Pete the Elaner

The days of the local station with a goods yard & engine shed were killed off by Marples, so a goods yard or loco depot in the 70s or later would look a little contrived next to a station. When planning, consider what you want from it. Is your priority to capture the feel of the GW main line or run trains on a layout which has some GW features? If the latter, what features in particular would you want? Neither are right or wrong in general, but a matter of personal preference.

As you can see, juicers divide opinion. I will not comment either way on that. But to answer the other part of your question, I would always use insulated rail joiners at the frog end of a point. You can always add an extra feed later on if you need it. It is a lot more difficult to replace a metal rail joiner with an insulating one.

You can't please everyone. Hornby have had 5 attempts Hornby #1 - the cast one: Working & robust but hugely overscale Hornby #2 - The 1st plastic one: Looks good but very flimsy Hornby #3 - Plastic permanently down one: Ok if you don't ever want to raise it Hornby #4 - Pendolino: Doesn't raise properly & some components not quite right. Hornby #5 - Class 87: Flimsy Remember that the real version is operated by a chain inside the arms. Even if this could be replicated in 1/76, it would not last long. The design brief for both Bachmann & Hornby would have been to make one which: looks like the prototype can be raised/lowered, preferably by DCC can ride wires will not break straight away. After 6 RTR attempts, I think it is safe to say that it is not possible to meet all of these criteria. The BW HS pan is simply a highly delicate item to model & compromises must be made in order to make a product which can be sold.

Sounds perfect. Along with "I don't like sound - it is just a gimmick', one of my friends asks what is the point of sound locos without ambient sounds? A station would be a perfect environment to add sounds to. Most even have suitable buildings to place the speakers in.

From what I have heard about this, it sounds like this product is well suited to removing the sound kit from inside, hard wiring it to the DCC bus, fitting a bigger speaker & placing the lot inside a building or hill.

It is not always brightness which makes the difference. It is sometimes the coldness of the layout lighting which can make it stand out. Most indoor lighting either gives a yellow or green hue, both of which are unlike sunlight. Your eyes sort of adjust, but not completely. A cold, white light is much more like sunlight. Layouts which block much ambient light & replace it with a colder light look visibly better. This is why the low (faulty) lighting at RailEx was a benefit for any layout with its own lighting. I saw a layout at the Manchester show last winter which illustrated this well. It was a small west London layout modelled in winter. The lighting was variable & could be turned up or down from anywhere between dusk to overcast to a clear sunny day, but the operator preferred overcast. The point is that it was white light, not yellow bulb or green fluorescent light.

I have said this before too: If it was added to the calendar after the cars have been designed then I would agree.... but it isn't. Monaco has always been on the calendar. The challenge for both designers, teams & drivers is to perform in a number of different conditions. 1 circuit must therefore be the most twisty & this is it. Drivers love it too. Getting it right (usually in qualifying) gives them more of an adrenaline rush than at any other point in the season because they know that they will get punished for putting a wheel wrong, like Leclerc did.

What did he expect? Ferrari have long been a 1-driver team. They got their pit-stop tactics 'wrong' for Kimi a couple of years ago after he put his car on pole, letting Vettel past. I never thought that was a genuine mistake. What he does get at Ferrari is good wages. I have said this before & I am sure I will say it again: Ferrari are not the best team to drive for if you want to win. It has been 12 years since a Ferrari driver last won the championship (Kimi). Schumacher & Brawn made a difference for a few years before that, then you have to go back a further 20 years for their previous winner (Scheckter). For a team aiming & promising to be no.1, that is a very poor record.

Good agreed. I can't agree on it being perfect. They can only play 1 'spot' sound: horn, compressor, exhauster, sander, spirax valve etc. So if the compressor is running, this fades out to sound the horn before fading back in again. I feel this is a fair compromise for the cheaper decoder, but not perfect.

Can you re-mount the door so it opens outwards? That way you will have more space available. I did for my layout room

I always feel that lighting really helps to present a layout well. I don't remember seeing any layouts without their own lighting. Was this deliberate? The quality of layouts was as high as at any show I can remember visiting. The selection of traders was excellent too.

Surely you would need to replace or re-engineer the main board to achieve this?

I have heard that said before, but I disagree. I think it makes enough of a difference to justify me re-spacing my own track. I am happy to do this though. The issue is pointwork, which cannot have its bearers re-spaced. Depending on when & where the layout is based, BH may be suitable. Pointwork bearers are spaced a little closer than plain track sleepers anyway.

Maybe so much knowledge has been shared that more are spending time applying it instead of discussing it? I have learned a lot from the discussions, mainly things which make sense but I would never really have considered.

The new bullhead range fits this description. They are suitable for more situations than reading through this thread seems to suggest: BH points were common long after FB rail was introduced so using the 2 together is correct for many modellers. I see many layouts with concrete bearer pointwork, but when were these introduced on BR? I never saw them until early 21st century & this was in the station throat of Paddington. I seem to pay far more attention to the real railway than many modellers too. So on what layouts would concrete bearer points be correct? Main lines with track re-laid since 2000. There are not many of these. For anyone else, FB track with wooden bearer bullhead pointwork really is an acceptable compromise. Also bear in mind that for Peco, BH track & points were a financial risk. The pointwork in particular costs a lot more to produce. Would sales justify the production costs & how long would they take to meet the break even target? In order to maintain profits & remain as a supplier to the hobby, they cannot introduce too many new items too quickly.

