Mike 84C

All very interesting stuff! But everyone seems to be saying the same thing, do not expect huge profits from FIT's but smaller savings should cover our power bills? Is it worth staying on e-conomy 7 , to top up the battery at a lower rate? Our present Scottish Pwr e7 rate is 47.379 day & 12.182 night, ave, =29.7805. SP's standard variable rate is 32.807. We are also not on a smart meter which I will try and avoid at all cost! My feeling about power costs are that as long as GB's gas is being shipped from around the world then our costs stay high and even if gas prices falls dramaticaly then power companys will continue to reap huge profits, my idea to fit solar is to insulate ourselves from this. With Hayfields prediction of a profit in 5/6 yrs I may live long enough to see that profit!

Just recieved a quote from Scottish Power , 11 panels 4.10 KwP at £4613 + Batteries AlphaB3 5KwH £3255 GT to inc fitting and sundries £ 11,240 10 yr warranty. Up here in Lincolnshire there seems to be no group/bulk buy discounts. My concern is is this system large enough for a 1950 three bedroom semi ;its like the Bako adverts in Meccano Mag!. So based on your collective experience what are your experiences please? Mick

Fortunately long tunnels and steam railway engines are not in my experience but both Snow Hill and Wolverhampton LL tunnels could be pretty foul. For a truly horrifying read about tunnels lookup the Busk Ivanhoe Tunnel under Hagerman Pass on the Colorado Midland. Single bore, 9384ft long o n a westbound grade of 1.41% . I believe it was the only piece of single track railway in the US that used a single line token.

Sorry I gave you bum information on the tablet catchers. But I did get mine a while back!

Afternoon Tony, bit of advice please. Do you ever reinforce whitemetal loco running boards and how? I ask because I am building a Millholme Hughes 4-6-0 , the footplate is rather flimsey and in two halves. I have used low melt solder but its still very easily bent! Can this be classed as a rebuild as it was glued together when I bought it! Mick

Replaced our polycarbonate conservatory roof, last year, with a double glazed reflective glass pitched roof. Glass is Argon filled which is supposed to help retain heat but not so sure about that! But the conservatory faces west and the work has made the living room which it opens onto so much more usable and light £6000 was the price and new pleated blinds for the roof were just over £1000!! All done by local firms near Lincoln and Grantham. My wife is very pleased so all is well!

Just come back from Newark, passing RAF Cranwell there is a large arable farm with approx; 250 acres of solar panels covering land on which wheat used to be grown. At 3/4t per acre thats a shortfall of 750/1000t of wheat that could be sold into the local poultry feed market. Looking at the buildings on said farm non seem to have any panels on their roof's. If grants were still available to the public for PV panels and for warehouse/ big sheds/office blocks and the country was still short of generating capacity I could go with solar farms. But its the easy way first, lets pick the low hanging fruit. And the NFU has a very powerful lobby. As part of planning for on farm digesters the applicant should have to collect food waste from the nearest town/hospitals etc; but no, lets grow so called energy crops like maize which takes more land out of food production! Fallen off my soap box!! but there is little joined up thinking. To my mind its close the nukes and demolish the coal fired power stations before having viable replacements in place.

Up here in Lincolnshire trying to get any interest from solar panel suppliers is impossible. An interview with the Pope would be easier! Meanwhile plans have just been announced for a solar farm big enough to supply 180000 houses, whats wrong in fitting 180000 houses with solar panels? no loss of good farmland and help food security.

Skoda Octavia for me, my 07 reg one, 164000 mls still does 60mpg has only failed twice in 12yrs I have owned it! the back folds nearly flat and will hold 4, 4ftx2ft base boards. Still got its factory fitted exhaust! Only problem on the horizon is its a Euro 3 engine and the proliferation of LEZ's may hasten its demize.

There was article in MRR years ago about distressing wagons with a soldering iron!

36C and sunny! envy, envy! cold, damp lots of rain, windy very and getting dark here. Would you swop? Naaah! 😎

I often watch the container trains on the GN/GE joint and wonder how 9f's or Thompson Pacifics would have managed these trains? My gut feeling is not ever so well!

For tablet catchers The Highland Rly Society do cast brass ones and Lochgorm models do etched ones.

I like the pub idea. It seemed to be a given that foundrys in the Black Country had a pub next door. Dragged from memories of living in Wolverhampton in the 1960's. Goodonyu bostin!

