Donw

In order to stop the GWR backed Bala and Dolgelley Railway from reaching the coast the Aberystwith and Welsh Coast railway started to build a branch to Dolgelley. Once they had reached Penmaenpool it was operated and designated as down to Penamaenpool from Barmouth Junction.However on reaching Dolgelley in 1869 they were faced with the GWR timetable which had designated Dolgelley as down from the junction near Ruabon. So the public timetable was changed to shown from Dolgelley to Barmouth as Down. However the Working Timetable was unaltered showing it as up. The working Timetable was not changed until 1895 when the whistle codes were also changed. Regarding the signals at Castle Aching. I am not in favour of Outer Homes and Advanced Starters where inter station distances are short. My choice would be to have a shunt ahead signal for the main and branch. You could add a limit of shunt board if you wanted but basically shunt ahead would allow a shunt move to clear the turnouts. Distant signals can also be a problem. However a lever to operate one could always be used to turn a light on in the panel of the other station to indicate a train from them is expected. Prior to around 1900 a lot of ground signal were actually point indicators sometime referred to as Non Independent signals. These were linked to the turnout linkage to rotate to show a red or white light. However by 1905 these may have been replaced with normal ground signals. My suggestions signal towards the station A home signal for both the main and the branch these could be on a single post with a bracket and subsidiary post placed between the two lines. a smaller subsidiary arm under the branch home to authorise entry to the loop and engine shed roads. A ground signal to authorise a shunt into the goods yard signals leaving the station A bracket signal with a starter for both the main and the branch with a shunt ahead underneath both. A ground signal to authorise a shunt move onto the main from the yard. A ground signal to authorise a shunt move from the loop or shed road onto the branch Don

Up and down on railways can be tricky for the major railways out from London down is away from London and Up is towards it.. For other railways up is generally towards the important place they started from. However you get some odd results. One of the oddest is Exeter where an Up SR train goes in the opposite direction to a GW Up train so if you ask which way is London both is the true answer. Now I confess I cannot recall the History of the WNR at the moment but you have the some issues there say you decided that up was to Aching Constable from Castle Aching and the same from BM to AC. Which ever you decide is up and down between CA and BM one of them will have up and down trains from the same direction. As regards the signalling I will put down my thoughts. Don

The footbridge wasn't in use when we lived in the area. Don

if I remember correctly colour blindness seems to be carried on the X chromosome. Thus my father couldn't pass his colour blindness on to me but my sister had to be a carrier with a 50% chance of passing it to a son. For a girl to be colourblind her mother must be a carrier and her father colourblind. My father had been a steward on an aircraft carrier where colourblindness was not an issue. Don

It is nicely modelled but the doorways look big enough for those horses to get through which is a little odd. Could it be HO horses with a 00 building? The Transoms of course make the difference. We looked at buying an ex Stationmasters house that had high ceilings making it taller than usual. Don

I have been looking back through the thread although a lot of photos have gone the videos are still there. Including running on the dodgy track. Just excellent. I also noticed Northroader's Englefield Farmers building. You commented you need to change the name. I disagree they could have started in Englefield and took over an old depot at Portway. down south we have Mole Valley Farmers all over the place even on the Island. I doubt many customers even know where the Mole valley is. Just a thought. Really good thread this. Don

you mean you have a queue of chassis awaiting bodies? Ut seems to me you could have three bodies for the one chassis now there's economy for you. After all none of the three would be running together. Looks good though. Don

Are you just trying to save the fare home? Don

You said the F20 you have built is not particularly good blaming your workmanship. There may be some wheel drop at the crossing and you are just blaming yourself. Don

Well that's bad driving going into a slip set against you. But more importantly if you have hefty stay alives you really need to think like a railway where they have traps to divert errant vehicles out of harms way. But also have a safe distance head of a stop signal to allow for possible overruns. Strong buffers may also be adviseable. I suggest a couple of seconds is more than enough stay alive. Of course in 7mm if there is enough flex in the turnout operating mechanism the loco will usually push the blades open. If you have a frog juicer it shouldn't cause a short so keeping control. Careful layout design where you can have crossovers at the ends of loops means a loco will not run against the blades merely run into the headshunt buffers (you do have both turnouts of a crossover worked by the same lever(switch) I presume. Don

you only have to run a typical DC loco in the dark to see odd sparks at the wheels. This is because the pickup system is imperfect. DCC works by changing the polarity the timing of the changes indicates a zero or a one. The poor decoder is trying to work out the string of zeros and ones so the odd interruption can confuse it. Messages are repeated to minimise the issue, but it is little wonder that sometimes it turns the sound off or something else. However this happens rarely and switching things off and back on sorts it out. One of the things I really like is the fact that when I stop a loco it stays stopped. It does not move if someone throws a section switch and connects the loco to their controller by mistake or just not thinking that the track my loco is on is also live. I have seen this happen when more than one person is operating and when the one operator has forgotten to switch off one section. Don

