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I mentioned that I was busy with my third etched kit, and here it is - a PDK B16/3. Digital photos have to be cruel and unusual punishment to a modeller, but they do have the advantage of pointing out where tweaks can still improve matters. Some further work will take place before Halfords Satin Black is applied, then Modelmaster lining and decals.

 

Re the B16 discussion, I built the PDK kit as my first etched attempt - a bit ambitious, with hindsight. I can't see why a modeller of Andrew/ Headstock's experience would have any difficulty, other than a need to fabricate a few "twiddly bits" which were not included in the kit. My 67 yo eyes are very happy to watch it wheel a 7 coach Gresley rake, including Comet/Hornby conversions, around the layout. The B16/3 will suffer the same fate.

 

Just as an aside, when strangers in shops address me as "mate", they are in grave danger of losing my business. Grumpy? Moi?

More, John, with regard to 4mm B16/3s

 

post-18225-0-96315000-1480527273_thumb.jpg

 

This is the B16/3 I built in the '70s, fitting a Nu-Cast body on to a scratch-built chassis. It even has Hamblings wheels! As can probably be seen, the painting is all my own work. 

 

post-18225-0-23903400-1480527276_thumb.jpg

 

I now own this PDK B16/3. It was built/painted by John Houlden for Tom Foster, who did the lovely weathering himself. I acquired it, as usual, by some horse-trading. 

 

The latter kit is excellent, the former a product of its time. 

 

I look forward to seeing yours when it's finished. 

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On the subject of how very young people used to get interested in railways ...  Just about my earliest memory: it was my third birthday, we were up early and rushing to get ready to travel to Bridlington on holiday (by bus) - and I fell down the stairs from top to bottom, and nothing would stop me crying and screaming.  So to calm me down, Dad took me into the garden and lifted me up so I could see over the hedge and down to the bottom of our street ... where there was an embankment and a signalbox (Trent Lane Junction on the ex-GN Grantham-Nottingham line) ... and a great black big steam locomotive loudly chuffing by.

 

I was quiet within seconds; and ever afterwards I found the noise of the trains friendly and comforting.  Many's the night as a lad I drifted off to sleep to the sound of heavy mineral trains trying to start-off after being held at that box, and their wheels thrashing and chimneys erupting as the loco slipped on wet rails.  

 

[Sigh]  And they say Nostalgia isn't what it used to be ...!!    :locomotive:

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Railways in the blood? I am sure my interest was seeded when I was a very little lad  in the late 1940s. My late dad was a professional musician who, on leaving the army, had his own dance band in a place called the Embassy at Milehouse in Plymouth. We lived in a small house in Devonport from 1947 and because he was free during the day a lot of the time he would take me up to Devonport Junction, west of Plymouth North Road and sit me on the wall to watch the procession of GWR and SR trains at the Junction. I have no recollection of this, other than this story as he told me, however when I went to 'big school' in 1958, that school sat next to the BR SR station at Devonport Kings Road, only a half mile or so from the Junction I visited so many times when I was little.

Some latent memory was suddenly ignited and that was that for the next 8 or 9 years but the end of steam came early in south Devon (sadly) but one young woman I knew in Weymouth enabled me to witness the end of the Bulleid Pacifcs in 1967.

Then, when I left College and was married (not the Weymouth lady) in 1969 and had my first job, I lived in Redhill about 100 yards from the 'slow' line from Redhill to Merstham and I took my first son down the road and onto the footbridge and often, to Clapham Junction and another 15+ years of railway interest was underway. Jobs in Wellingborough and then Epsom followed and the Inter City Railway Society kept us amused with Shed bashes until the 'lad' went to Uni and left home. Now I live a little further from the ECML than TW but I can still hear stuff at night in the summer; 60 years too late really but hey ho we do get steam through here at least a dozen time a year.

Apologies for rambling on but that has brought back some wonderful memories. 

In 2014 that son and myself operated my EM layout at the Retford show.

Phil

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No idea where mine comes from. I lived in a family who had no interest in trains really and for the most part in Germany, Norway and Holland at least 7 years after steam endded and then more. So how does that explain an interest in Steam, espespecially LNER and Pre grouping? My grandfather had a trainset, but we visited less than once a year throughout the time he was alive.

