Platform 1

It seems it does: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Porthkerry+House%2C+Porthkerry%2C+Barry&ia=web&iaxm=maps [And also explore the airfield just to the west-north-west - 10 Red Arrows and BoB flight!] I was interested because I lived for some months at Sully near Barry in the '70s. Anyone else remember those ghastly 'Lucky bags' in the '60s? Two toffees, a lolly, some chalk things that I was never sure whether you could eat or not, and a toy - all for 3d. And nice ice-cream: Lyons Maid, Walls, Neilson and Eldorado were the national makers - only Walls survives today. Was it Lyons Maid that made the neopolitan with the green stripe instead of chocolate? Always preferred proper Cornish though! Those LT twin rovers for 5/- (under-16 fare) were fab when we moved to the London area in the 60's - but I was always disappointed that they excluded lines beyond Rickmansworth, hence I never went to Amersham or Aylesbury. Nobody even blinked when I disappeared for the day with a box of sarnies and the previously mentioned individual fruit pie (strawberry and apple - yum!). Why did food taste better back then? Until just a few years ago, the Isle of Wight always felt like the 50s and 60s. But even there, the modern world is encroaching: traffic queues, supermarkets, noise, light pollution, giant ferries, retail parks and so-on have all diminished its special feel. Nostalgia ain't what it was!

Rather like telephone sanitisers and hairdressers on the B Ark.

Their proper name was Hellermann pliers - see here for the modern equivalents. Dangerous things in the wrong hands!

Ah, but perfection takes time...

Only if he's called Chuck... ...or he's very sharp

Together with other old tools, I have one of those hand braces. It was so good it sheared the screw! As long as you have the large bore bits, they're also really good for making large holes in wood.

Except that... at some point since the fifties/sixties, istr newspaper ink changed to a non-fully-drying type in order to assist newsprint recycling. So whilst agreeing re-use of newspaper squares on the back of the bog door would be useful, I'm not sure I want an inky bottom. Cue jokes about rubber stamping...

Rather odd that Auntie Beeb hasn't said a word about this proposed acquisition. Plenty in other news outlets. Incompetence or something more sinister (I know Hanlon's razor generally applies...)?

Today's Crossrail press release: "Elizabeth line services through central London expected to commence in summer 2021" http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/elizabeth-line-services-through-central-london-expected-to-commence-in-summer-2021#

Never thought I'd see that on a model rail forum

Not sure what size your hard drive is, but if you're 'upgrading' to Windows 10 v1903, it will reserve an additional 7GB or more for reserved storage which will hold "updates, apps, temporary files, and system caches". Microsoft have been a bit quiet about this new feature. This means you'll need more storage space than you might have expected to do a 1903 upgrade. Hope the above link helps!

Thanks Ron, I think I've lost the plot a bit lately - but have no connection with the media!!

Digging a bit deeper (!) into the Crossrail release last Friday 8 November, it now seems only Abbey Wood services will run into the central section initially: Hardly the much-heralded easy cross-London transit previously advertised. And which will leave both LST and PAD waiting for platform optimisation works a while longer. Sigh...

Thanks for the comments. Looks like I can get away with a couple on the layout then - main era is 1990±4. Might need to hide them to run my late steam period though!

At some point, oil lamps on buffer stops must have given way to electric, eventually moving to the bright LED types we see today. Anyone know approximately when this happened?

Another brilliant show, it just improves every year - well done chaps! Took a few pics but they're rather poor compared with what's already on the website. There was far too much to see in my 4½ hour visit, so I probably missed a few. My highlights were: the tiny working TVs in the electrical shop and many other novel details on Old Elm Road stunning Brighton East (at last I get to see it - thanks Kipford, hope your gremlins left when I did!) small but great Crossley Scrap technically intriguing and strangely compelling The End of the Line and the simple but very effective (brrr!) Tops Tor. I would've liked to have properly viewed Loftus Road, but the combination of dim lighting and crowds made it difficult - maybe another time/place? And Bewdley was very impressive, with a good period 'feel'. But very sad to hear - belatedly, must be living under a rock - that the prolific artist Alan Ward died last January, such a kind man. RIP Alan.

