pete_mcfarlane

The Tripadvisor reviews are also, err, interesting (if you ignore the 5 stars 'I LIKE HARRY POTTER AND THE HARRY POTTER TRAIN IS THE BEST FING EVA!" ones). Quite a few people moaning about how old the carriages are....

And his house is now a museum. https://www.olivercromwellshouse.co.uk/

Which is why I said 'mostly' to cover that earlier criticism. The real trashing of his reputation (with the wider public) came later on as part of the reappraisal of WW1 in the sixties ('The Donkeys' and so on). Otherwise he'd not have made the list of Britannia names ten years previously. The irony with Fuller is that the Germans did read his book and listen to his ideas, as they'd never had to work with him. Proof that being right isn't enough to get your ideas adopted- you need to be right, and not have fallen out with everyone you need to convince.

I'd say the the most interesting Britannia naming is 70044 Earl Haig. This was the 1950s when he was still (mostly) seen as a national hero, before his reputation was comprehensibility (and not entirely rightly) trashed by historians in the sixties. Nowadays most people just see him as Geoffrey Palmer with a dustpan and brush in Blackadder.

Footwarmers would be the traditional approach this problem. https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/K6Xj_8O9Sk-xi2h2JfvOuw

It's all about nostalgia. In this case, bringing that distinctive damp railway carriage smell back to the mainline.

I like the way the Mail has used a photo of what looks like a Chinese or North Korean train to illustrate that article.

But Culloden and the '45 wasn't really England v Scotland. It was the exiled Stuart dynasty plus the few Clans who supported them verses the rest of the country. Most of Scotland supported the Government, much as they'd supported the revolution of 1688 that got rid of the Stuarts in the first place. Anyway, I'm not sure what relevance somebody who thinks they have a divine right to stick to their old ways losing to Government forces has to the current WCRC situation. Oh wait....

I wonder if the scrap value of all that rotting stock would pay for CDL on a few coaches?

In the other direction there are stories of French rural metre gauge lines being delayed due to problems on the Southern Region (which delayed the boat train, and all of its onward connections).

Some of the eBay seller's feedback is from people who got hit by VAT, presumably not having realised that this would happen (or noticed that the item was in China). So not everyone is that clued up. There is some good railway and railway modelling stuff on Facebook. Random examples that are in my most recent views: https://www.facebook.com/groups/287574851395841 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063285277206 https://www.facebook.com/groups/178540989016069 But yeah, there is a lot of weirdness on there. The recent fun with Jacobite central door locking seems to have brought out a lot of badly spelled rants. I think it depends on how well moderated the pages are - some of them are a lot better than others.

Not to people on Facebook it isn't. If you look at the post on Dapol's page it's full of people demanding to be told exactly what to 'avoid'... (And in fairness, there are some people talking sense on there as well).

BuT wHy WoNt Dapol pOsT tHe LiNk To ThE cHeAp FaKeS sO i CaN aVoId ThEm?

Colorblindness runs in my family. Only an hour ago I was googling the numbers on Humbrol paint tins to work out what colour they were. These days there's a mobile phone app called 'Colorgrab' which tells you what colour things are - really useful.

I suspect that's less likely given the production runs involved in model railways. Injection moulding tools should last for years if looked after - witness all those Airfix 'classics' reruns of 1960s kits or Hornby churning out stuff from the 1980s and earlier. Maybe this is part of the problem, as Chinese factories are sitting on large quantities of no longer used (by their Western owners) but perfectly serviceable injection tools.