SRman

He was one of a very few people I have admired. He will be missed.

The body, including the side 'walkways', is simply clipped onto the chassis. They can be a bit stiff to remove at first. Whatever you do, don't pull on the fuel tank mouldings, as that will just come off in your hands. The tank is a good place to mount a speaker.

This is really good news. As others have said, Mainly Trains was THE place to go for all the fiddly or difficult to get bits and kits. In the past, Dave Cleal was also always very helpful when I was not sure exactly what to order to achieve a particular result - more difficult from here in Oz when we can't see the products at all. Good luck with the venture, Andrew.

I have now extended the main bus wires to the other end of the layout, and hooked up the first track feeds with one set of dropper wires only at this stage. This means that the entire right-hand end of the layout up to the removable bridge section is relying on fishplates to conduct the power. I will add some more dropper wires tomorrow and/or Tuesday, and also add some to the fiddle yard loops to finally give a complete circuit. I may not have time to wire more than a couple of the point frogs at that end, so running may be restricted to four of the eight loop lines when I have the meeting. Even if I had the time to add those last few frog polarity switchers, I don't actually have enough of them in stock at present. I have ordered some more, but they may or may not get here in time to do something with them. However, feeling pleased with myself (maybe even smug!), here is yet another shaky-cam video of trains proving the electrification works properly.

Sorry I missed you Peter. Agnes and I did meet up with several other BRMA and MBAA members as we went around. My feeling at the end of our visit was that all of the layouts were of high quality, but none actually stood out for me. I still managed to spend more than I intended to!

Taking a break from the electrical work, I have restored continuous track through the entire circuit now, albeit some on temporary bridges and supports. The Wills four arch viaduct proved to have a bit too much 'give' in the unsupported ends of the trackbeds, so I have added some Plastruct I-beam girder supports at each end. The springiness of the track base I am using also didn't help, although that would improve once the ballast was glued on, but at this stage, I don't want to make it too permanent until I can complete tasks on the lower level, as well as properly painting the Wills viaduct (it only has a pale earthy wash all over at present). I have stuck the track to the sticky side of the White's Floor Protector, and then used some mastic to locate it so it doesn't move out of alignment, aided by some spare bits of cork underlay wedged between the trackbed and the viaduct walls. The idea of using sticky-side-up allows me to set the track formation without tack pins or gluing. I made sure that track joints are supported, even though it meant cutting sections and adding new bits to ensure this. Even so, the track on the old, temporary Triang-Hornby viaduct sections can float a bit, so I'll have to see how well they take running trains, once I add wiring and power. Again, at this stage the power will be relying on the fishplates to take it to the Wills viaduct end, although that will also change once I can finish the Vollmer viaduct sections - something that will definitely not occur within the next week, when the meeting is due! The Vollmer section is at the lower centre of the first photo, consisting of two double-track arches converted from four single-track arches. IMG_20180311_161934 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr IMG_20180311_162745 by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr The two Dapol class 68 locomotives are nice and heavy, and are weighing down the cork and card packing I have glued to the end of the Wills viaduct to level the track joint with the lift-out bridge sections.

I did wonder about that, myself. Does it mean Phil will set up another website if he does, say, and English Electric type?

It wasn't just a different transmission; classes 112 and 113 had single 8 cylinder Rolls Royce engines fitted, instead of two BUT (AEC/Leyland) 6 cylinder engines. With that in mind, I would expect the underframe equipment to be quite different in appearance. Quick edit - additional: class 112 still had the standard mechanical transmission, but, of course, only one would be fitted. Class 113 had hydraulic transmission.

4 CAP units, made up from two 2 HAP units marshalled with DMBS cars in the centre of the unit. A similar thing happened with the remaining four 2-car DEMUs of class 205 (2H), which had the ex-2 EPB driving trailers from disbanded 3R 'Tadpole' units inserted into the centres to make 3-car units of class 204 (3T). Confused? The SR and BR(S) did a lot of this sort of thing over many years to meet changing traffic requirements.

There is this in Plymouth's Barbican area: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@50.3665898,-4.1343022,3a,75y,224.34h,111.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWI46TmfQhSUF2n2im_i2MQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 - it may have been restored but it looks genuine to me.

I have gradually been extending the electrified sections further. It is still back-breaking work, but the 'suitcase' connectors have reduced that just a little. I have now used up 48 of them out of a pack of 50, so I'll be doing a quick detour via Bunnings on my way home from work tomorrow! Once I connect those wires, I can push the layout back against the wall (I'll worry about the point motor wiring later, when I have some sort of control panel in place). I have now been able to run test trains around just on half the layout on the inner circuit, but I still have to connect the wires to the outer circuit loops. Next, I have to connect the lifting section, which will mean threading the wires back below the piano hinge, to keep them clear of the tracks underneath. I also have to relay a small portion of the tracks along the viaducts at the front, to eliminate a couple of very short sections which would be storing up trouble for much later if I left them that way. There are still several temporary viaduct 'place holders' - recycled from my old layout, and propped up on polystyrene blocks to maintain the correct height. With that in mind, I will be relying on fishplates to conduct power along that part of the viaducts for the short term. When I finish building the Vollmer viaduct components, I will be feeding extra wire feeds through the piers. I may possibly have to lift and adjust the curved tracks at the newer ends of the loops for clearance purposes, but that will not be a major operation, nor will it involve much more than moving the alignments by a few millimetres either way from where they are presently. The clearances are sufficient to allow me to run most stock on the Saturday of the meeting. I will post another short video once I have a significant amount of running track.

