great central

An ongoing, very slowly (!), project is the conversion of a Hornby 110 into a 104 to be finished in green. I have the original Hornby glazing but the bars are silver and should be green for the 104. I ordered a set of the Flushglaze ones but the glazing bars are merely a raised 'ripple' in the clear plastic so still need painting. I've now painted, not particularly well, the bars on the Hornby glazing but it's a devil of a job to get the silver covered. So in my opinion, the Flushglaze doesn't offer any great advantage over the Hornby original.

Had to grab this one very quickly, leaving Grantham on my way to Skegness as this rolled into platform 1. Sorry about the OHLE in the way.

Regarding overheating and older engines, many years ago I bought a Ford Corsair 2000E at auction as a short term runabout. Paid £50 including indemnity fee for it with about 4 months MOT and no sills(!) left. It was so worn I could remove the key with the ignition still on, not steering locked, but after a couple of weeks it developed a leak from the radiator. Originally brown it had been painted red and then black, possibly with a brush. The temperature gauge didn't inform particularly well how hot the engine was getting so I diverted the overflow pipe to point out of a corner of the bonnet. When the engine was getting too warm there would be a short splutter of water from the overflow followed by a plume of steam. That was the signal to pull over and refill the radiator. Waiting a few minutes for the steam to abate, it was then refilled with water straight from a can (cold), sometimes you could hear it boiling as it went round the engine, wait another few minutes, start her up and continue the journey. I was driving daily from near Nottingham to Grimsby for a fortnight so this happened a good few times, never any problems. Took it to another auction to sell and got my £50 back before it hit the auction floor! Little over a month's MOT and still no sills but someone happily drove it away. I made a swift exit!

Never mind about the actual colour of bauxite, how about the loco livery? Presumably fresh from overhaul and a repaint, the works paintshop have obviously misread the painting spec! Smokebox and first two sections of boiler cladding in black??

The angle and lighting on the last pic of 70052, latterly Firth of Tay, really makes it look like it's shouldering the load. Superb.

Must say I admire your dedication and Mrs 4479s forebearance allowing you to spend, effectively, the whole of Christmas and Boxing Day on a model project. I haven't managed anything at all but I left my nice warm bed 20 or so minutes ago to make my small contribution to keeping the big railway running. I'm 04.00 standby.

Like this, although it's coal.... https://youtu.be/6_gu0v33e7A

Apparently another one had been cleaned and allocated for the working but was failed before departure. Perhaps appropriate given the way the GC had been treated since being absorbed into the dark side?

Jvol4150, black 5 44984, 13 or so years later the same loco was to haul the final Nottingham-Marylebone in the GC.

Crop from a picture taken from the top deck of a bus. Didn't think including the business alongside was particularly smile inducing, it's a funeral directors.

Looks like an articulated pair with a brake end nearest the camera

On all of today's photos if you visited any of the sites it would be almost inconceivable there was ever a railway there unless you knew. The only one you could get anything like a similar view is the one showing the bridge at Perry Road (Bagthorpe Junction), the bridge deck may still be in place but underfilled, I think there's an old people's home roughly at trackbed level now. I was standing roughly where the Annesley one was taken (I think!) a couple of days ago. The land has been partially filled ramping up to the tunnel, now all there is is grazing horses.

I was standing looking at the demolition site that used to be the Broad Marsh centre in Nottingham yesterday, remembering that I was working there, dragging in service cables mostly, when they were building it in the early 1970s! It was absolutely freezing, just a concrete shell at the time. The day normally went along as an hour or so of work then half an hour in Woolworths cafe next door to warm up before back on site for an hour!

Possibly the same as happened to me with a thread a while ago. I always view the forum on my phone, pages tend to jump around a bit when loading, especially with the 'Gold' advertising at the top of the page. If that happens and you're either a little bit quick or not watching carefully what you're doing, the ignore topic bar can be hit accidentally and 'bang!' the thread is gone

Probably shouldn't have the nameplates either, although I'd have to check to be sure. Odd ones did retain them. Edit: I've just checked on the Annesley Fireman website and it must have been one of the best ones, kept it's nameplates, at least in the photos shown, and lasted in service for over a year. They did have some good dedicated fitting staff at Annesley!

Hoping no one minds a small, but sort of relevant, diversion. Tony regularly says that he's not overly concerned or know what's going to happen to his models after leaving this mortal coil. Another club member has rescued the entire modelling output of his former step father-inlaw ( I think that's right). All military, mostly second world war I believe, but very nicely done. It includes several ships of various types and sizes, many planes both British and German as well as infantry and artillery. This was all going in a skip! As well as the stuff to be seen all the boxes contain more of the same, the German planes fill the top shelf of the club library.

Friend at work has a Cascada which, if someone calls it an Astra convertible, really gets her going. So of course every so often someone mentions her Astra convertible

I rather think that the decision on new units for the MML had already been made by the time Abellio took over, their name being merely the signature on the contract.

About the same at a similar time in NG16

Hmm, cost cutting without informing the travelling public properly because XC has been instructed from higher departments? Somewhat like the 'information' given to the public through EMR 'official channels'.

Would it have all been flat bottom in the 1950s? There were some sections of jointed bullhead on the slow lines between Grantham and Peterborough until 4 or 5 years ago, still quite a bit between Grantham and Sleaford on the Skegness branch some of which has been spot resleepered in the last year or two.

Trainline is merely a travel agent and no connection with the railway.

Regarding Camms of Nottingham, they were know around here as Camms Collapsibles, due to the often poor condition they were turned out into service in. I saw one of their vehicles with water literally pouring from the radiator and heading towards Carlton Hill, who knows if it actually made it to the top. Another memory is of a very well (ab)used Leyland National where the front section shook in the opposite direction to the rear! They ran the service 331 under contract to Nottinghamshire county council up to the early 2000s, on one memorable occasion I had decided to walk rather than waiting as it hadn't turned up about 20 minutes after it was due. Another poor old National finally staggered into view around 45 minutes late, doing at best 20mph, leaving a huge black cloud behind and sounded like it was running on two cylinders!

People are critical of the method of removing the units from the tunnel, but it's similar to a recovery operation I watched years ago when a rake of HAAs had piled up under the bridge at Trowell near Nottingham. A fairly new, at the time, 58 was tried without success as it's electronic wheelspin controls kept reducing the power. Enter a pair of 20s, hook them on, open up and wagons came out quite easily, sheer brute force and ingnorance! How else are these things supposed to be moved? Trying to lift them in such a restricted space is impossible and fraught with risk to anyone supervising the operation, you can't remove the tunnel roof so dragging them clear is the only option. I'll agree that some onlookers may have been a little closer than might be wise but I doubt the loco would have shot forwards suddenly for any distance, the driver being very aware of that possibility, if the strap had broken. Think of it in model terms, you have a tunnel or even a bridge on your highly detailed scenic layout, which is a permanent part of that layout. A prized kit built coach is derailed and stuck under the structure. What to do? Do you, as carefully as possible, drag the coach from under the obstruction and accept a certain amount of collateral damage to that one vehicle or set to with knives, saws, hammer and chisel (as appropriate) and totally destroy the surrounding scenery??

I get a pick and mix bag full of largish steel washers from Wilko. They used to be £1.99, a bit more now I think, for the small bag, which gives loads of washers.