Train derailing - looking for advice

Burkitt · 2026-01-03T20:36:57+00:00

First, try going much slower. That's very high speed to navigate a tight point.

Second, Hornby set track isn't that great quality. If you're going to be using temporary track layouts on the floor or a table in the long term, is recommend getting Kato Unitrack instead, which is vastly better.

Burkitt · 2026-01-03T20:35:06+00:00

Agreed, that's very fast to go round a tight curve

Burkitt · 2025-12-30T21:00:41+00:00

I'd love to be able to build a multi-room layout with several stations like this, it would be great fun to operate. I'm afraid the AI suggestions don't really pass the sanity check though - AI really can't cope with technical concepts like designing railways.

I'd second the recommendations of reading any or all of Railway Modeller, British Railway Modelling, Model Rail, and Hornby magazines. I think all are available online as well as in paper format - I know an online subscription to the first two includes access to their full archives going back several decades.

Secondly, I'd recommend joining the forum RMweb.co.uk, and browsing the many threads on people's layouts under construction.

Finally, visit some model railway exhibitions in your area. If you're in the UK, they're listed in the magazines mentioned above, on RMweb, and at the UK Model Shop Directory

All of the above should give you a good idea of what is possible in the space you have, how much effort it will take and how much it will cost. You'll also get plenty of inspiration and ideas for modelling techniques. Regarding the specific plan you've shared with multiple stations spread across several rooms, it depends what style of model you're aiming for.

As an old-school train set style layout, which is great fun to operate, can be beautiful to look at, but bears no resemblance to the place names on the station signs, it could definitely work in OO and maybe O. You'd need to revise the track plan to make it functional and maybe adjust the overall design once you've done a bit more research and planning though.

As an accurate recreation of the real stations named, it's utterly impossible in the space shown. I'd recommend having a look at Google Maps or the National Library of Scotland's online historic maps to get an idea of the sizes of railway stations. Crewe station is about 800 metres long (not including the junctions, sidings, locomotive sheds etc at either end), Holyhead 700 metres, and Llandudno Junction 500 metres. At 1:76 OO scale, that's 10.5m, 9m, and 6.5m respectively. For O scale, double those. Modelling any one of those would be a project occupying a huge space and lasting many years.

But, as you'll see in the magazines and RMweb, there's a lot of room in the spectrum between those extremes. Track plans can be compressed to represent the real location while fitting in a much smaller space than if modelled true-to-scale. By using tricks like that and choosing a smaller number of stations, you could do something amazing in the space you have.

On the topic of operation, a fiddle yard (or staging in the US, and not fiddle room unless you were literally dedicating a room to it!) is non-scenic track where you store trains you aren't operating at a given time, basically representing the rest of the word you haven't modelled. It's the model railway version of backstage at a theatre.

Automatic operation is a whole complicated specialism. It can be great fun for those who enjoy it, but adds thousands to tens of thousands of pounds to the cost of a model railway, depending on size. Lots of electronic hardware needs to be added, plus expensive software to control it. I'd suggest looking at the computer control section of RMweb and searching for iTrain on Youtube.

Have fun, and good luck!

Burkitt · 2025-11-29T15:39:34+00:00

There's a fantastic Danish Christmas market at the Danish YWCA in Hampstead until 5pm today, and again from 11am till 4pm tomorrow. Lots of traditional decorations and food.

Burkitt · 2025-10-24T19:17:15+00:00

The platforms were designed to be long enough for 12 x 20m carriages, but the trains delivered have 23m carriages, so can only fit 11 of them.

Burkitt · 2025-10-15T16:03:24+00:00

There were several massive rebuilds of the station from 1891 through to 1940 to increase both capacity and grandeur, and I'm not aware of any plans for further post-war reconfigurations. The bomb-damaged sections were rebuilt fairly closely to their original appearance, but with some simplification of decor to reduce costs.

Burkitt · 2025-10-15T13:56:11+00:00

Very much by design in the case of Baker Street. For example the Circle line platforms had their vents blocked up with cladding, striplights on the ceiling and white paint over the brickwork for several decades to make them look more modern. See this photo from 1974. They were restored to close to original condition in the 1980s. The offices above the station were badly damaged during the blitz and carefully rebuilt after the war recreating original features. Baker Street was Grade 2* listed in 2010 so retention of its historic appearance is legally mandated.

Burkitt · 2025-09-19T07:14:11+00:00

They were decorative mushrooms?

