Pete the Elaner

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.

Ask what it is about Penzance which makes it special to you? Can you find this anywhere else? Must you model a real location? If so, how much of it do you have to model? The answers to those are personal to you but may help to choose what you need to re-create & what compromises you can make. Modelling a real location was also important to me. The motive power I like locked me in to finding somewhere suitable on the WCML. I felt that modelling a suitable location would be unlikely but I got lucky. I am finding it rewarding to create solutions for building structures unlike anything commercially available. The compromises I have made are to re-create just a short section between some tunnels & a road bridge. Certain aspects have to be be right: tunnel portals, station building. The area around the railway can be twisted. YOu may only have to get a few buildings in the right place to make it look like Penzance.

The Princesses had no corridor tenders. The crew had to ride the train throughout. There may have been 2 crews on the footplate, which would have been a little crowded. Where did you get 5 hours from? The hourly London-Glasgow service is timetabled for 4h29 with 6 stops. Coronation Scot was scheduled to do this in 6h30, but this was a once a day service which stopped at Carlisle only. Even so, today's regular service is 45% quicker with an extra 5 stops included too. The 5h43 Lizzie was a publicity run, so better compared with the record of 3h52 set by the APT. The modern record is again about 45% quicker. You should be looking at a speed increase of at least 45% & debating if that is a giant leap.

I rarely chanced the District/Circle platforms when Paddington-Euston was part of my commute. I tried the H&C a few times but got very frustrated at the 'The next train is at Latimer Road & will arrive in 5 minutes'. It always seemed to be way longer than that so I timed it. It was 7. This may sound like a petty whinge but if I can time it at this, why can't TFL do the same & use an accurate announcement? I ended up only using the H&C if I passed an incoming train around the Royal Oak area. Bakerloo then Victoria lines became my preferred route for this part of the journey.

Yes. Not the one I drive every day though.

6229 in blue would have been more unusual

No. Twisting wires together reduces crosstalk. Snubbers ease spikes due to short circuits. I have not suffered either, although my bus is sheathed mains cable, so that may well be twisted & with reference to the above post about different recommendations for different systems, maybe both you & I have command stations which effectively have integrated snubbers? If I do get strange issues, I will know some things to try.

I often hear of of others struggling to find a name they like. This should certainly provide a few ideas.

What you can get away with is not always a good recommendation. Without discussions like this we don't learn from each other. Feel free to not implement them but please don't complain about them being discussed.

I meant it sounds like someone has fitted this since it left the Hornby factory.

Great video. I agree that tunnels can be very different & the chances of a RTR one being right for your chosen location are next to impossible. I bought a laser cutter for mine, which was particularly suitable for me because I am modelling the same location in different eras, so I have something I can easily repeat. I do consider using a computer to be cheating a little & feel than a manual creation process is more rewarding. Most of the techniques you used are ones I had never thought of. I particularly like the effect of adding then washing off the plaster.

That does not sound like an original class 60 installation. I am not aware of Hornby fitting a 21 pin socket to anything & certainly not on the underside of the board.

There could be a number of reasons to delay it. Maybe they have an issue with the tooling which needs modification or repair. Either could cause the production to miss its slot & be re-scheduled later. It could be something as simple as wanting to produce models they feel would be more popular first?

Useful replies, thanks. I am surprised there were no Mk2s & the formations were longer than I expected. I thought they would only have been around 8 coaches, not 10 or 11. These were way before my time though. I only moved to Mk in 2002.