Zero Gravitas

Credit to: Shop | Stephen Collins Illustration

Never mind the van - just look at the backs of those wheelsets. I've never seen anything quite like that before (or have I just not been paying attention?)

I use standard loose tea leaves, applied in the time-honoured fashion with cheap hair spray (cheaper the better - it's stickier). The trick is then a waft of satin purple over the foliage with the airbrush. Not very much though! When you look at the leaves of the copper beech they have a distinct purple tinge - to the extant that it's sometimes referred to as the purple beech.

This has just appeared in my Facebook feed: (1) Facebook

Just received mine - and it's lovely. And thank you for including the card above. However, I'm going to put the time and effort to use by asking if there are any plans to sell to tie-down points as separate items, please? They are beautifully done, and I can see lots of other places where they would be really useful...

At Pendon there are Modelu 3-D printed figures, from scans of some of the volunteers in appropriate costume. They are good enough to tell who the person is from the 4mm model. That’s pretty good in my opinion.

Brilliant. As I wait on platform 2 for the 09:27 Didcot - Paddington on Wednesday morning, this will be all I will be able to think about….

Actually up to 4% of global annual turnover: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-le-processing/penalties/ Although talking about a “standard maximum” and then a “higher maximum” has never made a lot of sense to me…. I have always thought there should be a “maximum” and that’s it…

Hi Simon, Any idea on a publishing date yet, please - and will it be possible to place a preorder? TIA

330 miles for £90? My trusty diesel Octavia will do about 720 miles for £90 of diesel at 165.9 per litre… My opinion is that hydrogen will have its place - probably for trucks and where range is really needed. It’s not ready yet - but it probably will be. Just hop the Octavia lasts long enough…

Was in Belgium this week - I can confirm that “STOP” appears on stop signs there.

Firstly, and most importantly, I apologise for giving the impression I was dismissing the discussion. I'm not - I was just trying to give a bit of context to where we have got to. However, whilst Thomas Aquinas asked the question "can several angels be in the same place?" around 1270; the first reference to "whether a million angels may not fit upon a needle's point" was apparently 1637 - some time after the end of the medieval period (which some claim the be at the fall of Constantinople in 1453, whilst others claim it ended in 1517 when Martin Luther set about a church door with a hammer). In any case, I was using the phrase in its generally-accepted modern context of arcane intellectual speculation, and making the point that the variations that the shade will inevitably have had in real life will be much greater than the variations that the discussion is getting getting down to... Good thing I wasn't talking about the colour of the angels - or indeed whether they were prototypical angels or generic angels designed to give a good impression of angelness...🙂

IIRC, didn’t the Southern used to turn sets of coaches periodically, because the side facing south would fade from exposure to sunlight more than the north-facing side. Just another reason why discussion of the minutiae of colour differences is really deep into angels on the head of a pin territory…

May be old news now, but just seen this: https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/news/cooper-craft-products-to-return

I’m not normally a fan of cover versions, but try the Saturdays’ version of Christmas Wrapping - I think it’s significantly better than the original (and I say that as a Talking Heads fan)

The same - many happy Saturday nights in London pubs in the mid-eighties. Although I have to admit I spent more time watching Norman and wishing I could play bass like that.

Not quite right - should be pizza shop, estate agent, pizza shop, takeaway, pizza shop, estate agent, pizza shop, pizza shop, takeaway, pizza shop, chippy, pizza shop…. And yes, I do live there 🙂

Ah - Feng Shui, the Chinese for “utter b*ll*cks”…

Just bumping this, as it is absolutely stunning work.

Indeed. Last time I had my car serviced, I was told that I would receive an invitation to complete a “customer satisfaction survey”, and that if I was planning to score anything less than 9/10 would I please contact them first, as anything less would result in serious grief from head office.

I’ve seen enough - please just take my money! Seriously - is the order book open for this yet? I’ve got a Five79 fish van chassis I’ve been working up to putting on my Stove R, but this will be a better solution (with all due respect to Roger Chivers, whose 4mm kits I like very much indeed).

interesting… and I shouldn’t really need to ask this, but I will: does the Hatton’s wheelbase match the Stove R?

I’ve also got a fish van chassis to go under the stove R when I’m feeling brave, but I’ve already decided that I’m not going to try and narrow the body. I intend to use in on a milk train, and so it won’t need to be next to any other coaching stock, which may minimise the visual effect.

And rightly so - I’m currently on holiday in Lanzarote, but I know that my genesis coach is at home waiting for me. And in which case, it’s going to be much easier. Apologies for any confusion.

IIRC, one of the characteristic features of the LMS fish van and the Stove R was the the solebars were the “wrong” way round - i.e. with the webs of the channel section facing inwards. That makes using the Hattons under frame a bit more complicated.