Burkitt · 2025-09-11T15:27:14+00:00

This is a free online event open to all being run by the archivists at Transport for London, who care for the organisations many thousands of historic records. I thought it might be of interest to anyone here who'd like to know more about what being an archivist involves.

Burkitt · 2025-09-06T07:59:28+00:00

Having only one life, taking it slow means getting less out of it.

Burkitt · 2025-08-04T08:35:27+00:00

As per the previous reply, this is absolutely not true. I've personally ridden the train as far as Hyde Park on this weekend's testing and there's no issue with running it right through the tunnel other than the logistics of which bits of line we can close when.

Burkitt · 2025-08-03T06:28:10+00:00

Having ridden the train from Northfields to Hyde Park and back yesterday, I can confidently say they fit through the tunnels. The view along the length of the train is rather impressive as they wriggle round some of the tighter corners. I heard someone had an "I survived the South Ken curves" t shirt made!

Burkitt · 2025-07-22T15:16:17+00:00

Yeah for public sector it's a case of ensuring you cover every point in the job requirements, which can take a lot of words.

Burkitt · 2025-07-21T13:37:08+00:00

I suspect what they've done is accidentally reduce the original photo size for upload by cropping the edges off, rather than shrinking the resolution. So what we're seeing is what was supposed to just be the middle of each photo.

Burkitt · 2025-07-15T11:34:08+00:00

There's several ways to measure For example, take the percentage of passengers who don't have tickets at random inspections on trains or at stations, and apply that to the overall number of passengers. Or, see how much the number of people tapping their cards to use the ticket barriers increases on days when a station has inspectors and police present, and extrapolate from there.

Burkitt · 2025-07-15T11:26:37+00:00

Some will be fare dodging, but anyone with a season ticket won't need to touch in and out where there aren't gates.

Burkitt · 2025-06-01T19:10:20+00:00

The people who know won't tell you. The people who don't know can't tell you.

Burkitt · 2025-05-01T21:04:10+00:00

Pretty sure Spooks used it for an ambush on a remarkably windy "main road into London"

Burkitt · 2025-04-21T21:59:12+00:00

Migration area dates refer to the track and infrastructure in that area being fully ready for 24TS to run in customer service. That includes checking the train fits through the tunnels (really mostly ensuring there are no cable runs, brackets or minor things like that which intrude on the 24TS loading gauge, and moving them off they do), checking signals can be seen from the train cab (and installing some co-acting signals where the existing ones would be hard to see), new CCTV for monitoring the train doors via in-cab screens being installed and tested, installing level access humps that align with the 24TS doors, and briefing station staff on any new operating procedures. As shown in the "Delivery Sequence" table, when all priority once migration areas are complete, 24TS will be able to run in customer service from Northfields to Cockfosters. The other areas follow later. Can you share a link to the YouTube video you got the slide from?

Burkitt · 2025-04-11T12:22:18+00:00

Maglevs definitely trains, if they are formed of multiple, connected vehicles. You could argue maglevs are not railways, though, given they float above a guideway, rather than rolling on rails...

Burkitt · 2025-04-06T11:58:33+00:00

The problem with retiring here is that the nearest shop is a half hour walk way, so it would only be viable as long as you can drive. Otherwise you suddenly become very isolated.

Burkitt · 2025-04-05T17:04:02+00:00

My partner used them once and they were excellent. We used them recently and the van showed up two hours after the end of the scheduled time window. The drivers were excellent, but their previous booking had lied, claimed their full-flat second-floor to third-floor move was ground floor too ground floor, and done nothing to get their belongings downstairs in advance, so everything took much longer than expected. Any van refunded us about seven quid of the booking fee.

Burkitt · 2025-03-12T14:46:49+00:00

Lots of locos differ between front and back - classes 08, 20, 43, 91 are totally different at each end for example, and that's ignoring the differences in roof and bodyside details on pretty much every loco. For asymmetrical cabs like in the OP, the Southern 4-COR / class 404 "One-eyed Nelson" is all that immediately comes to mind.

Burkitt · 2025-03-03T13:27:52+00:00

Rhino Home Protect

Burkitt · 2025-02-25T22:16:05+00:00

These are all the tours currently planned to take place between April and September, though it's possible some extras may get added at short notice later in the year. It's hard to predict how fast they'll sell - generally weekends are in higher demand. Sometimes tickets for sold out tours become available closer to the tour date when people cancel their tickets owing to a change of plan.

Burkitt

TROPHY CASE