papagolfjuliet

Now, to be fair the Tri-ang Wagons Lits sleeping car is a rare item and a good one will probably set you back around forty quid, but there is such a thing as taking the Mickey. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185118937555?hash=item2b19f2d1d3:g:e4oAAOSwreRhcJzv&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwP9pQ%2FNBwzym2wIACP1mA%2BcCCSNYn68Mmt2NM5byo%2FCFGPpiu9W81tA4qqWCs8u2Zw2LPgtybDz5MZhNbEWP0RPSMPBF3GsbqJENnOrfUAbhRhV5LDIvpiZIIDmhfCcCGcaYDiAcmWni3LUV0cziR5jyQ1kZgbAvDmQGKj%2BCJ%2FYDbHYsXv7MEPp%2FTVVSxgb4tvXDEk%2FBF0uqtJcu2GzpgE%2BzOS%2BltIFfP1KvHzR25%2FlDLInf1N0q9TfO4%2FXENR8KEQ%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR-SqnKSJYw

I knew some fun guy would do that joke.

The British Mushroom Company's narrow gauge railway at Chislehurst Caves. Motive power: a Baby Austin. What a microlayout this would make. I'm thinking Oxford Diecast Austin, plus Faller Road System buried under track?

I belive so. Juice is definitely going across it and it is intact, so my suspicion is that in forty-odd years of storage all the electricity elves have escaped from the magnet.

That one's Darius43's in the next post. Mine's an unbuilt kit.

He's done the same value-reducing job on a Kitmaster Garrett and Swiss Crocodile.

No idea, but I'll be popping down there later in the week for a look.

News of the other former Thorpe Park line's stock: the four coaches which went to the Lynton and Barnstaple and thence to Statfold Barn have now been donated by the SBR to the Bala Lake Railway and were delivered to Llanuwychllyn last week: https://bala-lake-railway.co.uk/2023/11/24/blr-news-november-2023-edition/

Here's another photo of the operational one (LMS No. 7106) taken in 1996. Last I heard - which was two years ago - TFT was still using it as Bibbiena pilot and on occasional trains to the Baraclit concrete factory. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:15.11.96_Vercelli_Cariboni_700.001.jpg

A repatriation bid was mooted in 2016, but I haven't heard anything since. https://www.railwaymagazine.co.uk/1105/lms-built-shunters-in-italy-could-uk-preservationists-bid-to-bring-them-home/

Of course under a former regime the 2024 announcements would have consisted of artist's impressions of a WD 2-10-0, a Bulleid-Raworth Booster, and a Port of Par Bagnall.

This should fit the bill: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/kitson/kitsonst.htm

It's a vile slander to claim that the GWR only owned three types of engine, and who doesn't go misty eyed at the thought of Saint King Castle Hall arriving at a country junction station where a thing shaped like a matchbox pushes identical grey wagons around while a branch line train with the loco at the wrong end simmers in the bay platform?

Have the two LMS jackshaft shunters which survive in Italy been mentioned yet? Some photos of one of them here: https://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17,6698323

A few more, which fell out of a second hand book. No idea who took them or when or where. The second Class 20 image is partly double exposed but is included anyhow as it might be of some interest and because I'm a sucker for a Thornaby kingfisher.

Interesting to see them side by side. The Jouef Whistler was state of the art at the time and I note that it stands up pretty well next to the Bachmann and Limby models.

Lucky ebay find this week, lucky in that it was bought in a thirty quid job lot of Dublo coaches in which its photograph did not even appear: an unbuilt MTK Cravens parcels railcar complete with motor bogie! Everything is present and correct and I plan to have a go at it, but the motor bogie is stone dead. Is it worth trying to get it repaired, and if so by whom, and if not can anybody suggest a suitable alternative? Photos to follow.

The leading vehicle in the breakdown train pictured there has survived and is preserved in departmental condition by the LMSCA at Peak Rail. http://www.cs.rhrp.org.uk/se/CarriageInfo.asp?Ref=686

Two of the three RODs preserved in Australia were loaned to British companies prior to export: 1984 (pictured as such in Dave John's link) to the LYR and then the LNWR and 2003 to the GCR. The third Aussie survivor is either 1615 or 2004; if the latter then it was a Caledonian engine for a brief period.

