greslet

On paper the city squad is the best in the league by a long way. Losing a cup final to a team almost certain to be relegated and finishing 10 points behind the league leaders instead of winning it by 10 points is huge huge underperformance by a manager. Man City with a good manager would have been unstoppable this season.

The bottom level track is in place and I’ve nearly got an operational railway in 300 square inches! Making the most of the restricted space is the biggest challenge, and a key part of the design is having the front track as close to the baseboard edge as possible. Using an off cut of baseboard [...] Source

The bottom level track is in place and I’ve nearly got an operational railway in 300 square inches! Making the most of the restricted space is the biggest challenge, and a key part of the design is having the front track as close to the baseboard edge as possible. Using an off cut of baseboard [...] Source

There is a great DCC myth that you need to modify all your turnouts to work with DCC. This really isn’t true, and my Rede Valley layout has been operational for some time using PECO turnouts straight out of the box, mainly because most of the track was already laid before I converted to DCC. [...] Source

Looks good, I see that you took the time to get it boarded out properly and walled before the railway building starts. I wish I'd managed to be quite so patient!

A trip into my favourite local bookshop yesterday revealed a Waverley Route title I’d so far been unaware of, and have now been reading avidly for the last 24 hours. Quite simply a brilliant book. Waverley route – Death and Rebirth of a Borders Railway Unlike other histories of the line this one starts where [...] Source

Yep, that's small!

The build has actually started! We have a baseboard. I decided that the size of the layout would make no difference to baseboard construction technique, so my materials of choice are 9mm plywood baseboard top: thick enough to be rigid and not flex too much and also able to take screws on the underside to [...] Source

York has become a regular Easter outing, and while Wife and daughter explore the shops I watch the trains. The exhibition seemed to have a huge Welsh theme this year but typically I stayed true to my roots and modelling interests and managed to fill most of my time watching fine exampes of North East England. [...] Source

Making the 300 square inch challenge look convincing is not going to be easy. How do I make such a confined space realistic? My most recent idea….add some height. Lots of layouts in my view are too flat, with nearly … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/adding-some-height-693/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">?</span></a> Source

When developing a micro layout every millimetre matters. The initial placement of track onto the plan looked ok, and I tried items of rolling stock to check siding lengths and clearances. Then I looked at a Seep point motor and … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/baseboards-are-going-to-be-a-challenge-690/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">?</span></a> Source

One of the latest titles in Middleton Press’ Scottish Main Lines series covers the Waverley between Hawick & Galashields. Needless to say it has just arrived on my bookshelf and makes a great companion to the Carlisle to Hawick volume … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/another-great-waverley-route-book-697/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">?</span></a> Source

There's nothing wrong with a bit of arm chair modelling Paul. Hope the knee makes a quick recovery.

Never mind how much you plan on paper there is no substitute for trying things out full size. I’ve finally had a chance to do this for the 300 square inch challenge and a few things are changing. To simulate … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/best-laid-plans-620/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">?</span></a> Source

Some great shots, love the models too. I've always fancied a layout with Tyneside electrics but sadly don't have enough time or skill to scratch build them.

My club Bassetlaw has just launched a competition for members. The challenge is simple; build a diorama in no more than 300 square inches using RTR equipment. The entry would have no further constraints; any scale gauge shape and can … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/300-square-inch-layout-challenge-590/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">?</span></a> Source

Progress on the Rede Valley has been slow. The 2012 project to complete the viaduct diorama is well behind schedule and work commitments have continued to keep me in Nottinghamshire during the week and well away from a railway room … Continue reading → Source

There is a talk on the Waverley Route at Bassetlaw Railway Society on Wednesday August 22nd at 7;30pm The talk will be given by BNNRS club member Ben Eckersley. This is sure to be of interest to any Waverley fans … <a href="http://www.railwayblog.kevinappleby.co.uk/any-waverley-route-fans-in-east-midlands-524/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a> Source

One of the key tasks for the forthcoming week is to start properly evaluating Railroad & Co vs JMRI. So far the hardest part is working out which railroad & co products I think I need. A readers of previous … Continue reading → Source

