RJS1977

Wouldn't Hazard be orange with a Confederate Flag on the cab roof?

Ooh, Matron!

Somewhere in my father's loft is (the remains of) a copy of "Triang Railways- The First 10 years", which IIRC gives the time to assemble a 'Princess' - unfortunately I can't remember what it is! Obviously James's FS and coaches have more parts so the time would be longer. And yes, assembly by one person will take longer than a production line as each person in the production line will specialise in a particular part of the assembly and will do it o many times that in the end they could probably do it in their sleep!

Yes, now we need a £100 sound chip to do what a piece of sandpaper could do in the 70s!

Another member of the Huntley family was involved in the firm Huntley Bourne and Stephens, who made the tins for H&P.

Any tips on how to get the body off?

I picked one up secondhand a few years ago which has similar performance 'issues'. Again, usual checks such as wheel cleaning etc don't seem to have made much of a difference, so any other suggestions anyone can come up with would be much appreciated.

I feel for your situation D5541 - having not preordered as I always wait to see what other peoples' experiences of a loco are before buying, I now find I'll be taking a big pay cut in the New Year :-( Glad to hear you got one in the end, though!

Northern Gas Board No1 (Peckett W6) normally hauls at least two Mark 1 coaches on the CWR but can manage a third if passenger loadings demand it, ditto Peckett 1435(?) (Ivor!). Ride quality, whilst perhaps not as smooth as with Pannier 6430, is not unreasonable.

What about LoadHaul?

Just tear up their driving licence...

If only there was some GWR loco shed still in existence somewhere you could make a model of....

Does that mean I have to stand on one leg whilst reading it?

He's not alone in that. Several of 'Buckingham's' baseboards have imprints of other layouts on them including Crispin and Stephen's TT gauge layout which 'disappeared' while they were at University when Peter Denny wanted to extend his layout! Likewise, many of the layouts Stuart Robinson has built for the North Downs Model Railway Circle have imprints of other layouts underneath!

The exception to the last two points is the model engineering model railway club with a ride-on track as well as indoor layouts. The Reading club for example has high takings on its monthly public running days, and is open on other occasions for birthday parties, other community groups (schools, Scouts, Brownies etc) and charity fundraisers. Consequently we do have a relatively good relationship with the Council (our landlords) and are viewed as an amenity rather than just (mostly) "old men playing trains". That said, there are still a lot of people in Reading who are surprised to find out we exist!

If it was concrete, it would be Carnforth ;-)

Dependent on transport costs, consider this an open invitation to bring it to the Kenavon (East Reading) show when done. We could have 'Little Didcot' and my 'Little Wallingford' next to each other!

As stated previously, two different locos for two different markets. That said, I don't think the Peckett will sell in anywhere near the numbers that Nellie did, and I would be pleasantly surprised if many Pecketts are still in working order in fifty years' time. Talking of which - has anybody actually run theirs yet? I didn;t pre-order as I wanted to hear people's experiences of the loco before purchasing.

That one actually did turn up in a Christmas cracker at my work 'do' last night!

Which reminds me in turn of someone I know who recently missed a letter out of 'Aberdeen Angus'. He's gone to bottom of the class!

I think by major cities, he meant Manchester and Salford...

And I wouldn't have expected you to. I couldn't remember whether you were using CBUS already (it's not just for DCC) and I know from various ideas I've sketched out that the number of outputs required to be worked from MERG kits rarely matches the number of channels available, so most CBUS applications wind up with some channels left over. But I'm working on exactly those lines for having a CBUS-operated 'Digital Crispin' on my own layout once it's been resurrected.

Whilst it probably wouldn't be worth doing it just for the block bells, if you had sufficient CBUS units with spare inputs (CANACE8C) and outputs (CANACC8), you could operate the block system that way: Box A tapper making contact - ON event Box B LED and bell. OFF event for box A LED Box A tapper breaking contact - OFF event for Box B bell but LED remains lit Box B tapper making contact ON event for Box A LED and bell. OFF event for box B LED Box B tapper breaking contact - OFF event for Box A bell but LED remains lit.

One of the 800s has been undergoing test runs on the main line between Reading and Didcot this afternoon - I must have seen it about 7 or 8 times today!

Me! Think RJS1977 :-)