I think it's fair to say that the Ffestiniog is a 'heritage' wasteland once you get above Tan y Bwlch, and indeed Harbour Station itself is essentially a modern station housed in some heavily modified Victorian buildings. Where the FfR does score is in its commitment to the restoration and replication of historic rolling stock.

Sorry but that's not correct. The GER box van, BR Shocvan and shock open, LNER CCT, BR Palvans and 12t van, BR lowmac, LNER 13t opens and LMS 3 plank are definitely the property of the Farwath Rolling Stock Group and the VEA is the property of the station group. They are listed as such on the stock list which is available on the NYMR website. Only the NER box van is not owned by the station group or its affiliate. If the NYMR is now saying that the confiscated (one word for it) wagons are not the property of those groups then it may wish to update its own public documentation. Oops. Follow the 'Rolling Stock' link on this page for the NYMR's official stock list with details of ownership: https://www.nymr.co.uk/carriages

The NYMR does have one such engine, 45428, which in BR days was shedded at Neville Hill and is known to have worked over the Malton to Whitby line. Another NYMR affiliated loco, 2253, is also a former Neville Hill engine and also worked over the Moors, and 62005 worked the Whitby Moors Railtour while still in BR capital stock. There are a few other preserved locos which are known to have worked over the line: NER long boiler 0-6-0 No.1275, Class 40 No. D345, and Class 03 No. D2066 which worked the very last revenue earning BR train over what is now the NYMR - a Malton to New Bridge quarry pick up goods.

It's worth pointing out that preserved lines - I'm not keen on the word 'heritage' because as the great Gwyn Williams said it doesn't really mean anything - which have got into serious bother because of high handed and/or incompetent management can be turned around. Here's an example from today, on one of my current local lines: https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/23932186.llangollen-railway-attraction-year-prize/ It's also worth noting that this is not the NYMR's first brush with 'professional' management. It happened before, in the days of Horner and Pearce (when I was volunteering), and such a mess did they make of it that the first AGM report issued by the new regime after they were ousted was entitled 'A Blueprint For Survival.' Among their other plans for a more 'professional' railway were the installation of lifting barriers at Grosmont and worst of all a planned redesign of Pickering station, commissioned from the BR(NE) architecture department, which among other things would have seen the main entrance sheeted over with plate glass and one of the large cast iron window frames in the outer walls removed to make way for a new main entrance door. Meanwhile the station cafes were running out of sausage rolls by mid-morning because the 'professionals' were too busy being 'professional' elsewhere.

I too am a life member and that is as far as it goes. I live in North Wales, haven't been near the NYMR in five years, haven't volunteered there since the early 90s when I moved first to Scotland and then to China and then to Kent, know only one member of the Levisham Station Group and then only dimly and don't even like him very much, have never volunteered at Levisham, and am about as socially conservative as Roy Jenkins. And there was nothing 'gleeful' about my link to that review. I am extremely upset about what has happened on a line I have always loved and while I am aware that there are faults on both sides the tone of the leaks from the NYMR has been absurd. A vandalised leaflet? Shocked, yes shocked am I. Shocked, I say. These events are sadly typical of a rash of similar instances at many lines over recent years - West Somerset, East Lancs, Teifi Valley, Strathspey, Peak Rail, Lynton & Barnstaple, the list goes on and on - and each time volunteers and volunteer groups find themselves on the losing side of unnecessarily escalated rows with management types who are full of the letter of 'professionalism' and empty of its spirit. I'd also point out that the outgoing NYMR GM - sorry, CEO - was not noted for his habit of remaining aloof. To his credit he was and is a great exponent of management by walking around so if we're doing 'faults on both sides' it is a little unfair to suggest that he did not know what was going on - vandalised leaflet and all - until it was too late to do anything but go nuclear. But other than that your analysis of me and my views is spot on. Grats.

It is worth pointing out that the Levisham station group did not merely sell tickets and crisps. They also maintained the station and its environs including trackside drainage and fencing, rebuilt the station ticket office and waiting room from a condition in which it was structurally unsound to one in which it won a HRA award, reconstucted the former Scarborough Gallows Close goods yard weighbridge building, restored a rake of vintage wagons (which has now been towed to Pickering and dumped there by the management), was instrumental in the restoration of NER TO No.945Y, and much more. They weren't just a lot of gold braid wallahs.