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dibber25

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Everything posted by dibber25

  1. Not bubble wrap as far as I remember. I was warned long ago not to use bubble wrap around models unless you want the paintwork pock-marked with round marks. Hornby used tissue paper. (CJL)
  2. Good train watching from the end of the Skywalk (adjacent to CN Tower) - see picture below - but its all passenger trains. There's a footpath close to the line side all the way to the GO Transit sidings. Credit Valley model shop is well worth a visit but its a bus ride and then a 20-minute walk from where the bus stops. I last did it in 2018 but I think I'm too old (at 75) to attempt it now. There's usually several vehicles and locos to be seen parked around the John Street roundhouse and the preserved railway out at Uxbridge is worth a visit (a bus ride out from the city) but pick a day when trains are running. (CJL)
  3. I remember the reversed grey/blue Pullmans that were done for the 'Golden Arrow' and how the Southern's revision of them went down with at least one member of the BR Design Panel! Furious wouldn't cover it. It has to be remembered that this was THE CORPORATE IMAGE, standardised branding to be applied to everything regardless of whether or not it was appropriate (think horrible straight lines between blue and yellow on round-nosed 'Warships'). That the Southern not only changed it but re-introduced lining and a non-standard font, went down like lead balloon in an era when 'good design' was more about avant-garde style and uniformity than practicality. I always thought they got away with reversed blue grey on the Met-Camm Pullmans but definitely not on older cars or the erstwhile 'Blue Pullman' DMUs where the grey looked insipid and was allowed to get filthy - something which the old Pullman Car Company would not have tolerated. (CJL)
  4. Plus, as has been said a million times, you can't use the real paint on a 1:76 model because it won't look right. It will look way too dark. You have to interpret the colour and as none of us see colours quite the same, what looks right or OK to one person will look wrong to another. Add to that the fact that you're working off paint swatches about 2in by 1in that represent the paint that's available to the Chinese factory - and anyone who ever decorated their house knows how paint swatches don't always match what's in the tin....... (CJL)
  5. It was surely all about the fish - particularly mackerel - which initially couldn't be sold more than a few miles from the home harbour as it went off so quickly. The railway enabled mackerel to be sold in London and surely St. Ives, the big mackerel-fishing harbour, would have wanted to be part of that. (CJL)
  6. It was Isambard Brunel who was involved in the flooding of the Thames tunnel. He became ill as a result of ingesting filthy Thames water. Sent to Clifton for the fresh air and to recuperate, he got involved in the competition to design a bridge over the Avon (which led eventually to his suspension bridge) and while at Bristol he got roped in to work on the docks and from that the proposed Bristol-London railway. I have often wondered if the kidney disease which eventually killed him was also rooted in that original Thames tunnel flooding accident. (CJL)
  7. Steam World magazine featured: Cheltenham-Andover (MSWJR) in December 2021 Tiverton Junction-Hemyock in January 2022 Oxford-Fairford in March 2022 Banbury & Cheltenham Direct in July 2022 Chippenham-Calne in August 2022 and will feature: Stratford-Honeybourne-Cheltenham (photo-feature) in September 2022 Gloucester-Ross-Hereford in October 2022 (CJL)
  8. Isn't 'woke' the past tense of 'wake'? I refuse to understand what these new 'nonsense terms' are supposed to mean. To me, they are making my native language incomprehensible. (CJL)
  9. I haven't read a newspaper since the 1970s and the only thing that might make me buy one is if I need to light the fire. So I have no axe to grind for or against any of them. Fact is, 'lefty', 'righty' or whatever, the Guardian's list was not much cop. Why do you need to bring politics into it? (CJL)
  10. Gosh! Here's me opening a thread about the East-West rail link in order to read about a railway and I get a whole load of pontificating about global warming. Thought I was going to read something interesting - learn something I didn't already know. Well, that's another ten minutes wasted. Yes, I do care about global warming - not that I can do much about it - but apparently there'll be less global warming if I sit in the back of the aeroplane. That's OK - never flown business class anyway. (CJL)
