37409

ROG are not involved in the delivery of the units, that's DB Cargo's job. ROG are doing all the testing.

What sort of mileage are you looking at doing and how often do you need to use it? If you're looking at once a week to the shops and the rest pleasure/visiting/holidays then buy something classic and what you've always wanted. Road tax will be £255 or free if it's over 40 years old, insurance will be sub £250 a year even for exotica. Yes, it might do 18mpg, but if you're only doing 3000 miles a year you'll save that much in lack of depreciation. In fact, buy wisely and it will only appreciate giving an added benefit for when you either have to sell because you can no longer drive, or for your dependants when you finally move on to a higher plane. Many higher end cars are still well equipped and drive like more modern cars. My Mercedes 500SEC has Dual Zone Climate Control, electric everything (headrests and steering adjustment inc), ABS, heated, leather seats, sunroof, does 18mpg in town, 25mpg on a run (best is 28), does 0-60 in under 7 seconds, 147mph (verified by GPS on the Autobahn), cruises comfortably at 120 mph, seats 4, has a big boot and a beautifully 'woofly' V8. It's been to the northern tip of Denmark and down to Florence. It has not yet broken down in the 8 years I've owned it, I don't hesitate to use it on European trips, I've done about 45k miles with no issues and it now has 170k miles on the clock. I will admit to having replaced a few suspension bushes, and it has had new discs and pads all round, but given a yearly service of plugs, filters, oil and coolant costs about £100 I reckon it's cost about £1200 in all over 8 years to keep going. Couple that with the fact that I bought it for £4k and it's now worth over £10k and you'll see that owning a carefully chosen classic does not have to be expensive. Get that Merc 500SL convertible or 500SEC, have that Jensen Interceptor you always wanted, that Citroen DS you admired from The Day of the Jackal. You only live once...

I once had reason to be glad of the Achnasheen Hotel's existence back in 1994. I was on a 'Freedom of Scotland' rover with a mate of mine and driven up so we had the car for positioning moves plus somewhere to store the tent/sleeping bag/spare clothes etc. Having placed the car at Kyle and covered the Kyle line for a day or two it was decided to re position it at Inverness to be able to cover the 'down the middle' turns the following day so after we rolled into Kyle on the last train from Inverness, we drove back along the A896/890/832 to Inverness. Having spent the first part of the journey dodging suicidal sheep on the single track roads from Kyle to just past Strathcarron we joined the nice, fast A890 to Achnasheen and ten the A832 towards Garve and Inverness. It was now fully dark and after 10pm, but I had a pair of very powerful spotlights mounted on my car and they were illuminating the road for miles ahead. Barrelling along the crest of the road at about 70-75mph with great visibility somewhere near Achanalt a fully grown Stag bounded out from the ditch and crossed the road about 50 feet in front of me. I had no chance, there was a loud 'bang', glass everywhere, I had a vision of something coming through the 'screen, a sickening thud and we came to a halt in a cloud of tyre smoke (no ABS). Luckily (bear in mind no mobile phones in those days) after about 10 minutes a car appeared and stopped offering assistance. As we were about 5 miles from the nearest phone I grabbed a lift with the driver to the Achnasheen Hotel where I could make a phone call for breakdown recovery and have a restorative whisky or two. I grabbed a lift back to the car with some guys with a Landrover who dropped me off at the car, loaded the dead Stag into the back of the 'Rover and headed off to fill their freezer (under Scottish Law if you hit it you can't claim it, but if you find it it's yours...!). Meanwhile my mate has assessed the damage and worked out we weren't that badly off, dents, smashed windscreen and a blown tyre so we got the recovery crowd to drop us at Autowindscreens in Inverness, put the spare wheel on and levered the bodywork away from the wheel. By 9am the next day we were back in business with a dented, but serviceable car. Very luckily for us (and thanks in no part to me swerving) the Stag had run into the side of the front wing, blowing the tyre and causing its neck to be hit by the windscreen pillar. This meant that it was killed instantly (I'd hate to think what we'd have done had we had to put it out of its misery) and also prevented damage to the front of the car, It also meant that it spun it around causing it to put a large dent in the rear wing as it bounced off but that was a price I was willing to pay to remain mobile. The 'thing' that came through the windscreen was its head and had it been an older male with a full set of antlers the general consensus is that I wouldn't be sat here today and neither would my mate; luckily it was a young buck. All in all a very lucky escape and I was never gladder to see civilisation than when I saw the Achnasheen Hotel with its phone and bar full of whisky.......... All in all it was a rather eventful Freedom of Scotland as I broke my left arm behind 37188 two days later but that's another story...........