I agree. It would cost Peco to re-tool it, so they would naturally pass this cost on to the customer by raising prices, but the current stuff would still be available because it is for the much larger North American market. Peco's consideration is therefore: "Would UK customers therefore pay more for new tooling or just buy the cheaper existing stuff?" Some are happy to re-space sleepers, but I think the fastest I could achieve when doing this was 30 minutes per yard of flexi to modify & lay, which is a significant amount of work. I really don't blame anyone for considering it too much effort, although it really does make a bog visual improvement. 2 of us have insisted on re-spacing sleepers on the club layout & after laying most of the main line, those who are building the layout with us are starting to appreciate how much better it looks. There are obviously doubters in the club who believe we are wasting our time but I am sure we will eventually win them over.

I am impressed. The pantograph looks like an exception piece of model engineering. It sounds like they have selected a very suitable decoder too. I had feared that they would use an otherwise low-end decoder with the necessary servo drive hardcoded. Also nice to hear that they have provided a shortlist of recommended decoders with the required CV settings. So the long wait has been so they could get the details just right.. I much prefer this to something produced to a deadline with known glaring faults included.

Thanks. I am pleased with it so far. I am spending a lot of my time & energy on a club layout at the moment so have not done much to this lately. I am enjoying the club stuff at the moment so I do not mind a pause in progress with this at the moment.

Sounds about right. I took a look there almost exactly a week ago. I exited the MRT into what was a relatively quiet Bangkok suburb. There were a few food stalls as is normal for Thailand. The existing surface (metre gauge station had 2 platforms & either 1 or 2 through lines. Beyond that was a huge structure with a curved roof. There was a little activity but I expect quite a lot was going on inside. There is simply no space for expansion in the existing terminal (Hua Lamphong). The planned expansion of the railways there has necessitated this. In a way, I imagine London was a little like this 120 years ago when what we now know as the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo lines & the Charing Cross branch of the Northern lines were being built. I will be interested to go there in 15 or so years time to see how much of what has been planned is actually running.

I think they are but it takes time. The US has much stricter car emission regulations than we do in the UK, but they are suffering from past policies of road transport over rail. New rail schemes are being planned & built though. China have built more miles of high speed rail than any other country over the past 25 years. I was in Bangkok last week. They have suffered from a lack of transport policy. The city's roads are choked & many of the vehicles are tuk-tuks. You can smell how much rubbish they emit. They have several new city railways planned, all electric. They are also building a brand new terminus away from the city centre because the present one cannot cope with all the new lines they have planned. And as for the UK??? As all travel is on the increase, some electrification schemes are being rationalised for bi-mode. We still have people whingeing about how much of an eyesore wind farms are. Surely you can't get much cleaner or cheaper than using wind to generate electricity?

There is a photo of a class 24 at this location available on the net if you search for it but I am not sure it it acceptable to upload it here. There is a lot unfinished on the layout including platform tops & I need to touch up the ballasting before weathering it, but I am happy with the progress so far. My APT-E was on the down fast when I took this, but the Patriot is hiding it. It would have looked more than a little out of place.

South Hampstead. in OO, it has about 7' of track between Primrose Hill tunnels & Loudoun Road bridge, where the old & new station buildings were/are. There is a link to it at the bottom of my posts. I am modelling it as it was in late 30s & like you, I have photos of most of it but some of the other areas will have to be done as I think they would have been, but there are lots of clues remaining like cable hangers on the platforms. I then intend to model it around 1990. It has not changed much between then & now so I have lots of my own recent photos to work from. It will look very different from the 30s version though, with concrete sleeper track, a nasty new station building, no centre return rail on the DC lines & of course overhead wires on the fast & slow lines. Even the bridge carrying the GC over the top was renewed, presumably when the WCML was electrified.

Brabham. Thanks for correcting me on that. I couldn't quite remember. I do remember that it was not banned but that it would have been the following season & all teams agreed that it was too dangerous a concept to pursue.

I have only just seen this thread. One of my friends wanted to do Hadley Wood in OO but never got around to it. I shared your desire to model a real location on a busy line and am now doing just that. My preferences are for WCML in OO but these are minor compared to the things we have in common. Although my location has no pointwork, I am more interested in capturing the feel of the location by its buildings & structures. The project which has sprung from this is for me the most pleasing thing I have done to date. I really do not care how long it takes me. I never seemed to have this patience with previous layouts. I think this is because I am now working on the project I always wanted. If you build something you later feel unhappy with (a building or wall etc), do not be afraid to scrap it & start again. It is very rewarding to see it built more accurately second time around. You just don't get this from a 'freelance' layout. Your fiddle yard looks very complicated. Like most, the main lines seem to run through the middle. I questioned this & designed my through lines to run outside the storage loops, so both have equal access. When running it as a 1930s layout, after running through the up fast, the same train can re-emerge a few minutes later on the down fast with a different loco on the front. Since Euston is only 5 miles up the line, surely this is entirely accurate anyway?