ian

Don't tell me you built that one as well!

This goes way back - to the Code 100. The advert below is from 1962. Yes, the bullhead code 75 is a UK product and the code 83 is for the US but the code 100 was the original and sold worldwide. It still is.

Don't forget Peco have a large export market so their OO track is designed to appeal to HO users. Peco Streamline used to be marketed as "looks longer", a great marketing twist and sounds a lot better than "is to a different scale".

How will that look compared to Peco sleeper spacing on the points? Or are you going to do those as well?

The sheep wagon has gained some battens so that the passengers don't end up doing the rumba everytime the train jolts. (Note to self for when I do the rest of them - Evergreen 134 30x80 thou strip). Sneaking in to the picture is a Nigel Brooks 3D printed Snailbeach hopper. There is no way to add weight to that but fortunately they will work as a block train so won't be mixed with other stock and hopefully the light weight won't cause a problem.

Any layouts inside?

After the pause for some R&R the works are bodging away at full speed. No less than ten wagons are mostly complete, needing only(!) couplings, lettering and weathering. The pride of the line so far is the first of the milk vans. This is a Dundas Tralee & Dingle butter wagon and is finished in passenger Prussian blue. The wagon is fitted with vacuum brakes and will normally run attached to a passenger train, hence the natty colour scheme. &L wagons - one sheep and six opens. These have one brake shoe each in contrast to the four on the milk van. Needless to say they aren't vacuum fitted. One of the opens is sporting a set of removable greedy boards so that it can be used as a provender wagon. Two sheep wagon kits gave their lives to make that possible. The other two are Peco bolster wagons. As supplied they have a vacuum cylinder (but no pipes) and four brake shoes. This seems a somewhat generous provision so the cylinder and three of the shoes got lopped from each of them to bring them in line with their colleagues. The deck was painted to remove the plastic sheen, grey added around the body and some almost black was splashed around on the chassis. All of them have had some weight added in the form of Deluxe Materials Liquid Gravity and all have Peco NEM coupler mounts. And further reading indicates that the sheep wagon needs battens across the floor whilst the opens need door bumpers...

And how much you've done. Even with the long 'to do' list my first reaction was "Wow".

He has a point. Go full 'Internet of Things' enabled and you could have operators all over the globe... (I'll see myself out.)

That's the beastie.

Either scheme workd well. Me being me I'd go for the two station approach on the basis of added play value. Way back when Chris Ellis did an N scale project layout in Scale/Model Trains based on a CNW line. The basic outline was like this: Trains arrived on the layout from the FY/Ext (which was also the route to extend the layout in future if you wished) then travelled through station B to terminate at station A. The cunning bit was that you could simulate extra travel, if you wished, by belting around the oval a number of times between stops.

It is always a pleasure to escape to Altonia for a while.

Chasing Unicorns The perfect coupling is, like the unicorn, a thing of fable and legend but that doesn't stop railway modellers from going in search of it. When I was working on Minffordd, which was a continuous run exhibition job with no shunting, I decided that Tramfabriek's chopper couplings (https://tramfabriek.nl/couplings.html) would look pretty natty on the front and rear of the trains. Fast forward to the revised plans for a layout that would feature lots of shunting and the fact that the chopper could be adapted for magnetic operation meant that the decision seemed to be a no-brainer: good looks and no hand-of-god uncoupling. So I started to lay in a stock in readiness for the rash of rolling stock coming down the line. https://tramfabriek.nl/video/coupling-large.mov Having got a selection of wagons fitted with NEM pockets it was time for a play (sorry - test). The couplings come in pairs, one with a chopper and one without. So, taking two Peco bolster wagons couplings were fitted and the guinea pigs placed on a length of track and pushed together. Fail. The hook butted up to other coupling and stayed there, not lifting and not engaging. There followed a long session of trying different couplers and stock with very little resulting joy. An exchange of emails with Sven at Tramfabriek seeking guidance established that due to the design autonatic coupling was not guaranteed and that the fail-safe way was to lift the chopper with a magnet on a stick, which could also be used to uncouple. The coupling was designed to look good (which it most certainly does) and to stay coupled when running. Shunting is best done by hand rather than other means. So, once again the unicorn hunt has returned empty-handed. I shall revise my plans and go with the Greenwich couplers which are far better matched to my needs, albeit nowhere near as good to look at. By the way, if you know of anyone who is is need of 24 pairs of cute chopper couplings I know of some going spare. The works are closing for a holiday so there will be little to report for a week or so.

The Naysmyth Wilson 2-6-0 has received its heart transplant - all it needs now is DCC, stay-alive and sound. The big lump of Blu-Tac at the front is holding a securing screw in place that normally fastens to the body and the strange orange glow to the rear is some Kapton insulation tape to stop an occasional short from the back wheel getting just too close to the chassis. This bodgement is to check that it all works. The chassis needs to be fettled and reassembled properly in due course along with some of the bodywork.

I didn't strip it - I was impressed at the Vallejo's covering abilities used neat. It didn't react with the Peco paint, I scraped up the paint that hadn't hardened with my prodder. (Ooh er missus!)