  11. I wasn't suggesting that the train shouldn't have stopped and I certainly did not relate the stopping in any way to what might have happened to the black soldier. I was merely criticising the manner in which it appears to stop with a juddering halt like a sports car, which, if it had been for real, would certainly have run the child down. My criticism is that it re-inforces the (apparently widely-held) misconception that trains can stop on a sixpence. (CJL)
  12. Saw it this afternoon. Firstly, we need to realise it's made for a 2022 audience not a 1970 one. I enjoyed it but wouldn't be rushing back to watch it again and again (I watch the original every few months). It's big issue is that it lacks the charm and gentle humour of the original but it's watchable enough. With my 'railway enthusiast' hat on, there's some rolling stock that's too modern (BR Mk1s) and there's some obvious vinyl LMS stickers over the BR crests on Bahamas and the '4F'. Sadly, some continuity is lost because The Three Chimneys has been modernised since the original film and presumably wasn't suitable. So the Three Chimneys in the new film is clearly the doctor's house from the original - that is The Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth. Minor nitpick - there's some throwing about of flour in the kitchen. This is common in almost every Hallmark movie involving kids and seems to be something which American audiences must like. In England, facing the hardships of war, such waste would surely have been unthinkable. Kids trespassing on railway lines is largely avoided this time until the 'last reel', when the stopping of the military train is presumably meant to mimic Bobbie and the landslide scene in the original. That, with its reversed projection, was dodgy. This version is downright bad. (CJL)
  13. It looks like the old Coopercraft plastic kit AEC. No longer available, as far as I am aware. (CJL)
  14. Never mind the trains - the dream car I wanted but never got, a metallic blue Sunbeam Rapier. I looked at several but rust was always the problem. In the end the one I bought was green but wasn't a good buy and had a load of problems but I loved it. A great car. (CJL)
  15. Surely the most important aspect of the original film (which in my view is one of British cinema's greats) to discuss with kids today is about NOT trespassing on railway lines. It's the only aspect of the original movie that makes me cringe. That's far more important for kids to understand than the nuances of social history. (CJL)
  16. That's Windsor & Eton Central! (CJL)
  17. Monkton Combe 'on the Welsh border?' They moved a whole village to make a movie? (CJL)
  18. I think you're right. I seem to recall official pics of the Clacton units with GE prefixes - probably the only place I would have seen them. Edited to add photo from 1963 Model Railway Constructor which appeared with scaled-up GAs of these 'state of the art' units. (CJL)
  19. Wasn't that the thing where they 'contained' a deadly virus by dropping a train full of infected passengers into a river?!! My wife was a micro-biologist - she nearly choked watching it! (CJL)
  20. Yes, takes a bit of nerve to watch it - especially as it is usually screened late at night. 'Narrow Margin' is also pretty violent so perhaps that's why it was not on the list. Was the very watchable - but truly awful - 'Unstoppable' on the list? If we eliminated all movies where the writer had not the first clue about how continuous brakes work, we'd have a very short list!! (CJL)
  21. Well, at least similar locomotives and a good attempt at historical accuracy in most respects. So, was the real General used in the Buster Keaton film? Perhaps I'm getting confused. (CJL)
  22. 'The Great Locomotive Chase' (Disney with the real 'General' in steam) and 'Narrow Margin' (Gene Hackman -shot on the British Columbia Railway pretending to be VIA Rail Canada - with an SD40-2 in VIA livery!) would both be in my top 20. Both set very much ON a train. (CJL)
  23. Or is that a weed-killing train? When I worked at IA there was a picture of 10800 on the Brighton line, on a 'Merrymaker-type' trip - an excuse, perhaps, for anyone who wants an excuse to have this model on an SR layout. (CJL)
  24. Like the rail buses and the 121/122s, the parcels cars were personal favourites of mine. I provided Martyn at Heljan with quite a lot of help on these and quite a few reference photographs so I suspect the 3A49 head code may be a result of this particular picture. The rail blue/white roof dome/yellow corridor blanking panel version and 'Scooby-do' with the lettering in the dirt were also from my references. Manufacturers go to great lengths to get these things right and it is always good to assist them. (CJL)
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