 

I think it was a way as a third child to get my own toys as my brothers were not interested in it. I had to have their old clothes so their old toys seemed a step too far.

Richard

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Railways in the blood? I am sure my interest was seeded when I was a very little lad  in the late 1940s. My late dad was a professional musician who, on leaving the army, had his own dance band in a place called the Embassy at Milehouse in Plymouth. We lived in a small house in Devonport from 1947 and because he was free during the day a lot of the time he would take me up to Devonport Junction, west of Plymouth North Road and sit me on the wall to watch the procession of GWR and SR trains at the Junction. I have no recollection of this, however when I went to 'big school' in 1958, that school sat next to the BR SR station at Devonport Kings Road, only a half mile or so from the Junction I visited so many times when I was little.

Some latent memory was suddenly ignited and that was that for the next 8 or 9 years but the end of steam came early in south Devon (sadly) but one young woman I knew in Weymouth enabled me to witness the end of the Bulleid Pacifcs in 1967.

Then, when I left College and was married (not the Weymouth lady) in 1969 and had my first job, I lived in Redhill about 100 yards from the 'slow' line from Redhill to Merstham and I took my first son down the road and onto the footbridge and often, to Clapham Junction and another 15+ years of railway interest was underway. Jobs in Wellingborough and then Epsom followed and the Inter City Railway Society kept us amused with Shed bashes until the 'lad' went to Uni and left home. Now I live a little further from the ECML than TW but I can still hear stuff at night in the summer; 60 years too late really but hey ho we do get steam through here at least a dozen time a year.

Apologies for rambling on but that has brought back some wonderful memories. 

In 2014 that son and myself operated my EM layout at the Retford show.

Phil

Wonderful memories indeed Phil. Thanks for sharing them.

 

I suppose that many of our generation were more aware of trains because there were more lines open. The CLC/GC in Chester was either visible or audible from the first three houses I lived in in the city. The third house overlooked the teacher-training college fields and beyond those was the CLC line to Dee Marsh, Wrexham and New Brighton. All of those lines in Chester have been gone for years, so anyone looking out from one of the front bedrooms in the house in Cheyney Road today would see a distant embankment, with just cycles as machines using it. Will that fire a future interest in velocipedes? 

 

Oddly enough, every other house I've lived in - two in Stafford, four in Wolverhampton and the current one were either in sight and/or sound of a railway apart from the last dwelling in Wolverhampton; that was close to an abandoned railway. I suppose with Stafford and Wolverhampton being important railway centres, many folk live not far from a railway, so, perhaps, it isn't so odd after all. 

 

Because of my 'obsession' with railways, relatives/friends living near to them were always visited more often. An aunt's house overlooked the GWR shed at Chester and my oldest friend lived adjacent to the ex-GWR Chester-Wrexham main line at Rossett. No doubt I've mentioned this before, but returning to such locations (not that anyone I know lives in those houses any more), even though there still is a railway (just), I cannot see it holding the slightest interest for any youngster.  

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Dear Sir's & Ma'am's

 

Is it sad that I can understand what has been written?  Including the slang that has been put out as being "new english" or some other wonderful language?  I'd have to rate it as double plus ungood...  

 

It annoyed me (as a just turned 40 year old), when the kids at work would drop into textspeak.  I'm one of the early adaptors of the internet- I've been playing around on it since 1986 or 87.  But text speak is just horrid to me.  Spelling often gets the better of me, but there us usually a helpful "check spelling" feature on modern ( 1990 or more recent) word processors.  The one on our Atari 130XE worked well enough, and that's a 64k computer.  

