What Sort Of Model Railrway Do You Like?

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Surely having the trains run in a circuit is better than just having them run on a straight track.

Going slightly off topic(apology in advance) A thread like this makes me wonder about my father. Especially when combined with my stepdaughter noticing quite a few similarities between us. I do wonder whether he fits BAP. What makes me doubt undiagnosed ASD is the reasonably successful career he had as a diplomat.

Your Christmas tree layout will be continuous layout.

Great Western Railway. A company that existed from 1835 to 1948 in the UK. It was absorbed into British Railways ationalization scheme and became known as the BR Western Region.
Since then our railways were privatized again and one of the new companies called itself First Great Western. It has since dropped the "First" part of its name which was used because it belonged to a parent company under the name "First", which called itself the "First Group", to become Great Western. So in a way we have a reformed company working over part of the routes that the old Great Western Railway once ran.
The old Great Western Railway as a compny were very forward thinking. They actually sent their engineers to travel the world looking for ideas to use on their locomotives and their railway. They had a few world records. The first train to pass 100 mph in 1904 (The railway tried to play it down as they did not want to publicize it, as it was thought that if a train or by any other means, one travveled over 100 mph one would die, so if word got out they would loose passengers). It was pulled by a loco built in 1903 called "The City Or Truro" which was one of a class of 4-4-0 locos with external frames. External frames were needed for safety as locomotives were made of iron in those days, and they once had a drive wheel axle break causing a wheel to come off at speed which killed people, so the GWR built these locos and several others with external frames to prevent the wheels flying off if an axle broke. They also had the worlds first passenger service booked to run at speeds over 100mph in the timetable (Over part of the journey. Not the whole journey). It was called "The Cheltenham Flyer".
They also had the most powerful passenger express loco built in its day desite being a small size. (Actually two locos. The Castles came first and then came the King class which was basically an enlarged castle class with a larger boiler to give a tractive effort of 40,000 pounds. The USA was so impressed of the power output of the GWR locos that the first of the King class locos number 6000 "King George V" was shipped out to the USA to demonstrate its abilities and to share ideas etc. The USA fitted it with a bell. The only King class to have this bell. I saw it in 1987 as it came through here on a steam special .
The early days of the Great Western Railway had another unusual feature in that they used broad gauge. The broad gauge was 7ft wide but later was widened a quarter of an inch as express speeds increased above 60 mph (The GWR also were amongst the first to pass the 60 mph barrier). Tha advantage of broad gauge is that it was known to be very stable at high speed. Unfortunately most of the other railway companies chose the more popular 4ft 8 inch gauge which was later widened half an inch when speeds of trains increased. The slight widening of the gauge prevented issues when trains went round curves at speed. (They had heavy rail wear and widening the gauge prevented this as it gave the wheels a little slack which was jot an issue when they were running at low speeds, but 60 or more mph and it made a difference). Due to the incompatibility of using two different gauges, the GWR were eventually forced to drop their broad gauge and convert to standard gauge (4ft 8 1/2 inches). (Standard gauge was once called narrow gauge in the early years!)
The GWR had miles of track to convert and one stretch of line in the Cornwall area they converted 81 miles of broad gauge track to standard gauge in a single day! Not even today could this be done in such a short time!
Other famous firsts by the GWR was a tunnel under the sea which for many years was the longest tunnel in the world at 4 miles 836 yards long called the Severn Tunnel. (I did Severn tunnel training when I first worked on the railways as there were plans for my depot staff to work through to Bristol Temple Meads, but this never materialized).
The company was the first to adopt what was known as "Standardization" where their locomotives were made from standard parts. Due to this, one "Lost" class member when the steam era ended and all of a certain class were lost, a new loco was made from an entirely different class which shared the same parts, so the lost class of loco was brought back to life in recent years. I can't remember the class at the moment but it will come back to me. One of the 4-6-0's I believe as they used a 2-6-2T Prairie to make it... Ooh. I know which it was. The Grange class.

