TheSignalEngineer

Difficult to tell without seeing in the flesh but the idea is that a shoe meets the conductor rail via a ramp. If it hits the side you are sunk or fried. The other main criteria is that a train should have at least one shoe on the con rail so you can have a gap but it should be shorter than the space between the outer shoes on the shortest unit. There are places where a train gets gapped but it is usually where it can get enough momentum to roll across. Note:- Beaten to it by Phil whilst typing.

Another old book is 'Modern Railway Signalling' by Tweedie and Lascelles. This was originally published c1925 with two reprints shortly after. My copy belonged to my grandfather who bought it not long after it was published. I don't know if there is an ebook of it available.

Link works fine. Thanks

There will be a very big flash and bang as the shoe comes off and hits the con rail and running rail at the same time. All trains will stop and the signal lamps will probably all go out.

Trap positions and throw off directions shown. exact positions need to be determined by how the track is on the layout. A train dropping off the end of the trap should stop clear of the passenger move. There would also be a need to have some means of stopping the scrappie from pushing a wagon out foul of the sidings. In the past I have used a wheel stop padlocked across one rail so a wagon would stop clear of the other sidings if moved.

Yet another winner from Dan. Order placed on Friday afternoon and the loco was running on my layout by Monday lunch time. Thanks.

Got my second one today. DC version runs well both ways straight out of the box. Only problem was that the Carpet Fairy tried to claim the front buffer which was loose in the box. I'm getting too quick for her these days, plenty of practice from kit building. Next job to get the roundy connected to do a full running in and load test.

There's one in Tony Wright's thread. See this post, several pictures.

Got a signalman off a Please Explain when he managed to halt the West Coast Postal between Proof House and New Street. Tried to put it into 9 with a route set out of 8 through the double slip at the end of the island platform. Interlocking says NO.

Mine arrived this morning, what a beast! Just doing a bit of testing, seems to run OK at all speeds in both directions. Part finished Limby effort is now in the scrap drawer, Bachmann DCC Pannier chassis anyone? (Although it may yet get re-purposed.)

Just make some cosmetic switch rails and glue them in the position for leaving the siding. No-one will notice they are lying the wrong way.

No. With a route set in or out of platform 3 a train running past a signal in the sidings will foul it, besides running through the trailing end.

Short term loan or running in turn. At least four foreigners from the Cambrian fleet visited Stafford Road Works for attention during my period. The local shed had a habit of putting them on Worcester trains for a couple of days when they emerged.

Regarding the track layout I notice that you haven't got trap points in any of the sidings to protect passenger trains in and out of platform 3. These are a requirement for sidings connected to passenger lines.

P means Permanent Magnet Only. The arrow on a bi-directional line denotes that it has a suppressed Permanent Magnet, the direction in which the magnet acts on the receiver is denoted by the direction of the arrow. It is worth remembering that if the magnet is 200 yards from the signal that is almost 8 feet at 4mm scale.

Neither did I. One would certainly fit in my area and timescale but the locally shedded ones aren't on the list. A bit of book trawling and Shedbash surfing calls. One may have to sneek through on a dated seaside train or excursion, otherwise a slight time warp at the later end of the time cycle may be needed as three came in just athe the end of my intended period. (That would also help me to run a couple of Green Diseasels I have more believably.)

How about a DCC sound fitted busker on the corner outside the station? One of the f numbers could be the sound of coins dropping in the tin.

Ever done backing tracks for punk-era layouts Clive?

It was a bit of a faff. Had there been any prospect of the re-tooled version being imminent at the time I would never have bothered, just put them on Ebay or something. These were early models in the original Bachmann boxes with the Mainline type of couplings moulded on to the oldest style bogies and plastic wheels. I think there were already some differences in the bogies on the later ones of these even before the re-tooling. The solebar height was 1mm too high. I filed down the plastic of the shoulder of the bogie mounting spigot and the ribs sticking out each side of it making sure that the bogie could swing freely without the side frames fouling on the solebars. I think that made the wheel flanges foul of the floor, as I cut four holes to stop them rubbing. If the wheels hit the solebars on your tightest curves the inside of the solebars need to be shaved down to as thin as possible in the area of the wheels. I really don't think I would have done it had the re-tooled version been available. The easy bits were trimming the top of the gangway connectors to the height of a Comet Pullman gangway end plate etch with a scalpel and adding SEF flush glazing. Gangway connectors were from MB Model Railway Products, who look like they have disappeared as the website no longer works and the person concerned last appeared on here about two years ago. Others are available, I think 7821 on here does some and several other suppliers on the web. I found the easiest way with this type was to use a connector on one coach and a blanking plate on the other. The body sides of real coaches were regularly cleaned so I weathered by dragging a bit of cloth with a thin black wash down the sides until it had almost all come off just leaving a thin film and accentuating the bits difficult to clean in real life such as the edges of doors and windows. The underframe was sprayed with hair spray and then coated with a mixture of black and dark rust weathering powder using a stiff stencilling brush until it got to the desired effect. They look fine on the layout but as I said earlier I don't know if I would bother again as I only have three to run in odd ones in mixed rakes and the cost of glazing and re-wheeling plus any sale proceeds would be offset against some of the new ones.

For historical based layouts mine starts from 'what if in the early days railway X made peace with railway Y' then assumes what might have been there in 1950s BR, For background a good starting point for the back-story is RailMapOnline. https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php. Following on from this the story was developed by taking the stories of local arguments from company histories and the Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain series and others like the Middleton Press books on local areas. More historical mapping data can be gleaned from the NLS site as mentioned above and old-maps.co.uk

Thanks for that. One of our regular bike rides starts from the Huddersfield Road car park and goes up to Diggle and back using the Pennine Bridleway, Huddersfield Canal, Delph Branch and Micklehurst line for most of the journey. Next time out I must go via the goods depot and power station

I think there's still a glitch in Northwich or Shoeburyness somewhere as the LT&S Class 79 tanks are still showing some at Northwich and the dates between the tables at the top and bottom of the shed page don't match up. The information on Northwich seems very fuzzy as the other sites I have looked at don't always give definite dates. I wonder if anyone from the 8E Railway Association has any information?

I don't need anger management. JUST DON'T ANNOY ME!!

50ft BG. Have you tried Paul Bartlett's site? https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/lmsparcels. There are some on there.

There were some previous types of insulated and ventilated meat vans with provision for fitting ice boxes. I think the Palethorpes vans were some of the first with electric fans driving ducted ice-cooled air around the load.