Farringdon almost ready:

Photos from inside Paddington’s Crossrail station: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/10/22/photos-from-inside-paddingtons-crossrail-station/

Only slightly OT, but in case you haven't seen it, BBC Southwest recently did a piece on the WSR - start at 11m 5s. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0009fhf/inside-out-south-west-14102019 - available until 12 November 2019.

Engineman course in the driving rain...

The double-track main line has now been properly trimmed and laid. Cutting and re-spacing sleepers is very time consuming! I decided that the concrete sleepers on this section would benefit from being opened out to 8mm centre-centre. After gluing and adjusting - 5mm coffee stirrers are perfect - the track does look better, even though it's all a compromise in 00. The station area will be bullhead, so no chopping and spacing will be needed there. The other time-consuming element was aligning track at board joins. Because the boards are supported on shelf brackets, and the need to remove the elevated section for occasional cupboard access, getting the horizontal and vertical alignment spot-on was, er, challenging! So then on to the crossover at the station throat. Even with the cut-and-solder mods for DCC, pointwork was fairly straightforward to lay - despite my continued tendency to prune rail lengths just slightly short. But it looks reasonable and hopefully will look much better when painted and ballasted. Before going much further, a check was made for clearances on the curve: This is worst case, assuming I've not overlooked any longer rolling stock. Not too bad is it? Now to lay track in the station area... and then under-board wiring... and point servos... and... eventually see trains run!

How large? You may need one or more DCC terminator/snubber circuits for proper operation. Although the NCE symptoms list doesn't match your experience. Just a thought for the pot.

Always a problem for me - roughly November to March on the eastern ends of the Central Line could be quite distressing on a sunny morning. Maybe that's why all those rows of newspapers go up? Indeed. So why wasn't XR built to tube standards with say 12-car trains? Apologies if this was already covered up-thread - surely it would have saved on costs (plenty of precedent, Bakerloo & Central lines)? And perhaps thus avoided the temptation to extend as far as Reading. But at least lucky Freedom Pass holders will get a bargain trip in the Thames Valley if they can put up with discomforts en route...

So there's the summer been and gone... wasn't it a good one (in the West Country anyway)? Now the evenings are drawing in, thoughts have returned to the loft layout. Track has been acquired, and some progress made in laying it. Each board has to be laid and wired separately in case it has to be removed some time in future. The dropped board is easily (!) removable to access an under-eaves cupboard. The fiddle yard area is a bit of a squeeze to get to (see photos) so hunched-up working means limited spells at that end. The five tracks were straightforward, but the removable join was, er, rather tricky to work on. But that end board is wired now, so things should get a little easier to access. The board joiner strips are made from pieces of copper-clad board, intended for printed circuits - the technique is described in many RMweb posts. It's a very fiddly job, as each piece of rail has to clipped in place while it's soldered - I used a couple of small letter/bulldog clips. So far, wagons run pretty well across the joints, but we'll see what happens as the temperature and humidity changes...! Here's a pic looking in the other direction. The dropped board will have a bridge under the main line and a head-shunt, both providing some scenic interest. There will also be a tunnel mouth as scenic break just beyond the coal wagon, so that the points to the fiddle yard are all 'behind scenes' yet accessible. Only six inches or so of height for a back-scene though! Next steps are to finish track laying and wire up the other three boards so that testing can start. At the current rate of progress, that'll be slower than Crossrail !

Agreed Mike. Back in the day, I commuted from Brentwood to central London. In the peaks I'd aim to catch the semi-fast - even if packed - in preference to the all-stations services as it shaved some 10 minutes off the journey. And the class 307/8s were more comfortable. There is precedent of course - the Metropolitan went out to Aylesbury, but got cut back to Amersham in 1961; the Bakerloo was also effectively cut back operationally to Queens Park from Watford. So Reading seems an odd choice based on TfL's own history. Shenfield makes more sense (though Gidea Park might've been better) but I wouldn't want to commute from/to Brentwood today, stopping all stations, even with faster units. Hearsay suggests many now travel from/to Shenfield instead. No doubt that is a boon to some, especially with luggage, pushchairs, etc. But personal observation shows most commuters go for time saving and comfy seats. Like so many other recent things, it all feels like another race to the bottom.