I obtained some eight pin sockets from ebay wired the track pickups and the motor to it. I bought some decoders from Youchoose with the speakers. They came with the speakers wired to the decoder and and 8 pin plug. I mount the decoder and speakers on a piece of card with the edges folded up to avoid contacts. Slide it into place and plug in. I tape round the socket to avoid that contacting anything. Job done. ps the socket had leads already soldered to it

Excellent work. The stone wall is good but as others have commented there are too many vertical stones. As we have built quite a few stone walls ( Marion has a good eye for walling) you place stones horizontally. You just get the odd one placed vertically usually to fit in a gap too narrow for a horizontal stone. The type of stone can make a lot of difference to the shape of the stones. Yesterday I was building a stone wall inside a pond (no water yet) using Purbeck Stone which is supplied in fairly rectangular blocks. When we built an extension on the Wenlock Edge the Limestone was irregular flattish pieces you need ed brick quoins for the corners, doors and windows. Flints are the same too round for corners. I am not being critical of what you have done it is way better than most. It would not be easy to work out the pattern needed on the roller. Don

Excellent work. Don

I first tried DCC about 20 years ago. I bought a lenz compaq and a couple of decoders and fitted them in to a loco and the steam railmotor. I connected it up to a yard of track an had a go. I could have both on the track and shuffle them up and down quite independently brilliant. In my opinion most people have more difficulty with working out where to arrange section breaks for DC. I have over the years learnt a lot more but I buy a Zimo sound decoder to suit the loco fit it in (kit built locos dont have a built in socket unless you fit one , which is quite easy. Other than changing the number there is no need to do anything more unless you want to. Wiring up for DCC is much easier you just connect droppers to the bus wires. Once it is done you can forget having to think about which section switches to throw or whether one is in use by another loco. You can just think like a railwayman. I fully accept that if you have a dozen locos or more buying sound chips it will be costly but for the CAMEO type layouts with just a few locos the benefits of being able to have a couple of locos freely moving about makes a real difference. Don

A small NG industrial diesel could be small enough to fit in G1 clearances try IP engineering https://www.ipenginnering.com/product-page/the-danny-loco-kit Don

It shouldn't be a problem on straight track but where you have crossovers you will have issues with crossovers because the track centres and the gauge affect the spacing of the two turnouts with respect to each other. To make life easy you can just go for 11ft miminum track centres but if you are replacing one gauge with another and maintaining the track centres the v crossings will move a little along the track as well as closer to the track centre. Don

Nice work Jon, I wonder why they needed the shade over the green. Don

The issue with diamond crossings and slips is that the distance between the two V crossings is determined by the gauge as well as the crossing angle it is only about 2% between 16.5 and 16.2 but can introduce some slight distortion. Templot allows you to set the correct gauge but there will be slight differences. Don

I think the real benefit of 3D printing is that it is suited to low volume customer tailored out put. it would be possible to offer say a 517 body with all sorts of variations just specify your needs. For an injection moulded body the tooling costs are much higher. Whether 3D printing will be suited to volume production is another question. Now if Dave @wenlock could convince you to do a 7mm River (GWR) circa 1900 I couldn't resist. Don

superb as usual Dave. I have some kits on order but they never seem to arrive. Don

well as far as I am concerned if you can get it to give the flavour of the original it will be fine. I have been looking through my ebook copy of Phillip Harvey's Amberdale prototype accuracy is not a priority but what a wonderful creation and the buildings and horse drawn vehicles are superb. You could have the station nameboard like one of those bus destination rollers where you change the name to suit the stock. Now thats given me a thought with a little OLED display and an Arduino plus a bit of coding I could have a station name whatever was wanted. I shall look forward to Washburn. Don

Will you have a nice Scottish name for the station and what will the loco be? Don

you also get changes the other way the Hydra was originally in Brown Livery probably to carry their coaches. However they lacked automatic brakes and were down graded to freight stock and painted in grey. It would be great if someone could tell me which parts were painted brown just the sides of the platform? or did the sides with the axleboxes all come in brown? Don

Pre-group gets my vote. I do like these views of trains in open countryside few layouts have room for that Don