pete_mcfarlane

Exactly. BR and their successors somehow managed to cope with ECML services being operated with a mix of HSTs and Mk4 sets for years. I guess the hypothetical ideal situation would be to have a 50:50 mix of trains from 2 different suppliers, with identical characteristics for operational purposes (seat layout, performance (which these days could probably be tweaked through software to be identical), the same couplers so one class could at least drag a failure of the other type, and so on). The suppliers take care of maintenance, so the biggest overhead would be making sure that your crews had traction knowledge of both types.

There are plenty of semi-derelict Finnish locos dumped around the UK

I never quite understood the logic behind some of this - there were several diagrams for class 76 depending on whether they were MU or boiler fitted, but all got numbered as 760xx. And the 25s sub-classes weren't number in separate blocks, as other classes were. It's as if there were several people doing the TOPS number allocations, and they all did things their own way.

Only the NBL ones. The Swindon built Warships were class 42. There were enough difference between them to warrant separate classes.

This applies in pretty much every organisation - the other team/site/business unit is always full of morons who don't know what they are doing.

Maybe I'm worry about my soldering bits more that I should do.

Some more progress. The body is complete, apart from the cab detailing. Again no major issues, and everything fitted. The only minor annoyance was having a temperature controlled iron, and having to continually swap bits/temperature when soldering up the buffer beams (low melt with one bit for whitemetal, normal solder with another bit for brass. The basic chassis is also soldered up. Cutting out the half etched hornblock holes (after assembling the chassis and setting the compensation beam) was a bit tricky with a piecing saw and a tiny chassis, but I got there. Next step is to do the rods, which being a critical to get right first time job can wait until I'm slightly more awake (having drive to Derbyshire to visit the tram museum, having a few days off and it being the only railway type attraction open today).

The offset smokebox door looks even weirder on the Hungarian ones where they did the usual Communist thing of painting red stars on them and moved the pump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MÁV_Class_411 (You can take the entire smokebox front off to get the tubes out, in case anyone was wondering....)

There, I fixed it for you......

BeerHeadZ at Nottingham station is tiny, has a silly name, but is a pretty decent pub. The greatest non-railway transport related pub is the Canal House, round the corner from Nottingham station. Which is in an old canal warehouse, with narrow boats moored inside and a bridge to get to the bar.

'Southdown' is definitely a LBSC I1x class, the curved cab roof was to allow them to work on ex-SECR lines. No idea why a bus company is operating LBSC tank locos though.... The unpainted OO gauge model is an I3. It's bigger, and the shaper of the frames above the footplate (where it curves up to meet the smokebox) is typical of I3s. Apart from the horrible dome, it looks like a pretty decent model. Definitely worth finishing. The unfinished loco has a large boiler (so could be an I3) but the frames aren't right for an I3. Possibly it's one of I1x, I2 ort I4 with an overscale boiler to fit the mechanism or maybe a semi-freelance loco in the style of the LBSC.

I bought this at Scalefour North in 2019, and it's finally worked its way up to the top of the 'to do' pile. A High Level Neilson Mineral engine, for my small collection of Victorian/Edwardian industrial locos. Not quite as small as the Hughes Tram engine I built last year, but still tiny. Most of the work was done as the Scalefour Society East Midlands Group all day session on Thursday, which meant that I powered through the bit I'd been dreading (forming the ogee tank) rather than putting it off for a week or two. In the end it was fairly straightforward, bending round different sized drills bits with the tank sides held in the vice - less difficult than forming the one piece bonnet on a diesel shunter kit. The two spare tank sides are still on the fret (providing spare bits is a) a good thing if you mess it up and b) is a bit intimidating, as you suspect you'll muck that bit up). Pretty much nothing required fettling and it all fitted perfectly, as you'd expect. I've not even started on the chassis, as I expect it to fit the body perfectly.

This is an industrial museum, so surely you'd want to keep things from different industries together to make a meaningful display? Putting all the ceramics in one section makes sense for the V&A, but not where you've got Telegraph insulators in the ceramic section, and the block instruments they connect in 'wood'. Which is what the Derby museum has done.