 

How did I end up interested in railway steam?  Well, I'm not quite sure.  Dad had finished the 2" steam roller prior to me being born, and had the 5" gauge railway still, but had no OO around the house.  I was exposed to steam right from the beginning.  I can remember going to one of the Toronto shows, we think that it was in 1979.  The show was in a warehouse down to the left of the ferry dock, and someone had a tank engine running with a chute to fire into the box, rather than just using the shovel.  I think, that it was one of the 2-6-4 tanks, but I was 3.  However, I ended up following "tin mice" rather than live steam, at least for the most part.  That being said, I lost an injector steam cone yesterday, as I was puttering around with one of my 3 1/2" gauge engines.  I think that I prefer scenic modeling to just running a live steam engine.  I'm not sure why, but hey, that's OK.   I'll add, the steam bug is fairly deep in the family.  Both granddad's were involved (Granddad Powell bought a Sentinel tractor off the docks in Liverpool, and rallied it for 3 years), and I understand that there is a great uncle who was a stationmaster on the SVR, and some relationship to Edgar Shone, who had 3 full sized road engines.  Even further back, we have a relative listed as being "engineman" at Edge Hill in 1831 or 2. You can't get much further back than that for involvement in railways.

 

 

(* note, stilted military style writing !)

James

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Thinking about places of birth and the influence upon interests, I was born very close to part of the Harton Colliery system in South Shields - an electrified railway.  I still have an keen interest in anything with growling traction motor gears, despite really being a steam man. 

 

My primary school behind in this shot!

 

post-10195-0-39215200-1480540316_thumb.jpg

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I'm sure I've recounted what probably started me off - my maternal grandfather owned the coal merchants in Freshfield station yard, and coal used to be delivered by train. One of his friends was one of the bobbies in Freshfield signal box - I spent many happy hours in there too. As a small boy, I used to be taken to the station to watch the through Southport-London Euston carriages being pulled by what I now know will have been some form of tank loco - and my favourite place was on the footbridge, with the steam and smoke billowing around...

 

Oh, and when I was born, my dad and godparents got a Hornby-Dublo 3-rail layout 'for me' - but as we all know, the truth was somewhat different, as I discovered later! Dads and train sets... I was 11 by the time we lived somewhere where it could be set up.

 

Oh, and my formative trainspotting years, early 70s, were usually spent on the platform ends at Liverpool Lime Street. I ended up in the signal box, on the footplate of both the station pilot and assorted other locomotives...

 

Happy days :)

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I've just discovered a great magazine called Modellers' Back Track dating from the early 1990s (when I was out of the hobby chasing women and large scale trains). I'm sure most of the people on this forum will know it, but for those that don't I'd recommend it for a great insight into the prototype, particularly operations.

 

Anyway, the reason for this post is that I've just read an article titled 'Can we Live With Kits' in Vol 2 No 5. Which really reminded me of the recent debates on this forum. It basically is lamenting the death of scratch building caused by the increasing quality of kits! I'll give you a quick snippet as a taster:

 

"I get the strong feeling that there is a sort of 'sameness' creeping into much of our modelling and I suggest that kits may be having something to do with it. If this be even a partly true state of affairs then paradoxically, it is because kits, these days, are generally so good that for many people they have taken over completely from the hand-built model. Let's face it, how many folk, unless they are dedicated sado-masochists, are going laboriously to build a collection of fully-detailed goods wagons when firms like Salters, Ratio and many others can turn them out by the bucketful, complete with every bolt head and piece of strapping, at prices which, even in 7mm scale, would only buy about two or three hours on bench time from a skilled craftsman?"

 

Plus ca change...! I recommend a read to put our current debate into perspective!

 

Andy

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Oh,

 

Another interesting railway-related topic? 

 

The second school I taught at in Birkenhead was adjacent to 'bomb alley', a deep cutting on the electrified line from Liverpool Central to Bidston and beyond. It was a depository for old beds, old furniture and abandoned prams, pushchairs and shopping trolleys - hence its epithet. The last school I taught at in Wolverhampton had the Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton line passing right by it. When I started at that last school (in 1975), there were always a few boys train spotting during breaks and lunchtime and after school. I often joined them with a camera. When I left the school in the early '90s, there wasn't one. Does that say something about a declining interest in railways among the young? 

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I've just discovered a great magazine called Modellers' Back Track dating from the early 1990s (when I was out of the hobby chasing women and large scale trains). I'm sure most of the people on this forum will know it, but for those that don't I'd recommend it for a great insight into the prototype, particularly operations.