That's really taking shape now, Tom. I would have expected a Maunsell shunter to have an air whistle, rather than horns, or at best, a single horn, but if you like it your way, it is your model to do with as you wish ... Rule 1 applies.

There's also Woodpecker Model Railways at Pendle Hill (right next to the railway station), where Alan and Marilyn Lee and son Steve will usually offer a warm welcome to visitors. The Blue Mountains area is extremely scenic and well worth a few pauses and detours along the way.

A bucket of Barclays would feed my layout for years.

You could try using laminated layers of plastic card to achieve the curve. I know a few bus modellers use the technique to build their roofs. Once the layers have bonded, you can fill and file them into the correct profile. Larger radius bends in plastic sheet can be set using hot water.

Humbrol 'ivory' #41 is a little paler than the rich Tilling cream, but could represent a faded version. Alternatively, paint a yellower shade as a base coat, then add thin coats of the Humbrol colour until you get the desired 'creaminess' - the 'ivory' is a fairly transparent colour..

The ventilators on all three vehicles are offset from the centre line, towards the compartment sides. As such, the CK and BSK at the rear have them lined up with each other, but the leading BSK, being turned 180 degrees compared the trailing one, has the ventilators offset the other way. If you look at the water tanks on the roofs, the ventilators seem to be roughly in line (well, very roughly!) with one edge of each tank.

That's looking very good, Tom. Now, all you need to do is print some 3D umbrellas for the crew, and she's away!!

You've got until April, according to the latest The Clearing House! I hadn't realised you were down for the meeting after mine.

That's easy: it had a very quiet, smooth and powerful mechanism, way ahead of the Hornby class 25, which was the only alternative at the time. The appearance was off at the ends, but overall it still looked like a class 24 or 25. The price used to be very reasonable too, and many were available as bargains with sound fitted. I'm talking the price of a sound decoder with a £10 locomotive thrown in ... that's how I came to own several of both classes from Bachmann.

Thanks, Rick. I know you'll be here in spirit.

Thanks, John. On the lower level, I propelled a 4-wheel ex-Southern CCT around at full speed to test the tracklaying. It behaved perfectly. I haven't done that on the upper level yet, because there isn't enough room at present for any overrun of the test train. Once I get the full circuit running, though ... watch this space!

And here's how it is all working so far. I am deliberately using short wheelbase locomotives to test the frog powering, and sound-fitted units to see if there are any interruptions or dead spots (sound is particularly sensitive to these hiccups). In this short video, the Model Rail 0-6-0T USA Dock Tank can be seen using both crossovers as well as traversing the entire length of my electrified track on the upper level to date.

Here are a few pics illustrating the description on my previous post. The wire loops can be clearly seen in the last couple.

Work has been progressing on wiring the new bits, albeit, slowly. I decided to experiment with 'suitcase' wiring connectors, also known as 'tap and run' connectors. Initial tests proved a little hit and miss, using a pack of 10 that I had bought some years ago. The intended wire size was a little too large for the wire I am using, so the metal 'guillotine' in the connectors wasn't piercing the insulation reliably to contact the wire itself. Still, encouraged by the relative simplicity of wiring the droppers into the DCC bus wires, I persevered by buying a pack of 50 connectors intended for 3mm wire. However, while my bus wires are around that diameter, the droppers are a bit smaller again, and connections were still a bit unreliable. I slept on the problem and had a brainwave overnight: if I doubled the smaller wire over, it would force at least one part of it far enough into the 'guillotine' to connect the wires. I tried it this morning and it was successful. It is a little more fiddly than before, but still eliminates a whole heap of soldering of connections. I still have to solder the droppers to the track, but there is now no soldering required beneath the baseboards. I have also, for the first time, used some auto-frog juicers (or whatever they are called!), in this case, from Gaugemaster. The idea is simplicity itself, using further wires tapped from the bus wires to feed the two terminals on the corners of the boards, and a dropper wire soldered to the Peco frog wire on the point itself and to the 'F' terminal on the Gaugemaster board. Aside from a few hiccups with dirty track and wheels, it all worked perfectly as expected, and I have been happily trundling trains back and forth from the overbridge to just short of the crossover at the back of the layout, and through the front crossover. Who knows, with a four day weekend at the end of this week, I may yet have some trains running right round the upper level, ready for my BRMA meeting on the 17th March although only with manually thrown points at this stage.