Pete the Elaner

That's interesting & has transformed the look of the point. There are some jobs which take a lot of effort but seeing a result like that makes it feel worthwhile.

Here goes... I have used a mixture of Peco code 75 flatbottom for fast/slow lines & C&L bullhead for the DC lines on my WCML layout. With the Peco's sleepers spaced out a little, I have to look very closely to see the difference. Peco's bullhead sleepers are spaced at about 9mm centres. Peco's flatbottom is spaced at 7.8mm centres. I have found that 8.5mm for fast lines & 9.5mm for secondary lines improves the appearance noticeably. Bearers on pointwork were always a little closer & as you remarked, these are a lot harder to re-space. It takes me about 30 minutes per m length of track to cut the webbing, space the sleepers out roughly then glue the track down with the sleepers spaced properly. I initially cut myself a tool from plasticard which was ok but a little rough. I then realised I could make a tool much more uniformly (& consistently) with a laser cutter. Then I thought I could share these with others so they have recently become available through the Double O Gauge Association. I have no pointwork on my layout's scenic section so the difference between 9.5mm spacing & pointwork may be a bit unsightly. I have not tried it. If your layout is mainly straight (as mine is) you may also want to consider narrowing the 6' by 5mm to 45.5mm. Some of the spacers also help with this but I also have a separate tool for it. This layout was done with 8.5mm sleeper spacing & narrower 6' way. Pointwork is unmodified. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/56505-a-change-is-as-good-as-a-rest/?view=getlastpost & my own layout, using C&L bullhead for the platform lines & high level line then modified Peco (flatbottom) Streamline for the main lines. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/120795-south-hampstead/?view=getlastpost. Rails were laid in 60' lengths on the real railway. I would have done this on my layout if I had thought of it at the time. The new Everard Junction has been done with these lengths & sleepers re-spaced by eye. You can find this on Youtube.

i did wonder if it carried 6229 for a short time as BR loco. Interesting that they did not bother to cover over LMS on the tender when it was renumbered.

Atholl was 31. Montrose was 32.

I usually hear that last bit from people who have never been to MK for anything more than a flying visit. It is a very well designed town. MK has one of the biggest running communities of anywhere & this is not a coincidence. The reason is that most of the paths are kept well away from roads & often cross them by bridges or underpasses, keeping pedestrians well away from traffic. This also allows most of the main network of roads to be national speed limit, so motorists are happier too. If a road becomes blocked due to an accident, the police can simply close the road & this is little more than a minor inconvenience to any drivers because they can just use another road which runs parallel. It has more green land, parks & lakes than any town of similar size...although many of the trees are in unnatural straight lines. It was designed from the outset for road traffic, coping with many times that of smaller towns before becoming congested. When out on foot or the bike (bikes are allowed on the paths (redways)), you don't see many cars because you are separated from them. From my house which is fairly central, I have a choice of 3 Tesco, 2 Sainsbury, 1 Waitrose, 1 Asda, 2 Morrison's 2 Aldis & a Lidl all within 10 minutes drive. This is just the full size stores, not the smaller convenience ones. I can make a 'quick stop' into town on the way out to somewhere. This would take me at least an hour in the town I used to live. I can pop out to a DIY store & back again within 30 minutes quite comfortably. Useful for when you get stuck on a job halfway though the day. Good access to the M1 & WCML. If you need to commute to the city, that is only a 30 minutes journey. It has a ski slope (real snow, not a dry one), sky diving simulator. I believe there are not many of either in the country. Public transport is pretty good. All towns have their nice & not so nice areas. MK is pretty typical in this respect. It was designed to be practical & judged on this, it works very well. As a place to live, it is hard to beat.

I was told that some Inter-City services stopped at Bletchley before Milton Keynes Central station was built. It is hard to think of Bletchley as a major station now, but the removal of the Oxford line would have decreased its importance. It seems just as likely that the line was energised in 1 stage between Rugby & Euston though.

46229? Please wash you mouth out sir! It was de-streamlined in December 1947, so never ran for BR as a streamliner & probably did not re-emerge from Crewe until January 1948 so possibly never ran for LMS as a de-streamliner either

It is unlikely that many long distance services would call at Northampton. That is considered a diversion away from the main line.

I find Dettol work well for removing paint. Cheap, doesn't damage the plastic & removes factory paintwork too. You'll be down to the bare plastic but at least you can start again. I remember speaking to someone years ago who resprayed locos for customers. He left it a week between coats for the paint to go hard.

I just found this after seeing a comment you made on another thread. I hope you got your electrical fault sorted, but he is a thought for your next layout. Modelling DCC with electrofrog points has made me change my wiring methods but this can be applied equally to DC: Past experience with dirty point blades & rail joiners has taught me to never rely on them for electrical conductivity. I solder link rails between them & the stock rail (which Electrofrogs allow you to do very easily). They also require you to isolate then re-feed the siding. Dirt at rail joiners becomes a problem on larger layouts. For these reasons, I always isolate after every rail at the frog end of each point. Since you have every siding switched, you would not need to rely on point blades for feedng the sidings. I helped wire a friend's layout fairly recently & he did not isolate after every point (although his were electrofrogs). It drove me crazy trying to work out where things were being fed from. Far from being easier to use the point for feeding the siding, it made the layout difficult to understand. Regarding your other issue about running over pointwork, I have found that most RTR back to backs are wrong. I think it is quite poor from the manufacturers, but it seems we are stuck with it for now. Did you get a gauge for this?

