great central

When I'm working to Norwich, the first station towards Norwich after leaving Ely is Shippea Hill, Thing is I can't any flippin' hill

One small comment, Ilkeston Town is the work of Nottingham MRS, Ilkeston Woodside club had part of their Kimberley layout on show

Then a weekend off before Nottingham!

To go off at a slight tangent (sorry). If you fast forward to the late 90s/early 00s, wasn't there something similar, perhaps not quite as drastic though, going on? The old BR many had come to love was being broken up into lots of little businesses, loco haulage was being discontinued as quickly as possible. 47s on Cross Country services replaced with Voyagers, 37s in North Wales replaced with 175s, units everywhere you look. The old order (20s, 37s 47s, etc) in freight haulage being displaced by the 'Red death' class 66s. I was around at the end of steam, it was a very sad time, I lost interest in railways for several years, but came back. I followed the last couple of years on the North Wales Coast with 37s, then 47s as the units simply weren't reliable enough. Put in a few trips to South Wales as well, 37s, then 50s, a type I'd never bothered with before. I think that a lot of the apparent resistance is down to a dislike of change, which is mostly, if not exclusively, driven by financial factors. The next big change to come, and come it will, is the replacement of the HSTs and older DMUs. IEP anyone? The last true loco operated service (GE main line) may well I suspect be unitised fairly quickly when the new (long) franchise starts. Who, in 1975 or 76 would have expected people to be getting nostalgic for the HSTs, it was bad enough replacing the Valentas with MTUS!! That will provoke similar reactions to all the previous changes, but it'll go ahead because most of the fare paying passengers don't give a rats*ss what kind of train they're on. So long as they get where they want, when they want it's OK.

To put a more positive spin on this without wishing to hijack the thread. I'm sure a good number of those who gave up with BR went off and got involved in the, then, relatively small preservation movement. It's them we have to thank for there being so much preserved today.

I think there's a perception that it didn't happen. We were discussing this very era at the club on Tuesday. One of our younger members thought that steam had gone before blue and grey coaching stock became common. Rooting around in the library produced plenty of evidence to the contrary including a Britannia hauled train of 12 or so coaches, only three of which were maroon! Admittedly you're looking at the North West for most examples but it could have happened in most areas that still had steam post 1966. There is a picture in 'Great Northern in the East Midlands' by Alf Henshaw which shows what I'm fairly sure is a mk2 coach in Blue/Grey, being hauled by an 8F on a railtour past wekday Cross in Nottingham, heading towards Nottingham Victoria. Personally i would have doubted any blue/greys made it into 'the Vic' let alone a mk2!

That's at least three then, no longer valid in the context of the OP? Or would it just hack (pun intended) off the collectors knowing how many must have been sacrificed on the modelling altar

We have a short video clip (poor quality I'm afraid) of what should be a full APT set running through Carstairs station on our layout. It's reduced to eleven vehicles to fit into the fiddle yard! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uIVHuXcLAQ

Or make your own version of a Turbo car (with a metal propeller) and send it along the clubs GW branchline. It didn't have the platform clearances that our GC layout did Quote: advertise the show for the wrong weekend................ We went to one show down south where that pretty much happened, advertised as Bank Holiday Weekend, local radio saying Sunday-Monday, the show was actually Saturday-Sunday Hardly anybody came Saturday, not that many Sunday either.

Keep your 'ands off my cellophane

Not a sign but had to look twice in a local shop car park, to check what I'd seen in my mirror. Car parked behind me had registration number P15 LAV I don't think I 'd want that as a private plate, but the car was newer than the plate.

Much of it changing again over the next couple of years, extra platforms, etc. Desperately needed in my opinion. The current layout sees northbound east coast services sharing platforms with the cross country stuff and Ipswich terminator. Then the joint line terminator has to share platforms with southbound east coast services and FCC terminators. If something goes awry it quickly gets very congested.

Last Friday or Saturday, a Bachmann WD 90423, the one that was being sold off a couple of years ago went for £175.................

You're not wrong there!

Thanks Rug, I've tried looking for something which might keep people guessing so watch somebody get it at the first attempt in about 10 seconds flat!

Is it just south of Birmingham New Street, Proof house area?

:yahoo:

My first Rover 214 that I paid £20 for as a non runner (only needed a tow start!) broke it's belt. I had no idea of it's history, it gave little indication apart from the engine stopping, no unusual noises. When my son and his friend dismantled it he said there were only two broken valves, and FOURTEEN bent ones Got a replacement cylinder head from a scrapper and it ran for another couple of years until the gearbox gave out. I'm now on my fourth one of this type although I now have a 418 diesel, cost £120 over 18 months ago, only problem all last winter was needing a stronger battery, I'm leaving home before 04.00 some days, and the power steering fluid freezing

Several years ago, while dealing with one of these calls (not the first from this company) I asked rather forcefully, who they were and where they had got my info from. The 'person' on the other end of the phone, after telling me who they were, obviously turned to someone else and said to them 'this **** wants to speak to the manager'! When the 'manager' answered I told him in no uncertain terms that as I knew where they were and not far from me, they were actually a long way off, this **** would be round with a few friends to see them! Grovel, you should have heard him! Never had another call from them.

I've seen several photos, don't ask me where though, taken in the 50s and 60s of steam locos being dragged by an electric loco on their way to or from Gorton works. As many of the ex GC locos still went to Gorton for overhaul it's not surprising really. When Mike Wild took the photos for Hornby mag I had 26055 towing a very dirty 63770, although I think he cropped the photo and lost the steamer, can't lay hands on the mag at the moment.

Hi Dave, not having done any rivet work before tackling a brass and resin class 76 in O gauge, I wss a bit unsure of how it would go. Only a couple of weeks before we started on them, one of our members bought a G W tool (I think) from someone on RMweb. I found it incredibly easy to use, there are, if I recall correctly, anvils for 2, 4 and 7mm. Once you have set it up the stops ensure that all the 'rivets' come out the same. The results can be seen on my 'occasional' workshop thread here; http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/21861-o-gauge-class-76/page__p__216140__fromsearch__1#entry216140 All of the rivets were done in one session of a couple of hours. Just been looking through that thread, it's been nearly two months since I've had time to do anything on it, Nottingham show come and gone then Trainwest, needed me to sort out my OO stock, including 15 class 76s.

Not my layout or picture, but it does look superb and I think it deserves a slot here. Both the layout owner and photographer are club members: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/gallery/image/26939-netherwood-2/