Pete the Elaner

Excellent. I can see how that works. It sort of throws a hammer over at the contact & is a huge improvement over the Hornby switch.

I have read that on here before but I cannot find a diagram explaining how it can work. I don't meant to be argumentative, but I was taught to not take anyone's word for anything without a reasonable explanation. It has made me find answers & understand things. I will only be convinced when I see its internals, or a suitable explanation as to how it differs from the Hornby one (which I have taken apart many years ago).

Good find. You will need a +/0/- supply as I described earlier & it will require a bit of trial & error. The easiest way would probably be to Just select the route you want & play about with the diodes until it works. The maximum sidings is 6 (which is fine for the OP) because you will need 2 pole switches & the biggest I have seen support 12 connections (or 6 DPs).

They may work in theory but I agree with Ray on this & having seen his layout working first hand (I live about half a mile away), it works very well. Passing contact switches from Hornby & Peco are effectively off-on-off-on-off. Throwing the switch from one extent to the other will initially try to throw the point to the same direction to which it is set before throwing it the way you want it. My own experience of SEEP motors is that they are gutless without a CDU, a brand new motor didn't come close to throwing a point. Peco's were better but vastly improved by a CDU so I highly recommend one. The CDU will discharge virtually immediately so when you throw a point with a passing contact switch, the CDU discharges when it passes the first contact, which throws the point the same way. Unless you pause the lever in the centre off position, the CDU will not have recharged enough by the time is passes the contact which you want activated, so the motor may not throw. Ray recommended centre off switches which are sprung loaded to return to their centre off position. These are better because they do not throw the point the wrong way first, so the CDU discharge throws the point correctly. The disadvantage is you cannot see which way you set the point simply by looking at the lever's position.

Stall motors require a constant current which has to be reversed (or changed form +ve to -ve). A diode matrix is incapable of doing this because the same voltage will also be fed by the other 'slave' motor.

A slight twist. The complexity is there, but the manufacturer has taken care if all that so the user does not have to concern themselves with it. I think that is as close as you can get to the ideal answer for this.

Lewis was advised by Bernie & McLaren were on the slide. Less risk than can be perceived by an outsider. Daniel was a good No.2 at RB, but still a No.2 & would have been this season too because Max has driven very well. His 2019 team mate is now looking for a new drive for 2020. In the same way, Kimi looked jaded in the 2nd Ferrari last year. He looks revitalised in the Alfa, having scored less points than he would have done if he had stayed put.

It has been mentioned earlier on here that they were probably not just standard Fowler tenders, although they looked like it. 6200/6201 were the class prototypes, built in 1933. They had some differences including their tenders & round front buffers. I believe they both ran like this but I am not sure how long for. The others in the class did not appear for a further 2 years. I would expect changes such as tender & buffers to have been made in the mean time.

Yes. it was built with it & retained it... ...until it was re-built as Princess Anne. Even though it was then a Princess/Duchess hybrid, it was given a single chimney.

It sounds like you want to throw a point ladder to select a siding by pressing one button? I have thought about this in the past & because stall motors require constant current, I cannot think of a way to do it without using the complicated systems you want to avoid. They do open up another possibility & the following is an idea I have had: Each motor requires 2 connections instead of the 3 required for a solenoid. The conventional way to do this is to use a DC supply (12v, 5v, whatever the motors actually need) & reverse it with a DPDT switch to throw the point. Instead of a basic DC supply, how about a something with 0v, 5v & 10v (It will be easier to think of it as -5v, 0v & +5v)? After the supply, things get a lot simpler. The 0v is used as a return. The -5v & +5v is fed to the switches. This requires SPDT switches instead of DPDT & only 1 wire per point in addition to the common return. Assuming you have pointwork at each end of your yard, you will need 10 points for 6 sidings. This requires 21 wires for solenoids, 20 for conventional stall motors but only 11 if you can wire them with a common return. I have had a very quick look for a suitable power supply but cannot find one ready made. I did find a video showing someone making one by using 2 separate windings from a transformer (although they didn't explain anything), but that is how I thought of approaching it. It would make an interesting project.

I knew they tried a double chimney for a brief period & was told 'it didn't look quite right' but had never seen a photo before. I find it odd that they dismissed it so quickly then re-tried it with 6234 so early in its life, finding it a success.

It is far from a silly question. I found some drawings with dimensions by Clive Mortimore, possibly on this forum. These will give a good starting point but there are variations on the real railway. I cut myself some gauges from plastic. You may want to do the same to achieve consistency, but probably to your own measurements, not necessarily mine: I included coping stones in my gauge. Platform height 12mm from top of rail (gives 3' platform height. 2'9" was also common). Platform face from top inside of rail 13mm Height of coping from top of platform 3mm. Horizontal distance of coping from inside of rail 10mm The station on my layout is on the straight. I was keen to achieve this because I wanted a tight clearance between train & platform. You will therefore need to increase the 2nd & 4th measurements above. You will obviously need a long coach or loco to test. A BR Mk3 should be ideal for checking clearance because it has more overhang & underhang than most. I know this is out of your era but it should give you a safety margin You may also want to try a long Pacific such as an LMS Princess for overhang.

