Hroth

I don't think the current "status quo" of DC/DCC is likely to be overturned any time soon. DC is well understood, and you don't have to buy controllers off a manufacturer. With DCC you just need a decoder in the loco, a command station/controller and a psu for the current. All widely available from different suppliers. And you don't have to have sound with DCC either. Battery operation means you need a battery, receiver AND decoder (similar to a DCC decoder) for each loco. Definitely an added cost factor in excess of that for a DCC setup. Then you need to remember to recharge the locos you're going to use for the running session, or you're back to clockwork days when the loco runs out on the other side of the layout! The MERG CANBUS implementation is interesting, but not a commercial proposition any time soon. There's nothing wrong with DC, and DCC adds a degree of extra flexibility and a degree of backward compatibility with DC. But each to their own, there's no need to be prescriptive. The whole point is that you can do what you like on your own layout!

Fitted it on the Hornby Class 47 TTS chassis as a replacement for the BR big logo scheme body. There's a pic somewhere in the past of this thread!

Viv Stanshall was a National Treasure. Handing you a red hot coin for your efforts......

What you do have to watch out for if installing a fresh copy is that certain anti-virus programs label the SCARM installer as suspicious and refuse to let it run. I've installed it on a VM machine by disabling the AV then once installed re-enabled AV and ran a full scan with no results so it seems clean, However I still don't really trust it! Changing internal file formats to make previous projects obsolete isn't the way to go to encourage new users!

Not late, just differently timetabled.....

Perhaps they ought to run an enthusiasts special to celebrate its passing?

Minories is billed as a "Suburban Terminus in 3-D" (a current fad in cinema!) based on the projection used to display the layout and put forward as an alternative to the standard branch line terminus style of layout for beginners and intermediate modellers. Apart from a couple of mentions of dimensioning, there's no actual statement that it was designed for TT. Because Triang TT was the current new thing, it would be considered appropriate as a small layout suitable for both OO and TT. As for the roof design, it calls for PECO Small Section F.B. rail, also referred to as Conductor Rail, and not specifically as TT rail, though I suppose it was used in the PECO spiked track offering, a review of which, covering OO and TT variants, appeared on page 93. Making that roof might not be a task for a beginner... BTW, what was "Conductor Rail"? Was it for for a cosmetic outside 3rd rail, or for laying flexible track with a third rail for Hornby Dublo?

Not quite, I think the first publication of the Minories concept was in the April 1957 Railway Modeller (p92), and in that it was presented in an "axonometric" projection with accompanying scals rules for both TT-3 and OO. There's no preference in the text for either scales, but for what its worth the baseboard lengths are quoted first for OO and then for TT-3. If I were building it then for TT, I'd have stretched to the OO baseboard length and maximised the platform length! Of course, "Minories" is more a frame of mind than a fixed idea, you can go longer, wider, add more platforms, add sidings and stabling for coaches and DMUs, throw out the folding baseboard idea and so on and still have a "Minories" layout!

Eeek! Looks like a backstreet workshop cut'n'shut job! However did it get an MOT?

Not like late-70s Lime Street where you could barely see the rails at the buffer ends for the mounds of waste paper, plastic bags and Harp lager cans. Mind you, the dirty and broken station roof didn't help matters either....

Sounds good, esp if you're going down the CAD-CAM (aka Shilhouette cutter) route. Duplicating a second brake vehicle would be a whizz in such circumstances. I'm increasingly drawn to the idea of getting one of these myself, as I'd rather draw out the design and let the machine get on with it, rather than try and cut a multitude of tiny things with a dangerously sharp knife close to my fingertips!

And mismatched roof profiles too! As a distraction from all these pre-raff polychromatic drippy dames, and in the spirit of spreading a little extra cultural consciousness, I thought a few appropriate artistic photographs wouldn't go amiss, here's one.... "Ricking the reed", from Peter Henry Emerson's first photographic album Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, 1886.

Hope you're letting them off with something easy, like a Dapol 16T Mineral Wagon. Cheap too, only about £42 for the whole class! (Next week, its Painting and Weathering...) See you got the attention of the Hash Fairies!

Oh, lets NOT go there! Bur if we have to, perhaps they're burying the rotor arms and distributor caps...

My Pre-Raff.... Drat! I'll never get a decent Midland Red! JW Waterhouse, of course...

If you want to have contemporary relevance, the route MUST pass through the gable end of the building in front of the lounging couple AND obliterate much of the landscape further on! @ Andy K: What I want to know is why two of the woozy nymphs appear to be carrying yards of ale, and another a vaping device? Edit for repetition. I'd be a total flop at Just A Minute!

Has it? The poor thing gets blamed for everything!

Its almost tomorrow, here's another pre-raff. The prize goat leapt over the loading dock rails and escaped to the freezing marshes. Free!!!! Holman Hunt has a lot to answer for...

Talking of early railmotors, this resin kit by Smallbrook Studios ( http://www.smallbrookstudio.co.uk/products/4569521210/0e---7mm-Narrow-Gauge ) is rather sweet. Ok, its O16.5 so rather out of scale for CA but its of the era!

In the spirit of Randal Munrows book "Thing Explainer" ( https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer ) , I've annotated the locomotive section of TheQs illustration thusly.... (edit to get rid of spurious characters in the Thing Explainer link, preventing it from working...)

My pre-raff for today: "Distracting the Railway Surveyor" by William Holman Hunt https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/William_Holman_Hunt_001.jpg Well, someone has to do it......

My view of JA (that one, not the other!) was forever coloured by this Punch cartoon... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8bfmIgIMAA53Eu.jpg But remember, if there's ferns and/or urns, its art, not smut!

I thought that was the mirror (which eventually crack'd from side to side) which the Lady of Shallots was forced to view the outside world through, until Sir Lancalot came trotting by, making a disgraceful racket! (edit) It is, but Waterhouse has neglected to paint himself in the reflection, he should be obscuring the left hand arches of the bridge... I like the Yankee Railmotor - is the brass thingie a small cannon to clear trainrobbers from the track?

It may be as you say, but its difficult to interpret wind direction when the illustration has been created by someone with no sailing knowledge, probably working from a snapshot, simplifying as he goes. If the wind is more to his starboard side, then the red sail might be close to gybing itself and he's bearing off to port a tad to avoid the other silly ###### ok, blighter. If the wind is close to his stern, then the other boat is in irons and has the wind on the wrong side of her sail. It may be that the artist has merely neglected to draw the mast in...... Phew! Anyhow, never trust a yottie with a white peaked cap! AND a pipe in his free hand... Drat! Hashed again!!!

Not just that, but he's got the wind on his starboard quarter and if he's pushing his tiller over like that, he's going to gybe sooner or later. I know a wherry doesn't have a boom, but its got a whacking great block at the end of the sail and if that comes flying across its going to catch him one whilst he's gurning at whoevers behind him! (Probably a female Hullabaloo posing on a cabin top....)