Horsetan

That's Obekkaer, a P87 layout by Geraint Hughes. P87 is visually superior in the same way that P4/S4 is, but without the kind of trade support that P4 can take for granted. It is virtually impossible to obtain steam loco wheels for P87, and you need to have lathe turning skills and the correct form tools (another very hard-to-find necessity) if you want to DIY.

Mmmm, many of the homicidal maniacs I see in the City of London are cyclists. Many think red lights don't apply to them and will brazenly ride through pedestrians who have the green man showing at crossings, whilst others insist on riding on the pavements rather than using the purpose-designed cycle lanes. You cannot design and build for those who want to be wilfully stupid. And that's before we factor in e-scooter riders, all of whom are accidents waiting to happen and all of whom I think should be shot. If you give people technological privilege, you can be sure it will be abused.

If you're only going to be messing with the chassis, I'd suggest selling the bodyshell untouched. Hornby China bodyshells are not available as spares, so eBay is pretty much the only way you can obtain any. You'd be getting some money back. A Radial body on a Martin Finney Radial chassis makes a decent model in EM or P4.

I'll be there Saturday afternoon after horse-related duties.....

Those are angles I'd not seen before

The Bredins looked very modern. I really must try the SSM kit one day.....

However, one common theme seems to be shared by a great many of these schemes: it was that those proposing them were hoping that the established railway companies would pay for construction and the subsequent operation of these lines. The great Irish tradition of trying to achieve something for nothing, by whatever means, continues to this day.

....there were quite a few attempts to replicate acceleration, coasting and braking via mechanical means. Some of us will be familiar with DynaDrive, an expensive system involving miniature centrifugal cutches, indecently-big flywheels, reduction gear cradles, driveshafts and some very efficient bevel-and-spur final drives to replicate the mass and inertia of the real thing. However, there was another ingeniously brave attempt that was produced by Rivarossi some time in the 1980s. They called it "S-Drive". I didn't even know it existed until earlier this year, when, during one of those distracted Google searches that I sometimes get trapped in, the attached advert came up. "S-Drive" seems to have been quite simple in the sense that a standard motor drove a worm and wormwheel. However, butted-up against that was a cradle carrying three spur gears. Running the motor and worm stage one way caused the cradle to flip in one direction and engage with a final drive gear, allowing the model to move. Whilst on the move, if you cut the power, the motor would stop and the cradle would disengage so that the model would coast to a halt. Applying power the other way caused the cradle to flip the other way, engaging the final drive and allowing the model to reverse. Again, cutting power to the motor would disengage the cradle and the model would coast in reverse. If you got your braking distances a bit wrong, you were free to apply power in either direction. Turns out the system was so successful that Rivarossi only fitted it to one model: their ex-Bavarian S3/6 Pacific. It doesn't look like they tried it on any other. The advert suggests it was built using plastic spur gears; this may have been more to do with cost than anything else. Anyhow, for those not entirely familiar with German, their advert is roughly translated as follows: "Haven't you always wanted to drive realistically? S-Drive offers automatic engagement and disengagement of the gearbox - Continuous acceleration - Traction-dependent sliding travel - Individual determination of the braking distance through additional traction current pulses - Realistic, mass-dependent coasting to a standstill - Full braking by counter-control on the driving console - Possibility of towing another locomotive with S-Drive in case of separate traction current supply (overhead contact line / outside contact line) or individual control with electronic multi-train systems The Br.18 will be the first locomotive to be equipped with S-Drive by Rivarossi. It is planned to equip further locomotives with this new drive concept in the course of the model update. Should one or the other brake sections of existing layouts not be sufficient for Rivarossi S-Drive - too bad! But then this modern drive concept can be switched over to the conventional type of drive at any time. S-Drive. Now you can!" Nowadays, there is DCC and almost everyone who gets used to that takes all the clever things it can do for granted. But for those of us who find DCC a bit beyond the pale, the mechanical methods are still out there and could still be messed with.

