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Had an enjoyable and relaxing day yesterday being driven around and forced to drink champagne and eat cake. Due to an effective security screen, no bears or hippos were seen during consumption. Dave

Hadn't realised they were Mk4s!

Paddy McGintys Goat. It ate the note, and despite being stomach pumped, all they got was sixpence... Its a long time since I've heard the song!

Electronics? Touchscreens? Remember when things were simple - to operate and mend? My first car was a Mini Traveller. Two switches (one for headlights , one for wipers), heater, choke and the pushbutton on right for the screen washer. Dip switch was a foot operated button beside the clutch pedal. Simplicity and it worked. As for navigating, there was (and still is) the good old road atlas. My next car will be older, not newer. The downside will be that the seats will not be as comfortable for my ageing frame.

Nearer to your layout timeframe than mine, I’d say the 1920’s.

Shouldn’t that be zwei und zweizig? Dave (The autocorrect tried to change that to zero and xeroxing 🤣

Morning folks, We'll just leave this here... 🤭 Make sure you pop by, to see our (almost, we have amended the headcode font and fit) final production sample on the stand. A full update will follow in the coming days. 😎 https://www.accurascale.com/collections/brush-type-2-class-30-31 Cheers! Fran

Many thanks for the explanation of how Buxton Midland was shunted. I am building a layout, based on the station, and was puzzled about how goods trains were dealt with. I managed to arrive at a plan something similar to yours, but much shorter (compromise between what is wanted and what is possible). My engine shed roads lead back off the turntable so that they are more or less parallel with the station.

Be strong Chris! I just can't resist the 40' vans, or the early siphons for that matter! Tony

You can say that again.

Tony, Very interesting. Ooh, I feel a pull. 'Must not get into 40ft vans, I must not get ...........' I am still very slowly finishing off my siphons and will post when I have advanced a bit.

I remember seeing a Herald passing a line of parked cars, the offside was comfortably within the centreline of the road. A mumsie SUV following it overhung the line by a couple of feet... The Devil must have had further plans for the bu@@er.

Finished GBRF

Here's three versions that have seen service on the BNR. The earliest one used a Mainline J72 chassis and has since been retired. The later ones use a Hornby Jinty chassis and a Hornby Toby chassis. Various bits from old 06 and 08 bodies have been used to Bongliscise them - see my BNR layout thread if that doesn't make sense 🙃. Ones with the original mechanism have also seen service with added front couplings, glazing and a lot of additional weight. The original Lima one is quite high geared and the wheels need a lot of cleaning. These locos/bodies can be picked up very cheaply and being quite wide it's fairly easy to fit alternative mechanisms in.

Could some of that discrepancy be down to the size of the flanges on the Lima wheels?

Something went wrong with my post above as it didn't include my text or the photo hopefully now attached. I write to fly the flag for Swiss model loco builders. The loco below is from G.B. Modell, which is essentially a one man show. Appropriately for a Swiss rather than German outfit he makes only smaller loco models but they are good, don't you think? They cost a bit less than Micro Metakit examples& so I have bought a few. William

An off-topic comment if ever there was one! That looks like a nicely-built example of the K's kit; you're lucky to have it. You might want to consider renumbering. 2849 was one of a handful of 700 class engines rebuilt with the type D boiler in 1908/9, which did result in a degree of uglification: [Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre item 82417, 2849 approaching Trent with a through goods train c. 1920.] It went straight from this condition to a G6 Belpaire boiler in 1923, a type it retained until withdrawal in 1947: [Embedded link to catalogue image of Midland Railway Study Centre item 99-0683, 2849 outside Derby No. 4 shed c. 1925.] Tenders are a bit of a nightmare. By the 1920s, many 700 Class engines were running with either Johnson tenders off withdrawn 2-4-0s and the like, or with Kirtley tenders with rebuilt tanks, as in these photos of 2849. An example of an engine with round-topped boiler and unrebuilt Kirtley tender, i.e. in the condition of the model, is 2834, renumbered 22834 in 1935 (2849 was renumbered 22834 around the same time). 2849 was a Derby engine for most of its life; 2834 was allocated at Leeds or Normanton up to 1930 but was at Birmingham in 1933, ending its days as part of Bournville shed's antique collection. [Ref. S. Summerson, Midland Railway Locomotives Vol. 2 (Irwell Press, 2007).]

Oh, Sam. Mr "I give anything from Hornby an absolute kicking, coincidentally from around the time they stopped just giving me stuff to review...."

Yes, and TTj does exist, but it is very niche and eye-wateringly expensive. I saw a Tenshodo D51 in 1:120 advertised some time in the 90s, for the then-equivalent of $3000 - could get a very good used car for that price back then. Edit to add: NZ120 is fairly common and uses the same setup, 1:120 on 9 mm track, and I know of a few people who've done some South African and Rhodesian outline models like that, too, and one person has done Canadian National's Newfoundland operations in 1:120/9mm as well. I've long been mildly tempted to dabble in a bit of Rhodesian modelling, but... I'm tempted by a lot.

Much safer to take one that's already been discarded due to holes - just make sure the holes aren't in the bit that's over the end of the nozzle...

Thanks Robin. Nice variety of wagons in that photo. What date do you think it is?

Where dew drops cry and the cats meow!

Attention switches back to the Up, as another A1 approaches. It is another Copley Hill engine too, Kittiwake this time, bringing in an Up Leeds, which will stop here for five minutes.

His recordings might have been, but a lot of his material was pure Music Hall - I seem to recall one of his songs being about a character who "won a fortune, and bought himself a goat", and another about "Delaney's donkey". "Five Pound Notes" appear, generically denoting "a large sum of money, not normally seen". Spike Milligan used similar images of Irish rural poverty in "Puckoon"; the two Border Inspectors find they cannot pay for their lodging using a Five Pound note, because no-one locally has seen one before and their landlady refuses it because "we don't take cheques" ... eventually they pay using Ten Shilling notes - which their host happily accepts, thinking "brown, THAT'S the colour of money"