phil_sutters

727 is the common factor, I guess. Nice to see it not hiding in the bushes! I would have been surprised to find Brighton station used as a parking zone, but apart from Newhaven aggregates sidings, I don't suppose there are many other vacant spaces, between there and Willingdon, with carriage sidings in off-peak storage use.

Sorry I wasn't in a position to hang around for 727 to emerge from the bushes! There are a couple of additional, non-66 snaps in my album at

Just because I had a album of collected snaps of bankers ----

Bath Green Park / Queens Square & Templecombe. The banking engines there were not specifically for banking, but were rostered for those duties as appropriate.

At least one model of it is now on the market https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/fm104-the-crooked-house-pub-oo-scale . As it is/was a unique building I wonder how many will find a need for it on their layouts. I am sure there will be those who want it for the fun factor and in this era of 3D printing I guess it can be just manufactured on demand.

May be this service could help -

On the bits of the South Downs where they couldn't be bothered to lay tracks over or through the chalk we have to make do with Coasters. The latest versions seem to have caught on to the love of sheep - so devotedly portrayed in this thread. Very comfy buses these are too.

Lewisham has a road junction, a small river and the DLR under it.

I don't know whether you are also looking for dockside workers. Scale3D have a good range of modern RNLI crew and some new fishermen who are from an earlier era. This chap is £1.99. https://www.scale3d.co.uk/products/mm944-fisherman-hands-in-pockets?variant=44520226160860 + p&p. Usually very quick service from my experience as a customer. The problem is that they keep on introducing more figures, animals and other items. My painting queue gets longer and longer.

Why are 'gratuities' actually mentioned in the wagon train advert? If the staff are doing a good job, just adjust your prices to pay them a decent wage. Don't rely on the goodwill/guilt of your customers. Free p&p? No - you have just factored it into your prices.

In Geoffrey Maslen's 'Around Burnham-on-Sea and Highbridge in old photographs' he gives the opening date as July 1856, with the renaming to Ashcott & Meare in 1876. This the opposite of information referred to above. His emphasis on photographic local history rather than operational railway history may account for the difference. The caption is under a photo of the station c1915 with a train heading towards Shapwick. Steam, from what looks like a 0-4-4t running bunker first, obscures the rolling stock. It could be passenger stock or goods stock with a van or cattle truck leading. There are no sources quoted. He just refers to '..those whose knowledge and expertise of local history supplied the historical data from which many caption details have been derived.' British History Online gives the opening date as 1854 and says that Ashcott & Meare station was built just inside the village (Ashcott) boundary. Wikipedia doesn't give an opening date, but says the '& Meare' was dropped in 1876, although the running (in) board remained until closure. Having travelled that route a number of times in the early '60s I had always remembered it as 'Ashcott & Meare'. May be it was because of the board or perhaps that's what the porter or guard called out as is came to a halt. It was one of those stations at a distance from two communities. It was actually nearer to Meare, I believe.

No - not sub-lime - superior lime!

It appears that I haven't previously uploaded this sign from a bakers up hill from Lewes station. If I have - apologies. No guarantees that it works, but it could be worth a try. I wonder if they make gorgeous Lardy Cakes, like the ones we used to get on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea.

One that materialized at the much missed Brighton Model World in 2016. As you can imagine the grandson is somewhat larger now - 6ft+.

Newhaven and District MRC built this layout in Seaford Museum. It is well guarded as it is in the Martello Tower. I was allowed to photograph it for non-commercial purposes. I visited the Wealden MRG exhibition a couple of weekends ago. While passing through Upper Beeding High Street, which is reached just before Bramber, I was fascinated to see the street lamps mounted on cast-iron? brackets off the telegraph poles. I took a fair number of photos of Steyning buildings, with the intention of adding them to the 'Missing pieces' project at Historic England - filling photographic gaps in their Listings. They can also be seen in an album on the ipernity photo-sharing site that I frequent, when not on this one! http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philsutters/album/1360844

Make sure you have it bent in the right direction! Please note that this was taken when the wind wasn't blowing.

Back in the late 60's I modelled a GWR branch with S&DJR running powers. I thought that my Hornby Dublo 8F to SDJR 7F was quite good. My SDJR Sentinel was however decidely pathetic. It was a card and balsa body on a K's tender chassis, with a set of wheels removed. The problem was that I didn't want to cut off the redundant worm gear, in case I found another use for it, as a tender drive for perhaps a Kitmaster City of Truro. However the latter never happened and 101 still exists!

Was there much sand collected at Cuckmere? The beaches thereabouts are more shingle than sand. There certainly is sand further out. The current aggregates plant at Newhaven Marine grades the dredged materials and there is definitely a sand component. As can be seen in my album - especially the most recent pics. How was the aggregate extracted?

If I was VERY elastic with the timeframe for my Highbridge Wharf diorama, I could have Great Egrets wandering around the harbour basin there. They are flourishing on the Somerset Levels, but again are a fairly recent phenomenon. https://www.birdguides.com/news/great-egret-thriving-in-somerset/

There's a very steep incline just to the left/north of the cottage. It is a ridge 35+metres high that slopes down to Litlington Road to the west and down to The Lane, the road into West Dean, to the north. Both are at river level plus a few feet. Why would you want to hack your way through a big chunk of chalk when you could go round. Southern generally seems to have tried to avoid major engineering works cutting through the Downs. The Exceat buildings were only given the protection of Listed status in 1981. Incidently this ain't one of the listed ones, but the green phone box across the road is. I don't know when it became green, but I have seen it red for a time since moving here.

A closer look at the buildings you referred to. I am not sure that their uses were the same in 2014. Your line will of course need an attractive name for the publicity - Egret Line ?

Are you imagining there was a box at Exceat or just a crossing keeper? Strange coincidence of dates.

maybe I didn't spot the NG tracks