great central

Very pleasant evening spent at a car gathering very close to home, as in bottom of the lane, organised by my son's friend. American and classics, live bands til 11, reasonably priced bar and food as well. If you're at a loose end in the Nottingham area, Google coffee n cars weekend of wheels. £10 day ticket.

There's so much and many examples I could give around this issue, but as a serving member of rail staff and a guard to boot I'm limited in what I can place on a public forum. Suffice to say it's a very difficult area but children with tattoos, carrying and drinking alcohol, carrying cigarettes? All seen and action attempted, not always successful I'll add, just as likely to get a load of abuse and possibly worse. I don't doubt Pete's daughter was upset by the alleged actions of the guard in question, which do seem somewhat heavy handed, and possibly, with her permission, a complaint is justified. It will result in a full investigation if my experience is anything to go by and if as alleged the guard will be spoken to, certainly would be if it was my TOC.

No longer just a student railcard, available to anyone 16-24 years old, by which time a lot have a couple of kids so move onto the family and friends one. If they haven't got kids there's also a 26-30 one now. When I was eligible it was strictly a full time student only railcard. Those of us working for a living, probably the majority then, were expected to pay full price even though many were on apprenticeship wages including days at college as, oddly enough a student, me included.

I'm on a pretty flat straight stretch now. Outskirts of Boston to Firsby. Of course the line continued towards Louth in earlier days.

I believe it was a regular thing for containers loaded with tobacco products. Means the doors can't be opened in transit

You could have an underslung or very low bracket type. The one at Weekday Cross outside Nottingham Victoria was I think an underslung one, although in later years could have been a colour light. The one at New Basford to the north a low bracket from memory. There's a low bracket type at Melton Mowbray I think where the arm is mounted almost level with the walking platform on the bracket. Edit: memory just kicked in, well I've been up since 03.00, some of the platform end signals at Victoria were both underslung and very low brackets. A picture search should bring up some examples.

When we first exhibited Deepcar the intention was to change the era somewhat across a two day show. Starting with black EM1s and 2s, and a few steam locos gradually moving forward to green electrics with diesels and finally to blue class 76s. Not sure if it qualifies for your criteria though as it's only 26 feet long, that being the length of the longest space in the clubrooms at the time, even then we had to rearrange a partition wall to fit it in. It only took a short time to realise this wasn't really practical, as with most new layouts there were teething problems and constantly changing the stock definitely didn't help. As a majority of the group were aligned to the blue era, due to my age and location I'm about the only one can remember regular working steam, we soon decided to concentrate on the blue era and so it has stayed pretty much. My few black and green EM1s get a run out occasionally covering for failures, mostly wheel cleaning. Our first show was in 1991, most recent being Ruddington last weekend and Stafford earlier this year. It should be going to our spring show next year and has a couple of further enquiries, one in particular looking at 2021, the 40th anniversary of closure of the line. As a club we also own Carstairs, which is about the same age as Deepcar, although that is undergoing major alterations including a complete rewire for DCC control and under the guidance of a younger group of members may move forward a little from its original timescale to include sectorisation liveries.

Not being an expert on signal types I can offer the Leicester to Peterborough line as a good place to look, mostly semaphores, notably with the sole lower quadrant example at Ketton. A few in the Creswell area on the Robin hood line, Derby-Crewe also has semaphores between Tutbury and Stoke on Trent. The Hope Valley route and Peterborough to Ely are other possibilities.

Pendant mode: the 05.07 is actually Nottingham-Spalding via Peterborough

Mk11 Cortina estate spied this morning. Got to be a rare one.

In emergency we go that way, line block between Nottingham, Grantham and Peterborough. We have also used the joint line but Norwich crews don't sign that way

On my way home from work yesterday I passed a TR7 following a Triumph Stag, and half a mile later an MGBGT. Also seen two Metro/Rover 100s in the last couple of days

Knowing the people who organise the show, it's intended to be an add on attraction to the railway. Given the much lower profile of the GCR (N) compared to their southern colleagues the number of visitors is significantly lower. To hire a marquee would quite likely make the event unviable. The shed is no worse than other venues we have exhibited Deepcar in although for different reasons. A couple spring to mind, the slipway at Chatham was completely open to the elements at one end, fortunately we were there on a blisteringly hot summer weekend, the following year it was almost arctic. Lincoln museum was very dark and Barrow Hill roundhouse just before Christmas is very cold, not to mention the condensation involved in having locos in steam there as well. All a part of the experience, if you don't want to go it's your choice.

Seen a short while ago at a petrol station. 1971/2 K reg Mini Clubman. Milk chocolate brown colour, looked very much unrestored and original including rust holes in one wing

Not overly concerned to be honest, the car needs a full set of tyres and an exhaust back box at least for it's MOT next month. It's 16 years old so pretty likely I'll be it's last owner. It lives in a garage so condensation isn't a huge problem either. Personally I don't like air conditioning in any application but that's just me.

Air conditioning? Just open the windows. I've used the air con on my current car about 4 times in 6 years and done around 70000 miles in it.

Thanks for the various replies, we have had rats before but I don't think this is the same. The holes were generally smaller. There's a decent size hole in one fence and some time ago something dug it's way under the back gate, it's only hardcore there. Not unduly bothered if it's badger or fox, more surprised by the amount of bees around the hole. Filling it over did cause rather a lot of angry buzzing. We don't have neighbours on one side although there's not much wildlife either.

Friend of mine bought something similar, Rover 3.5 litre P6, immaculate, kept in a heated garage only 3 years old at the time £250

We thought badger, the hole is probably 8-9 inches across, can't tell how deep but that would make sense. So long as it's not the bees making a hole that size, if it is don't want to see the main digger!

Can't really get to it, it's behind other bushes and shrubs. Only dug last night I think, most of the soil is still damp. Having filled in the one from a couple of weeks ago it hasn't been dug up again.

Over the last few weeks a couple of large holes have been dug in our garden by something. Both have a lot of bees buzzing around, is it possibly a bee's nest with some animal trying to get at the honey? Wife insists I fill them in to stop our cats trying to go down and getting stung or stuck, although the bees don't seem too happy about it.

I can't help but think people have short memories nowadays. The Norwich Liverpool service was operated using 170s in Central trains days, the units working turns about with 158s and also doing commuter runs. Personally I don't like 170s much, having spent 12 hours at a time on them in my catering trolley days. After 7 or 8 hours breathing the same air all I wanted was the doors open so I could get some fresher air. Also I think it's highly unlikely the Matlock-Norwich service will see bi-modes any time soon. The only electrified bit is between Grantham and Peterborough and I suspect that will be the case for many years to come. Interesting to note the comments and picture in another thread about a fairly recently awarded other Abellio franchise.

Reports say it should be open by 22.00 tonight.

Isn't it the booted version known as a Sapphire? Neighbour of ours banger raced one many years ago when they were still pretty much current cars, although the engine sounded awful so probably why it was a scrapper. It was at Long Eaton which closed around 1997 I believe so gives an idea how long ago. Edit: incidentally some of the best action on oval racing is the 2 litre saloon stock cars. They have a Sierra shaped (more or less) bodyshell on a space frame chassis.

For a good many years now I've used plastic trays that mushrooms are delivered in. The supermarkets used to put them out with the cardboard boxes to take away free, although I'm not sure they do now. The last lot I got from our local IKEA café a year or two back. They'll hold a dozen or so mk1s each but not too strong so wouldn't recommend them for a lot of heavy locos.