pete_mcfarlane

Just got back (and finished my supper). Overall, that was quite a good show. It wasn't quite as general a 'general' modelling show as I'd expected - I'd say 60% model railways, 30% plastic kit modelling (mostly aircraft, smaller amounts of soldiers, vehicles, ships, sci-fi), a display of large radio controlled aircraft (including a really nice Sopwith Camel and a Hunter) and a RC truck demonstration where they shipped (real) earth around a track. Model engineering was confined to the gauge 1 steamers (which i can watch for hours) and a rather nice large scale Ruston 48DS. Layouts were a pretty good selection - 'Making tracks' was massive as expected, and is mostly a model of Milton Keynes Central and part of Watford Junction, with lots of watching the trains go by on either side. Seemed to run OK when I saw it, and was surrounded by big crowds. Got the World record, although that kind of thing always seems a bit lacking these days without Norris McWhiter and Roy Castle there to award it.... Trade was mostly railway orientated. Most of the people you'd expect (Squires, Bill Hudson, DC Kits, H&A, Bachmann, Heljan etc) were there. So a pretty good show for people who want model railways, and to look at some 'other' modelling. Enough model railways for people who only want model railways to not feel like they've had a wasted day. If you want to see dozens of 1:48 Sea Harrier FRS.1s then you are in luck. If you went wanting RC aircraft or boats, you'd probably be a tad disappointed. If you are me, who does model railways and builds a few aircraft kits as a sideline, and likes to look at other people's modelling of any variety then it's a pretty good day out. Hopefully the show becomes a regular thing.

My £6 sandwich and £4 sausage roll from the catering place in the Hall were very nice, but you'd hope so at double what you'd normally pay.

Once they let people in the queues rapidly vanished. Only took a couple of minutes to buy tickets and get in at 10am, and the show itself doesn't feel too crowded.

Which of course led to one of the less helpful/informed criticisms of Privatisation - that it brought in a load of complexity like this, as if BR was run by half a dozen people in an office somewhere and things only got complicated once it was privatised.

Of course there's nothing to stop that happening under the current system. I don't quite see the point of the Labour proposal. Eliminating the profit margins (which IIRC is something like 1 to 1.5%) won;'t make a massive difference to ticket prices. The only way to bring them down is to increase the subsidies to the operator(s) which they aren't going to be doing (and could do under the current system anyway). The whole proposal feels like a headline with nothing behind it. Exactly. I remember taking ages (nearly half an hour) to buy a S-Bahn ticket at Munich airport, as there were only 2 or 3 tickets machines (poorly located on the platforms) with a big queue. In a UK airport you could have bought your ticket in the airport building before you even got to the station with its dozen or so ticket machines. UK railways are actually really good at a lot of things.

The Tripadvisor reviews are also, err, interesting (if you ignore the 5 stars 'I LIKE HARRY POTTER AND THE HARRY POTTER TRAIN IS THE BEST FING EVA!" ones). Quite a few people moaning about how old the carriages are....

And his house is now a museum. https://www.olivercromwellshouse.co.uk/

Which is why I said 'mostly' to cover that earlier criticism. The real trashing of his reputation (with the wider public) came later on as part of the reappraisal of WW1 in the sixties ('The Donkeys' and so on). Otherwise he'd not have made the list of Britannia names ten years previously. The irony with Fuller is that the Germans did read his book and listen to his ideas, as they'd never had to work with him. Proof that being right isn't enough to get your ideas adopted- you need to be right, and not have fallen out with everyone you need to convince.

I'd say the the most interesting Britannia naming is 70044 Earl Haig. This was the 1950s when he was still (mostly) seen as a national hero, before his reputation was comprehensibility (and not entirely rightly) trashed by historians in the sixties. Nowadays most people just see him as Geoffrey Palmer with a dustpan and brush in Blackadder.

Footwarmers would be the traditional approach this problem. https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/K6Xj_8O9Sk-xi2h2JfvOuw

It's all about nostalgia. In this case, bringing that distinctive damp railway carriage smell back to the mainline.

I like the way the Mail has used a photo of what looks like a Chinese or North Korean train to illustrate that article.

But Culloden and the '45 wasn't really England v Scotland. It was the exiled Stuart dynasty plus the few Clans who supported them verses the rest of the country. Most of Scotland supported the Government, much as they'd supported the revolution of 1688 that got rid of the Stuarts in the first place. Anyway, I'm not sure what relevance somebody who thinks they have a divine right to stick to their old ways losing to Government forces has to the current WCRC situation. Oh wait....

I wonder if the scrap value of all that rotting stock would pay for CDL on a few coaches?

In the other direction there are stories of French rural metre gauge lines being delayed due to problems on the Southern Region (which delayed the boat train, and all of its onward connections).