Castle Aching

[Nearholmer]

Have PC members seen this, especially the harbour? https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/136318-the-ballycrochan-line/page/2/
 

I really like Mr F’s layouts, because they convey place and time wonderfully, and a highly operable, without getting caught in a neurotic tangle of near-invisible detail. 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Have PC members seen this, especially the harbour? https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/136318-the-ballycrochan-line/page/2/
 

I really like Mr F’s layouts, because they convey place and time wonderfully, and a highly operable, without getting caught in a neurotic tangle of near-invisible detail. 

 

Great bridges, thanks.

 

And spookily on topic.  When you see my next update on the test track, you'll see why!

 

In the meantime, I'll enjoy looking at this layout.

[RedGemAlchemist]

13 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

I have found that on the question of what constitutes too many railway magazines is a structuralist philosophical problem, the answer to which is usually revealed when one finds that one's abode has suddenly started leaning in a direction unintended by its builders. Balance is needed in all things so I suggest just even the piles out so the load is spread.

Exactly. Each must find their own answer to this deep philosophical problem.

 

17 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Apologies for that outburst. For my penance, I submit a picture of a Great Eastern Railway locomotive, Class T26 2-4-0 No. 420:

 

 

Nice clean lines. How could any RTR manufacturer who already has a Y14 under their belt resist?

Agreed wholeheartedly. A beautiful locomotive.

 

15 hours ago, sem34090 said:

However, at risk of seriously offending those whom I have not already offended, I can't tolerate atheists who won't accept that others are entitled to have religious beliefs. Just because one may perceive another to be wrong doesn't mean that one has a right to impose one's own beliefs on that other. Unless they're about to seriously harm people...

I can't help but agree here, even as an atheist myself. The life choices of others are not yours to judge or interfere with unless they are directly harmful to themselves (assuming you care about the person in question) or others. 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I really like Mr F’s layouts, because they convey place and time wonderfully, and a highly operable, without getting caught in a neurotic tangle of near-invisible detail. 

I am concerned that there are some areas of the layout which appear to be devoid of track, however.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I really like Mr F’s layouts, because they convey place and time wonderfully, and a highly operable, without getting caught in a neurotic tangle of near-invisible detail. 

I am concerned that there are some areas of the layout which appear to be devoid of track, however.

[brack]

21 hours ago, Phil Traxson said:

Perhaps re-open the Afon Wen, Caernarfon, Bangor link.  The Aberystwyth to Afon Wen section still exists though without looking I'm not sure that the side of the triangle near Morfa Mawdach that links the Aberystwyth and Pwllheli lines without reversal exists. I believe this is also in part of the plan if the first part succeeds. Unfortunately I doubt that I will live long enough to see it happen. I'm also of the opinion that it is about as likely to happen as the FR & WHR extending from Caernarfon to Bangor, in fact the latter, at "no chance" may well be more likely! 

 

Phil T. (I'm in favour of either or both of the above)

   

Itd be cheaper to grab some land off england in the marches when our civil war breaks out in the next year or two.

Balkanisation both as intended (SNP) or unintended (conservative, DUP, brexit) policy or consequence is fairly popular in our electoral choices. I daresay a newly independent wales (assuming they dont immediately schism into Cardiff vs the rest) could secure territory around Shrewsbury with ease.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, brack said:

Itd be cheaper to grab some land off england in the marches when our civil war breaks out in the next year or two.

Balkanisation both as intended (SNP) or unintended (conservative, DUP, brexit) policy or consequence is fairly popular in our electoral choices. I daresay a newly independent wales (assuming they dont immediately schism into Cardiff vs the rest) could secure territory around Shrewsbury with ease.

Interesting......

 

Remember, BSJ (Sorry, pterry...) will have billions in hand that won't be going to Europe!

 

Initial advances may well be made, but the remilitarisation of Offas Dyke and the Border cities would take place in short order, and any short-term gains would be reversed with advantage, and counties like Monmothshire may well be annexed completely. In addition, a punitive push around North Wales, taking advantage of the Edwardian defensive positions (Not that Edward, the first one!)  might be taken to pin the Welsh in their mountain fastnesses... 

