / letters by any chance?

I recall reading somewhere the original wartime plan for it was to have been oil fired. When they found out how much the (imported American) oil would actually cost, everything immediately reverted to coal firing. If at that point they had specified a mechanical stoker, the project could have been much more successful. Even then, it's really just a strange looking, shortened Garratt. I wonder what Beyer, Peacock & Company would have designed if asked to make something about that long and with six driven axles?

More gluing of track has been achieved. I now have four yard tracks complete: Train for scale: Loops #1, #2 and #4 are able to park a loco+9 consist. Loop #3 will hold loco+10. Future loops #5 and #6 are going to be loco+9 and loco+10 respectively. This is more than will fit in the terminus station, which has been designed to host loco+7, or 8 car multiple unit sets. This extra space will allow me to run longer trains around the continuous run when I want to. All loops have been divided up electrically so I can detect multiple shorter trains on track circuits and to apply ABC braking. This will allow me to dual or triple park shorter trains in the loops automatically.

So ... much like every small town has a 'London road' in it -- because when someone came around and asked the local "What's that road called?", they knew that road as the one you take if you are going to/from London?

Laying mostly-straight track is a lot easier than tight curves -- the track doesn't want to move about anywhere near as much while it's gluing, so I can get more done in parallel. The first yard track is now complete between the entrance and exit junctions. Capacity Loco+8 comfortably (or two shorter multiple unit trains):

They are a MERG kit: https://www.merg.org.uk/kits.php#sect30. I'm using the '681' kit plus the optional '683' microswitch kit, which I will use to power the frog. There are other combinations of parts for other mounting positions, plus custom mounts for signals and level crossing gates too. The servos themselves are not included in the kit, you need to source them separately. They are the common SG90 / 9g type which are cheap and widely available.

Third yard track gluing...

Starting to lay track in the storage yard:

This one is particularly galling, as they should have received the superior LVA engine. But because of a failure to communicate between different country branches of Sulzer (the UK branch not getting the memo about the badly designed locating pin in the bearings, and choosing to blame BR for the resulting problems), we ended up with de-rated LDA powered locos. However, once "fixed", the class did go on to do what they were designed to do, just not quite as well as they could have done with the LVA engine should we have received the french modification to remove the 'idiot pin'. Instead I'm going to nominate the Class 40. Introduced for express passenger work and taking it's place as the pride of the fleet upon introduction, they were already being bumped off express passenger duty by superior locos before the last of the class was even in traffic. In this case, there was no 'fix' coming -- 200 locos were cascaded onto lesser work. Perhaps if BR had have accepted the uprated EE engine they were offered mid-series, things might have turned out a bit different. But that would have made them almost as capable as the Class 44, so ... maybe not.

Well, it's been raining on and off today. I normally do sawing and sanding outside so the study (where this layout is) doesn't fill up with sawdust. So I've not been able to finish the new baseboard piece. Instead, I have the yard exit points gluing, plus the first bits of the clearance block sections: I've fitted the point motor on the most difficult point (the one in the foreground) to prove to myself that there is enough space. I'm going to be using current detectors to implement block sections, and thus it's not as simple as throwing an insulating rail joiner on the end of the electrofrog and adding some flex track. I want to know if a train is close enough to the point that it's a risk to run something past it. So a second set of insulating rail joiners is required a bit further away from the point.

I doubt it would have been the crack expresses going that way most of the time -- the route is longer and twistier, after all. So you probably wouldn't have seen expresses unless there was a closure somewhere. But transferring traffic across will certainly free capacity on the mainline. Effectively what you've got here is a second pair of slow lines, plus service to Brighton from a lot more intermediate places. I lived near Oxted for a while -- being able to get to Brighton from there by train, without having to go to Croydon and back would have been very useful...

I'm going to have to nominate two short bits of railway: Uckfield to Lewes, and Selsdon to Elmers End. Why these two? Because with these two intact, what you have is a second London to Brighton mainline avoiding all the traditional pinch points. A truly vast amount of money has been spent wringing every last drop of capacity out of the Brighton mainline. This route would have instantly added two additional tracks end to end on that route.

I have bitten the bullet, cut the 'wrong' piece off, secured the part of it that I'm keeping, and marked out a new piece to fit in the hole using the cut piece as a template. This fixes all the problems in one go -- it was the same part which was both warped and too narrow. At least I made all my mistakes in the same place... Hopefully the new piece will go in without warping. The yard exit has been marked out and is currently having it's underlay glued down.

