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We stopped in at the visitor centre in Christina Lake, BC for a toilet break. We've driven past many times, but this was the first time we've stopped. Here's a picture of myself standing on a Kettle Valley Railway trestle in the visitor centre: It's one of those amazing 2D, but looks like 3D, paintings done on the floor of the centre. You stand on a set of footprints painted on the floor to get the full effect - it is quite amazing.

Northumberland again today with trains on the ECML at Alnmouth, Buston Barns and Chevington. Alnmouth 37080 down oil 22nd Aug 89 C13721 Alnmouth 43050 up 22nd Aug 89 C13723 Buston Barns 153352 Alnmouth to Newcastle 3rd Sept 92 C18027 Buston Barns Class 90 Glasgow C to Kings X 25th Feb 94 C19304.jpg Chevington Class 101 Newcastle to Berwick Feb 87 J8762.jpg David

Good morning from a frosty SUrrey. Been in shed before sun up to fix tow steamers with non working headlights. Then out to phto an RHTT service.

Today I had my ninth (out of twelve) maintenance injections, which I get every 8 weeks as a follow up to my chemo last year. They have now become pretty routine, but with one side effect from the steroids they also give me to prevent me from having a reaction to the injection. That side effect is that I can’t sleep! Went to bed at 11pm, and by 12.30am decided to get up again as I was still wide awake. I will undoubtedly suffer later when the steroids wear off! Today, after the injection I finally managed to get my refitted hall radiator connected with no leaks. It was a relief as it had caused me a bit of grief. Now we can get on with gloss painting the door frames in the Hall, as the warmth will help the paint dry. All skirting boards fitted now except one where the wood has warped, so I plan to steam it tomorrow with an old iron and damp cloths, to see if I can straighten it a bit.

Morning all from the arctic circle boring borough. Flipping cold this morning. My last day off until Christmas. Today is court day with the arsebadger of a builder trying to get the judgement set aside. It has been a long 6 month wait for my day in court. hopefully 6 hours from now it will all be over apart from the paperwork to push the claim into the high court for enforcement. With a bit of luck they'll be knocking on his door right before Christmas. 3 more days of brother and SiL visiting. Not sure what they are up to today but plans to visit Rochester tomorrow for a bit of Dickensian culture are being made. On the topic of supermarkets, checkouts, and tills, it is interesting that B&Q have removed their self service tills. The chap I spoke with indicated it was down to increased theft and an uptick in customers abandoning their purchases at the tills in frustration. Our local Sainsbury's and Tesco are both testing their respective checkout gizmos. The downside of the Sainsbury's one is it requires a Nectar card to unlock the device. No thanks. Enjoy the day. More coffee calling.

G'day Folks

Morning All, It is a reasonable morning in this part of the world. 8000 pages! Who'd a thought it?!? There are quite a few of us who have been here since page one, many new faces too, and of course some who are no longer with us. Have a good day everyone...

One of the funniest incidents I have seen on a cricket pitch was when the side I was in was batting in a Cumberland Senior League Match, and one of our batsmen tried to hook a short ball, missed, and was hit on the head. No helmets in those days! He picked himself up off the floor, and the opposing captain kindly tested whether he was compos mentis by asking how many fingers he was holding up on his hand. The poor befuddled batsman saw 6 fingers, which was precisely the number the captain had on his hands. When the rest of our team realised what had happened, there was so much mirth that the poor batsman was quite put out!

Afternoon all back from court via the pub. Celebration time. Arrived, waited, no sign of the builder. Called into court room. Magistrate informed me the builder had withdrawn his application this morning and wants to arrange terms for affordable payment. WTF!!! No doubt his accountant or other adviser had a word in his shell like about his using a personal bank account for his limited company and the sh!t storm that was coming his way if all and sundry came out in court. I have little confidence he will comply with any payment arrangement long term but I was told to start High Court enforcement just in case by the magistrate. Either way I won, he can no longer apply to set aside or appeal.

Now that my daughter and son in law are back in their old house after it's rebuild, they will not becoming up for Christmas. The PH and his partner have invited us to their house for Christmas lunch. Results! In other news from the Hippodrome, 'they' are down and eating breakfast in the kitchen. A friend of my daughter's is coming over later this morning with her little one, and I have graciously volunteered to keep out of the way and hide do something useful in the garage. Initial reaction is vary favourable, but the plan of action take a downturn if the Obergrumpenfuhrer decides to accompany me.

Well who’d have thought it, 8000 pages..... .....and I’m wide awake at 5.00am. Thought those days had long gone. Have a great day.

