New Haven Neil

I'm not familiar with 'Striving', must have been when I was out of the hobby - marriage, houses etc.

We did, (unfortunately) look mostly like that in the early 70's, only a parka had replaced the dufflecoat, and no shorts. I always took my locoshed book, not the combined volume.

So as not to divert the Ashover thread, I thought I would start this. What older, (60's - 80's, say) layouts inspired you? In the flesh, or in a magazine. For me, Iain Rice's various Tregarricks were hugely so, but also older things in Railway Modeller back then, Ashover as mentioned, Winton was it, the LNER layout? Charford, Buckingham, High Dyke, Yatton, Craig & Mertonford, East Suffolk Light,...I could go on. Let's hear your inspirations. edit - It was High Dyke, not Stoke Summit!

Have a great break Sherry - Lisbon has always appealed for a holiday, no direct flights from here though so cost is prohibitive.

Morning, a dry (at last) and partially sunny one here on Fraggle Rock, but 55mph winds, increasing to 65 later - we may need an anchor otherwise we'll be several miles closer to Scotland by tonight. Weather is all over the place, friends came around last night at 7, it was 4c and pouring, when they left at 10.30 temperature had risen to 10c, still pouring, and now it's sunny and dry but only 5c and a howling gale. Pensions are a sore point here, I transferred my NHS (UK) pension into the IoM Civil Service scheme as it was advantageous to do so, but now the terms have been altered and I'm worse off to the tune of £30,000 or so. That was the lump sum that would have paid my mortgage off upon retirement.....as house prices here are so high compared to the norh-east from whence we came we had to take out a substantial morgage. I'll have to work way past my retirement age now. It's Mrs NHN's 49th Birthday today and we were rueing the fact our state pensions are going away from us quicker than we are aging! My Merchant Navy pension isn't worth much as I was only in the scheme for 3 years, as the 4 years as a cadet were non-pensionable, sigh. Off to think of brighter things. Edit for bad tempered spelling errors!

A GW King in A4 livery - nice....#also ducks# Does look well though, hope everything holds together this time, they deserve a break. Cracking photo too, canny nice that. (No RP here, man)

Are you allowed to wear snow shoes on a golf course?

Morning - sunny! Torrential rain last night, roads closed with flooding and landslides, I resume this is what fell as snow on the M6. The Irish sea warms us just enough! As for pronunciation, I used to live in Tyne & Wear - that's we-ahh...... Anneka please note! Physio and a session in the pool yesterday have left me seized solid this morning, ugh. No pain no gain. C'est la vie, or as the French say, that's life!

MacKillop, yes, thank you Mr High Speed Duck - my mind is still a bit fuzzy due to being on a lot of naughty painkillers still. Gilbert's photos have really started hitting the imagination now, giant holly aside I love that last set. Inspiration in spades, and he still resists time and area interlopers too! More power to your lens, sir.

Ohh, the N5 and the C12 in one post! May I be permitted a teensy little nit pick? The bright copper cylinder drain pipes on a weathered loco......copper oxide is black. I doubt these pipes would look anything other than that on a loco that dirty. It's a superb weathering job, but those pipes jar with me a smidge. (A smidge is a metric unit of measurement by the way). I feel guilty saying it now!

Ah, my love of 60100 comes from reading 'Engineman Elite' by 'Toram Beg' - Norman someone, although it turned out later some of the anecdotes in it were attributed to other drivers and he was being, er, less than truthful. She certainly was clean then, but in the only shot I have of her (by E E Smith) she is absolutely filthy, yes. As a Haymarket (or was it St Margarets? It's been years since I read it last) loco she would have been seen in Newcastle of course, so I'm safe with her! I thought Gresley A1's looked rather ill proportioned as built #ducks#, with the taller boiler mountings, and subsequent A3's looked better, and the double chimney versions the best of all, injecting a touch of modernity into them. I realise the deflectors are a very personal thing, but there we go, we're all different, again I thought they made the old girls look modern and powerful. Nice cop though Gilbert, that did surprise me! Don't resist, she was one of the best.....

My thoughts are with you Ian. Remember the good times.