Now is so far in advance of when the line will open that only guesses can be made. For those unfamiliar with just how busy the WCML is: Pendolinos were introduced in 2003 as 8 coach units. These would have needed to be ordered several years earlier & Virgin already started to talk about them soon after they won the franchise in 1997. All were extended to 9 coaches relatively quickly. After a few more years, more coaches were ordered to extend many trains to 11 coaches, 3 new 11 coach sets were ordered (although 1 was a replacement for the Grayrigg train) & the 9 coach sets were modified, having 1 first class coach re-built as a standard. Additional Euston-Glasgow/Edinburgh services have been introduced which run through the West Midlands. These use Voyagers because there are not enough Pendolinos. When I first moved to MK in 2002, I could get on a Virgin Mk2 in Euston & occasionally share it with about 6-7 people if I was prepared to walk to the far end of the platform. It would usually be a bit busier but if I had to share a 'block of 4' then it was a busy service. Suburban services were extended to 8 coaches in the peak period & you could always get a seat. Suburbans are now virtually all 12 coaches, having required several platforms to be extended. They are also standing room only, the queues waiting for them to arrive having more than tripled. Virgin have reduced many of the intermediate stops. Why? It is because they can fill them for longer trips (ie, Euston to Liverpool). They no longer need to stop them in order to fill them. That is how things have changed in the last 10-15 years. If they continue to get busier (& I have not seen anyone with an argument suggesting why they shouldn't), then where will we be in 10 years time?I sometimes get on a semi-fast which runs on the fast lines to Ledburn (just S of Leighton Buzzard) to pass a couple of slower services & freights on the slow lines. This travels at a maximum of 110 while on the fast lines. Within 5 minutes, 2 Pendolinos have whizzed past.

I have experience with both & enjoy working with either. My experiences stem back from my early teens when I had a loft layout, & this was DC. Lofts provide quite a hostile environment for a model railway, with the variation in temperature causing a lot of expansion & contraction, so will show faults more quickly than anywhere. I had an oval which was about 10' x 6'. It had 1 power feed for each the main lines. It worked fine to start with but after about 2 years, you could see trains slow down round the far side then pick up speed as they got back towards the power feeds. Over time, this just got worse. The problem cannot have been with the rails themselves otherwise I would have had issues from the day it was laid....which was not the case. The only possible cause is a build-up of oxidation & weathering 'rubbish' in the rail joints was causing the resistance of them to increase, so that must have been the problem. Some points became problems too. These were initially overcome with a squirt of electrical cleaner (1.1.1 Tricholroethane, which is the same stuff as tipp-ex solvent used to be...but now banned). A friend used to run wet & dry on the blades on his exhibition layout first thing in the morning & sometimes had to repeat this during the day too. I used to hide in embarrassment when he did this. I often see people claim that they never have any problem with point blades & wonder whether they find cleaning points in this way to be routine maintenance. I certainly don't. At one of the later shows, one of the points failed to conduct completely. I had to buy & fit a switch on the Sunday morning to provide power so we could us the branch line. I helped to wire his replacement layout. We used droppers on each section & fed the frogs with microswitches. Routine maintenance for this is limited to running a track rubber over the track at the start of each day. After several years, that is all we have ever done & have never had any electrical issues or stalls due to dirty track. That is why I recommend droppers on each section & feed the frogs with micro switches. DC / DCC only becomes relevant when deciding how to connect it all under the board. That is all which needs to be said about DCC on this thread because the OP is not interested in it.

Why can't they make these gears from brass? They wouldn't split then.

I dislike self-isolating & will not recommend it for several reasons. 1. Troubleshooting is much easier. By effectively breaking up the layout into small sections, it makes the wiring technique very scaleable. Relying on pointwork to isolate creates complications with feeding sections form the wrong direction when working on a larger layout. Breaking the layout into sections with isolating joiners makes a large layout just a lot of smaller ones from an electrical point of view. Isolating & re-feeding just involves more sections of a similar size. 2. It discourages relying on rail joiners to provide power. On slightly larger layouts, dirt can build up over time to create resistance at each joint. This made an older layout of mine unusable. Soldered wire joints are more reliable., so you can just feed every rail from the section feed. 3. I earlier mentioned that you can easily add another feed. Splitting a section into 2 is much more of a problem. So if you use self-isolating then find you have a problem, you will need to troubleshoot (see item 1) then pull up some track to add an isolating joiner. 4. Reading which sections are off & on is much easier from the control panel than it is by looking at a ladder of pointwork, but it does allow you to run into a point set the wrong way. I have been asked to troubleshoot several layouts in the past, every one because the owner has used points to self-isolate & lost finding the cause. They quickly become a complete nightmare. For these reasons, I consider it a bad habit to use points to self-isolate. & as a potential bonus, if you want to run it as DCC, you just close all the switches to make every section live (although you should really consider how much current will flow through the wiring before you do this).