 

There may well be Armoured Trains also, penetrating from Shrewsbury to the coast to encircle Eryri from the south and threaten Aberystwyth too... 

 

Best leave things as they are!

 

 

[Compound2632]

The Principality should look to play off the Russians and Chinese to get the best deal on rail investment. Or take a leaf out of Trump's book and offer to buy Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire, or parts thereof. Perhaps these counties will become disputed territory and a nightmare for map publishers?

Edited December 8, 2019 by Compound2632

[webbcompound]

18 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Initial advances may well be made, but the remilitarisation of Offas Dyke and the Border cities would take place in short order, and any short-term gains would be reversed with advantage, and counties like Monmothshire may well be annexed completely. In addition, a punitive push around North Wales, taking advantage of the Edwardian defensive positions (Not that Edward, the first one!)  might be taken to pin the Welsh in their mountain fastnesses... 

 

There may well be Armoured Trains also, penetrating from Shrewsbury to the coast to encircle Eryri from the south and threaten Aberystwyth too...

 

that would require a)  suitable trains and b) an army, both of which are in short supply as far as I am aware. Still, here is a mock(ery) up of the (suitably Edwardian) dazzle camouflaged "nodding warhorse" making its way along the coast.

[Hroth]

6 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

that would require a)  suitable trains and b) an army, both of which are in short supply as far as I am aware. Still, here is a mock(ery) up of the (suitably Edwardian) dazzle camouflaged "nodding warhorse" making its way along the coast.

 

Rather like troops going off to the Front in London buses.....

 

 

Chap in the foreground is saying "Quick, where's a railway bridge?"

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by Hroth

[Allegheny1600]

Speaking as an Englishman, I would definitely become a conscientious objector if it ever came to taking up arms against any of my fellow Brits!

As a European, I sincerely object at the thought of taking up arms against any other residents of this wonderful continent.

In fact, as a human being, I object to taking up arms against anyone who isn't actually trying to kill me.

 

It is not a natural thing to want to do, murder the other fellow just because he comes from "over there" so why listen to anyone who is telling us to do just that?

[webbcompound]

there is a railway under the bridge, also under the river and under the ground, honest.

[Nearholmer]

Actually, you know, if we were to offer groups of blokes extended camping expeditions to France, with basic pay, rations, and clothing provided, by vintage bus, provided that (a) no war was involved, and (b) they could leave their loved ones behind, I reckon we’d have queues round the block.

[Compound2632]

... especially if you told them they'd be home for Christmas.

[Nearholmer]

I was thinking that the main attraction would be a cast-iron promise that it wouldn’t be over by Christmas.

 

(I have been severely over-exposed to pre-Christmas-commercialisation this weekend) 

[Donw]

1 hour ago, Allegheny1600 said:

Speaking as an Englishman, I would definitely become a conscientious objector if it ever came to taking up arms against any of my fellow Brits!

As a European, I sincerely object at the thought of taking up arms against any other residents of this wonderful continent.

In fact, as a human being, I object to taking up arms against anyone who isn't actually trying to kill me.

 

It is not a natural thing to want to do, murder the other fellow just because he comes from "over there" so why listen to anyone who is telling us to do just that?

 

I must be not listening quite well because I haven't heard anyone telling me to kill others. That Blair chappie did get the country entangled in war. I was one of those protesting strongly, to no avail I deeply regret the death of British soldiers and foreign civillians who by and large were not intent on killing us. I know Sadam was a mad dictator but attacking the whole country was not the best way to deal with him IMO. 

I suspect some of the Border Counties might feel more akin to the Welsh but I dont think Plaid Cymry would appeal to them. There is quite a lot of joshing goes on along the Border but in my experience ( having lived in Shropshire and the Forest of Dean) folks get on well with each other.

 

Don

[brack]

2 hours ago, webbcompound said:

that would require a)  suitable trains and b) an army, both of which are in short supply as far as I am aware. Still, here is a mock(ery) up of the (suitably Edwardian) dazzle camouflaged "nodding warhorse" making its way along the coast.

How the hell do you aim your guns steady when it bounces up and down? Or try and approach anything stealthily as it squeals around mild curvature?