 

Anyway, the reason for this post is that I've just read an article titled 'Can we Live With Kits' in Vol 2 No 5. Which really reminded me of the recent debates on this forum. It basically is lamenting the death of scratch building caused by the increasing quality of kits! I'll give you a quick snippet as a taster:

 

"I get the strong feeling that there is a sort of 'sameness' creeping into much of our modelling and I suggest that kits may be having something to do with it. If this be even a partly true state of affairs then paradoxically, it is because kits, these days, are generally so good that for many people they have taken over completely from the hand-built model. Let's face it, how many folk, unless they are dedicated sado-masochists, are going laboriously to build a collection of fully-detailed goods wagons when firms like Salters, Ratio and many others can turn them out by the bucketful, complete with every bolt head and piece of strapping, at prices which, even in 7mm scale, would only buy about two or three hours on bench time from a skilled craftsman?"

 

Plus ca change...! I recommend a read to put our current debate into perspective!

 

Andy

I remember it well, Andy. 

 

It does put things into perspective, but those kits still had to be made. I think that's the big difference with regard to our current debate. There was nothing made by Slaters or Ratio rolling-stock wise which you could just plonk on to the tracks, whatever the scale or gauge. 

 

In a very small way the situation mirrors my own modelling 'history'. Time was when I scratch-built the A1/1, K1/1, K1, K4 plus several others now expunged from the memory. I replaced most of them with kits because the results were better, at least in detail. Abstracting my modelling from the following statement, I don't necessarily think that RTR is better than kit-built (well-built) locos and rolling stock today. 

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Oh,

 

Another interesting railway-related topic? 

 

The second school I taught at in Birkenhead was adjacent to 'bomb alley', a deep cutting on the electrified line from Liverpool Central to Bidston and beyond. It was a depository for old beds, old furniture and abandoned prams, pushchairs and shopping trolleys - hence its epithet. The last school I taught at in Wolverhampton had the Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton line passing right by it. When I started at that last school (in 1975), there were always a few boys train spotting during breaks and lunchtime and after school. I often joined them with a camera. When I left the school in the early '90s, there wasn't one. Does that say something about a declining interest in railways among the young?

 

Good evening Tony.

 

I work in Wolves for Tarmac in the ultra modern i10 building which overlooks the station and the bus station. All I see are pendo's, voyagers, arriva things and some othe green silver unit that's ownership and name escape me. In my opinion there is nothing worth spotting / watching. As I drive in on a Tuesday morning I do see a class 66 on Hanson bogie cements heading North so, some interest there. Must put camera in car on a Tuesday morning.

 

Andy

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How and why did I become interested in railways? Quite simple, my dad never learned to drive so if as a family we went anywhere it was by train. That was my fault for being travel sick on buses and coaches. The train journey and the train itself became as much of the adventure as the destination. Just before my 9th birthday we had a holiday in Caernarvon, my dad had bought tickets for Carmarthen (I said the journey was an adventure). The nice man at Bedford St.Johns ticket office did sort dad's mistake out before mum walloped him. We went by DMU to Bletchley, changed trains for one of the new electric hauled services. The Queen had officially opened the new electric railway to Manchester and Liverpool the week before. At Crewe the engine was changed to a diesel. When we went past Chester there was a shed full of old steam locos with all their smoke drifting across the horizon. At Bangor we changed again to a DMU for the final leg. To me even to day, that was an incredible journey, to travel on and see so many different types of trains in service. The seed was sown.

 

A few weeks later we went to stay with my uncle who lived in Swindon. Before leaving Bedford Midland Road, mum suggested we buy something to read. She was reluctant to buy me an Ian Allan Diesel Locomotive book but she gave in. I have dyslexia so a real reading book would have been no fun for me. Sitting in the carriage at Paddington I pointed out that D7026 was next to us and I had found its number in the book. Mum said put a tick by it, she didn't know you underlined the numbers. By the time we got to Swindon the other passengers were also calling out the numbers of the locomotives for me. The hobby had germinated. 

 

That Christmas some bloke with a red suit and a white beard came very early as I had measles and left me a train set with D5572 to pull the coaches and wagons in a hope I would get better. Shoots have begun to appear.

