John M Upton

There are 'inflluencers' and 'tiktockers' who make a living out of it.  Personally I reckon so called Internet Celebrities need to switch off their computers and go and find a proper job.

If the latest I have just heard is true, this week isn't over yet I am afraid.  I suggest a stiff drink (or indeed a whole fleet of stiff drinks) on standby...

377401 is also known as Mary from it's time a couple of years ago when a 7 fell off and it ran around as 37401 (a.k.a Mary Queen of Scots) for a couple of months!

I think it is even written beneath the unit number in one of the cabs.

For a small Scottish branchline with two services a day each way, I seem to have an awful lot of Class 37's...

Eighteen at the last count....

Presumably the Royal Train is automatically prepped and put on standby in this situation?  Mind you there is also the part of the official plan that nobody has picked up on yet (and I hope does not actually get enabled) which is from tomorrow there is supposed to be ten days of official national mourning with ALL public events cancelled...

Hopefully the BBC won't pull Gardeners World tomorrow night like they did with the Duke of Edinburgh, that created a right Twitter Storm in Middle England!

I haven't seen the weird shouty "YOU BUY ONE, YOU GET ONE FREE!!!!' double glazing window guy for a while but I suspect he is still around, waiting to pounce...

Had a browse on ebay earlier, call it nostalgia if you like. Last time a few years now you could pick up a decent example for twenty five quid, now fifteen is wanted just for an empty box...

I tend to stick to Tamiya paints now, far better quality all around, if I can get them that is.

I've copped someone else's night shifts Wednesday through Sunday so I can't be jolly and celebratory even if I wanted to. 

Distraction gesture politics from that imbecile of a Prime Minister.  Basically thinks he just needs to envelope us in Union Jacks, blue passports and get the crown pint mark back on beer glasses and we will forgive him anything.

This was an undecorated Proto 2000 SD9 (rare to find in the UK) and I am happy to report, it is complete, works a dream and all the bits are there.  Just baffled about the cellophane...

It was indeed a thread I - ahem - Fell into shall we say....

It's just wintry weather hyped up by the media.  Nothing new here except for media fuelled overreactions as usual.

An adblocker will knock it on the head if it is really annoying.

I think it has been scrapped hasn't it?

And jpeg and JPEG are exactly the same format too.

The cancelling of Christmas with just a couple of days to go last year was the highlight of 2020 for me (best Christmas ever!) so I am hoping for a last minute surge and a repeat performance....

It would help if sellers realised that those two plastic brackets that are always lying in the box doing nothing are supposed to be used, instead more often than not the loco slides backwards and forwards on its journey and I haven't had one delivered with couplings intact yet let along the usual horn knocked off, handrails wrecked, etc, etc.

Still, only paid fifteen notes for it so can't complain too much...

Replica Railways used to sell parts from their MLV kits which included those rubbing plates.  May be worth giving them a call?

Just to prove the point, the day the papers printed the 'relying on common sense' story, it was somewhere on the inside pages of many as nearer the front was a photograph of a grown member of said population with his trousers down in the street in central London with a fully lit marine distress flare shoved up his backside...

The one thing this whole Pandemic has done, is shown just how many utter idiots there are out there, far more than anyone ever realised.  That is the next pandemic that will need sorting, the pandemic of stupidity.

Start with that buffoon in No. 10 Downing Street and work upwards I suggest...

Whilst I support free speech, there are sadly, many examples nowadays where people need to have their keyboards taken away for the Greater Good.  In the olden days, these individuals would have been have had their typewriters taken away before being escorted back to their rooms by men in white coats...

You can relax now, they just cancelled Christmas....

Rarer than hens teeth.  If you do by some miracle find a copy, expect to pay a very large amount of money for it.  Last one I saw was £250+

I am not worried about the pandemic of the virus, I am more worried about the pandemic of crass stupidity that seems to be infecting everywhere...