DK123GWR

Yes, with patience. There are an awful lot of screws holding on the body and eye mechanism. (I have the number 16 in my head, but it might be less... or maybe even more!)

Don't forget Triang! I acquired one between Christmas and Easter on ebay - part of a £10 job lot which also included an Airfix autocoach and handful of wagons. Though not pretty, it's certainly an improvement over manual cleaning and a Hornby 2721 will pull it without too much trouble (anything larger will handle it easily). Usually running it in both directions over all lines is sufficient for good running.

Charles Michel, rear left, and Ursula von der Lyen, rear right, represent the EU. The other seven are (or were) heads of government of the G7 member states (left to right: front: Canada, US, UK, France, Germany; central rear: Japan, Italy)

A faster and more powerful alternative to a 153? Perhaps for stopping services on fast lines with some very lightly used stations, or where trains from a small branch line have to run some distance along a faster/busier mainline? Or in model terms, for someone who only has space for single car units, but wants a change from their 121/2/53?

Perhaps we could add 40 degree summers? Oh, wait... The rates at which sea levels are rising has almost doubled since 1993. I'm not sure why the main focus of diplomats from the South Pacific would be rising sea levels unless they really were an existential threat (in the most literal sense) to their nations. The Arctic may not have had an ice free summer yet, but ice coverage has reduced by 40% since 1979. It will happen. Or perhaps I've missed the point and we're supposed to be laughing at the ignorance of whoever wrote this? I apologise if this is the case, but my sense of humour is weakened somewhat by the real-world consequences.

If this were on a deliberately old-fashioned layout depicting a freelance railway (perhaps narrow gauge), I don't think it would look out of place, especially if those sliding doors do work. I wouldn't expect to sell it for this money, simply because anyone building such a layout would probably prefer to build their own stock, and I've no interest in buying it myself, but I think some here are being a little harsh.

The pictures make it look much better than it is in real life, but an Oxfordshire bus operator has identified a possible counterexample.

Are these really that mad? Yes, they're low-quality kit builds, but the price doesn't seem too ridiculous for useable parts that could probably be re-bashed.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134153164361?hash=item1f3c26d649%3Ag%3AwlAAAOSw7lRisu1i&LH_BIN=1 Perhaps this is a decimal point error, but even then it would be £42.95!

The loco-tender connection on these models is the worst I have experienced. The nut has broken on mine too (I have tried and failed to fix this), and its a nightmare trying to get the spring in the right place to put it back together. The mechanism is decent when it's in good shape though (unfortunately the gears on mine have disintegrated) and it's quite good looking considering the age of the tooling. I don't have mine to hand but I don't think there's a way to get a tool in to grip the nut. Perhaps the best approach would be to cut the screw, bodge a new mechanical-only coupling, and then find a two pin plug and socket to wire the loco to the tender. I would probably have a go myself over the summer if not for the aforementioned gear train issues.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403706205494?hash=item5dfec3d536%3Ag%3ATqoAAOSwXCNioNsL&LH_All=1 Surely this is not normal? £20 for an X04?

It wouldn't be anyway. The weight on the driving axles is identical, whether it is all on the first and last axles or shared evenly across all of them. Frictional force is determined only by the normal reaction force (the weight, when on a flat surface) and the coefficient of friction (which is determined by the materials). The area making contact is irrelevant. In case you doubt the physics, Sam has done an investigation which illustrates the point in the context of model railways.

And on that note:

'Property is theft' is actually a line from the anarchist thinker Proudhon. Marx thought it was quite contradictory. I'll get my anorak. To get us back on track, I've been trying to think of jokes about philosophers, but I Kant. I guess I won't be scoring high Marx in a comedy competition. Whatever I do come up with will likely be so bad that they'll Locke me up, which might cause me some Paine. I would hate to be left in a room with nothing to do but listen to the clock go tick-Toqueville. I think I would rather be sentenced to hard labour in a Mill, or forced into exile and made to live on a Moore. I'm really starting to worry about this competition now: there's far too much on my Plato.

If you add the word 'exclusively' to the first sentence then it's pretty much spot on. Suppose that an evil supervillain rules over the world and is killing anyone who is right handed (the exact reasons they do this are not significant). If we only pay attention to empirically grounded, falsifiable facts then all that we can say is that 'a person rules over the world and is killing all right-handed people'. What we cannot say is that the person is evil or a supervillain (for the same reasons) or that what they are doing is wrong and that it would be better if they were not able to do this. We cannot say that they ought to be stopped, nor that whoever did stop them would be worthy of praise. Clearly, the empirical facts are important, but unless we are also able to make normative judgements about them (and about counterfactual situations), the facts are rather useless. One might also ask how you can argue that facts are important and opinion is not without resting it on some sort of opinion which cannot be empirically tested. Such an argument would not be sufficient to establish the conclusion, for reasons which I hope are obvious.

