great central

The clock tower has also been extensively re built I understand, due surprisingly to deterioration of the original brickwork. Truly a station fit for an important city, compared with the low roofed thing in the meadows, squatting under the GC viaduct, that passes for Nottingham's railway station now.

The December timetable changes were already set some months ago, it's next May that will be interesting, they're currently being decided.

If Internet chatter is to be believed, seems likely there will be places with no, or at least less than currently, services come next May's timetable change.

And I was the alarm engineer called out to investigate and reset the damn alarm! Used to find myself regularly on call around Christmas, most of the others had other things to do, I was one of the few non drinkers!

Minor pedantry if you don't mind David? J5069 and 3226 might be better described as New Basford than Bagthorpe junction. The bridge shown is Perry Road, Bagthorpe junction is at the far end of the cutting seen through the bridge, spent many hours on those sandstone rocks in the early 60s, I was born in 1953. They were at the rear of Basford Carriage shed, and probably now the only, even slight, evidence that any of that existed at all. The bridge has been underfilled I believe, so possibly the deck still carries the road. The cutting beyond has been filled back to original levels and houses built up. As for Bagthorpe junction itself, it stood on a massive embankment which has been completely removed down to original ground level, leaving a low retaining wall as the only remnant of the Valley Road bridge abutment. What I, as a child, thought of as permanent had already more or less gone by the time my son was born in 1980.

True, still there as well, some sort of church I believe.

Walking up the path after school swimming at Northern baths, heading (slowly) back to school!

My dad had been to visit his parents after work. I told him when he came home, took a while to believe me! No 24 hr telly then, let alone rolling live news feeds from all over the world. Seems a bit more innocent looking back

Probably an appropriate place to express my thanks to Andy for getting it all going and sticking with it through the tough times, I hope things are a bit easier at times now with Warners back up. I'm stuck in hospital for a while so this is an outlet to a small, safe part of the real world. Although my modelling pretty much came to a halt ten or more years ago I still take interest in what others are doing and offer a little, probably outdated, advice if it seems applicable. Main thing is THANKS ANDY!!!

Moorbridge junction area may still exist in some form, some of the lines have been made into footpaths, intending to do more exploring of such things when I get out of hospital! The one showing 'forty bridges' as it's known locally has been totally obliterated apart from the odd bit of brickwork. I presume the J5 is standing in the same area so again untraceable.

Free shot of what I got earlier in hospital and you spend about 3 quids worth! Intravenous water tablets effectively, my mouth tastes salty now as well!

Ah! I stand corrected over my correction. Hope I haven't caused you too much confusion David. Nice picture of Sleaford which incidentally looks very smart in it's recently completed heritage refurbishment, at least it didn't finish up the purple, grey and yellow patchwork inflicted on many EMR stations.

Dent on a DVT? Almost certainly a bird strike, they can make quite a mess and receive a massive headache for the privilege at 125mph!

Hi Dave, Minor correction j13294, the 153 is 308. It must have moved from the north east further south at some point before privatisation, eventually turning up at EMT wearing black vinyls advertising some of the attractions of the South West! When it was taken into works, done in house at Neville Hill if memory serves, it was found to be heavily corroded in places and there was also evidence of crash damage at some time in the past. All this made the overhaul and repaint take somewhat longer than initially expected. Stagecoach were becoming a bit unusual at that time in doing full body overhauls to bare metal before repainting but it certainly helped staff morale rather than the bodge jobs that have become more common, the current EMR ones don't even get cleaned when sending them over from WM, seems something of an Abellio trademark. Sorry if I've rambled a bit but I'm stuck in hospital so helps relieve the tedium a bit.

A while, perhaps 4 or 5 years after the crab came out, I picked up a maroon one. Being a still fairly young but keen modeller then I took inspiration from one, probably the RM, magazine article. I balked at the idea of taking a saw to the body to widen it as I didn't trust my skills, tools or facilities to not completely trash the thing. A certain amount of detail was added, can't what remember now, full repaint and added weathering. Being pretty proud of the result I entered it in one of the competitions at the (then) East Midlands MRE in Nottingham. The show at that time drew in exhibitors from all over the country including many of the big names of the hobby and I was very surprised to be award a third place, not much in some people's eyes maybe, but the best I've ever done. I've still got the loco but it hasn't been out of it's box for many years, and I can't dig it out now being stuck in hospital at the moment. I understand they can be picked up, pretty cheaply so, in my opinion, if you simply want something to have a bash with, why not?