BSG75

Hi team, I have just bought 31-116a standard 4 75029, and it has come with a piece loose in the packaging. Can anyone identify where it goes? Many thanks!

Hi there, I've just bought a maroon CCT with a sealed detailing bag, but with two end hoses loose in the box, and from what incan tell those parts missing from the bag. It just feels a bit curious, did anyone else have similar? Thanks!

Hi there, I've just bought a maroon CCT with a sealed detailing bag, but with two end hoses loose in the box, and from what incan tell those parts missing from the bag. It just feels a bit curious, did anyone else have similar? Thanks!

Hi everyone. After 50 years I'm leaving the hobby. The final straw came when I broke off a set of footsteps just trying to get a model out of its packaging. But the truth is I've been struggling with the idea of £30 5 planks for a while; models that are made in such limited numbers; models like the 47xx that come as a kit of parts. I miss the days when duchess of sutherland was in the catalogue for years, giving you time to save up. I've had too many "mint" second hand models arrive with detailing parts glued on to a poor standard. The second hand market is just too much of a lucky dip. Its just not for me anymore

Thanks for your help!

Hi, I understand that 73050/32-507 was made with an incorrect body and tender, and replacement supplied. How can I tell if a second hand model has the original or replacement parts? Thanks!!

Hi, I understand that 73050/32-507 was made with an incorrect body and tender, and replacement supplied. How can I tell if a second hand model has the original or replacement parts? Thanks!!

Hi, does anyone have any experience of the repaired 47xx models that Olivias trains are selling? Looking for another option after my new 47xx arrived as a kit of parts, not helped I suspect by the vendor merely wrapping a piece of card around it.

Hi, has anyone ever dealt with this retailer before. I have just had a very unpleasant experience with them, and was wondering about other people's experiences - perhaps it's just me.

Ivatt and Riddles locomotives by Haresnape ? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ivatt-Riddles-Locomotives-Brian-Haresnape/dp/0711007950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536239548&sr=8-1&keywords=IVATT+AND+RIDDLES+LOCOMOTIVES

Still not sure why the vans only had one door - what happened if they arrived "wrong way round" ??!! Was it some kind of anti-pilfering mechanism, similar to the way some containers were loaded into Open High's rather than Conflats ?

Those wagons are BR diagram 1/214, there is a photo on page 65 of "BR wagons - the first half-million." I'm pretty sure I've also seen a picture somewhere of a grounded body in use on a farm.

It's not just engineering jobs that are in decline - IT is in trouble as well. My department has been TUPE transferred to a foreign outsourcing company. The contract says we are paid more for enhancement work, so we have extra projects dumped on us as well as our previous "wheels on the wagon" work. We also have to train up the people who will ultimately replace us, or be in breach of contract and lose 20 years redundancy. Our pay rise has just come in 2% lower than our erstwhile colleagues in our old company. You actually couldn't make it up.

Hi Everyone, and good morning. I notice that Bolster 32-825Z is listed as being in brown - were any of this built as, or modified to be, vacuum braked or piped? Many Thanks, Andy

I believe the quayside at Colchester Hythe was still in use in the early diesel period, but I have always struggled to find photographs.

I had an assessment for an Autism about a year ago. I was starting to get a bit cheesed off with having no family, no friends, no real hobby (no budget for trains at the moment), and a daily dose of anti-depressants that is the highest that can be prescribed outside of a hospital, and wanted to know "why me". I scored very high on the scale, but not enough to tag me with an official diagnosis. Some good news came out of it (I have an IQ of 135 and am in the top 5% of the population in terms of my ability to communicate), but some bad came out as well (my speech patterns came come across a little formal and old-fashioned which people may find off-putting). So without a diagnosis, I am having to try to turn things around myself, and have been training as an Army Cadet Instructor since last Summer. Again, I suspect many of the other adults there think I am a little odd and peculiar, but with the desperate shortage of adult staff needed for Health and safety reasons my peculiarities seem to have been accepted thus far.

I'm being transferred under TUPE at the moment, and it's truly awful, a soul destroying process. it's just.....everything. Take Jury service, going from my existing employer paying our wages in full, to our new employer asking us to claim statutory from the courts. Over a long trial, that will cost you your home. I've lost 10 days extra TA/ACF leave. But they are asking us to relocate from London to Sunderland, so our current jobs can be done by Indian Nationals living in a barracks in Tilbury, so with 4 kids settled in schools and the Wife working, that's me down the DHSS in fairly short order. Yep, that TUPE thing really works.

What about "the Tramshed" (now a restaurant), 32 Rivington Street, North London ?

There are some photos from 1994 here : http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/bishopsgate_low_level/ I'll try to get over to Quaker street some time and see what's there.

When Liverpool street was opened, they also opened a Bishopsgate low-level station for people who still wanted to alight there. The low-level platforms are still visible from the GEML, and I believe there is still a boarded-up entrance from street level.

Hi, yes, that's my understanding. The approaches to Bishopsgate are supposedly on the level, so when they start looming over the GEML very quickly, you get some idea of how steep the gradient into Liverpool Street actually is ! (supposedly part of the reason for the non-standard nature of the class 125 DMU ?)

Here are a few quick phone camera shots around Shoreditch. First, one of the last pieces left of the old alignment into Broad Street Next, a couple of the old entrance to Bishopsgate Goods Yard. There are some very fine pieces of stonework secreted under the arches of Bishopsgate, right next to the GEML, and I suspect they came from Liverpool Street during the rebuilding. One of the goods yard's retaining walls, running from the new Shoreditch Hight Street station to Brick Lane. Bisphpsgate Goods Yard, in truncated form, at Brick Lane The old Shoreditch Station. The old alignment of the East London Line ran in a cutting on the right; now filled in and grassed over, leaving the station building looking a little sunken. Apologies for the Angle, the pavement here was a little narrow and the road behind very busy!

I believe the grey building on the right is the original Station hotel; later becoming a psychiatric hospital. It's gone now, replaced by the inevitable flats.

I travel from Colchester to Liverpool Street every day, and I don't think it helps that the area served is one of the fastest growing in the country - I have heard it said that Colchester is THE fastest growing town (from 80K to about 180K people), but I don't know if it's true. What is true is that a lot of these new inhabitants commute to London, and the trains are creaking under the strain. Just a couple of years ago, I used to be able to get on the first car of the 06:55 and choose my seat. Now it's a mad scramble to find some in the last coach of the 12-car unit, as it has progressively got busier. The double-track section between Shenfield and Colchester doesn't help either - it really needs to be quadrupled. Something disastrous happens on this stretch about once every 6 months - be it a Freightliner in the fields at Witham, or the wires down for a mile at Kelvedon - and when that happens, there is just no plan "B". Staff are overwhelmed, Information is non-existent, there aren't any substitute buses.....it's chaos, and really sticks in the mind. Another perennial favourite is problems at Liverpool Street, so you get dumped off your train at Stratford, and left to fend for yourself. The queues for the Central Line are so bad that people are in danger of getting hurt and the Police are called. I've had to travel to North London via Docklands and London bridge before. And to go off-topic (sorry), someone mentioned roads earlier. They are a disgrace too. About 15 yards of the M12 built at the junction with the North Circular.....Diggers and dumpers in the fields ready to finish off dualling the last stretch of the A120.....all before being cancelled. I have no idea what we have done to deserve this.

A bit off topic, but whenever we visited St Pancras on a Saturday morning in 1985, there was always a class 25 parked at the stops. It was always there, so I am guessing it was a scheduled working of some kind. Does anyone have an idea what that working was? They stopped appearing in about 1986.