One step forward, two steps backward... Stepping forward, the underlay has reached the other end of the storage yard. Track spacing has been widened around the curve, then it narrows back to streamline standard for the exit points. Buuuut, as I was working out exactly where the edges of the underlay need to go (which requires precisely locating those exit points), it's ... all not /quite/ coming out as per the plan. Tiny differences between the plan and the real world all add up to nothing fitting quite how I wanted -- the ends of the curve are awkward, and a point motor intersects a key crossmember it was designed to avoid. Some real-world re-design is required. Time to break out the cardboard and string...

Has to be a Class 47 for today's poll.

Hmmm. It's been a while. This all came to a screaming halt when I got some kind of insect bite on my ankle, and it swelled up like crazy. I lost about 7 days altogether, including a complete long weekend. Last thing I did beforehand was get the last two point motors fitted. As I couldn't do much in the way of construction while I had an ankle that wanted to LARP as a barrage balloon, I moved the servo controller across from my desk to the layout and connected the point motors. Well, four of them at least -- the leads aren't quite long enough to get to all five at the same time. I also got a PC set up for the layout. I have two available spare PCs I could run the layout from, but for various reasons both of them run Linux. The software I'm using to run the layout works fine on Linux, but the config utility for setting the servo movement up is another matter. This has proven to be a significant challenge -- one I haven't managed to overcome yet. I did order some PCB mounting feet and some servo extension cables I need to install the controllers properly, but the delivery estimates are ... somewhat large ... at the moment. I'm now back at it -- I have more underlay gluing at the moment...

Good looking streamlined steam? Hands down, no contest, the GE Steam turbines built for UP. These: For the ugly example ... I almost went with the DRG 05.003, but then saw this thing: http://www.marklinfan.com/public/Gian Michele Sambonet/CFJDZ.jpg ... I've no idea what it is, but it's awful.

Favourite narrow gauge loco. As much as I have fond memories of QR 2300s rumbling back and forth, they really aren't lookers. And we're doing this by looks. So I've got to hand it to the QR 1250 class. I've only ever seen one, and it's a museum piece. But there's just something about the way that sunvisor sits that looks amazing...

Prototypes? I bet you can guess what I'm going to nominate. I'll give you a hint -- it's in the picture over there to the left :-P (And yes, DP1 was nice too, but it's not a patch on Kestrel).

Hmmm... "stood the test of time", huh? A split nomination for me. For passenger stock, LU '38 stock. Still moving paying passengers 82 years later, albeit in a different location than originally deployed. For freight, it has to be the humble 08. A design that dates from the 1930s, and all examples were built between 1952 and 1962. More importantly, there has /never been a fleet replacement/. These aren't a few survivors working alongside their replacements, we simply never bought any replacements, and they are still working.

Hmmm. Type 4s. Quite a variety of those, unfortunately quite a few that are as ugly as sin, or simply have way too many wheels for their own good... I'm going to have to go with a Class 50 on this one. There's something about one that Class 47s (my second place pick) don't have.

Type 3s? With a specific subclass? Has to be a 37/4. Centre headcode, ETH, tendency to appear in large logo ... what's not to like?

Two more points gluing: Three point motors fitted: Next two motors will go on once the glue has dried...

Hands down, the best "type 2" is the variant BRCW built for the Southern. They took their type 2 design previously supplied as a type 2 to other regions, ripped out the steam heat boiler, fitted electric heating, looked at the empty space, added two extra cylinders, and then ended up with something which in power terms was classified as a type 3, but still in the shape/size of a type 2. So ... that's a type 3 then. Can't have that. Okay then, Class 21. Not the old Class 21, that was awful. I mean the *current* class 21. These are a mixture of MaK DE1004s bought new by Eurotunnel and some ex-NS 6400s (MaK DE1002s) bought second hand. If I can't have that either ('type 2' implies a certain age as well as form factor and power rating), then I'll nominate the Brush effort. The version retro-fitted with the EE engine, and with a headcode box, but not fitted with ETH.

The first track got stuck down last night: My tub of PVA appears to have gone a bit lumpy on the surface, but after a good mixing it's mostly behaving itself -- and I've managed to avoid getting any in the wrong place and gluing the points solid. The blades are sitting in the centre because the springs have been removed. The point motors I will be using are servo based slow action motors and work best with the springs removed. I have discovered that drilling holes through this closed cell foam stuff I'm using as underlay is a touch more difficult than traditional cork, as the drill doesn't cut it in the same way. On the plus side, the holes where wires go down are much neater when done, the hole has much less visual impact and should also ballast better. On the minus side, there's a risk of getting the sawdust from the ply built up under the foam, causing a lump to form. Cutting a cross in the foam with a knife before drilling seems to help...