How about the two Cooke 0-8-2t from the USA and the later 0-8-2t built by I believe Nielson for the Port Talbot Rly? Built to haul 300t up 1 in 40 and 800t up 1 in 75 both at 12 mph. Fuel saved 29lb's per mile over 2 0-6-2t's.

After many diversions and false starts, the first being an oval in the attic of my parents house but it ran and Hornby Dorchester's mixed it up with various Wills, K's and Bec kits. Then I moved to Wolverhampton and in the local model shop a Rivarossi B&O S1 2-10-2 with a vanderbuilt tender beckoned, I was in love! and on visits home it also mixed it up with the British locos! After quite a while I decided I really liked the Pennsylvania, well you know what happened! But with freight cars and vestibule coaches. Much later a friend sold me two brass, PFM I believe, White Pass & Yukon narrow gauge 2-8-2's and the narrow gauge bug bit rather hard! Built a layout in our attic which ran well, small son got the railway bug and I do remember him driving a brass T12 4-6-0 straight off the end of track followed by stockcars etc; But made many friends in the Slim Gauge Circle which was good. Then the old marriage disaster struck and although I kept my trains I got pretty much cleaned out! Went to live in North Wales and did'nt really need models as I had 12" to the foot to operate and be involved with setting up a new railway. Ten years there and its time to move on and try marriage again which this time is very good but I have also met two guys who are very enthusiastic about what must be the least known Colorado mainline through the Rockies, the Colorado Midland, think small 4-6-0's and 2-8-0's three and four to a train over very steep grades, sharp curves, curved trestles ( Google Hagerman pass/ trestle). You can guess the outcome built lots of stock modfied some locos bought some brass locos built the layout in the garage, which son by now a grown up! ran more than I, there was so much track it was over whelming! So it festered, the narrow gauge stuff all got sold, the garage was made more useable and my lovely wife and I went on holiday to southern Ireland near Bantry which was the terminus of the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway, does this feel familiar? A friend who lives in the area gives me a book about the CB&SC and shows me lots of relics of the railway and I'm hooked again! Our local club is looking for a new subject and Bantry in Sleaford Lincs is born. Four of us have built a twenty foot long Bantry which runs! I have own most of the locos and and stock the club owns the rest! The layout in the garage was covered over and is now shelving/storage for all the stuff you put in a garage, I like to think there is one last layout and the spring has not run down yet but as my teachers often said "must try harder". Please take a look in the layouts section of Irish Railway Modeller at what four, seventy +year olds, have done.

I never ever wore that ghastly cap with its soft kneb. That's the one that came with the corporate blue total lack of style uniform. BR would have been better of using the old railcar drivers uniform. What a mess we must have looked! Some crews mixed up the parts they liked from all three!

Its been a grand Journey Rob, well worth the price of a ticket. Happy Christmas to you and Miss.R , let New year be full of bells and whistles! But better than 2022.

Happy Christmas Manna and let 2023 be a better year for us all. I also look forward to seeing more of your very creative modelling. Best regards to you and your family Mick

Andy, Thank you, Thank you, so far today I am ad and popup free, very much appreciated. I do hope your stick has a very big head on it!

Also just watched your video Tony, excellent content. Am I allowed to say that I love the way locos do that little rock and roll on some switches and crossings? and the goods brake vans do that strange swaying twitch they often had! But however often I see Thompson Pacifics they look odd, I know the reason why but the front end does not look right. All a bit of an afterthought! And that guy on the platform end in the blue pullover never flinches! Thanks Tony for your time and effort. Mick

Just finished reading Didcot Engineman ; Barlow, pub; OPC. Large format. A very readable book with a large number of good B/W photographs. There are several over the bunker into the cab shots of old GW tank engines of the open cab sort, most taken in the 1930's. Wagons, coaches, yards its all there. Just the sort of thing that readers of this thread may enjoy?

Just dissasembled an L&Y Dreadnought, real Dettol is your friend! Dunk and soak is the way took about a week to work. Then scrub/pick at the epoxy but do not run the parts under the hot tap until all the poxy is removed. It will go hard again, I know this!

Just noticed 251 pages in 2yrs and 2weeks. I think thats pretty good going! And glad to have been of help with loco info. Will the thread make 500 pages? Hope so.

As I age things from the past seem so much easier to recall, I have two brothers both younger than me and the stuff they cannot remember about our younger days surprises me. Like digging a huge cesspit when the house was modernised. Mrs 84C says its an age thing! there's quite an age difference between us so I have to be careful not to live in the past. My little meme/avatar? says it all.