That's great. I have caught a bit of a bug for assembling electronic kits right now so I'll probably give this a go.

That's interesting. I like the way you've hidden the switch beneath AWS ramps. I can't do that because my layout is pre-war 4th rail, but the 4th rail & some 'grot' in the 4 foot could hide it a little. Would this make the switch too far from the passing magnets for them to work?

This is wandering from the topic a little & will be impossible to find when I want to refer to it! How about another thread? http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/140465-conductor-rail-spark/

This was brought up in another thread but I think it deserves its own. I am interested in producing a spark when a 3rd rail trains passes a certain rail junction. These are caused by the shoe breaking contact with the conductor rail, so it happens at the same point on the track. I am therefore looking at mounting a bright LED in the baseboard & finding some way of firing it when the shoe of a 3rd rail until passes over, but not when a diesel does. Firing the LED should not be a problem although a suggestion of how to do it will save me from having to work it out but does anyone have a recommendation of a cheap, reliable, readily available way of detecting when a conductor shoe passes over so the LED fires at just the right time? Although I use DCC, I don't think this is relevant.

I am not sure the decoder is the best device to do this. From what I have seen on the underground, 3rd rail sparks seem to occur at a particular place on the rail, either as the shoe makes/breaks contact or on the weld between conductor rail & the skid block (I am sure this has a proper name but I don't know it) at the end. It may therefore be easier to generate the spark from the layout itself, activated by something mounted in the shoe rather than the other way around. I will have 3rd/4th rail on my layout but had not considered this until now & recreating this is the type of thing which appeals to me. Thank you for inspiring me to consider it.

I read (In BRM I think) that Dettol can be used as a paint stripper. I tried it with success on some old Lima bodies & some painted WIlls kits. It needs a couple of soakings to get a fairly clean bare plastic but it does not seem to affect the plastic itself or the glue which the Wills kit was held together with. Fairly cheap & easily available too.

Oops. I did describe that a bit sloppily, but I did actually mean to build a suitable box. You didn't even need to twist my words or 'selectively' drop some key ones either.

There are lots of options for this which are rarely exploited by the teams. Different coloured numbers on the cars.Mercedes this year is 1 example & who remembers Mansell's 'Red 5' at WIlliams when Patrese's 6 was white? I don't remember any other team around that time doing this. I remember the camera mount above the air intake being a different colour a few years ago. Why not colour the halo itself?

Rail gets rusty on the real railway long before it is laid. With use, the rust darkens & seems to spread around the ballast a little as Mike describes. Whether you can get away with airbrushing depends on the standard of your airbrushing & also exactly the condition of the track you want to portray. If you airbrush fresh track, you need to do it very heavily to stop the bare metal from bleeding through. It is a tedious task but a coat of brush-painted dark rust first can be weathered less heavily for a nice effect.

Open transformers don't cost much. I bought a couple from www.rapidonline.com recently for about £8 each. You'll need to mount them, typically in a control panel or under the board then you will probably want to cover with some bits of wood or plasticard for safety.

I completely agree with this. The Zimo really is that much better than any of the 'budget' ones which are only about £2 cheaper. I have not tried the Lenz Standard though. I will have to give it a try although I don't seem to buy decoders very often lately.

2 thoughts here, but both well short of replacing the system. It sounds like one of the pins has become disconnected. Check the pins inside the sockets on the cab & panel. One of mine bent almost flat & had to be teased back into shape with a tiny screwdriver. My flat cab-panel cable was never terminated securely. The cable's sheath is not held firmly in the connector at one end & I have occasionally found that it does not connect properly. Try wiggling the cable gently at each end.

That sounds very likely & from another point of view, very reasonable. I was brought up in a small village with a closed pit nearby (I think it was a sand extraction pit). This was accessed by a single track road with passing places. I think the poor road was the reason the pit closed in the first place. My parents still live there & told me that since I moved out, a company proposed to re-start operations at the pit. This would have generated a lot of heavy road traffic along a road which simply could not cope, then these lorries would pass through the village. This generated a lot of opposition within the local community. My suggestion was to welcome the extra business, providing they built a rail head & this was used to transport all the product away. The nearest rail line was & still is about 2 miles away & the required route would be to pass through undeveloped land. If they refused, then it would be the company's decision & they would never be able to claim that their plans were opposed. If they complied then this should generate local employment. I thought that was a very reasonable suggestion, but my father disagreed. I do not understand why. So I can completely understand why all coal must be transported by rail. It is difficult to make exceptions. Once you make one, you have opened the door for others. It is disappointing that Brecon finds it cheaper to import coal rather than buy it back from the distributor who bought it from the local supply.

Quoting half of my paragraph has twisted my meaning. Here is the whole thing with the significant part enlarged for clarity: Anyway, back to the Duchesses..I quite like them in wartime black. Hornby produced 6241 as a streamliner (which I have renumbered 6243 because it lasted until after nationalisation), but I don't think they have ever produced a non or de-streamliner nor do I expect them to. I just don't think the market is there for them. If there is a plain black one due out, I want it!

How badly do they rock & where? If they sink into the gap at the frog itself, then this is a trait of the loose tolerances of the major gauges,N OO, O & even EM. For 4mm scale OO-SF helps & P4 eliminates it completely. For 7mm, then S7 is the answer. They all involve building your own track & P4/S7 involve a lot more work on top of that. What gauge & size of rail are you using?