Lacathedrale

Though I am well and truly sick of coaches, it feels churlish to stop on this one given that I've got just the underframe details and the roof to do... It's bizarre that the RTR manufacturers have this obsession with LBSCR Mahogany - particularly given the red brake ends, 6w stock, and non-close-coupled sets are only even remotely compatible with a single RTR locomotive in the Terrier. I know the E1 is coming, but where are the D's, G's? Madness! Excuse the Sam's Trains floorcam, but looks like the 6w coaches are going to be just fine on the slip: As I understand it, these will need the footboards removed and either heavy weathering, or repainting into all-over Umber - that should be fun!

The billinton 50’ brake third is slowly making its way towards completion from the pair of Triang GWR clerestory coaches. Honestly the repetition is what’s doing me in - I need a break from carriages!!

Look what Father Halloween brought through the letterbox today? Yes, I know the 6w carriages should be umber in my time period, etc. but I'm not QUITE ready to take a brush to them! What I am going to do, however - is make sure they run through the bullhead single slip without catapulting off the rails.

Is there an ETA on when the turnouts, crossovers, etc. will be available - presumably only from the stores, or via Wayne's website? It's no rush but I do fancy testing out the method with a couple of wagons at some point.

The difference between ET's wiring is the insulating breaks required in the throat to permit power routing via the frog switches - the wiring is alot more complex. I've come a decision though - the last thing I want to do with this is need to shelve it for a while and then come back and have a rats nest of incomprehensible wires and switches to figure out. Even if the turnouts and signals are all manually actuated, the control of the locos will be DCC. Well, it will be wired as DCC but initially operated as DC while I figure this all out. Couldn't resist a little track bodging though - this is the first of many adjustments to the timbering.

There's a 7mm model of a dual gauge goods shed in the GWR and the 'otherness' of that time period is just wonderful.

I almost gave myself an aneuryism trying to hook up screw links on my brighton coaches with tweezers - do you have a particular tool?

Laying this out, one handed, while holding baby was about as far as I've gotten today: The parallel track spacing in XtrkCAD doesn't always match up to reality - so on the plan all these turnouts are connected by tiny bits of rail. I'm going to try to get rid of those - and I think all of it butts up together apart from the obvious join shown above? First, I need to get the WS Roadbed sheets down, but I think I'm going to hold off on that until tomorrow, when mum and baby are out for the day in London and I have a clear few hours. I'm still pretty unsure whether to go for DC or DCC as discussed at length earlier in this thread, but I think for now I'll fit insulated joiners and fit droppers which could be bonded for DCC (or DC testing), and left switchable for route-set DC.

Yes, I think it was trying to be too many things at once, really - the 1980's theme works, the Minories plan works, the use of speedlink-era freight works, passenger ops all work - but not like that. Note that the crossovers are in the wrong position, so the 'yard' couldn't be accessed by down trains, etc.

One of my first encounters with realistic model railway design was Cyril freezer’s Minories. His gave a simple and straightforward description of the design and operation of the layout. Up to that point I had felt frustrated with the domain–specific knowledge that was inferred by so much of the literature I had tried to read and understand as a beginner, and this was a real salve. It was natural then for this layout to form the kernel around which my layout planning would focus. My first attempt was a 'Minories' set in suburban 3rd rail territory: Godstone Road in embryonic form The setting was inspired by Purley and Bromley North, with a stone and aggregate merchant in the rear, an island platform in the middle and a coal yard still infront. There were some key problems with this layout, however: The roof joists (I'm sitting on one to take the photograph, and one pictured on the right) were high enough and the ceiling low enough to make getting over them annoying, and the fiddle yard was on the 'wrong' side of one of them. The fiddle yard tracks were not perfectly aligned to the entry and exit roads either, so every single train movement would require hurdling followed by realignment of the table to the relevant location. The multiple units while giving a definite flavour were incredibly dull to operate. I think ultimately the problem was not the plan, rather it was the requirement for shuttle operations and the crippled traverser. I still retained a desire to operate a passenger-oriented layout with lots of remarshalling, shunting and NPCS - and so a slightly extended Minories design evolved with the help of many contributors, ending up as follows: Edwardian Terminus The inspiration is clearly visible, but with some notable tweaks: An additional route from P1 to the Up line to permit an exit from P1 while P2 is being entered. This is typical of Pre-group practise greater number of parallel moves than a more parsimonious grouping or national company might ignore. The inclusion of the track formation below P3: A runaround to increase the variety of locomotive movements A headshunt into a loading dock, as another destination for head and tail traffic A carriage siding, to increase on-layout shunting opportunities A headshunt 'Old Turntable Road', representing some kind of cobbled hardstanding. One thing that is not resolved however, is the need for almost all movements to end up going off-layout. The initial phase of this project is set up to permit a traverser to bolt on to the right hand side of the layout, the rearmost track being kept clear as a headshunt. More on this particular wrinkle in the plan anon...

Harestone? A riff on Caterham's post 1900 layout if I remember but with half the throat off-scene?

Lovely stuff. Will you be able to retrofit the running gear to Eagle? I agree it looks a little sparse!

