big jim

Who knows! There are so many rumours about class 70s floating round the net

couple more little jobs done, fitted the point motors to the hidden area points, seen here part way through wiring, hadn't soldered the track feeds in place in this picture, i did however get round to doing it this evening fitted the accessory decoder below the baseboard, to make things simpler i've mounted it on the shed wall, nice and simple to get to incase of any problems, going to run a power bus to it round below the baseboards with feeds off it to various other decoders, lighting points etc then onto this evening, first i made a shelf to house the decoder/lighting power supply and controller/ transformer, realised after i'd screwed the board to the cross members on id put them on the wrong side as id left space at the rear for plugs to feed through so ive got to redo it so he board is sat on top of the crossmembers between the legs! and with some of the bits in place, the power supply for the decoders is a maplin regulated 12-15v 7amp DC supply, an ebay bargain for £10 i then ran a temporary wire from the power supply to the decoder and soldered the point motor track supplies in place and hey presto, working point motors, took me a while to get them to work properly, kept catching or not springing over but i realised that some of the blades were catching the sleepers, i pinned the points in the middle which cured the problem, may need to wire one of the points blades to the polarity switch on the point motor as the blade sometimes doesn't go over electrically next job will be to tidy up the wiring from the power supplies to the various point motors as well as the wiring from the point motors to the decoders and then wire and fit the decoders to the yard

im more interested in what the 57s are doing on the freightliner coal on the low level at WBQ in your pics?

i hope my contributions are deemed creative, looking at the 'likes' below most of them they seem to be liked at least!! this thread actually prompted me to go and look for unusual shots instead of the usual 3/4 views of trains i'd normally take

no not me as beast says, i was supposed to do a basford hall to ealing engineers (as far as didcot) which was cancelled so i ended up taking the loco to washwood heath for onward transit to taunton never been onto "metro cammell" before but have passed it hundreds of times on the main line so i asked for someone to meet me to get me on there as i didn't know how to operate the electronic ground frame etc, i'd had a look at my sectional appendix so i knew which route i needed to take from the main, or so i thought, the signaller put me onto the siding line at bromford bridge which i knew took me towards the ground frame for washwood heath, i just wasn't counting on it taking me through the "cemex" sleeper factory en route, it is a legitimate route onto metro cammell but the siding supervisor was a bit puzzled when i called him from the stop board, turns out most (if not all) trains going to metro cammell take the goods rather than the sidings, oh well, another couple of sidings to scratch off my quail atlas!! so i was conducted onto metro cammell, disposed of the loco and began to walk back to the exit to get a train from aston when this came up the hill, seen here crossing the road to the cemex factory, dcr operated 56091 its quite a climb onto the factory and onto the yard where the driver shut it down and very kindly let me share a taxi to new st! nice day, something different, worked over a few routes i'd not driven for a while (but had refreshed recently from the 2nd mans seat) such as bushbury to walsall, sutton park and the derby line towards washwood heath

cockshute is looking very overgrown whereas granville sidings have been cleared for network rail to use, funnily enough i've been asked to work an engineers into and out of there next week, so yesterdays move was handy to do i've still got to go and have a look at the sidings before i work into there to see the MOW for it etc, despite signing the route for years i've never worked into any of (whats left of) the yards until i started with colas

yeah that was me, i did give you a toot, and i tooted nearer to your landing window just in case you were there!! a few pics from today..... nice day to have a trip down a country branch line, oh wait.....i'm in the middle of a city! there are tracks there somewhere! then when i got back to stoke the signaller was "playing trains" i recon as he ran me wrong direction through the up (london bound) platform which then took me on position lights onto the up goods (in the down direction) finally coming to a red next to cockshutt sidings, as seen here, a move i've never done before, and indeed didn't know it could be done from there trains can continue on the up goods as far as etruria before taking a position light towards grange jn which is the old entrance to shelton steel works where they can then set back into etruria sidings, however i was signalled back out of the goods to continue northbound, a move which involves crossing a ladder onto the down goods which is the only way out northbound, you cannot cross over onto the main, here is the ladder found this in the trees at cockshutt too, some sort of engineers wagon

had a couple of good buy it now's tonight..... first up a maplin 12-15v 7A regulated DC power supply which im going to use to power the accessory decoders, lights etc on the layout for £10 and then about 10 mins ago, again a buy it now, a Bachmann NSE class 166 boxed for £30! a possible candidate for a chiltern respray after i sold my 2 car respray a few weeks back

only 1 pic from last night, due to a possession south of gobowen the log train in front of me had to sit there until i was fuelled in chirk then i ran down light engine onto the back of his train with 56094 which then left northbound, i then took his engine (56302) back to chirk but as there is no crossover and weston rhyn has no wrong direction controls i had to run to wrexham to change ends which i had to do in the 'bidston line' platform, first time i've been in there for a long time

Monday and thursday next week, probably a 66 as usual though, shame you missed the 47 on it last week!

another trip to reading today, no pics though as i forgot my camera and didn't really see anything of huge interest to photograph with the phone anyway been told i need to get banbury to didcot under my belt asap so have a few more days at it next week as well as a couple of sinfins and possibly a 47 from basford hall to ealing! baglan train again tomorrow, learning hereford to craven arms again and working it from there north, should be 094 again

This really shouldnt make me smile as it was made by my 9 year old son........ He proudly came home saying he had made a bookmark in craft class, handy for those who are studying german history maybe?

i think i'd rather have 100% cooked chicken, only 26% cooked is just asking for food poisoning!