Good evening everyone My shopping expedition to Asda, the Trafford Centre and the butchers went without any problems at all. In fact, when I arrived home at 11:15, Sheila mentioned that she didn’t expect me home so soon! After dinner I decided to use up some vegetables that had been in the fridge a few days and so made some potato and leek soup, some we had for tea and the rest was put into the freezer (in the cellar) for use at a later date, it’s now almost full. As mentioned earlier, I too don’t miss the daily commute, particularly at this time of year when I’d be leaving in the dark and getting home in the dark as well. It was the ever increasing amount of driving that I was expected to do that eventually made me decide that I’d had enough. Goodnight all

Afternoon all, or should it be early evening as it is now dark, as we had a bit of sunshine I did the SWMBO taxi run, another ladies wot do lunch but minus the slimming club( as it's her birthday at the weekend I guess cake will be involved and then gnashing of teeth at the bathroom scales later in the week...………………………...I shall keep a low profile), I went off to the woods with my camera, still frost on the ground in the darkest bits. Got a handful of half decent shots, still a lack of winter migrants just yet.

For some time, one of our photographers has been eyeing the platforms of the signal gantries as a safe way of getting up higher, without having to take quite a long hike to get to Spital Brdige. In the end, he decided to ask for permission, and somewhat to his surprise it was granted. Meanwhile, someone else had managed to get up onto the roof.

I went back to bed at about 2.30am, was still awake at 3.30, and only slept slightly after that. For all that, I feel OK so far this morning, so will make a start on painting of door frames soon. I see that we are also now past 200000 posts on this site!

Morning all. It is cold. Anyone in possession of brass monkeys is advised to check them for missing parts.

Morning all. Not a lot happening today. I suspect I may be required again if Aditi can’t reach something in the garden even with the telescopic loppers. Main excitement for me is a trip to the nearest blood test clinic this afternoon. Just tests for antibodies to things that cause lung disease/infections. I am surprised I didn’t leave some blood samples on the floor last night. I was dreaming and threw myself out of bed, hitting my head on a bedside table and then crashing into the radiator. If I tried to do that while awake I wouldn’t have been able to! Have a good day. Tony

This is the Hornby A3 converted to EM gauge with new etched frames added outside the original mazak block (keeping the original drive mechanism). The motion is all etched, including properly proportioned slidbars as mentioned by tbg above. With the additional bearings in the new outer frames these Hornby locos run very well.

Ey up! Pumped darden out 3 times yesterday and...it is still a lake! Not raining at the moment. Good! We need to load our hire van with a model of Chapel-en-le-Frith (Central) to transport it to a school in Jesmond for the weekend. Hopefully it will not be raining during the loading and unloading process. Have a great Friday and enjoy your weekend! Very positive thoughts to all who ail or are missing! Baz PS good job we aren't paid for adding to this thread..8000 pages,, lummy!

We started loading the motorhome for our trip. At one point SWMBO remarks that there's a pink drip under the sink. Yes and the bottom of the trap has a bit of water on it. A quick phone call and we have it over to the service people just after lunch and they think it will be ready tomorrow (or might have been late today). I may have been a bit too hasty in winterizing. Trying to get roaming on the new cellphone. Phoning Bell I am offered a new number to call "which will be noted on my bill". The person at their storefront says it's a new way to make money and they would prefer me to use the computer. I will do that, but using the computer means that my 30 days starts immediately, while the person can usually specify a start date. Had a nice evening with the couple from across the street tonight who will be looking at the house while we are away.