Locos absorbed into the GWR when "Grouping" took place in 1923 where all the little companies that formed the railway network became formed into just four big companies known as "The Big Four" which did not have standard parts were rebuilt in the GWR works at Swindon and became entirely new locos with new boilers. The term used was "Swindonized" amongst the enthusiasts!

Thank you for this abundant information on the Great Western Railway . And it descendants . And general history of the railway .

Your Christmas tree layout will be continuous layout. An end to end goes from one place to the next like a real railway normally does. They are British terms.

I can look for pictures of things I make?

I found this video of a really neat one. The owner is rich and hired people to build and maintain it . That would be a fun job.

That's my dream job!!

Did you know that the shape of the Great Western Railway locomotive boilers were specifically used to prevent boiler explosions if a locomotive hit and got wedged in a snowdrift? The GWR sent one of its engineers to Canada in the early years as they had developed a new boiler design to prevent a boiler explosion if a loco hit a snowdrift. What was happening is that when a steam locomotive hit a snowdrift and de-railed, the front of the boiler would dive down and the water would head towards the front, leaving the fire in the firebox heating fresh air and causing an explosion as the safety valve would not be enough to cater for it.
The Canadians started making their boilers in a conical shape so they were narrower in the front then compared to the rear with the idea being that the water in the boiler would always cover the heated area of the firebox due to the shape.
The Great Western Railway engineers were always the first to design for safety, and so they adopted the Canadian design. What surprized me was that the other railway companies that covered the colder northern UK areas like Scotland did not adopt this idea.

The GWR boilers were also part of their standard parts system and they would be referred to by number. For example the boiler number 9 was the largest and number one was the smallest.

The GWR also developed the pannier tank system of water tanks for their shunting locos as they could hold a greater water capacity then the curved saddle tanks, and yet they would allow easy acdess to te important lower parts of the locos so engine crew and depot crew could oil, inspect and work on them. Side tanks generally obscured such access so were only used if their greater water capacity was neccesary (E.g. on the various 2-6-2T and other designs).

Unless it's a helix. Are helical Christmas tree layouts a thing?

The GWR Grange class was an interesting mixed traffic loco. It was designed to be used as a general purpose engine that cojld be used on both passenger and freight use.
The mystery behind the grange class which I believe had at least 30 locos was that when they went to scrap them they dissapeared from all records. The entire class along with many 9F heavy freight locos.
Then some interesting tales started emerging where train crew that were towing trains of engies to the scrap yards were relieved at a signal box and a mystery new loco crew (The train crew would have met everyone as part of their job as even other nearby depot staff they would know, but the traincrew that took over they had not seen before which was highly unusual, as they would have had to come to them officially to learn the route) took over the train and they were never seen again. The loco crew was given the rest of the day off with full pay.
Now the mystery deepens as 118 locos dissapeared in this way which include some of the best examples and the most useful. The theory behind the dissapearance is that the government of their day used military traincrew to hide the locos in tunnels somewhere so they could use them in an emergency as one thing about the UK is parts of it have a plentiful supply of coal.
Now I happen to know a littlw bit more which may add to this mystery. I was told from a railworker who was fairly close to retirement how when he was younger and first employed, they had to lift the track from a branchline. This was not unusual because it was during the time of the "Beeching cuts" where many such lines that were loosing money were being closed and the track was lifted and scrapped.
Now what was unusual about this line was a few years later they were told to relay it with new track. Ok he thought as now they would have rail connection as at the other end of the line it was once a major port but all that was down there after another port took over elsewhere was a military base and a few old military storage base which was at one time used as part of the port and I saw mentioned about a different local military base with railway access that there were listed more tun els then the base had, and it gave reference to some being in the location of the port. (I found this out myself from examining old railway history which is something I happen to love).
Well. The new track was layed which was just over four miles, and what was interesting was the track was only there for a week or two before they were told to take it up again. The entire branch.

So could these locomotives have been stored in the tunnels?