pete_mcfarlane

Err no. The inference was that he had to have a bigger train set than everyone else and so went out and bought everything in the shop - quantity rather than quality.

More of a train set than a model railway. For some reason I'd imagined that he had something like a German version of the Norris layout, with beautiful scale models commissioned from professional model makers. But I suppose it's typical of the man's character that he filled his loft full of vast amounts of RTR stuff - as if he'd seen the demonstration layout in the Marklin showroom and wanted a bigger one for himself.

The SER van was done without having a photo of one of these vehicles in SR days. Having finished the model and posted the photos last night, the latest issue of Invicta (the SECR society magazine) arrived this morning, complete with photo of one of these vans at Folkstone in the 1920s. I don't seem to have made any glaring errors.

I've finally finished both vehicles. They were painted using a mix of Humbrol railway acrylics and Valejo paints. The lining was done using diluted Valejo yellow, and a black drawing pen. My lining isn't the greatest, but will do. The scratchbuilt SECR passenger brake. Finished as per the picture in the Oakwood press book on SECR coaching stock - I doubt if the white roof would last long in service. And the Branchlines brass SER luggage van. I'm currently working on finishing off a few stalled projects, but I plan to have another go at scratchbuilding a coach in the next few months, as this one seems to have been pretty successful.

The Banana vans are from ABS. I've built one, with another in my to do pile, and they are rather nice kits.

My reading of the Labour position is that they are saying they still support it, so long as it's not stupidly expensive. Which doesn't seem that different from what they've said before, despite the media putting their own spin on things. . Rather scarily, they've phoned up their mate Bob Crow of the RMT and he's said something that is not only sensible but puts him in agreement with the Conservative government.

It sounds like they were being shunted from the works to the paintshop.

You'd probably find that it's still better to drive to Newark, as any post-HS2 ECML timetable would have more services stopping there. Driving to Newark or Grantham seems to be pretty common on the eastern side of Nottingham.

Nottingham is an oddly shaped city, with the city centre (and main railway station) in the bottom eastern corner and a vast suburban sprawl to the North and West. This is presumably why some of the suburban stations (Beeston and Long Eaton) have expresses to London, to avoid people having to drive in to the city centre. So Toton will actually be quite convenient for a lot of the population.

There's a lot of focus on WCML capacity, but presumably phase 2 will have a massive impact on the MML and ECML as well which needs to be shouted about more. I went to the Mallard talk in Grantham on Saturday night, and in the Q&A session at the end one of the audience asked if HS2 would mean the end of Intercity trains stopping at Grantham. This was a bit bizarre considering that ECML traffic levels have got to the point where it's possible to justify running HST services just to serve Newark, Grantham and Peterborough. But it shows that there's still a lot of odd ideas floating about which need addressing.

I would imagine that the limiting factor these days is the amount of construction plant and skilled labour available, especially for tunnelling. HS2 seems to be starting after CrossRail completes, which suggests that there's a limit to how much can be done at the same time. The 19th Century approach of using navvies is easier to scale up - you just recruit more navvies. They are cheap and you can lay them off when you're done with them.

They've missed out the usual rabid frothing from the stop HS2 people. Shurley shome mishtake?

But Spain probably isn't a good example - it's current economic problems are due to spending vast amounts of borrowed money on infrastructure it didn't need. So their high speed lines were probably built to pretend to keep up with France and Germany, rather than because they were actually needed.

Before the Great War there were SECR services to GNR stations in North London, via Ludgate Hill, the Widened lines and Kings Cross. There were also SECR services to Moorgate, alongside the Midland and GNR ones. All of these were suburban services. After WW1 the only through traffic would have been freight. I think the only place to see SR and LNER express power together was the GCR main line, where some Southern locos worked cross country trains via Oxford.

BBC news article on the Public Accounts Committe report in to HS2. What strikes me (from my possibly biased viewpoint) is that the backbenchers seem to have pointed out that the costs have crept up and need to be kept under control or the cost/benefit analysis. will change. The BBC have turned this in to 'benefits dwindling' and the stop HS2 complainers have turned it in to 'devastating criticism'.

From a PR point of view, they should have announced the Northern part of the scheme first. The resultant outcry from the SE of England when they thought they were missing out would have drowned out the Nimbys!

From the BBC news article: Are these people real? I'm struggling some of the mental gymnastics that the anti-HS2 campaigners are going though to come up with arguments other than 'I don't want it going past my nice big house'.

Looks good. I'm in the process of finishing off one of the Cambrian LSWR opens - they are nice kits.

That's rather good news! Although I think they are missing a trick by not doing a LBSC version (which presumably would need them tool up the original cab) - the SECR version of the C sold very well. My money was on a D class.

I'm half expecting the late Dionysius Lardner to return from the grave and tell everyone how dangerous HS2 will be. The trains will go so fast that the air will be sucked out of the passengers lungs! Having read the IoD director's comments, in particular the statement that "Politicians love building monuments to themselves" I think it's clear that he's not really got a clue. There seems to be a notion amongst the more rabid anti-HS2 commentators that the whole thing is a political ego trip by David Cameron and will serve no real purpose. I think that's unlikely, given that the plan was originated in the rail industry, picked up by the last Government and continued by the current one. Err, no. Unless they did it 15 years ago.

Despite the recent wobble from one former Labour minister, HS2 seems to have pretty wide political support. So it's not surprising that UKIP is trying to position itself to get the votes of those opposed to HS2. Apparently they think HS2 is part of an plan for a trans-European railway network (which makes you wonder what they think the Victorians were doing when they built railways lines to Dover and Folkstone!). On the subject of anti-HS2 frothing, the Stop HS2 campaign have recycled this old urban myth, except with BR as the butt of the joke. Normally it's the US engineers who forget to defrost the chicken.

My reading of the story was that the thinktank position could be summarised as "HS2 plus a load of other random expensive things not in the published Government costings for HS2 will cost a lot more than the published Government costings for HS2". They weren't comparing like for like, despite the attempts of the newspapers to make out that they were.

The only one scrapped in blue/grey was one of the prototypes, which obviously look nothing like this. Hang on, why don't I (badly) repaint a few knackered Hornby HSTs in reverse grey/blue and sell them on eBay for a small fortune as "protoype HST - would look good in any collection".

I like the Balloon third. Is it a Blacksmith kit?

It wasn't your browser - the photo was the right way round on my PC, but got spun through 90 degrees on being uploaded. Uploading it a second time fixed the problem. Answers on a postcard..... As for the proportions of the R1, they are nice little locos. I think they may be slightly less well proportioned than the original R class. SEF do a kit for the R using some similar parts (including the incorrect chassis) and I've got one in my to do pile so I should be able to do a comparison before long.