Though silly, the idea of using a 1-Co bogie seems strangely appealing.

I doubt there would have been enough universities in SR territory at the time to name an entire class of locomotives after. At the outbreak of WW2 you have Reading and London. I would guess that the Southern also reached Oxford and Bristol over GWR routes. That's 2-4 locomotives. By 1932, the University of London had (according to Wikipedia): Birbeck, UoL Courtauld Institute of Art Goldsmiths, UoL KCL LSE London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine Queen Mary UoL Royal Holloway, UoL Royal Veterinary College St George's, UoL School of Oriental and African Studies UCL Bedford College Imperial New College London Richmond Theological College School of Slavonic and East European Studies Westfield College Wye College The Institute of Archeology would be added in 1937. The 19 or 20 here should be sufficient for a class about half the size of the Schools, so you might need to top up from another university if you want more names (Oxford is the obvious choice, geographically speaking). The GWR named at least two locomotives after Oxford Colleges (Saint Edmund Hall and Lady Margaret Hall)* which has sparked two random thoughts: a) Were there any others (on the GWR or elsewhere)? b) How common are examples locomotives on different (standard gauge, mainline) railways having the same name at the same time? The LMS Coronation and streamlined LNER B17 (both named City of London) come to mind. *There's also St Benet's Hall, but that's technically a PPH rather than a college

Plus, as I understand it, rubber-tyred vehicles are necessarily less efficient than (well-designed) rail vehicles due to the energy lost deforming the tyres. Tyres are also a massive source of particulate polution (including numerous toxins and carcinogens), so electric vehicles would still make a big contribution to worsening air quality.

Nobody is getting rich from protesting. Protest is a political tactic used by the side with less resources against a more powerful group. If I had enough money to 'rent a riot' (which would be a quite substantial amount - everyone can earn the minimum wage, so I would have to pay at least that plus a premium for the risks involved to protestors multiplied by the number of people I hire) and I wanted political influence, I would spend that money on PR campaigns and lobbying. It would be far more cost effective. The only reason that you would protest is because you don't have the money or social connections for any other option. I think it's therefore reasonable to assume that most protestors are there because they really believe in the cause.* It may be the case that people who are already wealthy and well-educated are more likely to be regular protestors, but this is because they are able to support themselves on a reduced (or no) income, so they are able to dedicate their time to supporting causes they believe in. This option simply isn't available to people on the poverty line, no matter how strongly they believe in something, because they need to work a full-time job (or several jobs) just to keep themselves alive. *Yes, there are some people who are thugs out to cause trouble, but that shouldn't be used to discredit the majority who are sincere about their intentions, just as the fact that there are some thugs who go out to cause trouble at football matches shouldn't be used to discredit regular supporters. Which makes sense. If you are a protest group trying to punch above your weight in terms of economic and social resources then you need to stay in the headlines. In reality, most people aren't active citizens so the only way that you can get their attention is by disrupting something they're interested in, whether that's traffic, a football match, or the jubilee. A group whose intention is to run a sustained campaign of civil disobedience until sufficient action is taken to address their concerns would be failing if it didn't show up for an event as big as this.

Be patient! It's good Manors!

It's now announced as 'London Paddington' though and the signs on the platforms say the same (or they did the last time I went). The real dissapointment though (for the tourist) is that they would have emerged right next to all of the parts of London they wanted to see, so had no reason to use the Underground.

This is probably in part down to back-to-back measurements being out. The 'right' solution is probably to fix that rather than fiddle with the short-circuit protection (even though the latter could possibly work - I just don't know how you would do it).

Dear thread, I win. Kind regards, DK P.S. My sister believes that (all) trains have steering wheels. Even she could tell you this is wrong. Why don't they give her an apprenticeship? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/134133502350?hash=item1f3afad18e%3Ag%3Ai9YAAOSwwDlilOrH&LH_BIN=1

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175291193936?hash=item28d02b5a50%3Ag%3A45cAAOSwP2liEPwG&LH_All=1 So I get to bid in an auction when trying to buy one item against somebody who wants a different item? Hmm...