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Martino

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Everything posted by Martino

  1. I recall (dimly) a product in the late ‘60s called Metalskin, which came in gloss or matt. I made a reasonable Airfix Hawker Hart and applied it to that, which for the time looked quite good. I then tried it on a Lightning but it took so long I gave up.
  2. They’re all trainsets or layouts until one goes out in the garden (or other outside area) and prepares a trackbed, following the landscape. Then go through the constant maintenance of a 1:1 line. Any structures have to be capable of withstanding the elements - like a 1:1 line. Then, my son, you have created a railway………
  3. There was a rectangular tank (which I think went to the GWS at Didcot) used by the Slough Trading Estate Railway. I believe it was originally a tar wagon, but Slough Estates used it for weed killing. https://didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/article.php/104/no-1-tar-wagon The GWS says they think it was black in its SE time. It was, I remember it well.
  4. It’s been a while since I visited Twyford (Berkshire) as I moved to the US back in 2006, but I remember that taking a Paddington to Henley train would result in Twyford passengers pilling off the train and then down the platform end to a board crossing from the platform end to the car park (old goods yard) and then waiting at track level while the DMU past en route to Henley. Of course the big surprise came when you got to your car and found your radio was still in the car as they often had been removed by some local scrote!
  5. Yes, it’s puzzling isn’t it? Rather like the preponderance of rail tracks suspended from the ceiling and running round rooms. Makes me scratch my head.
  6. Back in the ‘50s and early ‘60s my parents had a coke fueled AGA. Its ashes were removed each morning and put in the metal dustbin. I don’t remember there ever being a problem with fire. All organic kitchen waste was put on the compost heap. My grandmother (born 1901) would weekly start a conflagration in her metal dustbin to ‘sanitize’ it! Eventually they rusted/burned out and had to be replaced. Mind you she burned everything for which she no longer had a use. He favourite phrase was “what do you want a book for? You’ve already got one”. But I digress massively .
  7. Woburn Green Country Club. Not sure it was an ever a golf club. Later a disco/night club. Burnt down regrettably and a number of houses built on the site.
  8. I recall a tale told in the Goods Shed at Taplow, when a Great Western Society base in ‘66, that when the water cranes were removed from Maidenhead station someone flushed the toilet on one of the platforms and it kept flushing for two weeks or until the tank emptied. Almost certainly a ‘bar tale’ but the thought still makes me smile. ;-)
  9. I model 15mm/ft for outside in the garden. The last railway, which although British was located in Florida, had resin buildings that suffered from acute fogging of the plastic ‘glass’ in the windows. I replaced them all with microscope slides and no further problems. ….however once you’ve cut the slides to fit they become incredibly sharp. Don’t ask how I found out ;-)
  10. Thank you Barclay and 33C. Yes, it’s not a big issue just causing a drop off of modelling mojo. I’m sure it will pass.
  11. Thanks Schooner. Yes, I do have enough room, but I used 45mm track and have no 0 gauge stuff. I suppose I could try a 45mm track/16mm in the basement. That’s a good thought, and could go outside in the summer. That’s a good idea. I’ll have a look at the Layout design sub too. Many thanks.
  12. I still have the urge to model. However I suppose I’m confused as what to do. I had a 16mm/ft garden railway at our last house. 10 years old and based (very loosely) on a fictitious 3’ gauge light railway in Bucks. We decided to move to a house up a mountain in Georgia (USA) and there’s nowhere on our steep sided land that obviously lends itself to a garden project. I have a large basement and thought of resurrecting my 00 gauge stuff. Mostly diesels and some steam based around the mid ‘60s WR. The models are all themselves products of the ‘60s and ‘80s/‘90s - so not really suitable for DCC operation. Having done the garden thing with radio control DCC, i can’t bring myself to go back to analog control. ..and anyway I essentially just have locos, very little rolling stock and it’s all old, old, old. If I did recreate an outside set up, where we are would keep running to just during the summer. Every plan I come up with seems a bigger problem than the last. It’s just depressing my interest in modeling and railways.
  13. Exactly as British Airways did in claiming to be 100. Yes, there was a British Airways but it was merged into Imperial to form BOAC. BEA came later and then in 1974 BEA merged with BOAC to become BA. So, not really 100 years of British Airways.
  14. My memories are of DMUs being stabled in the east end sidings. There was inevitably a 61XX shunting parcels vans in the two sidings leading to the parcels bay. Mostly Warships, Westerns, Hymeks and Brush 4s on the main line expresses, some slowing to call at Slough on the down main. Blue pullmans of course. Later in the 60’s Warships double heading on the Cornish Riviera and Royal Train movements. A steady stream of DMUs on the relief lines, the parcels railcar with steam hauled freights (Various GW locos, black 5s and 8Fs, plus 9Fs. , along with Hymeks. One afternoon during a boring English lesson (the English room was in a corner of the building and had windows all around two sides) a big loco was parked on the parcels/down main sidings. I could only see the tender and the loco safety valves were lifting. After school I wend down to the fence and it was a 9F. I noted in my book that it was 92220, although I noted ‘looked black’. I’d like to think I recorded it accurately but after nearly 60 years I somehow doubt it! The Dolphin loop was gone during my time there.
