runs as required

May I ask a question about 3D printing of 4mm scale road vehicles. Could one of these Elgoo printers produce a 3D clear acrylic body shell (or sides of an 1930s bulbous streamline psv coach to be joined together) economically that one could then paint - leaving the clear acrylic as double curvature windows? i have looked at posts about 3D printing that say how difficult it proves to be to glaze a cured resin form.. I envisage this to be dropped over an inner 3D chassis and sets?

Without looking it all up, I thought the GWR did rather well out of all the 1930s UK Government's version of " US New Deal" public infrastructure works (including a triangular junction on the up side of the Severn tunnel mouth ?).

So were the Midland mainlines far more intensively block signalled? I remember the 100 mph Deltics being introduced on the East coast requiring 3 blocks clear ahead of them. I first wondered about the "modernity" of the turn of the century Midland during my years as a student in Liverpool when home was in NW Derbyshire in the mid 1950s. The obvious, quick (but boring) way home home at the week-end was Cheshire Lines "clock face" timetabled non-corridor* (Lpool Central to Mcr. Central) in 40-45 mins. The interesting wayward ones were old L&M from Lime St (once the DMUs were introduced with forward view) and the L&Y corridor trains from Lpool Exchange via Wallgate and Trinity Street - both these route departures were sparse and random. *the exception was the 13.15 "North Country Continental" Gresley buffet car train to Harwich - a great favourite. Sorry a bit OT - but it does demonstrate the interdisciplinary task of running a railway (as did the Civils & rude Mechanicals rivalry and deceit expressed in earlier posts.)

I reckon this has all to do with whose chair has been taken over... I have posted before about my previous next door neighbour's mum in her nineties having a fund of stories about being being (clearly a comely) tracer at Doncaster plant, through the war years, her boss being Bert Spencer, and they all enjoyed coming and sitting at her board and confabbing except that snooty Mr Thompson. 2 I have often wondered, amidst the universal condemnation of James Anderson by rail writers (usually not engineers or in railway management - such as Nock, CJ Allen, or Hamilton Ellis), whether there was anything to be argued in favour of Anderson eschewing big engines and preferring 'little and often' services throughout the system - very much the opposite of the heavy trains out of Euston - and maybe the basis of "clockface" modern operation..

I am surprised no-one has yet made a pitch for "Fowler's Ghost" for total incompetence. The whole of the Metropolitan running in cut and cover tunnels from Paddington and Baker Street to the City was based on the engineer's assurance that his fireless steam local would afford acceptable clean air breathing! It is another example similar to IKBs assurance that all would be well with his atmospheric system. But before you all say "Aha! its that LMS Henry Fowler again (Graces Guide obit her), this is Sir John Fowler, no relative (Graces Guide obit here makes interesting reading), later designer of the Forth Bridge. And as for his "Ghost": Again from Wiki, the only known photo of the loco is on its second trial in October 1862 at Edeware Rd on the still incomplete Met. once gain unsuccessful, the Stephensons built loco produced very little steam from its supposed heat retaining (Cowens Blaydon?) firebricks - the cause of the earlier Hanwell near explosion, because they could not be dropped as in a conventional firebox. I forgot to conclude by checking that dependable "Fireless" accumulator charged systems with steam or compressed air did not gain practicability until the 1870s on US and French tramways, later of course widely used on Industrial systems.

I have always been an advocate of ‘component standardisation’ that can be used in open building - especially ‘self build’ - however that gets interpreted across the world. I learnt that working for the BR (E) CCE’s Research & Development Group designing Tinsley’s generally well received System C buildings, and also the ER’s widely used version System T (for timber) of the copyrighted Clasp school building system developed by Hertfordshire CC The key to the success of this was also demonstrated to me: that you must be ready to ditch and supersede a standard component within the open system once it is obsolescent in insulation, fire or other functional terms as technology moves on. Perhaps Mech Eng was slower in following this Civils’ dictum in Swindon and Derby. It was aso the same with VW’s Beetle and Citroen’s pre war Tractions down to the DS Goddess in 1952. Mind the open approach was pursued by BL into ... um

