pete_mcfarlane

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Years later, talking to a mate who'd been in the RAF, an aircraft mechanic at a base with Victor bombers, he told me the following about a conversation he'd had with one of the pilots.  This pilot had worked out that his instruction, to destroy an airfield and everything else in a 5-mile radius somewhere in Eastern Germany, and then return to base had not accounted for the undeniable fact that the base would have been a lifeless smoking radioactive hole for some hours before they got back to it. 

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. 

10 hours ago, Hroth said:

@The Johnster  The current problem with Russia is that Putin was a KGB operative in East Berlin when the wall came down and  he takes the "Westernisation" of the former Soviet Bloc as a personal insult and a direct threat to Mother Russia.  From his pov all he is trying to do is to recover that precious buffer zone against the capitalist West.

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. 

11 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

In what way?

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. 

8 hours ago, papagolfjuliet said:

Kettering Furnaces No.3 to the Waterford & Suir Valley Railway.

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. 

On 26/01/2024 at 21:19, MJI said:

I am wondering if a craft cutter could do the SR EMUs

I've built a Tadpole that way, and have a 4-BUF nearly finished: 

It's a good way to scratchbuild coaches. 

8 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Oct 2013 to Apr 2015 is impressively fast?

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. 

5 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Were any Lords chanting "build the wall"?  How silly.

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. 

On 22/01/2024 at 18:51, MarcD said:

It was a nice little museum. We have been a few times. A shame it's being broken up.

Marc 

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. 

On 22/01/2024 at 11:19, rockershovel said:

What worries me is that the Americsns clearly want to fight the Iranians. I've been to Iran. It's large, rugged, stinking hot, full of oil, inaccessible and those boys will fight. Teheran alone has a population of 12 million. I really can't think of a more inadvisable venture. 

It took 4 days to defeat them last time. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran

1 hour ago, Deeps said:

Do you think, perhaps, that is why we haven’t got one of our carriers in the Middle East?

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. 

3 hours ago, ardbealach said:

Naturally he was delighted to receive the invitation to this new exhibition - until he read the small print attached to his invitation - which reads 

‘As with previous shows we will cover travel expenses for van hire, but in a change to our previous events we are asking for layout owners to arrange their own accommodation which we will then contribute towards. The payment offered is £35 per head - the equivalent of £70 per night based on twin occupancy that we usually provide’. 

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. 

On 21/01/2024 at 10:08, Oldddudders said:

Never having been a driver, I am baffled why any driver would not relish the reassurance such systems offer if he becomes distracted, which I imagine to be much more likely on a steam locomotive with its footplate complexities, compared to modern traction. Were a TPWS equivalent available for the family car, I think most of us would opt-in. 

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.  

On 18/01/2024 at 21:31, Northmoor said:

The new Heritage Railway reports that WCRC are to "work with the ORR to find a solution to the CDL issue".  What amounts to a staring contest  apparently counts as working with someone.

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. 

9 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

It's an odd case, definitely. I never realised until relatively recently that Fenchucrch St Station was owned by the LNER, not the LMS at grouping.

It was served by some LNER trains. They even electrified it (at 1500v DC) as part of their Liverpool Street electrification programme, with regular empty trains running through the 1950s to keep the wires clean. 

3 hours ago, James Harrison said:

 

Most of the Airfix announcements are just re-releases though; there only seem to be one or two new toolings.  In the warships range for instance, Iron Duke and Ajax both date from the 1960s.  

I finally get to have a P.1127. Always wanted one of those. 

There's some new stuff in the Hornby International catalogue - there are CAD images of an Italian loco.  

On 05/01/2024 at 14:28, rodent279 said:

Why not go for an Italian style tri-phase system, with 2 contact wires and 2-C-2 electric locos with water cooled rheostats? Maybe add in a few inside cylinder outside valve 2-6-0s just for good measure?

Don't forget the cab forward 4-6-0 tanks, and Franco Crosti locos with no chimneys. 

11 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Being something of a cynical sort - especially where this bunch are concerned - I get the impression that they are banking on getting plenty of bookings so they can turn round and blame the ORR if they are not allowed to operate unless they use CDL fitted stock.  That will give them the opportunity to play the 'small company being oppressed by jobsworth officialdom' card - and there are already people out there elsewhere on the 'net thinking that is what is going on.  I hope that someone in the ORR is bright enough to suss out the game this bunch are playing and will stop them taking bookings until it is known that they can deliver what they are selling.

I'm sure that whatever happens, it won't be their fault. 

38 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

 

I wonder if anyone ever ticked the box to say they were involved in terrorism?

I always wondered how Gerry Adams answered that question.....

2 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

It would be good if they had specialist books relating to the actual line itself, where such books actually exist. People do buy these sort of things when they’ve visited a historic site etc. and want to find out more. I’m not sure there’s always as much of a market for a more comprehensive range though.

Exactly. One place that's really good at this are the visitor centres on the High peak trail in Derbyshire - they have large numbers of different books on the Cromford and High Peak for sale. 

6 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

Enthusiasts will turn up planning to take a lot of photos, which must include no people, or anything that hints it's not 1952 in shot. For this, they will bring their own sandwiches (the ones in the cafe are far too expensive), then thumb (but not buy) the books in the gift shop, because these aren't being discounted either.

They'll be lucky to find any specialist railway books in the giftshop on a lot of preserved lines (but is this because nobody actually buys them?). 

I know how to fix the leak....

https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/robinson/a-leak-in-the-channel-tunnel-illustration-from-inventions-litho/lithograph/asset/94802

2 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

DBS checks are only of any value for those who have been caught wrong-doing. For those like my former colleague who hadn't been caught he was merrily driving school buses with clean DBS checks before he had his computer repaired. 

I think the motivation behind DBS checks was to stop repeat offenders from moving to a different part of the country (where nobody knows them) and starting all over again.