Pete the Elaner

I need to have a good sort-out so I can sell off all my old air con Mk2s & replace with 1 rake of Bachmanns. I will get around to it one day.

The stock I like varies from late 30s to early 90s. They ran in the same location though. I am therefore building a layout suitable for the 30s but once I have this looking reasonable, which will hopefully take 3-4 years the plan is to store the scenic boards & repeat the layout in 1990s guise with concrete sleeper track & the addition of OLE has forced some other changes such as a new bridge & station building. I should only need to change a few minor things like signage to bring this up to date.

While looking an old photo of the bridge, there seemed to be 2 small brick-built structures just beyond or maybe even in the platform ramp of the disused up fast/down slow platforms. The larger structure probably about the same height as a person with a pitched roof. In front of this is something smaller but it is unclear from the photo whether this is a small wall or maybe a housing for electrical equipment, so I have chosen to represent the latter. It is roughly in place but may need moving a little. It needs a roof & some painting too. Fast_line_hut1 by rip, on Flickr The larger structure will be my next project. The roof pitches upwards from left to right. Unlike this one, it was built using stretcher bond. Neither buildings are there now. They are replaced with a lot of overgrowth & some electrical cabinets.

Euston was not central London 200 years ago. Railways were not allowed into central London when the termini were built. This is 1 reason we have several of them mainly linked by the circle line instead of 1 huge station like Grand Central in New York.

Your masts look great. Catenary is hard to get nice & fine in OO because it would be extremely fragile. I remember speaking to Andi Dell (Dagworth) a few years ago & he told me that all his pantographs had their springs weakened until they could just about support a very short pencil. This was to reduce the gauge & tension of the contact wire to something more aesthetically pleasing. Standard Hornby pans are way more fierce than this. Painting the arms & wires dark grey helps to hide them. I know the copper goes a light green colour but this is one of the occasions where I believe the correct colour is not the best thing to use. You mention that stock fouls them on curves. We all have to use train set curves to get our layouts to fit & Mk3s are always likely to give the most problems. Check the distance between the track & mast against in the photos in post #40 & in Clive's diagrams. Ignoring the Diesel line in the bottom diagram, the dimensions provided by Clive show a minimum 11' from track centre to mast centre. Yours look 7' at most. This is probably too much of a major change to apply, but possibly something to consider for a future layout.

I cannot remember how a 6 pin chip is configured. I had 1 loco which was fine until the body was replaced & I have a 1F, although I cannot remember if it was this one which was affected. I believe the clearance was so tight that the body was pressing the chip against the chassis so the 2 made contact.

Euston is designed around its concourse. It is warm dry, bright & clean. You can see the screens from most of it & you can understand announcements clearly. There is no way the old Euston could cope with today's number of passengers. If there is a delay, I like the option of being able to buy a magazine or get a snack/drink without going to far. & you call this a hellhole?

They have an SR-71 Blackbird there. In a building which houses an American collection IIRC. Duxford is a war museum though. I don't know how the Concorde fits in with this, but I think other civilian arcraft are unlikely.

English signage has an issue here. What 2nd language would we use? English is the most common 2nd language by a long way, so wherever you go, English will be understood. I was in Thailand a couple of years ago & the locals were speaking English to some Chinese visitors...because this is a language they both understood. French - Our nearest neighbours. Spanish - the most widely spoken 1st language in the world, largely in South America. Polish - the 2nd most widely spoken language in the local area. Dutch/Flemish - Eurostar services are available direct to St Pancras from Netherlands & Belgium. My own personal dislikes for a station rebuild is London Bridge. Signs directed me outside along a rainy street to get to the Northern Line & the 'key' destinations screens are still not what you get guided to when arriving by Underground. Euston takes a lot of flak for its characterless building but it actually works. The platforms are all in a line & access to the tube lines are in the middle of the concourse unlike the split platforms of Paddington or King's Cross which were both 2 stations half-heartedly merged into 1. Euston's biggest flaw rarely gets criticised: its poor interchange with Euston Square. Why should travellers have to walk the entire length of the platform at street level? There was an excellent chance to include an east end entrance in the 1960s rebuild & make this a proper interchange with the rest of Euston.

What's new? Irvine has always talked himself up like that. He was Schumacher's No2 so how better to justify himself as the 2nd best than to talk his team-mate up as being the best ever? Ferrari had a winning set-up at the time, with Jean Todt & Ross Brawn directing the team. Ferrari & Vettel have made some errors in the past 2 years, but I do not mean this as a criticism. It is what happens when you are striving to be the best.

I have used Copydex before & quite like it. It certainly has plenty of advantages over PVA but its tendency for the ballast to float when wet prompted me to experiment with something different.