thats not me on it but yes, i think its the other guy who is learning newport at the moment i'm going to hopefully sign off as far as hereford once an assessor can get a ride out with me, struggling to get over the route south of there so definatly not putting my name to it!

is the yellow in the picture to wake the driver up! there used to be a similar scenario between penkridge and stafford, the signal on the down always showed a double yellow if the signals either side were green

it just looked odd having never seen one, the driver said that they take the least restrictive aspect at it, however if one of the aspects (i think the fastest route one) is not lit then you are stopping at the junction

not normally john but the one yesterday had a couple of empties, don't know why whether it was loading problems or weight limits as it had 19 wagons on

couple of days worth of pictures this time yesterday was road learning from newport to craven arms, travveled down on an arriva service and got the baglan bay logs back north which i worked from craven arms to chirk via crewe a few pics from newport FGW hst FGW 158 another hippo for dave FGW 150 and the ATW 175 then my train came in and todays job was to carry on learning newport but the lack of cab pass meant it wasn't possible, i did however have a cross country one so i was told to go and have a look at banbury to didcot parkway, the only problem being cross country dont call at didcot so i decided to catch one anyway and continue on to reading instead caught a chiltern service from moor st so refreshed that bit of a route while i was at it then waited atbanbury for my train onward to reading, a few pics from banbury this caught me by surprise so a rushed photo newcastle bound voyager voyager and 172 172 heads off to london washwood heath bound 31, again caught me by surprise and on to the building site that is reading, first time i've been there since about 1985 so somewhat different! junipers heading off onto the southern this didn't catch me by surprise but the camera failed to focus! thats one long train! looking back towards didcot not a bad route from banbury to didcot as is the route to reading which is obviously going to see a heck of a lot more changes over the coming months and years, but one thing mr stationmaster what is the split signal at tilehurst all about, by the time the driver explained it to me my head was battered! tomorrow is the teigngrace train from craven arms again, getting on at hereford

had an unxpected morning in the shed today before work, unfortunatly i've run out of track pins and there are no model local shops open today to go and get any so i decided to go ahead and do a bit of woodwork inspired by the way i did the first part of the high level area last week i decided to continue the rest of the edge of the high level in the same style, got a piece of wood from B&Q this morning to continue with it, the first thing i did was to cut the board back by the width of the plank as can be seen here, (the existing crossmembers are no longer flush) a bit hard to see but i drilled pilot holes through the baseboard and screwed the plank up from underneath i then continued the edging round the top corner of the layout, to secure it i had to remove the baseboard cross member edging to enable me to screw up from below and then refitted it, i also cut the top edge so it is angled as per the wall side with the top in place still got to put some beading around the inner edge of the new sides for the baseboards to sit on before they are secured proper, however before its all secured i've got to fit point motors to the hidden points and cut some reach through holes under what is going to be the slightly lower shed level so i can fit point motors, lights, electrics etc here is the shed area in place, sat on a piece of foam board but it is at the height i will be at when its fitted permanently and with the shed placed pretty much where it will go, i am going to cut 3 shed doors in the end of the building

56302 did indeed pilot the train from bushbury loop, that was plan C, originally a pair of 56 was due to come up to crewe yesterday and i was booked to take them in multi to chirk via chester, that then changed to the 56s coming up to crewe this morning with another driver and for me to drop the logs onto the rear, my concern with that was the length of the train would pretty much stitch up the whole down side of crewe for 10-15 mins while we coupled up and did a brake test. i suggested to control to attach in bushbury loop as it is a long loop with position lights to allow me to drop onto the rear of the 56 under a signalled move and if there were any problems we would not effect any traffic which is what we did, 56105 unfortunatly didn't make it due to not quite being up to scratch after i stopped in crewe to drop off the other driver and 10 mins at winsford jn it was pretty much right away to tebay where i sat for 30 mins to let passenger services past then it was onward to kingmoor non stop again, really struggled today with the headwind, very noticable! passed the 47/56 combo near brock, i didn't know it was running so that was a nice surprise, one photographer patiently waiting at brock certainly got the 'money shot' of them passing here are a few of my pics.... tebay kingmoor, end of the journey another long day but again enjoyable

bit more done first up wired up the crossovers in the hidden section, got it right first time so trains can cross over from the down to the up without shorting or stalling next up i moved on to the removable section, continued the tracklaying across the bridge including the points for the sidings fitted the point motor, had to recess it by a couple of MM as i was using the motors off the old layout and i'd cut the pins down to suit however this layout has slightly thicker boards and cork so they were too short, the wires run off under the bridge in readyness to be connected to the main board mounter accessory decoder via a socket (which will also carry the track wires) i then went onto the pcb strips on the other side of the removable board split, soldered and wired the completed low level section not shown but i then went onto the wiring, i have put droppers from both the high and low level tracks on the fixed section to chocolate block connectors under the layout, from that i have added wires to the gaugemaster reverse loop module after that i temporarily wired that lot to the controller too see if we had power and hey presto, power, i was a bit bothered that the reverse loop module may not do what i wanted to, anyway ran the Bachmann 57 round the mainline and towards the yard, over the join and 'click', the module did exactly what it should, i then set the points so that the tracks were set for the 57 to leave the yard on the down, cross over via the new points to the up and re-enter the yard from that side which it did without electrical issue, only one dead section on the 3 way point but ive not wired the polarity switch in yet which should cure it. got a few sections of track entering the yard that i need to pack a bit as the loco derailed a few times but that should be a simple task so basically i can now run a train in a complete loop round the low level part of the layout!