Results – The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019 Hello everyone Very many thanks to all those who downloaded and displayed The Poll posters and who took part in The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019. Once again, the 00 Poll Team would like to express its grateful thanks to Andy York for all his timely help in running ‘the computerised aspects’ of The Poll for us and particularly for the ‘new style’. Although The Poll is ‘hosted’ on RMweb, Andy does this as a volunteer in his own time and neither he nor Warners/BRM etc have any ‘influence’ on it. The 00 Poll Team itself comprises nine volunteers who have worked on The Poll in its current format since 2012. We are unpaid and totally independent. The results are in the formats of: * Most Wanted * Category-by-Category * Top-to-Bottom * Top-to-Bottom – New Entries Only (a new result for you this year, showing where the 112 new items came in) We always seem to have one or two people who will exclaim such as: “The LCDDRR Ventilated Donut Van has polled 30 more votes this year – it must be a fiddle!” There are many reasons why we get slight year-on-year fluctuations and we have listed some below…but The 00 Team puts more store by how items fare relatively and whether they stay within High, Medium or Low Polling. A number have been in The Top 50 for years. * Industrial and Underground categories have gone, removing 43 items * 18 announced items have been deleted * These deletions have freed up 14 places in the Top 50 * 112 new items have gone in * Some items have been ‘combined’ this year whilst others have been ‘split’ * Freight has been split from three categories to four, which could have affected how voters saw items * General Railway Service has been split from one category to two, which could have affected how voters saw items * Press Releases have gone out but may not have been received or acted upon * We know of some magazines that heavily supported us last year, but have not done so this year due to quarterly publication dates being too early or too late. * Conversely, we weren’t in some last year but are this year. * Just one club of c.35 members all voting for one item can propel it from top end of Low Polling one year to bottom end of High Polling the next (or vice versa if they don’t vote) * Certain categories are more ‘popular’ with voters than others * New announcements might have a positive – or negative – effect on votes for items (for example, the SECR D Class was announced during the currency of The Poll. Some may already have voted.) * Some might be encouraged to vote if they perceive an increase in announcements of certain eras etc. But others may be ‘losing hope’ and stop voting for other time-frames * An item that has been ‘restored’ and has received publicity may well have an impact on voters * Items that have recently featured prominently in magazine articles etc may have an impact on voters We hope you will find the results interesting and that the makers keep providing us with the now so often excellent models with which we can further enjoy our modelling! The 00 Poll Team Neil Burgess, Robert Carroll, John Lewis, Jeff Lynn, Brian Macdermott, Chris Knowles-Thomas, Nick Stanbury, Ian Taylor and Glen Woods 1. Results - The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019 - Most Wanted.pdf 2. Results - The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019 - By Category.pdf 3. Results - The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019 - Top-to-Bottom.pdf 4. Results - The 00 Wishlist Poll 2019 - Top-to-Bottom New Entries Only.pdf

Thanks. I got the judgement against him personally and not his company as he is using a personal bank account for his limited company. That alone is worth grassing him up to HMRC for review. I'm beyond getting the money back but this is now about revenge and piling on as much hurt as possible. I'm sort of hoping he does go bankrupt as that would expose any savings or other assets and with a high court judgement in hand, I become the top creditor (apart from the tax man). What he did was to take the last 2 payments for materials and do a runner after completing 80% of the work. Idiotic behaviour, and he ignored the original claim as well.

But only significant because most of us happen to have ten fingers. If perchance we had twelve fingers the number would be a lot different. We would only be up to um, er, well a different number of pages.* The generator was chained to the lifting arms of my tractor and hoisted on to my truck. No ERs (or anyone else) were harmed in the process. The service shop said it would take about a week. I'm hoping we don't experience any major power outages while it's gone. We had a bad ice-storm here in November 1996. Our power was out for about a week. I had to resort to hauling buckets of water from the nearby creek to flush the toilets *I deliberately left this as an exercise for the reader.

Working the graveyard shift, obviously?

On the subject of Hornby A1/A3 valve gear I have studied one of mine closely tonight having been aware for a long time of the shortcomings. I have decided to modify one and see how that comes out. I have also compared a Hornby set with a Comet set for an A3. interestingly the expansion link on the Hornby valve gear is only 1.2mm longer than the Comet version, I thought it might have been more. I will shorten mine and also intend to reduce the height of the motion bracket which is also a problem - and this is on one of the earlier Flying Fox models not the later version with the thicker top piece. I have previously modified a Hornby B17 which suffers from similar faults. I hope to report back in a few days. In the meantime here are a couple of photos showing my attempts at learning how to line with a bow pen and Bob Moore lining pen. The boiler bands have been done using HMRS Pressfix lining. The D2 still needs to be toned down somewhat. Its abit of a pity about the Kadees but both of these will operate on an exhibition layout where Kadees are in use. The driver in the D2 is rather high up due to the footplate being somewhat high but will be replaced with a sitting figure when I get around to painting one. The C12 is a Craftsman kit but with LRM smokebox door, safety valves and chimney. Also the dome and chimney have been replaced but I can't remember whose those are, possibly the chimney is Gibson. The D2 is the old Nucast kit but with a Graeme King J6 smokebox door and LRM chimney, safety valves and whistle. The lining on both is not great but hopefully is partly hidden by weathering on the C12. The camera can be quite cruel! Andrew

So Ian has the 200,000 post on page 8001. I might have to help set up the faux wedding. They are filming at church tomorrow; I'm not involved because (a) I don't own a suit and (b) I'm on a stand at Tolworth (so will see Chris). Quite what state the church will be in at 7am on Sunday ..... Off to do battle with an L&Y open wagon. Bill