'Tis the same in Britain: people don't really care where things come from if they're out of sight, out of mind. Then again, importing half the country's food leaves it quite vulnerable when things go wrong. Transport for London thinks that an Ultra Low Emission Zone is an answer, but the leaded petrol emissions from my 34-year-old gets blown back into the Zone, so I'm not sure there's that much difference... Why should I buy a new electric car (which took a whole new set of resources) when there's nothing wrong with my decades-old one (no new resources required)? The data centres thing is a bit mad. All that componentry constantly at work probably generates quite a bit of heat, as well as being a significant drain on electricity.

Put in an order for the triple RPSI Mk.2 pack a while ago. They'll go with the three Bachmann RPSI Mk.2s.

Cost of living crisis? What cost of living crisis?

Probably just as well. She made ignorance fashionable.

Please don't tell me it's Jade Goody

Sir David Attenborough?

Be careful what you wish for. Meanwhile, I still add tetraethyl lead to the petrol for the oul Citroën.

To be fair, they are probably the same as building any lattice post signal, e.g., LSWR, CR, LNER, etc., so go carefully with the soldering iron and use the minimum amount of solder that you can get away with. Those 5ft arms are seriously long, though....

The thing that strikes me about the CB&P engines is the triangular, almost minimal, buffer beam...

Thing is, could the non push-pull 201s have been upgraded to push-pull? And, if that were possible, is there actually enough work for them to do?

Thanks to @KMCE, I now have a clear set of his drawings plus quite a lot of measurements; I now know that the lateral centreline of the inside cylinder is just 4ft in front of the centreline for the outside ones. This shows that the front of the outside cylinders does coincide with the rear of the inside one, and would have made quite a strong rigid structure on the real thing with virtually no flexing in the frames in this area.

Could have been worse. Could have been the Provisional Lion, or Continuity Lion....

Is that 63? That engine looks very S/S2 class to me, and there's a trace of a nameplate on the leading splasher. Looking at the shape of the cabside numerals, I'd say that's a "1" in front. The second numeral is rounded, which I guess to be a "9", and so is the third numeral. That makes the engine S2, either 190 or 192. I'd say it's more 192, so Slievenamon. I know the UTA renumbered this one 63 in its list, but the cabside (and indeed the whole engine) suggests this hadn't been repainted at the time of the photo.

This is the same question I'm asking. All of the worked examples concentrate on the driving wheelbase only and don't take the bogie into account

On the fifth read-through of the instructions, one of the particular design points stands out: - The kit bogie is designed to pivot from a direct link at the rear to a mainframe stretcher. There are no provisions made for a central bogie pivot, or for the bogie frames to directly bear the weight of the mainframe. This is slightly different to the real thing, where the bogie frames and stretcher directly take the weight of the engine frames and only slide laterally to a limited extent, whilst the bogie axles themselves are allowed to rise and fall. - I want to see if the kit bogie can be modified to act more like the real thing. That means trying to make room for a central pivot / slide, not a rear one. Helpfully, the kit has an "L"-shaped mainframe stretcher here which is in virtually the right place for mounting a centre pivot. The vertical part of that "L" could also double as the back end of the inside cylinder. I messed about with a spreadsheet initial diagram for the continuous sprung beam (CSB). It is quite rough at the moment: This is based on a model weight of 200 grams (I'm sure the completed engine tops out at a good bit more than that), with an estimated centre of gravity ahead of the front axle. With the known wheelbase of 29mm x 34mm , the CSB has provisional pivots / fulcrums set at 16mm ahead of the centre driving axle and 19.5mm behind it. The outer anchors are set at 14.5mm ahead of the leading axle, and 11mm behind it. The spreadsheet which works all of this out calculates a theoretical weight distribution of 32.5% for front and middle axles, and 35% on the rear. The aim is to get each axle bearing 33.3% each, so the current working is just messing with settings. Incidentally, anyone interested in messing with CSB suspension might find the spreadsheet tools useful.