Martin S-C

Ooh, er, missus.

I am sure one of those browns in that colour card was officially known as "compost heap".

Yup. That's what I did.

That's because it is. Coal is extremely shiny, especially Welsh steam coal. Absolutely not! This is a pile of coal in the sun. It looks silver. But in fact its shiny black.

Regardless of what goes where I think you may need vehicular access around the back of the goods shed and along towards the other sidings. The siding that enters the goods shed has free open standing for wagons along it and the only way they could be accessed for unloading is from the far side of that track because there's the coal siding in the way on this side. I find that simply poring over as many photos of goods yards, big and small, as the access question was equally valid no mater the size, is a great way to educate yourself on how they functioned.

Stop doing yourself a dis-service Chris. I have plenty of RTR models on my railway and I don't consider myself a cheat at all. What are RTR models there for?

Ooh! Such a fun debate this one. They certainly did go adjacent to sidings and very often, it seems they were placed tall side against the track. I'm aware they went in lots of other places as well, often some distance from any siding. Hungerford: Mayfield: Wadhurst: But if you look at various photos, what does become obvious fairly quickly is that the height of the track-side wall (or the 'rear' wall) of the average coal bin was too high to rest a wagon door on top of it and shovel the coal over directly, so it seems likely that the coal bins were just placed beside the siding simply for convenience in taking up less space and not to allow easy unloading. That would have been done as Stubby says. There are some exceptions to that and one of them can been seen in the Wadhurst photo above where it seems like a low gap has been created by removing two sleepers in the rear wall of the coal bin. Or it could just be falling to bits - we don't know. But my view is modellers are free to place coal bins wherever they like in their goods yards and alongside a siding certainly isn't wrong - and nor is placing them far away against the wall of the yard.

Can I please have the spare 100% and 99% versions. I'm not half so fussy as you!

That is a very neat and simple change and the stripping down of the old paint and the new colours have gone on beautifully. For those that know, how good a runner is the Electroten chassis, and can it easily be digitised?

It bugs the heck out of me that RTR manufacturers don't mass produce a 9ft wagon timber-framed underframe, perhaps with single sided brakes. It would be such a boost to modellers and kit conversion people generally. Yes of course kits are available but an RTR chassis all ready to go would reach a wider market.

Ah, so under the incline structure itself, not under the outer edges of the sleepers?

Yes, in the past we've cut tongues of ply and eased them up (or down) to get the start and end of the gradients. With the right support in the right place that seems to work well. Useful info about chord to arc ratios. I'll keep that in mind. Did you use any superelevation on your curved inclines, John?

Some years ago I built a virtual model of the GW Highworth Branch in Microsoft Train simulator. I picked up a lot of useful information from the very first title Wild Swan ever published, which covered this line. During the Great War a company of Canadian lumberjacks were brought over to cut down timber in Stanton Park woods which was about 3 miles along the line. The timber was sent off in the round on long bolster wagons to various government departments to be sawn up for the building of barracks, hospitals, aerodrome structures and other temporary buildings in the UK that the military needed to support the war effort in Belgium and France. A siding was laid in Stanton Great Park which faced towards Swindon. Trains were run loco first from Swindon Transfer Yard a mile up the line to Stratton, the first station on the line where there was a loop but the trains were very often much longer than the loop, so sections of the train were propelled into the two back sidings at Stratton. Parts of the train, which might be up to 15 to 20 wagons were then propelled further along the branch, past Kingsdown Road Junction and up a fairly significant gradient through Stanton Great Park woods. IIRC this grade was about 1 in 50 or 60. The Wild Swan title (again IIRC) stipulated that a guard rode on the leading wagon with flag and whistle and the propelled trains were limited to 5mph. As the wagons were dropped in the siding and the loco returned to Stratton to collect the next section of the train the lumberjacks (cue Monty Python song) loaded the first block of wagons. When the loco returned with the second section of train it was swapped over in almost exactly the same way as John's clay dries are shunted, although I have no data on where (or if) a brake van was in the train although it presumably was. The tricky part on this section of the line was that the branch past the siding dropped at about 1 in 50 down to Stanton Station and there was a stop board (for pining down brakes on all freights) at the top of this gradient, so empties would have to be shunted down this grade in order to allow the loco to then collect the loaded wagons and drawn them out of the siding. This process was repeated several times with the loaded sections of train stored in the Stratton sidings. Wherever the brake van was, it was finally attached to the end of the full loaded train at Stratton for the mile journey back to Swindon Transfer. So this propelling operation took place over about 2 miles of 1-engine in steam line but with a much longer rake of wagons than is being shunted here. In more modern times when the Watlington Branch was truncated into a siding to serve the Portland Cement Works at Chinnor trains were propelled from Princes Risborough. This traffic ran from the closure of freight to Chinnor in 1966 until 1989. Google maps tells me this is about 4 miles of propelling wagons.