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I've just discovered a great magazine called Modellers' Back Track dating from the early 1990s (when I was out of the hobby chasing women and large scale trains). I'm sure most of the people on this forum will know it, but for those that don't I'd recommend it for a great insight into the prototype, particularly operations.

There was also 'Backtrack'. Friend David Jenkinson encourages us all to take out subscriptions although I seem to remember my first one was free to give an insight into what we could expect.  This and 'Modellers Backtrack' were great mags even I pulled david's leg about too many pages of steel mineral wagons and tank wagons. Funnily enough, I was looking for the mineral wagons articles last week when a boat load of 7mm ones arrived from a pal. I need weathering ideas! My collection got sadly depleted when the flat garage roof partially caved in a few years ago after a storm.

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Given the significance of the railways as an employer throughout much of the last century, I imagine it would be hard to find a family that did not have some railway connection, however tenuous. In my own case, the connections come in from both sides of the family. My great grandfather on the paternal side was a porter at Blandford Forum, and my father was born in Shillingstone. On my mother's side, my grandfather was an acquaintance of Dai Woodham and so Barry scrapyard and its environs were always there in my childhood. Both my parents worked in BR drawing offices, and my father was a civil engineer involved in the taking down of Crumlin viaduct.

 

I was born a week after the closure of the S&D so have no memories of steam, but in my early years it was pretty clear that steam was something that had only just gone, so to speak, with steam locomotives still popping up on the covers of annuals, comics and so on. My my first train set would have belonged to my dad, and I was too small to really play with it, although I do have faint memories of being in a high chair, watching a black Princess Elizabeth whizz around an oval of grey track, with some blood and custard coaches behind. Later (very early seventies) my dad built an 8x4 layout and a few other locomotives joined the Princess, including the inevitable Tri-ang Dock Tank, a GWR pannier, and blue "Co-Co" diesel. As far as I know I still have all those models, including the Princess.

 

Throughout my childhood there were frequent house moves, and so any layout never lasted long, a constant source of frustration, along with never having enough pocket money to build up those gorgeous rakes of coaches you saw on the covers of the Tri-ang and Hornby catalogues. My trains were always made up of odds and sods, generally whatever single coach had been given as a birthday or Christmas present.

 

By the mid/late seventies my dad would sometimes come home from work with a copy of Railway Modeller to look at, and I suppose that's when the bug really began to bite, largely without any particular influence from the "real" railways. We didn't live near a railway line and even when we occasionally took a train somewhere, I never paid much attention to it. Later, I got given one of the Ivo Peters books and I suppose that's when my interest began to latch onto the S&D as a particular historical entity, with my dad stressing the family connections. However, at birthdays and Christmases, it was often a GWR engine that turned up as a present. I suppose there wasn't much choice back then anyway. Ever since then, my interests have been pretty loose and wide-ranging, and while my modelling tends to gravitate to the Southern/Great western/S&D, I've always felt that I could be equally drawn to any of the regions or periods. In fact a long spell abroad, with limited access to British exhibitions or models, cured me of any parochial tendencies. As far as I'm concerned, if it's got flanges and runs on rails, I'm interested - be it a Dean Single or a Class 66.

 

Above all else, I'm very grateful for whatever it was that planted the seed of this life-long interest. I've got plenty of other interests, from music to art and hillwalking, but I don't think there's anything that really takes me out of life's worries and stresses more than a good evening's modelling.

 

Alastair (Barry Ten)

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I can understand the lack of interest with modern locos and rolling stock from a number of people on this thread, I too take little notice of present day railway operations, but we are all possibly looking at the current scene by being influenced by the past.

 

I'm pretty sure that there were large numbers of people who said that they had no interest in British Railways after the demise of steam. Likewise, others said that the passing of the Westerns or the Deltics were their cut-off points. I avidly followed Class 50s for eleven years from 1983 to 1994 and then kept a slight interest as the new privatised freight designs came out until the advent of Voyagers and Pendolinos removed virtually all loco hauled passenger travel.

 

My father hates the "boring" blue and grey era, I truly revel in it because as the livery was the same for everything then you have to look for variations in design. Modelling BR blue prior to 1978 means that large numbers of pre-nationalisation designs of parcels stock (from all of the big four) were still in everyday use. As I am predominantly a coaching stock modeller then this is where I find my inspiration.