Also, I bet you anything the turrets would leak like a sieve and when the heating is on it smells of burning metal.

[Allegheny1600]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

 

I must be not listening quite well because I haven't heard anyone telling me to kill others.

Were you in uniform at that time?

I had left the army by then but was liable for recall, like many thousands of others.

Also, like many thousands of others, I was eager to join up after 1982 but had to wait until 1983 until I could take the Queens shilling!

Cheers,

John.

[robmcg]

10 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I really like Mr F’s layouts, because they convey place and time wonderfully, and a highly operable, without getting caught in a neurotic tangle of near-invisible detail. 

 

 

And you dare to publish that in the same forum as certain highly respected modellers ?   I am shocked!   And pleased.

 

 

[robmcg]

To expand on my previous post just now, one of my successful model railways in the 1960s was on a 8' plank, with ballast and scenery, where I towed Kitmaster models with brown cotton 'borrowed' from my mother, wound onto a spool driven by a Meccano clockwork engine.

 

A certain degree of imagination was perhaps involved.  I didn't have , no,  make a stone bridge, for a start.   But the engines looked great, even with incorrect bogies on the Hornby Dublo tinplate stock...

 

Then I discovered girls, motorbikes,  and other distractions, just as my physics teacher had predicted.   He also in front of the class predicted my 'end'. All because I wrote lab results on a scrap of paper... 

 

But the trains and imagination never went away. 

Edited December 8, 2019 by robmcg

[sem34090]

Such is my life that in my mid-teens discovered heritage railways and haven't looked back...

 

(Just remember here that my idea of a Saturday night out is a night duty at Medstead... )

 

[robmcg]

May I enquire of the illustrious readers of this eminent thread how I must act in accordance with basic principles of politeness with regard to another much-read thread, namely the one where 'real modelling' is discussed?

 

I have got into a lot of trouble in my life by being too lax with standards of behaviour, and would love to put a(n) heavily edited picture of a(n) Hornby Scottish B1 into a thread currently covering the esoteric details of the class,  but it might result in my expulsion from the forum for 'contentious behaviour'..

 

So I'll put the pic here instead...

 

Lovely model and in fact hardly edited at all, but at least I paint my own skies.  

 

edit; pic removed as outside remit of thread

 

 

 

This one is self-powered.  What will they think of next? What I cannot work out is why RM writers talk of wanting models to look like models, not of the real thing.  When models are of course models, and pictures are pictures of models or the real thing or something else, like Annie's beautiful Victorian travels.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by robmcg

[Nearholmer]

Thinking back, in my teens, I managed to discover girls, and motorbikes, and volunteering on preserved railways, and being an active member of a model railway club, and getting-up at six o'clock every weekday morning for work, and evening classes two nights each week.

 

Put like that, I only wish I had half the energy now that I had then!

 

For clarity, I don't decry highly detailed model railways, in fact I admire them, and the people with the single-mindedness to build them, but I equally admire Mr F's work because he "cracks on", and gets a big layout to a very presentable standard indeed in a reasonable time, by avoiding the snare of micro-detailing.

[monkeysarefun]

On 08/12/2019 at 04:02, Regularity said:

What was said was that such a suggestion was not true.

But they are attempts to explain something and equally valid in their way - which is how to easily side-step this issue:

Creationism is a theological explanation and a matter of faith.

Evolution is a scientific explanation open to challenge, debate, evidence and fact.

Taken on their own terms, they are fine, but don’t belong together in the same arena.

 

I worked at an oil company once where there was a geophysicist who was deeply religious in that fundamentalist the-bible-is-literally-true way.

 

Yet his day to day work required him to interpret and describe  geological processes and features that  were provenly millions of years old and which made obvious that the world hadn't been created in seven days a few thousand years ago.

We asked him once how he was able to keep both completely exclusive positions happily  in his head, and he said that one was just  for work and the other one was how things really are. 

 

 

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

We asked him once how he was able to keep both completely exclusive positions happily  in his head, and he said that one was just  for work and the other one was how things really are. 

 

 

It is a rather common experience to come to believe that what one is doing at work has ceased to have any connection with reality.