Nearholmer

When it comes to "the image of the hobby", I think its possible to get way too neurotic. Its a hobby, it does nobody any harm, it makes quite a few people happier, if you enjoy it, pursue it, if you don't, don't. Many other hobbies come in for a bit of mild mocking occasionally too, its just human nature to mock "the other", and provided mild mockery is where it stops, it does no harm. My other hobby is cycling, and that elicits plenty of mockery and, thankfully exceedingly rarely, irrational hatred, for reasons that really do baffle me - far worse than th

The full-on nasal experience is only available when they are lubricated with traditional mineral oils and greases, which unfortunately are usually “shot”, no good as lubricants, and have to be cleaned away. I wonder if you can buy an “essential oil” made from these things, with a bit of powdered graphite and paxolin in it, to go in those fancy oil-warmer thingies.

I just watched a video posted by the magazine editor of the Train Collectors Society in which he is running a c1895 Maerklin clockwork train. That sets a benchmark, I think.

Death watch beetles?

I bet it makes you long for the roast beef, Liberty, and barely-impeded spread of Covid of Olde England!

15RPM PM me and you can have it. K

I had always assumed that colonial mariners used the term “road” in much the way that railwaymen do, to mean “route”.

Yes, pre-plastic-age things last exceedingly well if not exposed to the damp. Early permanent magnet motors are problematic, but wound-field motors generally survive well. Some early Mazak castings suffer, but many don’t. Best survivors seem to be high-quality clockwork locos with painted, rather than lithographed, tin bodies, and good-quality lithographed tin rolling stock. There are plenty of these still going strong after more than a century with only very basic maintenance. Sometimes, I run my layout entirely with trains made in the 1950s, and I know guys wh

Yes. But, why do the cloud sheets so often have their edges at positions that permit this? (The truth is, I think, that they probably don’t often. It is more likely that on those odd occasions when they do it produces a memorable winking sunrise/set, rather than a forgettably grey slow increase/decrease in light level.)

Jcredfer That explains why the sun appears red/orange when low in the sky. It doesn’t explain why it often appears at the edge of cloud sheet at dawn and dusk. K

The point is surely that in the winter you don't have to get up early to see the dawn, in fact it takes a lie-in to miss it. And, can anyone tell me why, very often in winter the sun rises all nice and red and bright and promising, only to instantly disappear into a dark-admiralty-grey cloud sheet that then covers the sky for the entire day, until the sun dips below it in the distant west for about half a millisecond as it sets? If I believed in deities, I might imagine that they deliberately tease us by having the sun wink at us twice a day. But, thankfully we don't se

Isn't it the other way round - the tramway has to be slightly sub standard gauge? But, yes, several street tramways were like that.

As a minor point, those coaches aren’t Mk1, indeed I think BL Might have Introduced them before the Mk1*, having suspended development of them for the duration of the war. They are a generic late-1930s coach, possibly with LMS inclinations, and pretty much everyone calls them “blood and custards”, since that was the only livery they were issued in as a standard item. IMO the body is the best made tinplate coach ever, bar none, being incredibly sturdy due to the design of the interior. But, the bogies are comparatively fragile - they get bent quite easily. He

You’re right - that makes no sense does it? I’ve clearly got hold of the wrong end of a stick somewhere ...... I’d better find the book and re-read it!

Yes, but I should imagine fired to a large degree on slash.