 

So I am sure that there are 8 - 16 year olds today who are fascinated by current traction (although, sadly, most parents would not want their children to be unsupervised anywhere nowadays). Whether they wish to become railway modellers, if even wish to model the current scene, is debatable but most of us class today's railways as boring because we are so influenced by our past.

 

The reason for my interest in railways? My parents met at Brighton Drawing Office. I don't think I ever had a choice, railways were in my system from a very early age.

 

Graham H

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I can understand the lack of interest with modern locos and rolling stock from a number of people on this thread, I too take little notice of present day railway operations, but we are all possibly looking at the current scene by being influenced by the past.

 

I'm pretty sure that there were large numbers of people who said that they had no interest in British Railways after the demise of steam. Likewise, others said that the passing of the Westerns or the Deltics were their cut-off points. I avidly followed Class 50s for eleven years from 1983 to 1994 and then kept a slight interest as the new privatised freight designs came out until the advent of Voyagers and Pendolinos removed virtually all loco hauled passenger travel.

 

My father hates the "boring" blue and grey era, I truly revel in it because as the livery was the same for everything then you have to look for variations in design. Modelling BR blue prior to 1978 means that large numbers of pre-nationalisation designs of parcels stock (from all of the big four) were still in everyday use. As I am predominantly a coaching stock modeller then this is where I find my inspiration.

 

So I am sure that there are 8 - 16 year olds today who are fascinated by current traction (although, sadly, most parents would not want their children to be unsupervised anywhere nowadays). Whether they wish to become railway modellers, if even wish to model the current scene, is debatable but most of us class today's railways as boring because we are so influenced by our past.

 

The reason for my interest in railways? My parents met at Brighton Drawing Office. I don't think I ever had a choice, railways were in my system from a very early age.

 

Graham H

I'm not disinterested in modern railways completely. Working for Tarmac I sometimes find myself at Tunstead and the meeting room overlooks great rocks junction. hoppers rumble past behind grumbling 66's, wagons are exchanged and just a mile a so away diesel traction is king at Peak Forrest. I could watch for hours there if I wasn't missed.

 

Andy

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There has to be something in this "early exposure to trains" that sets the interest in the blood.

I was born and lived until I was 4 years old in Brockley, South London, in a house that backed on to the LBSCR main line from London Bridge to Brighton and whilst most passenger trains would have been electric we could hear both these and the steam freight trains as they passed all day and night.

My mother used to take my sister and I for walks in a place called Brenchley Gardens (in the direction of Honour Oak), and here, the electrified branch line to Crystal Palace ran right alongside the park; I can still recall the characteristic noises & smells of old SR electric units as we sat & watched the trains in the sunshine here.

This is my earliest dateable memory, because we moved away from Brockley in 1954, when I was 4 years old, and the Crystal Palace line closed the same year. My interest in trains and model railways has never gone away since that time.

 

Tony

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I remember it well, Andy. 

 

It does put things into perspective, but those kits still had to be made. I think that's the big difference with regard to our current debate. There was nothing made by Slaters or Ratio rolling-stock wise which you could just plonk on to the tracks, whatever the scale or gauge. 

 

In a very small way the situation mirrors my own modelling 'history'. Time was when I scratch-built the A1/1, K1/1, K1, K4 plus several others now expunged from the memory. I replaced most of them with kits because the results were better, at least in detail. Abstracting my modelling from the following statement, I don't necessarily think that RTR is better than kit-built (well-built) locos and rolling stock today.

 

Tony,

 

I agree absolutely. The article just amused me given the current debate! Imagine what we might be debating in another 25 years; perhaps lamenting the skill of opening red and blue boxes being replaced by ready to plonk layouts.

 

Andy

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There was also 'Backtrack'. Friend David Jenkinson encourages us all to take out subscriptions although I seem to remember my first one was free to give an insight into what we could expect.  This and 'Modellers Backtrack' were great mags even I pulled david's leg about too many pages of steel mineral wagons and tank wagons. Funnily enough, I was looking for the mineral wagons articles last week when a boat load of 7mm ones arrived from a pal. I need weathering ideas! My collection got sadly depleted when the flat garage roof partially caved in a few years ago after a storm.