Builder will then mysteriously go bankrupt, despite his massive house and Bentley. And all assets will be in his wife's/kids/dogs names.... Seriously though, good luck today and I hope you get the scrote (whatever he did)

Morning all. It appears that we will only have a small amou t of liquid su shibe today but it is defibitely cooler. The mossies seem to be declining in numbers. A pleasant evening was spent at the quiz last night. Now it's time to wait fir the nurse and the builder to arrive. Last tiles to go on today it's looking good. Some good friends who are over here for a week are coming for a neal tonight. In between times I may even manage a bit of time in the shed. Regards to all. Jamie

Speaking of such things, my friend's O ___________ _______________ is coming along nicely. We had to build it to be structural (supporting the weight of the ______________ ) and not just cosmetic. We ran a test ___________ over it this afternoon and there was no flexing of the ____________ at all. Tomorrow afternoon should see it completed. __________ work will begin after that. Tomorrow morning should see a visit to the bank and a fodder run completed and a foray into, dare I say it, some Christmas shopping. I am a bit stuck regarding my 27 year-old son. I am also trying to decide whose Thanksgiving dinner invitation to accept. Customarily I would attend a dinner with my daughter-in-law's grandmother's extended family. (Lovely people but more of a familial duty than a pleasure.) My son's older brother (who I helped raise as my step-son) has also invited me to dinner. His guests will include fellow keen cyclists of a similar age, and from past experience, their conversation singularly revolves around their cycling circle. Sitting at home and mindlessly watching football has an appeal. I believe this will be my 34th Thanksgiving - some more enjoyable than others. I still find it an odd holiday, but it can be lovely when it is "your" family who gather together. It makes a difference when the hosts know how to cook, the "Goldilocks zone"* of alcohol is available and the guests have enough in common to sustain conversation. * Meaning "just right" - not too little and not too much.

Good morning one and all Trio Dhoore were well worth the trek to Croydon last night, though I was surprised that there were barely 20 in the audience. As tickets were only £5 there is a certain lack of economic sense. Somehow I doubt that a trio of international renown command a fee of £100. Be that as it may, they were good and the venue is close enough to East Croydon station for me to be on the train home at just after 10 pm. Thank goodness I can still cope with 19 hour days. Yesterday there was a bit of a gathering in my street. First came a police car containing two PCSOs. They were followed by a low loader and a land rover type vehicle. Their mission was to remove and possibly destroy the lorry and its precarious load which was dumped near my house a couple of weeks ago, sterilising two precious car parking spaces in the process. To make room for the low loader I had to move my car but it was worth it to see the back of the interloper. The whole operation took a couple of hours, followed by feverish activity to reclaim parking spaces! While all this was going on I was preparing seasonal greetings cards for despatch, this being more productive than the admittedly tempting pastime of gawping out of the window. This afternoon there is an LGBT meeting in a coffee shop in Bedford. It is a regular fixture and is normally quite well attended. The organiser will be on her way back from somewhere and has asked me to look after things until she arrives. I am happy to do that but after what happened on Sunday when I ended up having breakfast on my tod I am just a little apprehensive! Tomorrow I will be at Tolworth Showtrain, entailing a ‘Spoons breakfast somewhere. Oh, and for the record I despise self-service checkouts. Best wishes to all Chris

Back to trains, and Lord Faringdon, with its well heeled passengers, slides past the envious protelariat on PN's grimy and downtrodden platforms. and then, as Dire Straits did not sing..... I want my, I want my CCT.

Morning All Frosty & foggy here it's just started to clear The week has gone from bad to worse I was at the flat yesterday and found the roof is leaking, spoke to the estate agent to get access for my gas engineer on a Saturday and they started to whine these people don't want to do any thing for their money. Off to the Tolworth Show tomorrow plans for a café visit before entry have been arranged with GDB. Get well soon if your sick, ill or injured. enjoy your day B. Rasstoff

Good morning everyone Yesterday’s rain has gone and has been replaced by sunshine and blue skies, but it’s quite cold, thankfully no frost here though. Today will mostly be spent waiting for the delivery from the big orange DIY shed, unfortunately I’ve not been given a definite time slot. As Sheila has been told not to lift anything heavy and the packages will be too heavy for her to lift, I’ll have to be reasonably close to the door to deal with it myself. Back later.

