woodenhead

Hence my earlier not elaborating what the upturned coach was lay on, it's not clear what it is and we should not get into speculation.

Apparently they had come from the BBC site, though I think the BBC may have since taken them back down, but it could like you say have come from a passenger.

What I don't get is how some of these images are coming to social media - it's a live incident and the only people on site are surely the emergency services.

There is an image on Facebook which would confirm that, it's lay across something else that I don't want to speculate on.

Richard Clinnick of Rail is reporting that the train had actually been turned back and was heading back north when the incident happened.

A return to a normality of sorts is basically going to be 12-18 months from the start of all this I reckon as long as there isn't some Covid sting in the tail that no one, not even Monty Python, expects. If you're young it seems like a lifetime, if you're an older then maybe it's a blink of an eye. We're on a ride, it's a roller coaster, we've done the big drop and we just need to wait for it to get to the end with a few more dips and twists to come.

I think all we are proving is there is no right answer, what works for one of us is a compromise too far for another -we all have our cut off points. But you are correct that the sheer heft of O does allow it to operate with shorter trains, or perhaps those who do model it do so by applying the appropriate compromises on the model to not make it look unbalanced. Both of the examples above use the right trains in the space available to make the model look authentic to a prototype - even Vine St would look odd if the Ivatt Class 2 was replaced with a bigger locomotive Ivatt had a hand in namely 46256

Any model railway should be built to the satisfaction of the builder, it is no-one else's business what goes on your railway until you invite them to. That is the broad church this hobby should be, if someone else doesn't like your railway, that is also fine but none of their business to pull you up about it unless it is obvious to those around the builder that he/she is interested in both complete accuracy and authenticity.

You need to qualify that though because O gauge cannot always be the answer. You have to look at the whole picture and decide what can be fitted in the space available against the want/needs and budget of the builder. If you are space limited then O gauge comes down to a Trebudoc branch with some of the throat excluded and worked through clever use of the fiddleyard, if you just like locomotives then you have have a small engine shed or part of a larger shed with nice engines with all their coupling/piping glory in situ or if you like banging wagons together then an inglenook. But if your desire is to represent a town terminus with cross country passenger trains and some inclusion of bigger tender engines then you need to rethink the scale downwards until you can fit your wants/needs into the space with the minimum number of compromises you can accept. Interestingly, I've recently gone down this route, I was doing a branch station in 00 but it lacked any running line, so I've dug out my N gauge so that I can have a terminus and actual line running. I am missing some rather nice GW locos and with Dapol bringing out a Mogul I am gutted to a certain extent, but in N I get to watch the trains move more than a couple of feet and then stop again.

If you were an exhibition planner, would you be planning an event in June next year knowing that on present estimates that is the earliest people will begin to return in decent numbers? Confidence can be easily shaken and I don't think it will be until we are well into or past the winter flu season that we will know if we are out of the woods. Personally, a relatively normal winter with no spikes in mortality rates will be where my confidence for later in 2021 will be decided.

What you describe sounds very much like a Bradfield type layout - biggest engine being a common or garden Black 5 or perhaps a Jubilee and 4/5 coaches. In the space available that only going to be 4mm, if you go 7mm you're talking Trebudoc or similar.

Just to throw into the mix, at the moment you are not lawfully allowed to visit friends and family in Greater Manchester, we are in lockdown. You can visit the Arndale, you would likely also be allowed to visit a model railway exhibition and use public transport all wearing masks - but you cannot go to your son's home in Didsbury nor sit in his garden if he has one. I'd be more concerned about that and the impact on your plans than about what plans the MMRS have for a show in December. There's a good chance that with Schools due back soon and local government concerned about the capabilities of track and trace that we may still be locked down for some time yet.

It is meant to be fun, and I think covid is simply sucking the fun out of a lot of things we took for granted. At least whatever we are facing right now isn't an extinction threat, we could have been hit my a meteorite, so whilst for the next 12-18 months things are going to be strange, eventually the screens will come down in the shops and we won't all be looking at each other like plague carriers. I think there are plenty of other barriers at the moment, a single day exhibition and the difficulties of finding a set of locally built layouts capable of being put up quickly would be another one to add in.