That Falcon Brass box is a really nice piece of design. Unlike the contents.......

The irony is that the Art-Deco original interior looks far more modern. We seem to have forgotten how to do Industrial design for about 25 years in the middle of the century.

I finally went to the reopened 'The Museum of Making' today. Firstly, the new museum is pretty dire. The building looks great after the renovation, but here's very little actual content. Just a random selection of artefacts carefully displayed with minimal labels, in that virtually empty fashion of modern museums. In some cases they are arranged by material, for no obvious reason (because the curators didn't know anything about the objects but could see what they were made of?). There's a tiny little bit of information about local industry - for example Rolls Royce has half a dozen wall panels with a short paragraph on each, and single jet engine on display (the previous museum had loads). The railway gallery contains the rebuilt model. It's not very well presented, with poor lighting and no backscene. But it's there, and running twice daily (at 11:00 and 2:00, for about half an hour). I say running - a succession of trains did circuits, train set style, without stopping at the station. The poor lighting makes my photos look like something Brian Monaghan shot for the Railway Modeller in 1974. Gone is the stock on display in cases - these are the only non-operating stuff on display. These are some of the few things in the museum with decent labels. The other good not utterly terrible bit of the museum is a kind of open store, with various random items jammed in. Lots of railway stuff, including endless block instruments, an early APT model, and a mock up of the Fell. No idea what it was used for - as I can't image they wind tunnel tested it... So the railway is back, working regularly (unlike before) but in a very poor museum.

Which reminds me of this Viz strip from a few years back: https://jodrell.org/2012/05/08/34-year-old-obsessive-war-workshop-assistant/

I find my local Games Workshop a bit odd. Go in for a can of spray paint and I get pounced on by the staff, who try and pressure sell me gaming stuff that I'm not interested in. It's a retail experience that you normally only get in the States.

Did the conversions retain the art deco tubular chairs? I travelled in the restored one on the NNR the other month and they are of the slightly uncomfortable kind found in some buffet cars, presumably designed to stop people hogging them for too long.

I think the boys ended up as black as soot in my 1970s copy of the book. It was a bit unusual to see that word in children's books - I think the only time I ever encountered it was when Alan Quartermaine tells you not to use it in 'King Solomon's Mines'. I do remember thinking it odd, even as an 8 year old, that a lot of the villians in Biggles were described as 'half caste'.

Didn't one of the European countries store their strategic reserve locos in a tunnel? Not all of these incidents may have been from the UK.

Ordered something on Sunday and it turned up on Tuesday. Which surprised me, as I normally expect orders to take a week or two.

It's a clean electric car, but only when the regulators are testing it..... His autobiography 'Life as Sutch' is quite a good read. It goes into a lot of his experiences of touring by-elections, and shows how clever and incisive he was. And a lot of his joke policies are now law, and he managed to put the SDP out of their misery. The less said about some of his music the better though.

Strictly speaking this is film, rather than Video (and he takes great pains to point of that he shows real archive films). I went to one of Rob Foxon's 'Railways Remembered' film shows last week at the Palace Theatre in Newark. This was the second time I've seen him there - when I was a member of the Railway Society in Grantham (as a kid in the 80s and early 90s) he was a regular fixture, but it was only recently that I realised he was on at the Palace. The latest show was LMS focussed and a mix of public films (Royal Scot in the USA for example) and internal railway films (the correct use of hand cranes). The Christmas show last year was a bit more mixed - and included this gem about the Ohrid railway in Tito's Yugoslavia (the 60cm one with WW1 vintage Brigadeloks) which is also on Youtube. So well worth going to see if you're in the area -- he's on again in Newark in November (and at other places in the Midlands). https://www.palacenewark.com/whats-on/instances/railways-remembered-christmas.php

The mention of full length step boards on Gresley carriages reminds me of this scene. Enjoying watching this build. I'm tempted to have another go at building one of two of these carriages.