Mooring Awl Inner temple Hare, 1122/701 5 hours sleep plus 1.5 dozing on the sofa. not too bad.. The stove is burning, rather fiercely I think there must be some air getting in somewhere, I'll have to let it die down tonight and have a furtle around in the morning and seal what ever I've missed. The Car was frosty this morning, for the first time this season, so it was throw the bag inside start the engine, blower on the windscreen then take Ben on his patrol. I don't know whether it's the sensors being cleaned, or the additive to clean the system they've put in, but he car is definitely more lively this morning. I've noted the nearest BP en-route ish to home and it will mean an extra 2 miles to get to it. The car is however Blue not black even though has been a bit of a Disaster Area over the last few days.. I notice a certain local ex radio DJ has stood down from his attempt to be an MP... since he had to give up his Job at the BBC, to stand for MP, he is now unemployed, somehow I think it's going to be difficult for him to get employment as a DJ again.. Time to. take a wander rdown to the lab and see what's going on...

This is my take an the A3 valve gear it started life as a Proscale kit but. apart from the connecting rods and the coupling rods the remainder was filed from steel. The expansion is in three layers as in the prototype. the centre layer passes through the radius rod. I think that it was worth the effort. It is in forward gear. ArhurK

See, she is on form.

We have a daily process at work for a member of the development team who has the correct access to be on 'Live Support', for urgent issues with the software. For less urgent issues, another member of the Dev staff will be on 'Non-Live Support', obviously known as 'Zombie Support'.

This one was quite a dull dream. I was looking for a windscreen scraper in a drawer and someone opened a door and knocked me over. I woke up as I hit the furniture and radiator. In the past I have been chased by zombie pandas (zombie cuddly toy pandas not even real ones) or assassins in my dreams. So looking for scrapers is an improvement. Tony

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Cold and frosty this morning with the rime on the cars having to be scraped off. Far preferable to the deluge oop north and I hope any ER's in that region are safe and dry. Time now for breakfast, be back later.

Good morning all, A frosty start here and should be sunny for a while with the chance of some showers later. Yesterday's visit to The Shed was a waste of time - again. I seem to take one step forward and about 5 back. Today we're going shopping for a new bed for the spare room which is still full of boxes of my ####### stuff. Looks like some rearranging will be needed. Have a good one, Bob.

Regarding figures my first choice is Modelu

Australians are born with large bladders, aren’t they?

Good afternoon fellow risers, Nice to see that post 200,000 was related to railways! The morning was spent being digitally screwed and further tests are required in the new year but nothing to panic about. Additional medications have been prescribed. I then visited the supermarket where pale green is the order of the day at the behest of SWMBO and sadly used the automatic check-out facility as the two human-operated lanes were queuing back down the aisles. Whilst the sphincter was feeling sorry for itself, I grabbed the camera and tried to walk off the distress. I managed a few shots of various shades of autumn but the sun wasn't playing so I will wait until my new Luminar 4 software arrives and see how well its sky enhancing feature works (as long as it doesn't result in something clearly artificial). Afternoon muggertea will be followed by a session removing crab meat from a nice edible brown specimen and then making crab cakes for tea / supper. As this is one of SWMBO's favourites, I may just be in line for a refund of confiscated brownie points. There seem to be a lot of references to brown in that paragraph, I guess it must be a subconcious after-effect of this morning's visit. Must crack on

Greetings all from LBG where it is distinctly cold. There was frost covering the car and the lawn this morning and I could see how many leaves have come down since I cleared them up last week. There will be no leaf clearance this weekend as on Saturday we are going up to Cambridgeshire for a family gathering and on Sunday Elder Lurker and I will be going to Brands Hatch to watch some endurance racing. With it being so cold I expect endurance to be required by us too; having said that, his ticket was free and my advance ticket was only £12 so I will not be too fussed if he wants to come away early.

GDB doesn't have to dream for that sort of event to come true!

Hey, an added bonus..... That's cheating....

G'Day Folks

Our local Sainsbury's only has the self-service lanes open unless some one specifically requests conventional or the queue gets too long! Been Hitch Hiking again?

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Finally sorted out the box of boxes. Five contained various items, four are fitted out as stock boxes and four empty boxes. Of the various items boxes one contained a load of new LED's still in their wrapping and another held some 00 scale diecast advertising hoardings which I think are by Master Models, in a pretty good condition as well. These will go into the display cabinet alongside other similar items from when I first started in the hobby. As some of the boxes containing 'stuff' are overfull the empty boxes are going to come in handy.

Almost there with the cottage frame. Excuse the background clutter and frames that aren’t joined.. Still a bit more detailing to complete like EZ wire (to mimic telephone wires) from relay box room to pole and cottages. Cottages now have a dusting of frost so I hope the residents have their coal fires burning. The aforementioned relay room is in with 6’ security fencing as per the real thing. (Actually the fencing didn’t go in till the ‘90’s but it looks impressive).