pete_mcfarlane

No idea why the Royal Navy never bought these. Must be stupid politicans or something. https://www.twz.com/news-features/cmv-22b-osprey-not-operationally-suitable-according-to-test-report

Great announcement. Nobody has ever done a decent 4mm scale model of that class before.......

Have you picked up on the different motor bogies fitted to these units? More info here (and helpfully a photo of a 4-GRI with the same type of bogies you've used) tl:dr is that they all had equalising beam bogies from new, but some were refitted with the leaf spring bogies from PUL/PAN units, so pick unit number carefully.

Is this the train? I came across a photo on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1513662615439289&set=pcb.2649206025170508

If you employ more than about 10 people then you really don't want to be running anything important using Excel spreadsheets.

Which in turn looked like something the PLM would have built 30 years previously. https://www.flickr.com/photos/76677346@N04/43200601220

There's a lot of models as well, including a rather nice Cambrian 4-4-0 built at Oswestry works by apprentices. Models don't always fare well in modern museums, so hopefully there's a decent plan for these.

The droplights look a bit odd - the tops are far too curved (I have a vague memory of differences between batches, but none of them looked like that)

The media obsession with 2% GDP target also masks the fact that the UK, France and US historically spent a much higher percentage of their budgets on equipment than the other European NATO members. That has changed for the better over the last few year as European countries have ended conscription and moved from the model of lots of conscripts with lorries and rifles and (not much else) to the all professional model with less but better equipment. https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2023/7/pdf/230707-def-exp-2023-en.pdf I can't help thinking that a lot of the criticism is down to us (for once) collectively preparing for the next war, so our forces are no longer able to fight the 1980s version of WW3.

The French went for the approach of building their nuclear bombers (the Mirage IV) with only enough range to get to Moscow to avoid the crews having to speculate on this. I've heard it said that the problem with Putin was that as a KGB Major he was far enough up the hierarchy to be fully invested in the Soviet system, without being high enough to be able to see the flaws. Rather like Hitler being gassed and in hospital when the German army collapsed in Autumn 1918 and so not being able to see how completely hopeless their situation was.

There seems to be a lot of change for changes sake, in this case breaking up a museum collection that's been in situ for the best part of 60 years. A quick google should bring up some of this - some of which seems to basically be a culture clash between the younger London based types who run charities like the NT and their members and volunteers, who tend to be older people from the shires. Are they going to restore it? The C&L has restored a 3' gauge Avonside from one of the Ironstone tramways near Grantham, so there's a precedent for this.

I've built a Tadpole that way, and have a 4-BUF nearly finished: It's a good way to scratchbuild coaches.

But what state was it in when launched? IIRC their recent aircraft carrier was launched as pretty much an empty shell with no island or machinery. This one seems to have taken them over 5 years to commission, which suggests it was launched in a similar condition.

This is the Lords, so they'd be copying Hadrian (or Antonine) rather than The Donald, when it came to wall building.

It was semi-seriously suggested in the Lords about 10 years ago that the best solution to the Afghanistan problem was to use enhanced radiation weapons to deny use of the border passes leading out of the country, and then leave them to it.

Presumably those are the only signs they have in stock down in (mostly) 3rd rail land.

It seems to be symptomatic of wider issues with the National Trust.

Not all of the crossovers in yards were wired, so apparently there was a trick where you took a run up, lowered pan, coasted on the booster through the gap, raised pan. Any mistiming resulted in a bent pantograph.

I'm wondering what they mean by 'motor', given that these ships have diesel engines and a gearbox driving propellers? It's probably a lot more complex than somebody wiring up an electric motor the wrong way round by mistake.

That's surprisingly good for 1980s Russia. I was expecting something of the same quality as those knackered Novo plastic aircraft kits before the box was opened.

It took 4 days to defeat them last time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran My assumption is that the carriers aren't there because a) we can use aircraft from Cyprus if necessary, and b) lots of Johnny Foreigner types are suddenly kicking off (Hamas, Houthis) or potentially kicking off (Venezuela deciding to reignite their border dispute with Honduras, China making vague noises about invading Taiwan) in a way that's definitely definitely not a coordinated plan designed to spread Western military power thinly around the planet responding. So resources need to be carefully used. At least one of the carriers is earmarked for using the Russian navy for target practice and then seizing St Petersburg maintaining peace in the Baltic.

The problem with that logic is that the organisers may have paid £70 a room when they block booked half of a hotel a year in advance, but Joe Bloggs is booking one or two rooms at a time and will have to pay much more.

I am reminded of that possibly apocryphal story about somebody taking the batteries out of their Carbon Monoxide detector because the beeping sound was giving them a headache.

Maybe WCRC are hoping that they'll lose the staring contest and the Weeping Angel will send them back in time to when CDL wasn't a requirement?

I'd also be interested in some 4mm W&C stock.