pete_mcfarlane

It's a steam heating van (for pre-heating carriages, especially sleepers). More photos here. https://www.departmentals.com/departmental/041978 It does look like it has appeared in an episode of 'Pimp my ride'.

Which sounds similar to BR using Kensington Olympia as a 'London' station for cross country trains.

There's also a big Gauge One show in the agricultural centre in Bakewell. Apart from that, Spalding and Loughborough are now the only big East Midlands shows I can think of. Having gone through this with am AmDram groups, the extra work was a) stuff we should have been doing anyway (but didn't, because previous committees decided that the law didn't apply to them) and b) mostly one off tasks like writing policies and getting lots of people DBS checked. After that it was just a steady trickle of form filling. Like a of of these things it was going to be a complete disaster and unworkable, until you actually started on it. Having a couple of former members in the paper with child porn convictions also helped to silence doubters....

The real trick is to position the gas powered barbeque against the kitchen wall, the other side of which is the gas powered cooker. As a middle class person I feel the need to point out that conspicuous consumption is dreadful, and that most of that stuff was bought on credit with repayments which they can't quite afford as some kind of insecure 'keeping up with the Joneses' thing. And that the male host will be wearing an 'amusing' apron.

It's always an interesting experience crossing the Trent viaduct at Radcliffe when the fields are flooded. I commuted from Grantham to Nottingham for about 5 years and it flooded once or twice a year. The viaduct itself is a bit odd, having a junction in mid air with the newer viaduct on the colliery branch to Cotgrave (most of which is now walkable - a very cheap footpath conversion as you walk on the old ballast). The city tends not to flood since they built the sluices up stream from the viaduct.

I do wonder if Wilkos have suffered from changed work habits. The Wilkos near my office was useful for popping into at lunchtime to buy random cleaning products or other bits of hardware that were needed urgently. With a lot of people spending fewer days in the office, they must have lost a fair bit of that kind of trade. They had been doing something to address whatever problems they had - a few local stores did close in the last few years. Including the one in Grantham, which was tiny and tucked away near the bus station. That kind of illustrates the randomness of their approach - the stores all seemed to be of different sizes with different ranges of products, I once bought some 'HSS' drill bits (either from Wilkos or Boyes) and managed to bend one of them. HSS isn't supposed to do that.

It depends how much effort is involved. The Mikro-Mir DH.88 I'm currently building in 1:48 had incredibly complicated (dozens of parts each) and not very well moulded engines, which you would pretty much never see. So I skipped those. A lot of the tinier bits of etch detail get skipped. Because I'm only planning to live to be 102. I'm also not 100% sure on some of the detail - the AIrfix 1:72 Vampire had a wonderfully moulded set of intake ducting and a compressor face. You have to wonder how much research they did, given that Vampires had centrifugal engines without a big compressor at the front.

August 1993. I remember buying that issue their stand at the Grantham show in September that year a week or two before I left for University - I'd no idea that BRM existed until that point. https://www.railmags.org/brm1993/1793-brm-1993-august.html That was definitely not 30 years ago.,,,, 👴

If it wasn't for Crich stand on the cliff behind the tram, you'd never be able to tell it was the same place.

I've built a few 'small' 0-4-0 diesels from kits, and they are surprisingly easy to motorise compared to much large steam locos. There's a lot of room in the bonnet for a motor.

I remember my local model shop owner saying that people had standing orders for every new Lima diesel, and then started to get into financial trouble when the numbers of locos being produced shot up and their bank account couldn't keep up.

There's some more info here on the French versions, but viewer discretion is advised for the picture of the real S100 on page 2 😬 https://cercleduzero.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7052&sid=722ab884f20b4caff043223c25463d5c

Probably the same people who applaud at the end of films, and to thank the computer that has just landed their flight.

Most of the Wagon-Lits F class sleeping cars that worked the Night Ferry were also pre-nationalisation - being built in several batches (1935, 1945, 1952). They lasted until 1980, which probably makes them the last 'pre-nationalisation' coaching stock in regular use in the UK.

I think the answer is 'a good starting point for a lot of work'. I have two slowly progressing. Main issues are the cab (it's too wide for the 8'6" locos and two narrow for the 9' batch), and the front end. All fixable with work. Albert Goodall's instructions on how to do this are on the RT Models site, along with most of the bits. https://www.rtmodels.co.uk/albert goodall wc,bob paper overlays instructions.pdf The Hornby based one in Tim Shackleton's book also looked really good.

Those look like the prices with and without VAT.

It looks like the cars I 'designed' in felt tip as a child. Somewhat typical of the Grauniad to not know about the use of wood in a lot of early cars, and treat it as a modern novelty.

I remember the class 91 test runs, from memory they were normally 4 or 5 mk3 sleepers, a mk3 buffet car, and a buffer fitted HST power car. Ditto seeing them a few times on the MK1 charter set.

The example I was thinking of (at Sharnal Street) is in the left background to this photo from the Kent Rail site . There's a better photo in the Peter Sqibb book on scratchbuilding signals. The ring looks dark so I may have misremembered them being white. Looks like an early SR latice post signal, so probably a direct replacement for an earlier SER one. I'm using this as a excuse for a similar signal on my layout, when I get round to doing the signals.

To confuse things further, the Southern had a few ringed goods signals with yellow arms and the white ring doing the 'access to a block section' job. In some cases these seem to be adaptions of earlier signals. There was at least one on the hundred of Hoo line. Some photos of the various SR examples here: https://sremg.org.uk/proto/semaphore_5-mob.shtml

I am now the proud owner of an Albion 4mm scale E5 from Roxey mouldings. So the kits are now becoming available again.

Interesting that you have fitted individual glazing to each window. The normal method is to stick a single piece of plastic in place, but that never gives you quite the right effect of the droplights being further back than the main windows.

Even as an under-10 I had determined that I could build better models more quickly out of card and Superquick brick paper than with Linka. The (presumably professional model maker built) models on the box artwork were very impressive though. Looking forward to seeing how this comes along.

They were responding to emails about a month back when I bought some more Mk2 kits. There's some information at the bottom of this page: http://www.southernpridemodels.co.uk/html/srkits.htm Never tried the Bulleids, but the Mk1s came with everything apart from paint/glue, transfers and wheels (and the interior kit, which you need to order as a separate item from him).

I like the accompanying photo, which shows somebody hanging out of the window. Sounds like they are still going for a judicial review. My impression is that many people think these are a way to overturn decisions they don't like, rather than a way to get the decision checked to make sure that due process was followed.