Model Railways

[Pilot]

With the whole London idea, maybe you could just do a couple of streets around each route, and with the tube lines, the structure holding up whatever it may be in could be the colour of that line. Do the whole Oyster zone why not?
It goes to Gatwick now. But, iirc, Clapham Junction is within the proposed zone...

Leftie and myself had a rather large discussion about the whole London idea, and noticed a minor mistake in his maths. Basically, for an OO-Gauge scale map of London (just going off the Tube Network), we would require a building of somewhere in the region of 6.3 Million Square Feet. To put that into perspective, Boeing's Everett Factory (the third largest building by footprint, and a building designed for the construction of 747s) is only 4.3 Million Square Feet. Adding Gatwick into the equation would be, in my eyes at least, insane!

We also got a rough quote for a building of such size, and unfortunately, I don't know anyone with spare £2.15 Billion

[Redirect Left]

We also then had a large conversation about doing it with Manchester, from the Airport down to Rochdale/Oldham focusing on Metrolink tram routes and mainland trains through Victoria, Piccadilly, Deansgate etc instead, which was much more feasible. But still would require great investment, although I got the feeling if we suddenly got the money we'd probably give it a good go

ps: maths was never a strong point for me

[Gwyd]

How big is London's zone one though?
By my calculations, it's 125 meters (Earls court to Aldgate East) wide, and 75 meters tall (Vuxhaull to Kings Cross St. Pancras). So thats around 9375 sq M which is 100911.7 sq ft which is achievable.

https://propertylink.estatesgazette.com ... ee-feltham

[Pilot]

How big is London's zone one though?
By my calculations, it's 125 meters (Earls court to Aldgate East) wide, and 75 meters tall (Vuxhaull to Kings Cross St. Pancras). So thats around 9375 sq M which is 100911.7 sq ft which is achievable.

The issue with London Zone 1 is that it is all underground, there is very little to see above ground (other than the buses, the stretch between London Bridge + Cannon St/Charing Cross, and a few boats). We did discuss a scaled down London Idea, with the boundaries being Heathrow to the West, Harrow to the North, Barking to the East and Croydon to the south, and came up somewhere in the region of 2.5 Million Sq Ft.

We discussed the Manchester idea, and I think we came up with a ballpark figure of around 1.2Million Sq ft. (Edit - Actually about 800k sq ft looking at my calculations) So for something not much bigger than the London Zone 1, we can do Manchester, where there is probably more to see, as well as more variation in buildings densities, etc.

EDIT - I hope you don't mind me questioning your calculations here, For London Zone 1, I make the Eastern and Western most points to be 16 miles apart, and the Northern and Southern most points to be 3 miles apart, yet your layout size is 125m x 75m. In my head at least, that doesn't make sense.

[Gwyd]

I probably did it wrong: I went from the mentioned stations with google maps, then divided the distances by 72, and then rounded it.

Another thought since I was on the Tube today, that may be slightly mad: do it like it is on the map. Extremely inaccurate but you'd pick a few main landmarks between stops, and keep the diagram's scaling.

[Dave]

Now then...

[Geo Ghost]

An interesting addition to my collection...

Intercity Voyager.

[Doorslammer]

That's gotta have an amazing story behind it.

[Geo Ghost]

That's gotta have an amazing story behind it.

I saw it for sale and said "I MUST HAVE IT!" and that was it
Not much of a story to be fair

[Pilot]

So, that's what a Voyager will look like if the railways get re-nationalised!

[Redirect Left]

So, that's what a Voyager will look like if the railways get re-nationalised!

I will actually miss all the different colored liveries we get with franchises.
I hope renationalisation won't make them all a sad boring all the same color

[Geo Ghost]

I hope renationalisation won't make them all a sad boring all the same color

I'd suspect, if such a thing did happen anyway, that it would be under one company eventually, but split into the appropriate sectors like South Eastern, Southern, South Western, Great Western, Thames Valley, Chiltern, Thameslink, Great Northern, Great Anglia, East Coast, West Coast, Midland Mainline, etc etc

Would probably make more sense so everyone knows what goes where

[Dave]

Now then...

Spot the difference...

[Hyronymus]

The foundations of the viaduct gave in and is now half as high .

[Redirect Left]

The foundations of the viaduct gave in and is now half as high .

God dammit, I spent ages looking at that and I never saw that rather obvious thing.

Also, mods; I don't seem to be able to edit the poll on the first post, if any of you want to give us a fresh new Model Railways related poll to vote on? That's been there many moons now.

[Dave]

The foundations of the viaduct gave in and is now half as high .

Indeed!

The master plan calls for a raised main line at various heights across the layout, but the viaduct track bed was 132mm. To allow gentle gradients over reasonable lengths, I had to consider my options.

By reducing the height to a square 100mm, I can now get down to 70mm over a 1500mm length, which allows a much shorter branch line as it now only needs to descend 70mm to the ground.

The viaduct was my first card kit so I was sad to hack it up, but it actually has come out just about alright, I think.

[Pyoro]

I'd say so. No way they'd have build that higher than absolutely necessary, which seems to be about the height you've got now. Looks great.

[Pilot]

What I'm most worried about is that giant Cat picture that the Townsfolk can see!

[Dave]

Yeah there's been a couple of close shaves between local traffic and a mug shaped UFO which has landed...

Thanks Pyoro - you're absolutely right. I thought long and hard about how this fits into the wider plan, I really didn't want to hack the viaduct up. But it became clear that its height right in the middle of the board was the problem, so I've taken action!

[Pilot]

Yeah there's been a couple of close shaves between local traffic and a mug shaped UFO which has landed...

Let me guess, it's only ever the town drunk who sees this UFO, so everyone thinks he's just crazy?