I've never actually managed to figure out an aftermarket parts coupling system - my 2mmFS wagons still don't have any couplings at all! With my 4mm stuff, I decided to fit three-link and screw-link couplings in the interim, and then whatever system I eventually end up with I can make the relevant modifications as required. I figured I may as well setup something of a torture track for the couplings and see what happens: The particular arrangement like this won't actually be used - but this is the 'worst' possible combination. I did think I gave myself brain damage trying to thread the screw link couplers on though, so may well be a moot point :)

Thank you for those pictures, @burgundy - I saw the same traverser in use at ScaleForum and it appears to have the same issue as mine - the outer ends (on which the deck slides) are too tall and causing lots of friction. The layout at Scaleforum showed obvious signs of having these planed or sanded down. @ianb3174 in addition to the 'oh god do I really want to do this' of actually finally having all the parts and components to hand, I was also a little disheartened to have the 1-2 punch fo Vivien Thompsons 'Eastbourne' and then Michael Ball's 'Ferring' come up sequentially on my reading list - hard to follow those two up, eh? :) I think it was a solid plan to not be drastic though, as with a few weeks removed the positives outweigh any potential drawbacks. I'm still not sold on the gauge, end-on it looks awful - but realistically that's not a viewing angle I am expecting and hopefully with some Mikkel or Nevard-like hard work it will end up looking OK despite the gauge.

Thanks, Bob - I had (before disassembly) fixed the red vee and green vee and the adjacent yellow wing rail together as a single sub-assembly. My idea was that the plane from the diverging route on both the red vee and green vee really must be bang on and so using the jig might make sense. Given that it's now disassembled, that's not such a big concern :) I decided to take it easy from P4 tracklaying by fitting screw link couplings to my LBSCR coaches to test them over the reverse curves of the Edwardian Terminus throat. I'm not sure what possessed me to think that would be relaxing, a large scotch was definitely required.

Thanks John, I did that with 2mmFS but I thought I was smarter than that for 4mm :) @t-b-g I built a B7 in P4 in the spring and it worked really well, though admittedly that was using functional chairs throughout, which I can't really get away with on this one I don't think...

Argh, I can't believe it - I soldered the 1:10 vee in upside down, only noticed when I went to slide the chairs on. Time to put this in the proving drawer for a while, I don't want to get cross!

I set the bends in the wing rails relative to the vee using the EMGS jig and the flangeway gauge, rather than via the drawing. As I said they are a little tight so maybe that explains it? I've re-laid them more closely to where they'll end up and it looks OK to me, to my unedcuated eye? It's bloody tough photographing long lengths of metal against a white/black background isn't it? :) Strange that Exactoscale has nothing at all for 1:9 switches, although 1:8 and 1:10 are described in their chair position diagrams...

The vee blunted puts it in the correct place and with a little curve of the vee it sits well. I also blunted the 1:10 and 1:9 vees off which form the rest of the tandem. Here's the progress today: The flangeway gauge passes through everything but it's a little tight. Honestly, it's only cost me an evening's work so if I have to re-work things that's OK. The components are of course just loosely laid for now! I believe the last step is for this fabrication is to get the wing rails onto the 1:7 vee pictured above, and then it's about getting it laid down with chairs. My minimum radius is 5' and so there's a bit of leeway if I sod up the placement and end up with a sharper angle somewhere, but my understanding for the steps is as follows: Ignore the two 1:8 crossover turnouts on the outside for now Lay the middle-top vee subassembly into position Lay the straight stock rail + first checkrail (using 0.68mm checkrail chairs) gauged off the middle vee using a check rail gauge Lay the bottom vee subassembly in position using a check gauge off the second checkrail and visual alignment of the bottom-vee-wingrail and middle-vee-running-rail Is that about right?

Oh well I'm not sure about that but thank you very much. My scaling is bang on 18.83mm gauge so I don't think it's that, but as @Izzy, @Siberian Snooper and @martin_wynne have pointed out - it's a curviform vee. Thankfully that just means bending the rail gently (thanks Martin!) Speaking of blunting the vee - not a bad shout, I'll check that out shortly. I have a 1:10, 1:9, two 1:8's and 1:7 so I guess there's alot to check out. Annoyingly I've already assembled the 1:8's with wing rails (three times, one of the was accidentally putting the 1:8 wing rails on the 1:9 vee)

Having a bit of a mare with this: This common crossing is 1:7, but when i lay a 1:7 vee onto the plan, it looks very out: Since this vee leads directly into the wing rail for the 1:10 common crossing, I'm a little worried that just using chairs to pin the 1:7 vee rails into the correct position is going to end up in tears...

Thank you, that's very kind. I have the gauges and built a half-crossing and straight track to run my EM wagons over, but for the sake of having a bash at it I'm going to try P4 first. I'm fairly certain as per @t-b-g it will all end in tears as too much hard work, but I think i'd be short changing myself if I didn't TRY it...

My wife has been down for the count with a sore tooth (and forthcoming root canal) and our trip to the NYMR is cancelled. By way of solace I've had a fairly productive evening listening to an audiobook and cracking out some common crossings. Here are the vees required for my little test idea - a pair of 1:8's (middle) and a 1:7, 1:9 and 1:10 which form the single sided tandem I'd like to try out: Tonight was also my first time using the EMGS common crossing assembly jig as pictured on an earlier page: Does anyone have a rule of thumb of where the tip of the rail should lay in the filing jig so it doesn't mushroom and stretch-over while filing? I know @hayfield doesn't file and bend before filing again, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I often ended up with a concave curve instead of a straight line when tweaking and it takes ages to straighten - is there an easy solution @Martin Wynne? I've not yet had a chance to test these subassemblies, but I'm looking forward to it :)

I visited on Saturday morning and aside from the horrific parking situation I thought it was a lovely show. I didn't stay around long, but definitely one of my favourites. This close to ScaleForum, I've been spoiled for the rest of the year...

I would be interested but isn't it a bit weird there's no pseudo-original condition, only the early and later preservation?