Edward Talbot's anthology "The LNWR Recalled" has some particularly human insights on aspects of FW Webb and his "Kingdom". He had to stand up to the parsimony of the LNW Board of Directors and defend the extraordinary range of Crewe works in-house output from steel making to signalling and standardised easily recognisable prefab timber and robustly detailed Crewe made brick buildings from Peterborough to Swansea and Holyhead and north to Carlisle. There does seem to have been ever-keen profit takers amongst the Directors - the inheritors of the unscrupulous Captain Huish. Give him his due, Frank Webb seems mostly to have kept the respect of Sir Richard Moon in maintaining economy against efficacy (compared to Churchward's defensive "mine could pull two of theirs backwards" answer to his Paddington cost critics. During my short time working for the old Chief Civil Engineer of ER in King's Cross, (as the Deltics were taking over- and being housed) I realised how we much we had to hang on to the coat tails of our Chief in pitching to the General Manager for approval of our Department's design proposals. How different it all seems nowadays when all procurement seems centralised in Westminster.

My favourite candidate for this would be Thomas Wheatley more about his dismissal from the NBR here. I would have loved to had the chance to take my young family off to Galloway to set about running a 1:1 scale railway. It seems they made a good enough hand of it to be loved by the local community.

My own impression about Asbergers is that a whole lot of high achievers in the academic world score high on the Asbergers scale. I had a rendezvous several years back to climb from Hayfield up to Kinder Downfall with an old friend from childhood In his 80th year who’d became the youngest ever Fellow (In chemistry) of an Oxford college while I was still in sixth form. He subsequently never ever advanced from his Lectureship in one of the first of the Robins New Universities. I screwed up the courage to enquire about this ? He replied that perhaps he’d mistakenly sought to seek answers to the really Big Questions in science. Whereas it seemed those that got all the promotion were those who asked Research questions to which they already knew the answers.

Personally I prefer the Egg-slicer to cheesy Rachmaninov of the same period. My dad would have disagreed: Celia Johnson was his Jenny Agutter and he had complete sets of HMV 78s of both R’s piano Concerti in the cupboard under the old steel needle radiogram.

Please stay with the jokes folks, in my view locking of ‘what statues’ looked inevitable a couple of pages pages earlier; naebody wanted to do jokes around the topic.

Geordie Magpie's solution for the 'White House': repaint in black and white stripes! (was just going to post on my own thread - but found its bin binned. I never managed to get a thread to 6 pages before!)

As someone who endured living with a young family in Lusaka Zambia through the period of "Good old Smithy's" UDI and the proxy war in the Zambesi valley, I can fully see why Cecil Rhodes ought to be torn down. NB 'Torn down' is far more stimulating in artistic terms than just being quietly removed by committee - otherwise there would be no large heroic paintings in Galleries by David and the like. BP comes as a surprise to me - a keen Scout in the early 1950s. Mind, where I grew up in the Dark Peak, we 11 year old kids were fully aware of the double entendre of the title of the Scouting handbook. Some were in the church choir and would warn us about the organist and Vicar. addendum In answer to the post immediately above - I entirely agree about the ephemeral nature of the empty plinth. There should be a lot more stimulating Civic Art in our bleak modern urban peri-urban townscapes.

Holding a stimulating Degree in Fine Art (second class: two one, IMHO marked too high) from Sunderland, taken in my earlier retirement years, I've always found the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square a really exciting event, Far more so than the Turner Prize which often seems to me a refuge for bad cinematists.

Presumably there is also an "Arrival" side. Working on Tinsley, I was delighted to find the BR(E) Polish p.w. designers engineering a "Brake Kip", gravity powered, feeding down to the Departure "last exit" side. As "Runs as Required", I stiiI like the idea of the Guards sitting brewing up all day with no idea where they might end up. PS Ah Vienna! I have never been allowed to visit there by my wife. She had her great romantic pre marital adventure there as the only girly volunteer building houses for DPs in Austria during the immediate post-war years. Annoyingly as a student teacher, she had a better practical knowledge of building construction during 5 years of courting, than I gained as an architecture student !

Quite simply YES PS in terms of BLM, should I have called the thread "Downupping" - which i remember as the Ashanti street English word for a rough ride on a 'tro tro' truck's hardwood bench along an unmade road?

Here’s another suggestion for a ‘Positive’ Statue outside Jarra (or less used Bede) Metro station of the Venerable Bede. He alone, in Early Christian Europe, stuck to ancient Greek Ptolomy’s proposition that the World was a sphere In his writings - even, unlike Pt. working out a better guess at the circumference. Without even leaving the NE ! It wasn’t until Galileo and his telescope (excommunicated by the Pope) and Magellan, that Europe begrudgingly accepted it was round once again.