Larry,

 

The article on steel mineral wagons, along with one on Pullmans, first attracted me to the mag when I saw it at the Bluebell Railway bookshop. I can let you have a copy if you like (assuming that's allowed under Copyright- moderator please correct me if not). Just PM me.

 

Regards

 

Andy

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May a miserable old git make a request, please?

 

Though I find great pleasure in helping anyone I can with research, constructional techniques/methods, sourcing components or just offering advice, when I next get an initial greeting with just 'Hi' (particularly from someone whose identity I have no idea of), I will totally ignore it. Though that might seem rude to some, I assure you it's mutual.

 

I most certainly don't expect to be addressed as 'Sir' or even 'Dear Sir', just an informal 'Good morning/afternoon/evening' Tony.

 

Why is it that we now have to tolerate such 'modernity' of greeting or, worse still, when the greeting has been made and the question is asked as to the state of health of an individual, the answer is 'I'm good'? I hope the low-life creatures who stole those items from the Grantham van when asked a similar question with regard to their health will answer 'Actually I'm not very good (they'll be too thick to use the correct 'well'), in fact I'm dangerously-bad - very dangerously-bad!' (It should, of course, be 'ill', but they won't know that). If the moderators think this too extreme, then, no doubt, they'll remove it.

 

I shall now return to my cave in which I keep my time (only going into the past) machine.

I don't wish to cause argument about this, but I'll admit that this post made me sad.

I've been saying 'hi' to people all my life, especially when I do not know who they are, and 'I'm good' is part of my regular parlance.

I would never have imagined that either of these would cause someone to feel insulted, I had always thought that they were friendly phrases.

Surely language is flexible? Words and manners change over time and of course between different regions.

David Mitchell presented a rather nice little radio programme about manners and their origin, how the perception of manners and etiquette changes etc.

It's worth a listen, it's on youtube if anyone wishes to seek it out.

I'm not really sure where I was going with this post but did want to present my point of view.

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I can understand the lack of interest with modern locos and rolling stock from a number of people on this thread, I too take little notice of present day railway operations, but we are all possibly looking at the current scene by being influenced by the past.

 

I'm pretty sure that there were large numbers of people who said that they had no interest in British Railways after the demise of steam. Likewise, others said that the passing of the Westerns or the Deltics were their cut-off points. I avidly followed Class 50s for eleven years from 1983 to 1994 and then kept a slight interest as the new privatised freight designs came out until the advent of Voyagers and Pendolinos removed virtually all loco hauled passenger travel.

 

 

 

Graham H

 

I have one of those bound volumes of the old Model Railway News, from 1923 - 1924. Other than being a fantastic insight into a different modelling era (with some surprisingly "finescale" stuff in it) there's a brilliant letter from a reader complaining that he's lost all interest in railways after the Grouping, and that nothing will ever be the same again now that the LMS has swept away the Midland, LNWR etc, and that everything's boring and standardised now. This only a few months into the Big Four!

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I don't wish to cause argument about this, but I'll admit that this post made me sad.

I've been saying 'hi' to people all my life, especially when I do not know who they are, and 'I'm good' is part of my regular parlance.

I would never have imagined that either of these would cause someone to feel insulted, I had always thought that they were friendly phrases.

Surely language is flexible? Words and manners change over time and of course between different regions.

David Mitchell presented a rather nice little radio programme about manners and their origin, how the perception of manners and etiquette changes etc.

It's worth a listen, it's on youtube if anyone wishes to seek it out.

I'm not really sure where I was going with this post but did want to present my point of view.

Like you I use 'Hi' and whatever else comes to mind. One thing to beware as we get older is ending up like the grumpies; a short-cut to loneliness.

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Larry,

 

The article on steel mineral wagons, along with one on Pullmans, first attracted me to the mag when I saw it at the Bluebell Railway bookshop. I can let you have a copy if you like (assuming that's allowed under Copyright- moderator please correct me if not). Just PM me.

 

Regards

 

Andy

Thanks very much Andy, but PGH of this forum has them all thanks so I will have plenty of info when weathering time comes around. 

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