pete_mcfarlane

I'm now a bit confused about the blue VEP. Have Hornby actually said that it will be the "Gordon Petit" or is that an assumption based on the the fact that the only test shots we've seen are of a refurbished unit? The (slightly vague) wording on the Hornby website suggests it will be in original condition.

A 28mm figure would be a scale 7ft tall in 4mm scale, 20mm would make it 5ft but is probably the better size.

7ft is probably about right for a Cyberman!

A while back somone produced some cast whitemetal daleks for wargaming with. I think they were in 28mm scale which is roughly right for 00 gauge.

 

http://www.blacktree...02&bestseller=Y

In fact there's a massive range of Doctor Who monsters - even the Voord and the Kandyman are there. And the extremely cool looking special weapons Dalek.......

So basically, they want to take a gas axe to a 37 then bolt together parts of it and stick on other bogies?

There's a Monty Wells article in the May/June 1983 Railway Modeller that explains all of the necessary modifications!

How many buses will be queueing behind the dead one before someone in control (if indeed there is a "control") twigs something is wrong?

Hopefully the buses will either have a radio link to a control centre, or the drivers will be equipped with mobile phones. Note the use of the word "hopefully"....

Which shows how the taxation system favours larger vehicles, since they are accountable for the damage caused to our roads yet hardly pay their way.

 

What was the point of this anyway...? Are Cambridge bus drivers generally lazy or so inept they are incapable of properly steering their vehicles...? If it was a guided trolleybus route then a dedicated RoW may be appropriate, otherwise it seems a waste of a good road or light rail alignment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway

The 6-metre (20 ft) width of the bus guideway is narrower than the 9.3-metre (31 ft) width of a single carriageway rural all-purpose road built to 2009 standards (excluding attendant verges and footpaths/cyclepaths in both cases).^[70] A conventional road would have been too wide for the guideway itself to fit on top of the narrower existing railway embankments and across the under-bridges along parts of the route

So basically you can't turn a double track railway route in to a single carriageway road without widening it (which is presumably very expensive). Guiding the buses controls their position on the roadway, so you can allow less clearance between passing vehicles.

The biggest criticism I'd make is the low top speed (55mph) compared to rail - this isn't competitive enough for medium distance journeys like St Ives to Cambridge.

A much better solution to congestion on the A14 (and other dual carriageways) would be to ban lorries from the outside lane and enforcing this with numberplate recognition cameras. Most congestion on dual carriageways is caused by lorries doing 56mph taking 2 minutes to overtake lorries doing 54mph.

I suspect a flat crossing would be the only possible solution, I suspect the others were considered, but discounted early on. We just have to make it work !

And just because it the commissioning of the crossing has been delayed does not mean there is anything wrong with it as a solution. As an onlooker it looks like some people have taken these delays as meaning that it's never going to happen.

I doubt if a bridge is financially viable. If Network Rail aren't able to replace the Newark flat crossing (on the East Coast Main Line) with a bridge, then I doubt if taking a lightly used branchline over an equally lightly used narrow gauge line is going to be a priority for them.

I like the LSWR electric. The early 3rd rail suburban units are rarely modelled but there's an almost endless variety of different types.

Those images of Robert's really show how archaic these units looked for new trains in 1970!

I was looking at the NRM stocklist the other day. Their VEP driving trailer is a year younger that the APT-E.

Putting one in the NRM would prove to one and all that double decker trains don't work on Britain's railways and hopefully silence all those badly thought out calls for them to be introduced!

My go at identifying some of them:

Van 1 could be LSWR? Certainly they used the X shaped bracing each side of the door.

Van 2 is GWR judging by the twin end vent hoods.

Van 5 has sides like an LMS Diagram 1817 beer van, but these had slatted ends (at least when built). I suspect the vertical end planking is a replacement job. Good find!

All thanks to the lunacy that is the rail regulations dreamt up by some 'not on this planet' civil servant in a locked basement in Whitehall I presume!!

Presumably it's cheaper to run one train a day than to fund an Parliamentary Bill to get the original act of Parliament authorising the station repealed or amended. Until the relevant bit of legislation is changed then the station has to be kept open by law (BR got caught out y this when they tried to close the Bluebell line).

It was also pointed out in one publication that, in theory, the REPs could be coupled and run in multiple with any of the other SR EP units but, in practice, if this was done they would have blown every circuit-breaker in the vicinity!

I *think* a REP could work with a single MLV/2-EPB/2-HAP without tripping the circuit breakers. I doubt if this combination happened very often in service!

I like the EPB sandite unit. Very nice.

That looks like a 3H LNER 6 plank wagon to me - there is a photo of a similar wagon in Tatlow's LNER wagons (the 1980s single volume - I don't think the new multi-volume work has got as far as LNER standard designs). Nice mouldings but a pig to assemble square.

I had an opportunity to ride on a class 22 on the demolition train. It took the workers a few months to rip up the tracks, and luckily, the workers were very friendly to us kids at the time.

Can you imagine that today - a strange man offering kids a joyride around a demolition site?

i think i menationed earlier in this thread that our original cad/cam design factory in China had had a fire, subsequently losing ALL the cad/cam files and variations for the class 22.

I get the impression that business continuity is a completely alien concept in places like China and India. They should have a copy of the files on a backup tape stored offsite in case this happens.:icon_thumbsdown2:

Also thought I would amends my thoughts on future production on 207's it's more than front ends... But its a still a possiblity if they are up for it?

The class 207/3D units are 6" narrower than normal Mk1 stock (narrow tunnels at Tunbridge Wells), so a complete retool would be needed to do one.

But never build, as only the seven where shipped to Holland... One became parts-donor, the other 6 entered service after an extensive rebuild, mainly on the Den Haag to Venlo route. Of the seven, nearly half (3) survive: one in Holland, two in the UK, including the one in the NRM. The Dutch machine is operational and based at Rotterdam-Noord.

The NRM has an EM1, not an EM2. The preserved EM2s in the UK are at the Midland Railway Centre, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The Manchester one is still in Dutch livery and condition. Manchester also has a cab section from an EM1.

Yes, the LNER and later BR(E) planned further extensions to the 1500v systems, and for a short while the 1500v DC system was the BR standard system.

Kings Cross - Grantham (plus the Nottingham line as far as Colwick Yard) was supposedly being planned at one point just after 1948. That would have given the EM2s an decent run, and possibly ties in with an extra 20 of them being ordered.

Good luck to any one wishes to have a real challange.

 

Terry

I've seen finished examples of the earlier fibreglass Q Kits diesels, but never have I seen one of their brass/whitemetal mainline diesels actually get finished. They are awful.

If you mean these they were later than the austerities and were a RSH design.

 

http://www.spavalley.../SpaUgly_04.htm

 

Arthur

 

Thanks - I knew they were somehow different from the Austerities, but obviously forgot exactly how.

Though the ones that I did find interesting were the ones from Corby that had the shortened saddle tank.

I thought those were an earlier Hunslet design and not strictly speaking "austerities".

I wonder what ever happened to Monty Wells? He did a few very well written articles in the RM mag and then suddenly disssapeared, which was a shame.

He jumped ship to MRJ when it started - there are quite a few of his articles in the early editions. An epic conversion of Lima GWR railcars in to a 2 car set and a class 73 detailing article spring to mind. All beautifully illustrated and well worth tracking down.