EddieB

Yes, the old Dom Joly Routine. Diddle-ee-dee-diddle-ee-dee-diddle-ee-dee-dee "HELLO, YES I'M ON THE TRAIN" "NO, THE QUIET CARRIAGE, BUT EVERYONE'S SHOUTING INTO THEIR MOBILES" Nothing like a subtle hint.

Ok, so perhaps this might go in "eBay Madness", but it's hardly railway related (despite a Triang Super 4 long straight in some of the pictures). http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp3984Q2em1555Q2el2649QQitemZ280730252092QQsspagenameZSTRKQ3aMESELXQ3aIT#v4-34 If anyone is still wondering what to buy me for Christmas, look no further.

Don't get the funny, just rather annoying. Ignoring any slight towards train videos on Youtube (we're used to inane comments), what a tiresome, tedious individual. I guess he did everyone else on the train a great favour by keeping out of their way. Fancy listening to his boring monologues for eleven hours.

No, not Colonel Stevens or one of his lines. Finding the railway should lead to the man.

Zis minkey? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnlIWpZSPXU&feature=related

As in "ly-cence foure your minkey"?

Time for a clue, perhaps. There is a modern preservation society that has adopted the name of the railway concerned, who have also converted a carriage into a replica of the inspection saloon.

[Edited to correct] This is a clip from a film made by Jamie Uys many years ago, where the fabricated story of marula fruit intoxication was achieved by darting animals with a sedative, or lacing the fallen fruit with alcohol, making them appear drunk. Sadly, what that film never told is that they didn't know what dosage to give, and at least one elephant was killed as a result of the film-maker's stupidity. The whole film is full of misinformation and treats wildlife childishly as comic actors. http://africafreak.com/the-marula-fruit-african-booze-for-wild-animals-or-total-myth

This person was promoted to and served as Superintendent and General Manager of a penurious independent railway from its opening early in the last Century until he was forced to resign over alleged misdemeanours some fourteen years later (although one published history of the railway still has him in office four years after). He was the most prominent member of a railway family (from which I am descended). During his tenure he converted a former Metropolitan carriage as a VIP saloon, in which he travelled the line.

Wasn't sure as Allport's service as General Manager wasn't contiguous, being first appointed in 1853, with a gap between 1857 and 1860. I'll be back to set a new one later.

James Allport?

I thought the shunter looked like it was salvaged from the recent riots, but as for those coaches. All I can say is that the seller's user name just about describes his wares.

Definitely the sound effects are dubbed and the low viewpoint exaggerates the speed (note how gently the car crests the bump at the top of the Rue Norvins near the end), but still excessive speed to say nothing of running red lights (especially at blind junctions) and passing one set of lights on the wrong side. Taking the middle arch away from the Louvre was skillful, if the whole enterprise wasn't idiotic!.

That didn't take long! Yes, George Westinghouse invented the air brake system widely used worldwide and adopted by the Great Eastern Railway, where it became indispensible for the tightly-time "Jazz" services (the Westinghouse pump being clearly visible at the front of the tank of the J69 preserved at York) . He was also a pioneer of AC current and his company built and supplied electrical equipment for electric and diesel locomotives, including the metre-gauge 1-Co-Co-1 electrics of the Paulista Railway in Brazil (later FEPASA class 2050, as seen here at Sorocaba in 1992).

Staying with septics Americans, this is an inventor, engineer and founder of a major company that bears his name and represents a link between equipment or components of these locomotives (sorry, not the best scans):

George Francis Train. Too many clues in the end - I was thinking Port Sunlight rather than Birkenhead.

Thought i'd check out the revamped station at Stratford today. It's just wrong on so many levels.

Having just Shotover to find a rather Tranquil Enterprise (it was a Fairway to travel, but I am much refreshed by a Salmon Trout Sandwich at the local Harvester), all I could find was a Grand Parade of Ladas. Are you some sort of Humourist?

Trouble with lucky guesses is that I have to think up a new question. What connects the following names: {a} Munro, Chattan and Mackinnon; {b} Buchanan, MacDonald, MacGregor, MacKintosh, MacLeod; {c} Campbell, Fraser, Stewart and Mackenzie; And into which group, {a}, {b} or {c} would Cameron go?

Lucky guess: Sir Thomas Bouch? (Forth Rail Bridge)

Quite right, and for once one that I said would be easy turned out to be so!

I wasn't expecting that to be the answer you were looking for! Right, a new one that should be fairly easy, I think. In 1861 Robert Stephenson & Co constructed a unique broad-gauge 2-4-0 (the builder's number is variously given as 1312 or 1314). An experiemtal locomotive, it ran probably just two trials, both ending in failure (the first in near disaster) and was put up for disposal just four years after construction. 1. For which railway was the locomotive built? 2. What novel feature, intended to cut noxious emissions, contributed to its failure? 3. What spectral nickname did it acquire?

Glasgow? A small overlap in the early 1960s. Standard gauge ("Blue Trains", from 1960), tramways (1894-1962, laid to 4ft 7 3/4in) and Subway (1896-present, 4ft)?

Yes. It was part of a set of definitives (that aroused some controversy over the self-depiction of the postmaster general on one of the values at a time when portraits tended to be exclusively of royalty). The locomotive in question appears as an unidentified wood-burning 4-4-0, thought to be "Ossekeag" (no. 9) or "Prince of Wales" of the European and North American RR (of which the aforementioned postmaster general, Charles Connell, had recently been made Director), or "Coos" of the Atlantic & St Lawrence RR. To you pH. (And having held the token for all three quizzes for a few days, I'm pleased to see them go!) The 1871 5c "trencito" stamp of Peru is generally regarded as the first railway commemorative postage stamp - marking the twentieth anniversary of the Callao-Lima-Chorillos Railway, the first in South America. (However there are stories that this stamp was in circulation a year earlier and marks the restoration of the 5c postal rate rather than commemorating the anniversary of the railway).

The item in my question is definitive, but the first of a different kind went on sale in 1871 in Peru, costing five centavos...