So far, apart from my opening proposal, I haven’t seen anyone post of any fantasy they would like to put on, even say a model layout, plinth ! Sorry hadn’t read Kevin’s post when l stuck this up

Madderport reminds me that we went to Peel for our summer hols in 1949 from Brum (via Woodside. the King Ory and the IoMR). It reminded us all of Ahern - a wartime RAF badly burned "Guinea Pig" who scratch -built LT&S tanks, lived with us at the time. An avid follower of Ahern in the mags, he had us all trying our own imaginary worlds. Peel had got the lot: the long quays, the terminus at the east end, piers and light house at the west with the ruined castle overhanging it all. I enjoyed an old Bean lorry caked in Herring fleet residue, also several steam lorries were around. Even a 1920s char-a-banc still attracted our custom rather than the line of new Bedford-Duple (Vista?) charas with boards advertising their tours parked along the prom by the open air pool. 2 I hadn't noted the high and low lights before on the Madderport layout for safe entry into the river . I first saw the ones at Harwich and Dovercourt in the early 1950, and since moving to Tyneside the "old and new" pairs of lights supposedly affording safe entry for sailing colliers to the Tyne before the long piers were built by the Tyne Improvement Commission set up by 'firebrick' Cowen of Blaydon.

Doing A level History back in the 1950s, we had a history teacher who also was a railway enthusiast. We always had to anticipate a "waffly" question on 'History Theory' which you couldn't swot dates and battles for. He told us "the present is just the momentary point of contact of a steel wheel on a steel rail. The future is something unknown lying ahead that has to be anticipated, but the long line of the past behind us can help us cope with the road ahead" I plagarised his quote and achieved my best A level mark !

About street naming: Anyone remember Brendan Behan's joke about Dubliners looking up at their street name and saying "sure isn't the Irish language a lot more poetic than the English" ?

i'll start by saying a statue i'd reinstate is the missing Mallard duck that is inspiring Sir Nigel to have a go at the world record for steam locos; I tried to support the disappointed sculptor in her brilliant idea to stimulate young children into thinking the could do great things. For those "out of favour" I'd learn from the collapse of the Stalinist East. I'd have a fascinating overgrown dump where you can go and ferret out all the statues torn down and ditched any old how. I saw those in the Baltic states full of Stalin and Lenin, and glimpsed in China and Cuba also. The Chines experience was interesting - I was there from York uni advising on making money out of tourism and Conservation. A big issue was whether or not to preserve as a reminder, relics from the Japanese invasion of the 1930s invasion and the treatment of Chinese as animals to be experimented upon. Profiteering Mayors eventually solved this dilemma by demolishing everything in sight and rebuilding with high rise blocks.

As a total Asperger i found the fax machine story very interesting. I’d been away in primitive up country locations for a decade - beyond even telephones. I came back to find an even bigger nerd than me (who’d spent 5 years designing a new standard BR platform seat and other platform equipment e.g waste bins next to me in Kings + station) now in lucrative private practice from his west London flat working for the well heeled middle classes busy ‘gentrifying’ their W postal districts houses and restoring all the original details. He showed me how easy it was faxing long continuous strips off to site for full size details like elaborate arts & crafts balustrades and newly posts, railings, ceiling cornices etrc.

This a very strange thread - seemingly only for trash postings ... but not for the causes of trash (to misquote an old political slogan). I live in Gateshead, one of the 2 worst Boroughs in England for C-19 and high R value (as at mid May). I am 83, and have been in Lockdown since May 12. Two things did register with me during that time: Reading "the Medieval Expansion of Europe" that is on eldest grandson's Reading List for his second year of a History degree. The celebration of 75 years since VE day. Both these were dependent upon the age group that are being most chastised by all these trash postings i.e. the young who seem to believe they're indestructible. They were to the fore in the Crusades, the voyages and expansions during the Black Death and the" fearless" men and women of the Second World War. My uncle Pete was not yet twenty when he was posted missing over Burma three weeks before VJ day, I remember him as a mad beggar who'd have surely killed himself (and me hanging on for dear life) on his Matchless had he remained an apprentice at home.

Happy to oblige oops - pic has not survived (imho this thread gets censored !) dh