The 'small' wheel size never seemed to bother the Bulleid Pacifics, which are supposed to have the greatest number of recorded (albeit not official) trips above 100mph of any type of UK steam engine. Of course the reason for the number of recorded trips may simply be because the majority of 'timers' lived in the South, or maybe because express steam lasted longer on the ex Southern lines, or maybe the ex Southern drivers were having a 'last hurrah' and thrashing their locos more than drivers from other regions, but even so, small wheels does not necessarily equate to lower speeds - witness the 9F's.

All for the love of sunshine.

Wouldn't that have been great if they'd extended that policy a bit. Even if only 1% of locations took them up on the offer just imagine what we could have now..... SR 'V' class owned by schools, more 'WC's' owned by town councils, 'BoB's by the RAF, 'MN's' by shipping lines, 'Counties' by County Councils, 'Halls' and 'Castles' by Landed Gentry etc etc etc

Re 50's and Inverness.... 50's were booked traction to Perth on the Motorail where a 40 took over for the final assault on to Inbhirnis, On occasion there'd be no 40 available so, if traction knowledge wasn't an issue, the 50 would run through. D410 also made it in addition to D412 pictured above.

Not forgetting Ken Tishtown

That makes it easy....... CHARING CROSS With the Northern Line now in Spoon that stops any move direct to MC

What about Windsor Davies?

There is no arguing, Ivor did go Psssscht ti coof........

As shown in that last pic of the 'fish mixed', the fish wagons were air-braked and thus had to travel on the 15.50 Mallaig - Glasgow/Euston as it was the only Up Mallaig line train that used air-braked stock at that time.

I suppose you're using the WR system of counting things on the Withered Arm when asked to compile statistics for Beeching: I can see 4 turnouts........

That's correct, the 'day coaches' were from Qst - FW (with sleepers and aircons), FW-Ml (with 1 aircon), Ml-FW (likewise) and FW-Qst with the sleepers and aircons. Booked move, the sleepers and the Mk2d BSO were left at Fort William and the declassified Mk2e FO plus the two (or sometimes more depending on season) Mk1's worked the 14.05 FW - Mallaig and the 15.50 return. This happened from the summer timetable '85 through to the end of hauled services when the sleeper became its own train separate from the normal WHL services. This meant that the 15.50 ex Mallaig was effectively a through train to Glasgow with a seated coach for Euston. Note that the tanks attached to the afternoon (16.05 ex FW) Mallaig were TTV's or TTG's, not TTA's. This is because, aside from the sleeper, all WHL services were vacuum braked.

As said above the Sprinters took over on Jan 23rd 1989 predating the advent of Regional Railways livery on locos and stock. Intercity livery started to appear on the sleeper from '83 and also appeared on the Mk2 aircons (d/e/f) so you can mix Intercity and Blue/Grey. The Mk2 aircons appeared when the sleeper moved over to Mk3 sleepers in '83. Being all airbraked the day coaches attached at Glasgow Queen St were dual braked Mk1's as there were no air-braked Mk2a's in the WHL coaching pool until after Sprinters appeared. Thus, despite normal WHL trains getting Mk2a/z's from 1984/5ish, the 04.50 Glasgow-Fort William and 17.40 FW-Gw still kept Mk1's despite also being the 'premium' Intercity train on the route. The 'mixed' carried on until the demise of loco hauled in Jan '89. Normally the tanks (TTG or TTV's) were attached to the 16.05 Fort William - Mallaig on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and returned empty the following day on the 18.50 Mallaig - Fort William. Loco diagrams for the '85-'89 period were roughly as follows; 1Y21 09.50 Gw-FW 2Y55 16.05 FW-Ml 2Y58 18.50 Ml-FW 2Y57 21.05 FW-Ml 2Y52 06.50 Ml-FW 1T18 08.40 FW-Gw 1Y23 16.50 Gw-FW 1S07 05.50 Gw-FW 1T34 14.15 FW-Gw 1Y51 10.05 FW-Ml 1Y54 12.20 Ml-FW 2Y53 14.05 FW-Ml 1T46 15.50 Ml-FW 1M16 17.50 FW-Gw