I do like a nice set of curves...

I understand. I am just concerned about a curved incline where the maths is different.

Unfortunately I don't have a smart phone. My old phone will let me speak to people, act as an alarm clock and it accepts texts (it can't send them!), but I'm happy with it. We actually tried using one of those before on the first layout and it wasn't accurate enough.

Your St Enodoc to Wheal Veronica gradient is my inspiration in terms of both design and construction. Its the kind of thing I'm aiming for on my branch line. If I can get nearly 28 feet of 1:67 gradient smooth and consistent I'll be very happy. I can probably manage it if I can accurately cut wooden risers each exactly 1/4" taller than the one before and get them spaced exactly 16 3/4" apart.

I was also thinking that the average operator had a big beefy H&M Duette and with a Princess Royal and three coaches a train could be hammered up such a grade at a scary speed and people were quite happy with that. Nobody had even thought of tiny RTR locos like Pecketts and Beattie well tanks back then. I remember the first Tri-Ang Jinty was a monster that could pull anything on my layout, but then it was built like a tank, had the level of detailing of one and was quite incapable of running at shunting speeds.

Its an entirely personal and subjective issue. For me its easily do-able. I wore one for the set-up session on Friday which was from 3:00pm to about 6:00pm and was fine, but then I'm a person who's happy following rules for the good of the majority. I find the blue medical masks are so light I quickly forget I'm wearing one. I lowered it only 2-3 times for a sip of water. My three friends who operated Chalfont all day Saturday said they had no issues with wearing masks all day but with three operators that allowed a 2 on 1 off operator schedule so there was ample opportunity to go outside, de-mask and have a break. But masking is an entirely personal thing. Some can't stand it, others like me have no issues. If you exhibit, perhaps make the extra effort to have plenty of helpers so people can take more frequent breaks if needed. Just one more logistical issue to bear in mind when exhibiting or trading.

I was at the National Garden Railway Show at the east of England Showground last Friday, which was set-up day. I had planned to assist in operating a friends layout the following day but a domestic occurrence quite unrelated kept me from attending, which was frustrating. What I saw of the venue on the Friday was extremely encouraging with huge wide avenues between stands and a planned morning and afternoon limited pre-booked ticket access system to reduce crowding. The organisers had done pretty much everything right with every exhibitor given a risk assessment document first and all exhibitors/traders/helpers details given to the organisers. Exhibitors were required to wear masks and socially distance and our layout owner had brought along a supply of sanitiser and some spare masks. While I couldn't attend on the Saturday I saw some video and still photos and chatted to the guys who were there and they reported not many visitors which made me concerned the organisers may not have broken even. But shows are do-able already and with the proper organisation should be safe - at least as safe as going round Sainsbury's probably. However can they be both safe and profitable? That's a different question. So short answer - yes, I'd definitely attend.

There was a roundy-roundy built into the first plan but it was at least 50% hidden, and its route used up a chunk of the branch-line trackage so I couldn't have both at once. My only regret (well two of them actually, the second one being I cocked everything up on the first attempt) is that Plan B is no longer the self-contained system I originally wanted and which (via the Madder Valley of course) originally inspired me. I've managed to keep several of the rail-served industries but the traffic to/from them all goes off stage to a fiddle yard now and not onwards to another industry on the system. I can do some internal movements such as horse boxes and horse carriages on open carriage trucks from the main line goods yard up to the branch terminus and milk from the branch down to the main milk and parcels office but I suppose what I shall do is move goods from off stage into the main line stations goods yard, things such as cordwood for the wood distillation works, and shift it onwards from there. Coal too might move from the colliery to the goods yard and be sorted into wagons destined for the docks and those to be sent up the branch so I imagine all is not lost. I do prefer the more open and less busy nature of Plan B, there is a lot of nice open countryside which hardly existed on the first design. The coal mine is better laid out as well. No steep grades though I think is going to be the main success here; they were the bane of my life before. Its my fault for reading too many CJF plans when I was young and impressionable with their 1 in 30 grades

That's an interesting comment. May I ask why that is? Was the old plan just too crazy to work from the outset?

Life can't be any more insane than it is right now. I have heard eminent psychologists say that regressing to your childhood is a great stress reliever.

I'm sorely tempted at this stage to just put trains on the plan and push them around going "Choo-choo!" It would save a lot of money and effort.

I have got the new plan printed at 1:1 scale and started laying it out on the floor. The purpose of this stage is to lay the existing frames over the plan and adjust any spacers where they conflict with the area needed beneath points for the motors. Once the frames are modified they will be erected on the old legs and a new ply top fitted.