The GC bridge is coming together. The plate sides are Wills Varigirders, split into top & bottom halves & staggered. I noticed smoke shields on an old photo on the net. The prototypes were different widths so these are too. The uprights are way too small so I have not even bothered to paint them, which is why they are still white. I have found that for some things, I cannot really tell what they will look like until I try to model them. It is not like I can go & take some more photos because that bridge has been replaced, I assume when the line was electrified in the 1960s. Having been looking for a suitable alternative to watered down PVA for ballasting (which I think is poorly suited to the task), the ballast was fixed with wallpaper adhesive flakes. This looked reasonable at first but has not lasted & looks a real mess now. I will re-visit this later, ballasting the whole area, but not until the other buildings are in place. There was a P-way hut which, from the 1 photo I have of it back then, seemed to be built into the platform ramp so I need to build this too. The platform sides are also glued in place now. You can see one of them in the bottom right. The containers are in that area right now at South Hampstead right but I will need something else for the 30s/40s. SH_GC_Bridge_190123 by rip, on Flickr

Hi, I am also starting in 7mm. I have modelled in OO but been intrigued by finer standards of P4, which, like 7mm, lends itself to smaller layouts. I am therefore giving O gauge a miss & having a crack at S7.

I have always enjoyed this show. It was a real shame for the club that it had to be cancelled due to snow last year. Hopefully this year will be well attended.

I seem to remember from reading Rail in their last few years, 50017 was hardly ever in Laira for repairs, making it one of the more reliable members of the class.

Also for 3D printing & Laser cutting. In the past, if you wanted something more unusual or bespoke, you had to build it from scratch. It is easier to draw it up on a computer & press a button. It is a different skill set but easier to achieve a consistent result for something repetitive with a small but significant difference to that which is commercially available.

As for pointwork with concrete bearers, the first ones I saw were early this century in Paddington's station throat. Concrete sleeper track has been around for about 40-50 years longer. Wooden bearer pointwork is more suitable for the vast majority of modern layouts. I noticed a layout in last year Great Model Railway Challenge using wooden sleeper track with concrete bearer points & my instant reaction was that whoever chose that combination does not pay any attention to the real railway.

Easier to describe it with a link http://www.wiringfordcc.com/switches_peco.htm Those DC modellers who isolated sidings with pointwork are not able to with these. It is Peco's solution for not producing 2 different ranges of pointwork. Not to every modellers taste but sound economic sense.

The station looks like it has been squeezed into the corner like an afterthought. Trains have to stop well short of the run round loop in order to actually run round, leaving only space for 1 coach on that plan. I have never seen a terminus this short. There is no reason why it cannot take up at least half of that side of the layout. Most termini I have seen were way longer than the trains which usually served them. There is a siding adjacent to the station's headshunt. I thought this was for storing locos until I saw the engine shed, which makes me wonder why it is there at all? Why not move the shed here & remove the siding where it is now? This creates a space where the engine shed was. Either move the level crossing to here or replace it with a road bridge which is also your scenic break, the road providing access to the coal yard. An option is to make the backscene high level street with a retaining wall in front of the railway. The coal depot & dock give the goods side some purpose. If you want to make something a little different, the dock could be on a pier.

No answers yet? New models are often over-greased, maybe as a precaution against sitting on a shelf for moths before being purchased. Nothing really beats a strip down, clean & re-lubricate with a light oil. A coating of graphite should also work well. For solid deposits on wheels, a fibreglass pencil can be used. The fibreglass which flakes off is a skin irritant though. Isopropyl alcohol removes a lot of dirt effectively. Methylated spirits is an alternative to this but its colouring can remain as an unwanted residue.

I've just been looking at their site but can't find scenery such as hedges or scatter material. Backscenes should be fairly easy to produce & should sell quite well if marketed correctly.

Holy Pointless. That is almost in Edgware Road! Also shows how long I have avoided Paddington for...

I have never seen an LMS corridor tender documented anywhere. Coronation Scot was scheduled to stop at Carlisle, so building a special tender just for a non-stop run seems a bit unnecessary. It also had to keep stopping for water. These stops were never required when the water troughs were there. Without these 'modern delays', it would easily have won.

When did it move? Not since early 2000s & I can't see any sign of a previous move.

34C mentions partial demolition. Once I had figured out how to fit the layout in, dismantling the previous one felt quite enjoyable because I believed the end result would be pleasing. The same goes with a couple of things I got wrong during building. One of the tracks was aligned badly because the Google Earth view I went by was not as clear as an older one I eventually went back to. I also built a retaining wall far too blandly. Deciding to scrap it & rebuild it much more accurately was one of the most rewarding 'mini-projects' of it.