Michael Hodgson

I hope toy finally got your bananas. If not, they must be going off by now!

It looks more like a plywood dummy than a real loco - but less convincing than the inflatable Sherman tanks used during WW2

Probably also helps to have a white face. During the IRA attacks on the City when the "Ring of Steel" was routinely being manned, I noticed that the vehicles stopped on London Bridge tended not to have shamrocks on the side, but were more likely to be white vans from sarf of the river driven by black men. They were also usually emitting blue smoke though!

The Swedish for wide load is "Bred Last" which is clearly seen on that video clip. Swedish number plates are generally three letters followed by either 3 digits or 2 digits and another letter; black characters on white. When my parents lived in Kiruna, the (British) number plate on their Saab was LYX ..., which the Swedes loved as it means "Luxury"

Why bother? Aren't there enough Hornby or whatever RTR versions around second hand?

Its not just lorries though. In this part of the country there's a lot of level crossings, some of which have (or used to have) an avoiding bridge nearby that's so low that even ordinary traffic has to be careful. Not unkown for drivers or small vans 4x4s or even cars to forget they've got a roof box or something on a roof rack. http://ukrailways1970tilltoday.me.uk/Littleport-signal-box.html The lowest I've come across is Bishton on the S Wales main line - so low I had to duck to go under it on foot! https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/9u6zfu/bishton_level_crossing_in_newport_wales_at_56_17m/ Network rail has a league table of low brides https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-54871244

Perhaps you got that nickname by crashing into a wagon full of flour?

An extremely busy road junction that I used to use on my way to work - it must have caused chaos. Traffic was also disrupted there a few years later by an IRA bomb that demolished the adjacent B&Q (on the site of Staples mattress factory after which the junction is named) the same night that my office got destroyed by the Baltic Exchange bomb.

Like the Yorkshire city. Also called "lever plates" or "Pull Plates", at least when then do list the other levers that you have to pull to release the interlocking on the lever. Quite often the numbers are engraved into Traffolite (a sheet of black plastic sandwiched between two white sheets). When a lever function has to be changed and a new plate is needed, S&T often just turned and old one over and engraved on the other side, the original being invisible when fitted to a casting on the lever. So sometimes signalmen do a little unauthorised archeology during a quiet spell by unscrewing the plate to see what it used to be.

There is a village in Monmouthshire whose nameboards on the different roads in used at least three spellings - Trelleck, Trellech and Trelech. I think they've now standardised on the last of these, but you will still the other spellings locally.

or this ... #

They're not fussy. They'll treat dogs as food given half a chance.

This was the Swedish Scrubber .. https://www.departmentals.com/departmental/977695 Not to be confused with the cleaning lady from Stockholm ... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262704/Female-cleaner-steals-train-drives-apartment-house-exclusive-Stockholm.html And this may notnecessarily be what one expects to find by googling Grinder!

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