Is Railroad and Co. worth using? That’s a question that has come to the forefront of my mind in the last 24 hours. I’ve used JMRI decoderpro and Panelpro for some time, mainly because these are open source, well supported, … Continue reading → Source

Update…….. I’ve been back to th RR&co website and discovered that despite being listed in the price list as items to purchase, it is possible to download these for free. A quick look at the Bronze manual suggests the software will run without a license, so I’ll download a copy and have a play. The manual also shows some functionality available in bronze that I’d assumed from the limited info on the website would probably require silver. Maybe this could be a lower cost venture than I had first assumed?

Mike Thanks for the reply, I note what you say about RR & Co with interest, and yes I have thought about RR & Co, but its only in the last couple of months I’ve had a machine able to run it. As far as I’ve been able to tell RR & Co is windows only software and I’m a mac user for most stuff and the ancient pc in the railway room runs linux. JMRI has been my choice for ages as it runs happily on these machines and over the years Ive used more and more bits of it, for example it was the only package for quite a while that allowed the use of a mobile phone as a throttle. (I was involved in the user testing of WiThrottle before it was publicly available and have loved using it ever since the first day it arrived as a beta version on my iPhone) I’ve heard of people giving up on JMRI and moving to RR&Co to achieve automation, but these folk always seem to refer to JMRI versions of several years ago and the software has developed hugely since then. Now I have the ability to connect a windows pc to the layout I’ve taken another look, but so far I’ve been put off by the price, having preferred to spend available funds on decoders and detection devices. As far as I can see it doesn’t seem possible to try the software without buying it and there aren’t even any manuals available online to have a look at to get some idea of what it does. To do what I want seems to need at least the silver version (£300+), and since I can find no technical information I have no idea whether this will actually suffice or whether I’ll need the gold version (£500+). The RR & Co website is shocking, obviously originally written in German and badly translated into English, and is a marketing exercise with virtually no technical information on the product, or at least none I’ve been able to find. So far this has put me off wanting to look any further, but hearing what you say about its capability I’ll keep an open mind. If you can point me to any manuals or the like I’d be very interested. Re using short blocks for exact stopping, I had thought of that but I need to use the dozen or so Irdots I’ve bought to do something! ( I suppose I could always sell them on ebay to fund more block detectors)

I actually chose Lenz as my DCC system because of these technologies, expecting a good amount of development to take place around them. So far that doesnt seem to have happened, Basic assymetric DCC seems to be OK at stopping a train at a defined place, but so far Ive not seen it do much more than this. Railcom looks as though it might have promise, but it isnt something that my software package supports. I actually note with interest that the Hornby DCC system has got this feature, and they are pushing computer software. I briefly spoke to Simon Kohler a week or two ago at the Hartlepool exibition, and he gave a broad hint that Hornby had a new piece of software in the wings that would handle more automation. I wonder if it will use Railcom especially as the Hornby DCC system has no feedback bus. Railcom appears to operate in a similar way to block detection, with the layout physically split into sections and power to each fed through a railcom module, in much the same way as a block detection module. The added bonus is that the decoder can feed back information, using the DCC bus for communication rather than a separate feedback bus which will only report whether a given sensor is on or off. The advantage seems to be that the section can detect not only that there is a train in it, but which one it is, however the train tracking software on the computer should have managed to work this out for itself without needing this information. I can see a disadvantage that all Railcom tells you is that the engine is in the section, and from the details I've read it won't detect the full train. For automation purposes this is a problem as you will have no idea when the train has left the previous section and it is clear for the next one.

One of my reasons for adopting DCC was my requirement for some degree of automation of the layout, so that it could be operated single handedly in as near a prototype fashion as possible where using traditional cab control would … Continue reading → Source

Those of you that have checked out my locomotive fleet will have seen an odd-ball amongst all the LNER engines. No 746 Pendragon, a SR King Arthur. Well, its all very prototypical…… The answer, its 1943 and Heaton depot has … Continue reading → Source