dick rowland

Nice!!

The 'Rails in the Valleys' cover illustrations are excellent. Very evocative.

Welcome back Jack, a much missed name, well remembered.

Years ago I saw a painting of an A4 in lined maroon, it suited it quite well in my opinion.

Tish, I left it too late, it seems! Seriously, these controllers are very good. I have had one in use for about four years on my German n gauge layout.

I managed to visit Pendon yesterday, it must be about thirty years since I was last there. As I had expected, it was excellent. It was good to see the Madder Valley actually working. I understand that the operating locos are not always John Ahern originals. I'm fairly sure the railcar, with interior lighting, is of more recent vintage. I got there about 1300, so I had plenty of time to enjoy the MVR, Dartmoor, the Vale scene and last but not least, the Teignmouth Sea wall scene. A good selection of trains, as always. I even saw a train on the Midland & South Western Junction line on the Vale scene. A couple of 'wind up' points: the signal arms didn't 'bounce' and really good smoke units with drain cock simulation would make it 100% perfect instead of only 99.9%. Some people are very hard to please! More and more simply superb buildings and scenes have appeared on the Vale scene, Pendon never fails to amaze me and inspire me. A note: public transport from Didcot Parkway to Long Wittenham appears to be virtually non-existent. I used taxis from Didcot Parkway to Long Wittenham. The train fare, from Cambridge, was actually quite reasonable but, factoring in the taxi fares I may well hire a car next time.

I am not a vindictive person, but it is very tempting to wish some very bad karma on the clowns who started this fire unintentional or not.

Hopefully 'Continental Modeller' can now be fully archived, this should not be too difficult as Peco only need to go back to 1979.

'Are you aware of anything comparable for the LMS or the BR? My interest is just opposite yours :-) Michael Can anybody recommend a similar general guide for UK steam locomotives, that might be helpful to other European enthousiasts?

Not the original sketch, I think.

The original Airfix church, memories! I will have to see if I can find one. With a little imaginative detailing, it would still be a good model. About seven quid it seems, even though I model the DB in N gauge, I feel a 4mm scale diorama project coming on.

Perhaps Shapeways needs some competition. A while ago I looked at some Deutsche Bundesbahn wagon bodies in N. By the time I had sourced wheels, lettering etc, I would be paying about Euro 100.00, that is for basically a kit. A few months later, I found the same wagon, complete and ready to run from Modellbahn Union, for about Euro 35.00, guess which option I took. The only thing I have bought from Shapeways is a three-axle chassis for the Fleischmann Whylen crane in N. This was a few years ago, back then I paid a much more reasonable price of Euro 22.00 plus a normal, in my opinion, postage cost.

Reinstate the Ex-Great Eastern Mildenhall branch, and continue it to Thetford, or Elveden at any rate, as originally intended.

One may just make it to the Moselbahn, the Cochem area. Rule 1 applies!

Announced recently by Arnold for N 1:160. Even though I am a DB modeller, I am seriously tempted.

Could anybody do a better job of what appears to be full S.E.C.R. lining in 4mm scale? Not me, that's for certain. One of my favourite pre-grouping liveries, next to glorious Great Eastern Railway blue.

When I joined BAe Systems at Warton, I came back by train over the Pennines via Sheffield to Cambridge. The sun was shining, it was a lovely trip. For Northern atmosphere, how about the late Dave Shakespeare's layouts.

It looks pretty good to me as well.

I see your point, mine are the originals. The reproductions that you are referring to do, indeed , sound awful.

I have this one amongst others, it is not badly printed, the paper and the content (in my humble opinion) is good. O.K. nearly all these books date from the 1980s but so what.

Referring to the '150' and, by implication 'Great Days', series as potboilers is a little harsh I find. Although I mainly follow the good old Deutsche Bundesbahn in N, I still have a reasonable collection of U.K. themed books. I personally found the D&C books to be very well put together.

Transacord are back! http://www.transacord.co.uk/ I bought 'Trains in the Hills' last night. For Four and a half quid I cannot complain, as I expect from Peter an excellent recording.

Certainly not cheap! I following the Deutsche Bundesbahn in N as my main interest, which has never been cheap, but these latest prices are surprising. The last OO loco I bought was 'Sir Gawaine' about twelve years ago for what would be termed now a pocket money price, I do not think I'll be adding to my OO collection anytime soon. 100 Quid for a coach, that is fairly expensive for a HO coach these days. Lovely models though, I have to admit. If I do rekindle my interest in OO, I'll just have to bite the bullet. I may limit myself to a J15 and a module based on Worlington Halt, on the Mildenhall branch!

It is a pity that Peco have not produced a proper Archive DVD for all the Continental Modellers and Railway Modellers. Continental Modeller would be a start, the first issue was in 1979. In this case, one DVD should cover it. I have the Eisenbahn Journal and MIBA archive DVDs, they are excellent, Smartcat is a reasonably good search engine as well, for MIBA and EJ. If it works for MIBA and EJ, why not Peco.

I found an Omnibus version of the original stories in a charity shop recently, it is now on my bookshelf. Excellent!