The Pilotman

I’ve only ever seen one picture of a Class 56 on the Dover - St. Blazey Polybulks. It was a Railfreight Construction livery loco approaching Cowley Bridge Junction at Exeter. Couldn’t be the same train as in the slide to which you refer as 56050 was still in Railfreight grey at that time. I don’t recall any talk of trials of Class 56s on these trains so maybe these are just isolated examples. I only ever saw this train with a 33, 37, 47 or 50 on the front. Class 56s were, at that time, rarely seen in Devon but here’s one from Flickr at Dawlish Warren in 1983:

The op has decided against N now.

In the early 1990s it was usually a Class 60 with 30 bogie wagons, Mike. Sometimes one or two fewer, never more, but usually 30. I’m guessing by then Langley must have been able to deal with such a load on a daily basis.

C4419 55011 THE ROYAL NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILIERS C3399 55016 GORDON HIGHLANDER C3400 47415 J2507 I’ll pass on that one….

In the early 1990s I regularly witnessed the class 60 hauled Lindsey to Langley tanks loaded to 30 bogie tank wagons, certainly one of the heaviest “oil” trains on the network at the time. I was wondering if there was a similarly heavy train of TTA tanks running somewhere on the network around that time. The longest train of two axle tank wagons I’ve found so far was a train in Scotland loaded to 32 TTAs. Any advance on that?

How about asking them directly? customer.services@Bachmann-europe.co.uk

Competence is not really the issue. Humans will always make mistakes, whether it’s the signaller or the person programming the automatic route setting software. Every signaller I ever worked with was competent, but that doesn’t make them immune to errors.

And it is highly unlikely. Fuel is expensive and pretty much the only reason an aircraft would dump fuel would be to get the weight down to below maximum landing weight if an immediate, or earlier than planned, landing was required. Doing so routinely on approach just doesn’t happen.

55022 ROYAL SCOTS GREY 55012 CREPELLO

Hi @Adam1701D With regard to the InterCity Executive and InterCity Swallow Mk3 sleepers, will these new versions have pale (I don’t know whether it’s white, silver or just light grey) window surrounds as in the images on the Rails of Sheffield website, and on the real thing below? Dapol’s original Swallow version did not have this feature so I’d like to know if it’s being done this time around. Thanks.

Yes, he was. He was one of the supervisors in Reading Panel when he retired.

That’ll be Stan Thompson you’re thinking of, Mike. And yes, he did.

Point of order if I may…. I think the team you’re referring to there is Borussia Mönchengladbach who play in the city of Mönchengladbach in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. It is nowhere near München (Munich) or Bavaria. In fact, they’re as far from each other as Cardiff is from Glasgow. Back to the Whacky signs…

On the whole these are very nice wagons indeed and they filled one of the biggest gaps I had on my wagon wish-list. Aside from the minor issues already mentioned above, I’m surprised there’s been no comment yet about the weathered versions. I ordered enough weathered wagons to recreate the St.Blazey to Cliffe Vale train of the 1980s based on the subtle weathering I saw in the pre-release pictures, which looked very convincing. I have ended up returning most of them because the weathering was much darker than in any picture I’d seen. I may have just been very unlucky but the weathering on some of the wagons would have been more suited to a very grubby coal wagon. In some cases, the wagon ends where the walkways and handrails are were completely black. I’ve therefore replaced them with the unweathered versions. To give credit where it’s due, the weathering varies from wagon to wagon so no two look exactly the same (as in the real world), it’s just a shame that the colour and density of the weathering (on the wagons I received at least) isn’t right. Otherwise, these are excellent models.

The loco got around a bit in that livery, Penzance and Inverness for example, so it would appeal to people modelling way beyond its Trans-Pennine stamping ground.

Excellent news. A GWR150 green duff has been on my wish list for ages.

I’m presuming there is no indication to the driver of which way the junction is set until sighting the junction signal (E193) approaching the over bridge at Charlton. The line speed on the up approaching and through Cogload on the Bristol line is 100mph and it’s 90mph through the junction towards Castle Cary (for which the junction signal shows a position 4 junction indicator). Throw in a bit of poor visibility and it’s no wonder this could happen if there’s no prior indication of which way the route is set.

Thank you for that information. I will be spending some time in Geneva, Basel and Zürich in November so good restaurant recommendations are very useful. On my last visit to Basel I visited Elsbethenstübli on Elisabethenstrasse which was very good indeed, but I will likely try Restaurant Hasenburg this time.

Would you be able to recommend a restaurant in either Basel or Zürich for this dish, please? A personal recommendation is always welcome.

How about a fork in the lake…

According to one of the passengers, the train stopped “halfway to Bristol”. Halfway from Cogload to Bristol would be somewhere around Weston-super-Mare so I’m going to say they’re talking out of their ****.

I’ve just tried voting but irrespective of where I tapped the screen (iPad), no vote was recorded.

Good subject for a new thread perhaps?

The signalman’s a funny fella He stands behind a frame The drivers all think he’s a **** And he thinks they’re the same

They connect Terminal 5 with the POD Parking car park on the airport perimeter.