RJS1977

Talking to a contact at Reading Museum recently (when I lent them my model of HP1 - which apparently currently shares a display case with HP2's bell and works plates, not far from a pre-production photo of the Hornby Peckett!), it seems Reading Museum would still like it to come to Reading and my friends and I would certainly still be interested in being involved in that. However first we would need to persuade the current owner to part with it for much less than it was bought for, and then we would need to re-start the whole process of getting a condition report done, finding somewhere for it to go, and persuading the Council to pay for the restoration work (which will doubtless cost a lot more than we were quoted first time round as its condition will not have improved).

Found out yesterday just how scary it is to see someone drive a vehicle across a crossing in front of you when you're in the cab of a loco. Fortunately I wan't driving but both Driver and Fireman turned the air blue!

It's more usual for deliveries to come *from* North Pole, though admittedly not at this time of year....

Sadly, no longer at the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway and 'preserved' in only the vaguest sense. After the locomotive arrived at Wallingford (without the C&WR knowing it was coming!), two friends and I were offered the chance to purchase it for a "nominal sum". We set about looking for a permanent home for it and eventually decided that the best course of action would be to try to persuade Reading Council to purchase the loco instead. Our contact at Reading Museum Services was very enthusaistic, but the "elected members" less so, at least in practice as every decision seemed to get delayed from one meeting to the next. They did however provide £300 for a condition report to be carried out by an engineer from Quanton Road who gave us a quotation for a cosmetic restoration. We took that back to the Council, who continued to look for a location to put it on display once the work had been carried out. Eventually the Council rep called me to say he'd found somewhere it could go (we never did find out where though I have my inklings it could have been near the North Entrance of Reading station) and could we meet up, but the day the meeting was due to take place, the Readign Post rang me with the news it had been sold elsewhere (for £20K!) - to a Yorkshire farmer as a 'surprise' for his father, who expressed an intention to restore it. He invited us to come and stay in his B&B if we would like to help him, we sent him a copy of the condition report and said "Get the asbestos out and we'll talk about it" and heard nothing since. Google images seems to show it languishing in the middle of a scrapheap and we've heard a rumour it narrowly avoided being blown up at one stage as another of the farmer's surprise presents was a pile of unstable WW2 ammunition!

The happy days when model trains were designed to be affordable by as many people as possible (particularly families/children) rather than high-end products. My father's 1956 Princess is still going - how many of the current Hornby version will still be running in 2076?

Strange this thread should crop up now as on Tuesday night I was tasked with heading to the Collectors' Centre in Harris Arcade to find some buses for the club layout. Only when I got to the shop the following lunchtime did I realise i had no idea which operators we wanted on the layout so I ended up buying an unmade Bedford OB kit which can be painted in the livery of "Hening Vale Transport" or "Readley Buses"! Also in the shop, I picked up what is currently an open-top blue RT in Great Yarmouth colours for personal use, which is going to undergo some very severe modifications and a partial repaint as a single deck narrow gauge railcar!

The minimum order size seems to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Dapol will do Limited edition wagons for a minimum order size of 100, but Bachmann want 500... As to selling through another dealer, that depends on how it's done. I know when West Wales Wagon Works did limited edition wagons in connection with a club, the arrangement was simply that Mike would let the club have 50 at cost price and he'd sell the other 50 himself. So although he didn't make a profit on the wagons the club sold, he was only taking a risk on the 50 wagons he sold (unlike his own wagons, where he took a risk on the full 100).

Bet you've got more satisfaction from doing that than buying a new one in a blue box....

It's still "strictly non-elastic" then...

Panoramal - Bring haunted by documentary-makers

There was an electrified railway in the Llechwedd quarry. The Portmadoc, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway was proposed as an electric railway, but apart from the power station, the railway was not built (though parts of the proposed trackbed later became the WHR).

A herd of wildebeest roaming across the Serengeti?

"Unexploded German skulls? I hadn’t thought of that." "Elephant soup with sqad spuds." "I hadn’t thought of that, either." "Sabrina in the bath." "I do have some spare time..." - Quatermass and Bloodnok, "The Scarlet Capsule"

I'm slightly confused here. The article says that the video shows the adult and child opening the gate and running across, however the video doesn't show this. As the child is running ahead of the adult, is it possible the child is running away and the adult is trying to stop them?

I presumed the question was about the prototype rather than the model. NGB1 (W6 class) normally hauls two coaches on the C&WR, but I believe it has hauled three on occasions.

If the vehicles involved are say 15 years old and not too long out of production, that's OK. But I know there is a classic banger racing series which offers a prize for the rarest vehicle entered - which I find reprehensible. And before anyone says they're all in such poor condition they'd otherwise be scrapped anyway, I know one race in that series featured a Silver Shadow which had been used as a wedding car only the week before :-(

Irrespective, it breaks my heart to see any type of historic vehicle being destroyed for a few minutes' so-called "entertainment"...

I remember hearing a talk by Colin Curtis at the London Transport Museum a few years ago. He mentioned that when London first got Atlanteans, their reliability was so poor that instead of keeping the recovery vehicles in the depot until needed, it was more efficient to keep running them up and down the routes - apparently it was very rare for them to get to the other end without them coming across a failed Atlantean!

I've discovered this evening that the Routemaster currently undergoing restoration in a barn not far from me was once blown up by Jeremy Clarkson. He's even more of a Philistine than I thought!

Worse still, it was a convertible with the top down....

Not only that, but two of them are dead...

Latest addition to the Shadow Cabinet:

Disruption on the Reading-Didcot line today owing to 'over-running engineering work' on the Reliefs. Not much sign of anything going on apart from one bloke in an orange suit at Pangbourne and a few wagons carrying rail at Goring. Lines re-opened around lunchtime. But no apparent progress on wiring from when I was last up that way.

This isn't intended as a Polly/Nellie replecement (certainly not at the prices being talked about - I won't be surprised if these are upwards of £100 by the time they actually hit the shops). Polly/Nellie was intended as an entry-level model, primarily for the junior enthusiast on a low budget. This is most definitely not!