Your best hope is the chap who commissioned the 76s https://www.oliviastrains.com/trains/mt/Heljan/Heljan-class-76-main-page/ Though it looks like the only rejigged models with altered cabs for Tommy are in BR black or LNER Apple green, the BR green version only mentions renumbering now. But they may still be offering to convert the green 76s, if they have them, back to Tommy for a price.

If I've offended in some way, I apologise

I did wonder if GETS got a good deal from Event City for the show in March but these places don't run on air and they either have guaranteed income stream that the banks can lend/finance against or they shut. Given that unless they are running as a Nightingale it is likely they have zero income so far since March but still have overheads then I cannot see how they are going to do deals in 2021 where they may not get paid even though an exhibition has been held because the organisers didn't turn a profit or that the profit was so small it did not cover the venue overheads.

Actually, Clive appears to have all these skills in abundance, he just chooses not to make a big thing of it and continues to model in what I could only describe as a 60s modeller style - your layout around the room and anything you cannot buy rtr is scratch made using components you can get his hands on. Isn't that how the Buckingham got built albeit he did go one step further and did the track too plus a robotic version of his son to help run it. I think Clive had an admirer of his early layouts who ended up working at Heljan, because a lot of these plasticard built diesels we see pounding around Sheffield ended up as the staples of Heljan's odd ball diesel revolution a few years back.

1. Non Refundable in the event of lockdown - that will put people off, and as everyone has prepaid online by Credit Card they will simply exercise their right to a credit card refund for a service not received once the date has passed. A chargeback will be deducted from the bank account of the merchant so the club will have to pay them back. 2. Don't Traders pay to attend and that helps make the exhibition profitable? 3. One day exhibitions, this has been suggested and is probably a way forward in the short to medium term 4. Commercial venues, the only likely ones that will be available, charge for their use, why should a club then pay on top a share of their profit unless you believe they will be allowed a use of the premises gratis unless they make a profit?

Not sure that is a Sheldon Fopp, though very similar in style Sheldon liked to draw in large coupling loops under the draw bar. This I think is a painting by German immigrant Flik Ofderwrist who came to the United Kingdom in 1938 where he met and married the love of his life Geraldine Ewestice

@phil-b259 I need new walking boots - use them whenever I go out and our oven gave up the ghost last week, tried to buy online but realised unless you get up close and personal you don't really get to know how good the dials are (for those with poor sight) or what exactly is in the cavity. A trip to Currys and John Lewis was in order to verify some options and we've come away with a product that we like with the features we want. But I'm not one and probably haven't ever been a slave to fashion, I buy what I need when I need it as does my wife. My only joy in the retail world used to be purchasing secondhand trains until I realised I was using it for a dopamine fix and realised the pit of guilt in my stomach that I felt when I had unboxed and plonked the train on the track was that the hunt was over - on to the next loco, wagon or coach I didn't need.

@phil-b259 I have to shop, and as you rightly say, I have a choice to go online. I don't have to go to a model railway exhibition, or a bike show, or a wedding show, or a restaurant or a pub.

It now has a Next 18 socket so the electrics have been overhauled and over on the N Gauge forum Ben A was saying the old model wasn't bad so this should be a fine model. I believe I shall be ordering one

Went into the Trafford Centre for the first time since lockdown allowed all shops to open. Was heading to John Lewis so I parked at the back so I didn't need to go into the centre proper thinking there would be a reasonable volume of people. Walked in no queuing, then once inside I realised why - it was empty. Did what I had to do in John Lewis but had to venture a little into the main centre due to an escalator being out to get back downstairs - ended up in M&S. The centre was empty, M&S was empty, the other shops around me were empty. I am not used to seeing the big shopping centre for South Manchester in such a state - even on a weekday evening before Covid there would be more people about than I saw today, a Saturday afternoon. If people are not venturing into a shopping centre in levels above what could be described as a 'smattering' then if there is a silent majority waiting on exhibitions starting again you need to make yourself known.

The station in the corner had a nicer flow to to the trackwork, when shifted right it lost that flow.

It may very well be that, if slots are allocated on time basis, similar to the Scrum Agile methodology then there would be a strict limit on what is produced based on the time available versus the time it takes to produce each model. If for any reason the slot cannot produce the planned units then they would have to be shifts to the next slot for Farish products so that other products are not delayed through a delay in another product.