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One of the soubriquets often hurled at overly detailed obsessive British railway modellers is “rivet counter“ and whilst I believe that you should strive for as much accuracy as possible, being overly fixated on giving getting every single tiny detail right is/can be counter-productive. I’ve been to a number of model railway exhibitions (including Warley) and have seen layouts which have been accurate for the period down to the type of chairs used to fix the track to the sleepers and yet they didn’t convince. I would argue that Model Railways, like theatre, are all about the suspension of disbelief. Deep down, we know at a gut level that we are not looking at a MPD on Grot Central Railway in 1933, but if you trick the senses into thinking that you are looking at an MPD on Grot Central Railway in 1933 then the railway will come to life. And this the Japanese manage to do impressively and not just with their model railways. I visited a temple in Kyoto some years ago on a private tour and was shown a room, not visited by tourists, which had some beautiful painted Shoji (Japanese paper and wood room dividers) depicting Cranes wading in a lake, the master artist used but a few dozen strokes of paint to create the scene, detail was there none - but the cranes were as real as if you were seeing them in nature. I have been lucky enough to get some Japanese N gauge (one loco being a generous gift from jjb1970) and they certainly look “right”. Maybe if you were immersed in the minutiae of – say – Japanese Railways bogie types you might notice that something is amiss, but they certainly do the job of convincing you that they are tiny versions of the real thing. Not only that, but the Japanese second hand model railway market is impressive. Thanks to our Tokyo correspondent ( @railsquid who very generously and kindly helped me find a suitable model railway souvenir of my trip to Japan last year). I have seen what’s available secondhand in Japan. Forget the battered, clapped out, often dirty and damaged, rolling stock you see on the secondhand stalls and on the “used” sections of dealers tables at Model Railway shows in the UK - all the secondhand material I’ve seen for sale in Japan has been immaculate. I bought a Kato six car Hankyu Railway EMU boxed set and apart from some scuffing of the outer box sleeve, the whole box was as though it had just left the factory. Ian ( @railsquid) informed me that this was pretty much the course for the second hand model railway market in Japan.

My school housemaster had been in the Punjab police and described his actions at partition as follows". I had trouble getting g the Memsahib out to Bombay as the engi e driver wouldn't move the train. The Sikhs had stopped it and killed everyone on board. I put my pistol to the drivers head and we got going, ' It was a very nasty time with a huge death toll. Anyway time to gerramoveon. Jamie

In My Life — Beatles

I tried swapping the speaker on one of my Accurascale 37s, which has Bif's sounds on it. I tried one of the new ESU passive radiator speakers which work very well with Accurascale's own sound profile, but it didn't sound as good on the legomanbiffo loco. Swapped the Accurathrash speaker back in and tweaked the bass and treble instead, and it sounds much better. As Charlie said, Bif's sound file seems to be set up very well for the original speaker set up.

Sounded good too....

Excellent to see how it has all come together Andy. Lovely looking layout.

Great to see the 126 bodies and hear of 120s, all from my formative spotting days! I can smell the fumes and asbestos from here. I have the 126 in green in N gauge but a 3mm one does inspire. Any chance of details if there are more available. thanks Robert

Northrop Grumman is also in Palmdale.

I IIRC the reason for the doors being locked is Network Rail / Southern do not want an unsecured door coming foul of the adjacent line and being smashed into by a national rail service at high speed - which could cause significant injuries to the driver or on board passengers. As such, and in view of the absence of secondary door locking which would ensure that the doors can not be opened / tampered with by passengers, it is written into the contract which allows them to run onto Network Rail land that the Spa Valley MUST ensure all doors are locked before leaving the platform at Groombridge and stay that way till the train returns there. As far as I am aware there is no requirement for doors to be locked on the other side of the train - which is handy as the usual platform used at Eridge is on the opposite of the carriage to the platform used at Groombridge. I would also add that seeing as the Spa Valley is overseen by the ORR and the above requirement has been there from day 1 of running into Eridge then they quite obviously don't have an issue with it regardless of how uneasy it might make you feel.

Some of us don’t need to cite brothers.

One of IPhones silly traits. You can rotate it with image editing software. A shorty indeed!

That's a big advantage indeed, good thinking by Intentio. Thanks for that tip, I always struggle to get the paint off the railtops neatly. The sides can look fine to the eye but then in close-up photos they aren't neat towards the top. Will give this a go.

I'm not sure it matters - given what I see of the damage that modern anti-tank weapons do. Thinking of wreckage of Iraqi equipment in the First Gulf War (less impressive anti-tank weapons than today) to images from Ukraine more recently and none of those had traction batteries. The intentional explody bits they carry around are least as dangerous as batteries.

Bit of a sweeping generalization. There are many religious groups represented in India. Muslims are still a large population and are not vegetarian. While most Indian adherents of Hinduism were vegetarian, some enclaves historically were not - particularly those living close to the ocean where eating seafood is permissible. This is now much more widespread. The meat proscription in Hinduism has changed over time. Yes prosperity is a factor - but it is a broad societal change away from self-sufficient agriculture. India Today: The plot chickens! One in every two Indians relishes non-veg every week Pizza chains in India offer turkey based versions of items that would normally be made with pork in the west - like pepperoni. "Turkey bacon" is common in the US. Without a modifying adjective terms like bacon and ham would normally imply pork, but their real distinction is in the curing process to life-extend the pork product in days before refrigeration - more so than the animal.