I have been racking my brain to find where I had filed this photo - in my WSR folder of course - d'oh.

JEFFP, I too prefer the 'Witte' smoke deflectors....and the double chimney, especially with a GN tender, and as 60100. I thought the improvements were exactly that! I like the Brits, it's just that angle....maybe the bigger tender versions would look better. edit - 60100 would be one hell of a cop at Peterborough!

The rear 3/4 view has me wondering. Well, a lot of things do that, it's my age, but... I normally like that viewpoint, and indeed several of Gilbert's photos have had all three legs jiggling in excitement, but both the Std 5 and Brit do not look paticularly good that way. I rather like Brits too, not bothered either way about the 5...and really the front ends are quite different, but neither locos are at their best here. An A3 however...or even those Thompsons ..... look superb. I just can't nail why. OK the 5 has the smaller taper boiler, but the Brit has a strong front end with the big boiler and smoke deflectors (with NO handrails....WR Design clever?....titter). Odd. I shall ponder.

..said you can't earn a living from it! I thought it was a pretty decent programme. I like Ricey's writing, although I am aware he's not to everyone's taste. Thinking again, he's one of my modelling heros. Always nice to see a woman in modelling, I recall seeing Bev Lowery some years ago, nice lady to speak too aswell. The fair sex do seem to have a touch for detail and scenic work IMHO - Mrs NHN's pretty good with details on my layouts too, funny how it always seems to have something to do with horses and other animals though! Anyone recall Viv Thompson's LBSCR articles in Railway Modeller years ago? Edit - should of course added credit for the input of the ladies here on RMWeb!

I've just been watching some New Zealand railway DVD's sent by a friend out there....I could be persuaded to model Kiwi steam, it is a very attractive (to me ) mixture of British and US practice with the narrow gauge mixed in. excellent. I spied some ex-BR Mark II coaches in use too, suitably rebuilt. Interesting. Oh no, a third layout....

Melon-collie forwarded to collie owned friends. Lovely!

Love the 'contraversial' shot actually. I like the C12 almost as much as the N5 too! Newcastle Central was another station with starting bells, although how they heard them over the bellow of a Deltic I'll never know.

Morning all No sunrise here, more a greyrise with a whopping 2.5c. I have a Canadian friend from Ottawa who is on the Island for a years sabbatical, and he is laughing at our weather, but was less amused by the amount of flights cancelled as he was trying to get back from London City. Reckoned he could have brushed the snow off the runway himself. My hip is a lot better this morning after a bit of a setback yesterday, I really had the blues too. I was warned this might happen, but it hit like a sledgehammer, unexpectedly from my point of view as I thought I was doing OK. Sheesh. edit for speeling.

...or a J27 and a Q6......

Morning ER world Damp start here and a little warmer than of late, a whole 2c. I recall the winter of 63 as a 4 year old, I remember Mum opening the front door and the snow being two thirds of the way up. I attended nursery school in those days but don't recall if we missed any, I presume we must have done. Mrs NHN is an escaped Cornish farm girl, and reckons it's not a place to be in winter!

Morning, back form physio, didn't go too well today with adverse reaction in the joint to just about everything I was told to expect days like this but it still pulls me down when it happens. Bah. No snow here at a soaring 30 metres ASL, (the contour line passes through our garden) but all the high roads are closed, there looks to be reasonable snow on the mountain. The physio had gone up on his mountain bike yesterday, but had given up due to not being able to see the ruts and continually falling off! 1500 pages of human life, not drivel?

Mrs NHN expressing her views of Swiss marketing, Chur 2009, my 50th Birthday treat tour.

That sounds very comprehensive, Richard! You chose your neighbours carefully!!! I have a distrust of computer lead health advice, as an ex-NHS manager. There needs to be a practitioner of some kind who can assess your understanding of the situation IMHO, as in Stewart's situation, it can save an awful lot of time - and time can be of the essence, the 'golden hour'. We have 'MEDS' here - Manx Emergerncy Doctor Service, you get to speak to a medic pretty quickly (usualy a GP), only had to use it once, but it worked.