  15. Thank you very much Nick and Stationmaster. That’s perfect info in both cases. Looking at a period between Sept ‘63 and around ‘66. That’s corresponds with my early years at Licensed Victualler’s School (shown on the map) and before all Steam was gone, and everything was painted blue! Once again, very many thanks.
  16. Thank you very much Simon. Of course, as soon as I re-read my post I realized that I meant the EAST end of Slough station! Your suggestion is very useful as it has the adjacent box’s diagrams. Dolphin is helpful as is Slough Middle. Regrettably the S-R-S don’t have the box between them, Slough East, so it’s back to the drawing board. Many thanks again.
  17. I’m about to launch into 4mm/00 modeling again after probably 55 years, having been doing 15mm in the garden for the past 15 years. My plan is to do a section of the GW main line that I could see from the playing field and classrooms of my school during the early/mid ‘60s. That would be the east end of Slough station. In fact you couldn’t see the station from the school just the main and relief lines plus the sidings etc. Thing is, I can’t find a track plan of that piece of railway. Can anyone point me in the right direction? It’s essentially the bit in this awful photo taken by my teenage self back in the day. Many thanks in advance.
  18. It gets even worse with the larger scales/gauges. I model in 16mm or 15mm/ft but on 45mm gauge. That gives me a 1:1 gauge of 3ft. However so much of this is lumped into G scale. That of course means different things to every manufacturer. LGB for example has rubber ruler and produces stuff in anything from 1:18 to 1:29 and everything in between. It seems that stating you model in 16mm/ft means that people automatically assume that you run on 32mm gauge. G scale means different things in the UK to the USA. I find it frustrating to say the least.
  19. Thanks for the temporary fix Andy. Much better.
  20. I think our guys would be up for that. They’re pretty good. Trouble is my drive is firstly downhill, then steeply up hill and on a curve. I’d definitely need a rack system. I’ll keep dreaming.
  21. My understanding, and experience, is that the F35 is no noisier than the F15 or the F22 (which we also have). We’re talking the Air Force variant rather than the Marine version. However the sheer variety of types coming in here from B52, B1, through C5s, C17, KC125 and everything else means that the they really can’t be identified. Also, the aircraft don’t flash past anyone’s gardens here. The base is just too extensive. There are routes that the inbound and outbound aircraft use and they do avoid some areas, but it’s a huge base and and also cover the ranges out over the Gulf of Mexico. There’s more noise disruption from the Navy EOD school, the Air Force Test Center and the AFSOC guys who tend to blow stuff up fairly spectacularly. We also have the AFSOC base at Hurlburt (just down the road and part of Eglin) who charge about in CV22 Ospreys. Everyone knows that the area is a major base and has been for 80 years. The military friendliness and lack of NIMBY persuasion in Northwest Florida is well known.
  22. Three quick stories. My later Father in Law, a USAF three star General was the Boss at a B52 base in the US. He received a call from a local lady one day complaining that an aircraft had passed low over her house. “Did it have a red star on its tail?” He asked. “No” she said. “Thank God, it’s one of ours” he replied. In the ‘80s and ‘90s I was involved with a company that sold holidays in Australia to Brits. One set of prospective tourists rented a Campervan with the intention of driving from Adelaide to Alice Springs, a distance of some 1530 Kms. We were obliged to tell them they shouldn’t drive at night as animals in the outback unexpectedly crossed or stood in the road. They felt it would be OK as they’d see them in the street lights. Lastly, we currently live near Eglin AFB in Florida. The largest USAF base in North America and home to the Airforce Weapons Development section, plus squadrons on F35s, F15s and virtually every type of aircraft in the USAF inventory visits regularly. The base has been here since the 1930s. We’ve had a local mayor who challenged the deployment of F35s as he felt they were too noisy. Also a recently moved-in local complained the he’d lived near Atlanta airport but the military aircraft here made too much noise. You can imagine how that went down with the locals who celebrate The Sound of Freedom!
  23. My Lady Wife constantly surprises me. She has in the past surprised me with a table saw and various other tools -none of which I had hinted at, and indeed hadn’t even thought of buying myself. For my birthday this year she found a VCG copy of The Official Guide to the Great Western Railway dated 1888. Today (Christmas Day) she presented a Railway Calendar (that’s a regular gift), a Lego I.K. Brunel figure (see photo), a 1991 edition of George Behrend’s Gone With Regret (which on opening revealed that it’s a signed copy, which neither she nor the seller knew) and a 1940 stamped T.E. Bladon & Sons Ltd., GWR guards handlamp. No input from me. I am a lucky man.
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