Palmdale is from the North American Aviation / Rockwell International heritage. The B1-B was built at Palmdale. Boeing acquired the mil/aero assets of Rockwell International. (It is also home to the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works.) Long Beach was the primary McDonnell Douglas facility in Southern California.

The impacts of that executive team you refer to is primarily in Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA). It is almost a completely different company than Boeing Defense, Space and Security (BDS) - which is where the Starliner program is. Yes the board room is the same but the assertions you make are specific to BCA. BDS is building the F-15EX Eagle II which has a McDonnell-Douglas pedigree but I don't think your assertions are relative to that aircraft.

Your optimistic view on my ability is to be applauded lol. I did own one a few years ago but never got my head around it really. I'm a far happier village idiot paying for re blows if needed, but thank you for the idea. Cheers, looking forward on Friday to hearing your cl 60 sounds I bought off you at Bristol. Simon.

A relative on mum's side (perhaps an uncle / great uncle of hers? I don't remember) was in the Australian Light Horse, which, attached to Allenby's forces, famously (at least in Australia) participated in the world's last successful cavalry charge (allegedly) during the Gaza campaign at the Battle of Beersheba, though I don't know whether my relative was there at the time.

And can make a mess of your house when they put their foot down.. Interesting bit from 30 seconds. (warning, contains Australian language!)

Cut and paste seems to be doing a lot of overtime in those feedback comments. Edit: Just out of interest I had a look at the reviews of a railway very close to my heart in the Midlands on Trip Advisor (I’m not a big fan of that site btw) But I have to say the whilst the recent reviews are very positive (which is great) whoever’s doing the feedback is taking the time out to personalise them, so they don’t just read like a cut and paste job, maybe those in charge in North Yorkshire should maybe have a look at how customer feedback should be done?

A MK2D coach. Goes with Deltic. Plus loads of livery varients. Would be nice to see a decent 153 dmu. Still recon it could be a 60? But as there seems to be a general English Electric theme, a 73 in caledonian would go with mk5s, or a 40..... Could be a 93?? I could guess all night? 😂😊

My concern is that whilst people are looking to the sky they are not facing the facts that the Earth is coming under considerable man made pressure. It feels more like a billionaires escape pod or means to get precious metals from other planets, or more likely gaining the high ground from which to dominate those below i.e. weaponisation. Sadly the direction of the inhabitants of the Earth at this present time is towards totalitarianism, so any conquest of space is going to end up an extension of that - I don't see a Star Trek style confederation of planets, I see each main threat actor going it alone and that cannot be a good thing long term. What I also see are billionaires making themselves richer off government contracts to build space ships, like an extension of the military industrial complex that sees constant and rising expenditure from which a group of people can and do profit from war. Going to the moon in the 1960s had no purpose other than to beat the Russians - there was no cheese to bring back and the cost of going was so astronomical they stopped. There are plenty of precious metals there, but the cost of bringing them back to Earth is prohibitive compared to their availabity here on Earth with the exception of Helium-3 which is rare here and all over the Moon. Helium-3 being sought for it's value by India, China and no doubt the USA - odd that these three are so keen to go to the moon right now. If going to the moon is expensive, going to Mars even more so and colonisation is only ever going to be limited because surviving there will be hard, according to Elon we should've have been on our way in March 2024 - but those dates keep getting pushed back because going to space is hard, going to the moon harder and a return trip to Mars harder still. The fact that SpaceX are touting Starship as a replacement for aircraft on intercontinental flights tells me that their focus is not just on some philantropic mission to populate the stars and there is real concern about what happens with all the greenhouse gaes these rockets will release as the launch volumes increase, they are undoing a lot of the effort that is going towards decarbonisation: https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-rocket-launches-environmental-impact So whilst I love watching rockets launch and I'd love for us to develop interstellar capabilities for human travel, a lot of me thinks this current effort is all about making money not necessarily advancing human civilisation. But I will shut up again now, I recognise that in a thread about going into space it's not the place to continue the argument.

Aww jeez, its not to here is it? - I woke up to this this morning as it is! I made it into work but if the rain keeps up I may need to go the round-about route home. T20 - USA vs Pakistan turned into an unexpected nail-biter, they had to go to the super over to sort it out..

Pickrd one of theseup in town earlier, BR vac-fitted livery. Nice little thing, looks the part, appreciate the white-painted handbrake levers, but shouldn’t it have lamp brackets, as a vac-fitted wagon? Then again, I note it is not XP branded, so could not in theory have run as the tail vehicle while it was in service; I think I may have answered my own question. Presumably the wheelbase prevented an XP rating. So it’s a nice little minor livery variation as well, and I strongly approve of such things… Will be given light weathering and the tarp bar in the ‘down’ position.

Just had a quick look through the ones at Speke where most were at one point. No shedcode plates visible on dozens of photos of cab and nose ends. None visible on a quick look through the Oakwood Press book either. Unfortunately I've not got the Wild Swan book yet. I have a sneaky feeling that if shed allocations were carried they were in the cabs. Jason