It is very detailed isn't it? Sounds like you're getting to grips with it though.

You could use them for choosing a controller. This is often referred to as cab control. If you have 2 controllers, this is much better than driving a train from 1 controller to another. You will probably want the double pole switches. You can use single if you have common return, but there are extra safeguards you need to follow for this (controllers need to be on isolated transformer coils).

I know what you mean. I use mine a little more than that, but still nowhere near enough which I feel is a waste. Cleaning it tends to put me off too, but it really only takes 5-10 minutes, which I know is a fraction of the time it takes to do the actual spraying, but it seems to be a stupid hang-up I have. You only need to part-fill the cup, turn the flow on to full & spray until you have no more paint, clean the pot out & part fill again with clean thinners, then take out the needle & front 'bits' to give them a short soaking in thinners while you clean the rest down with thinners & a rag. Describing it sounds much more tedious than doing it! Airbrushing seems to be a much more satisfying experience for me than brush painting. Once you get the hang of not over-thinning, you can get a really good finish. The other week I airbrushed a kit before assembly. I had never done this before but I am so happy with the result that I am keen to do it again. I also think that our perception of how well a paint can be airbrushed is coloured by what we are used to; different brands requiring different amounts of thinning.

Agree agree agree. Tunnels are very dark & trains should disappear into darkness. Even normally weathered ballast looks too light on a model. I made up tubes about 18" long with black card to help with the darkness. The tunnel mouth itself is a real dilemna. Real tunnels are usually a lot skinnier than anything produced commercially. They are usually quite tall too, to cope with clearing smoke which may not be an issue now, but it was when they were built. I wanted the opposite to you: tall, skinny tunnel mouths to exactly represent those at the location I am modelling. There was nothing commercially available which was suitable for me so I got them laser cut. I was fortunate to have a friend who could do the artwork.

It is far more likely that the cause of poor running is out of gauge wheelset back-to-backs instead of your track. A DOGA b2b gauge costs £6 & you only ever need 1. I found this was the answer to derailments with some of my models. Older Hornby models seemed more tolerant of Hornby track than Peco. Having since checked a lot more of my stock, I have found that most RTR is poorly adjusted. Some models have a mixture of loose & tight b2bs. You would think this is as easy to get right as wrong in the factory, but sadly it seems not. B2bs have now become the first thing I check when any of my models do not run well. The only wheelsets which I have found to be correctly & consistently adjusted are Romford/Markits. I check every one but none have ever needed any adjustment.

That seems to be a common view, but it lacks accuracy. We still have trains of 15+ coach trains in the UK...the Caledonian Sleepers. These are limited stop services because they are too long for most platforms. Trains longer than 12 coaches are & always were the exceptions, severely limited by their length as to where they can stop. An answer I have heard is to extend platforms. This is not possible everywhere, such as Birmingham New St which is hemmed in by its surroundings. Many others have junctions at their station throats. Extending these would require buying land, (destroying homes), moving bridges...& for what? In 20 years, they will probably need extending again. The cost of making these changes while keeping the existing railway running would not be much less than building a new railway (HS2)....but then we would still be left with the same twisty routes. The routes being supplemented by the first phase of HS2 rarely sees short passenger trains. Voyagers usually run in pairs, middle-distance services are normally 8 coaches during the day but most are 12 in peak periods. There is a lot of criticism in the UK about the state of the railways, but when something is proposed which attempts to address the issue instead of papering over the cracks, there is huge opposition.

Passenger numbers are rising & the southern section of WCML is hugely busy. Something needs to be done. Other routes are also suffering but you have to start with something. So what should we do? Build more Victorian style railways? If anything new needs to be built, then surely build it to a modern standard? You have mentioned some motorways. A large part of the M1 was opened in 1959 & a small part of the M6 a year earlier. Could you imagine life without these & the other motorways which followed? Did the entire nation agree that building these was a great idea? Of course not. Back in the early 1950s, there were similar sceptics that we now have for HS2.

As above reply, 1 black feed missing. The important part is that you have all the isolating joiners in place. These would be a pain to install after the track has been laid. Adding an extra feed is easy. & an aside..DCC would be perfectly happy on that layout with no further modification.

You've made me wonder if the larger tender was an afterthought? Or maybe the design team thought like you & hastily designed something to look more suitable behind it?