pete_mcfarlane

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.

There was an interesting BBC4 documentary about 10+ years back on relations with Romania in the 1970s. The West attempted to court Ceausescu - for example he got a honorary knighthood (which we took off him shortly before he was shot). We seem to have seen him as a moderate communist we could deal with, of the kind we eventually got for real in the form of Gorbachev, rather than the unpleasant character he actually was. Like a lot of Eastern Bloc countries, Romania's currency wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, so they were desperate for Western currency to buy food etc, and things like the class 56 order helped get them this. As mentioned, he also visited the UK - the documentary talks about how his wife Elena Ceaușescu was presented by the Romania propaganda as some kind of amazing research chemist (her name was put on other people's papers) so was set up to meet actual British chemists who quickly saw through her. The whole thing is a bit like an Ealing comedy. In return for all this horsetrading, the Romanians ended up with some license built BAC 1-11s part funded with vegetables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_One-Eleven#Rombac_production. I flew in one of these - it hit the runway at Bucharest so hard that the lights went out, emergency escape lighting came on, and the overhead locker doors burst open spilling luggage everywhere. But that's another story. And as for the 56s, weren't the bogies a Romanian contribution to the design? They are completely unlike anything under any other British loco.

In one of Samuel Smiles books on now obscure scientists and engineers there's a section on a member of station staff on a Scottish rural line, who because a noted amateur astronomer for that exact reason, and conversed by letter with various lords and dukes who were also amateur astronomers.

Which would recreate a genuine CIWL service - that brief period in the 1960s when the Night Ferry had coaches from Victoria to Basel.

There are stories of local meter gauge trains in Northern France being delayed by problems with Southern electric commuter services (and the consequent timetable mayhem with boat trains and their connecting services in France). So it's not exactly unknown for there to be disruption.

When I went to Whitby by NYMR they make you queue up for the return journey. In front of me was a coach party (elderly UK punters), and the tour guide was patiently explaining to them 456 times that they needed to get off at whatever the Harry Potter station was, where the coach would meet them, and to watch out for the big signs at the end of the platform telling them what station you were pulling in to. The last bit seemed especially confusing to some of them. So locking punters like that in cages a nice comfy Mk1 is probably a good idea.

A judicial review could end up costing them more than it would do to fit the coaches with CDL.

I think it's very easy for people such as myself (white, straight, middle class, able bodied, educated etc) to dismiss stuff like this as token gestures or say 'it doesn't matter, you're all the same as us' but if it helps people who might feel a bit isolated within the wider society to feel less isolated, then it's worth doing. And the same goes if the LGBT+ members want to set up their own support network on here.

And there was me thinking that 'capsule range' meant that Airfix were going to do some 1960s spacecraft.... (Actually, one of those new NASA moon rockets would make a great kit, along the lines of the Saturn V they did year ago) I suppose we could hope that 'capsule range' means releasing locos and coaches to go with them all at the same time.

Lincolnshire archives will have the Ruston drawings (enough to build a real loco) - they used to have loads online but that site seems to have disappeared. Wayback machine has a small amount of it it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170619194018/http://www.lincstothepast.com/exhibitions/archives/the-ruston-and-hornsby-project/ The new site is less useful: https://www.calmview.eu/lincolnshirearchives/calmview/default.aspx https://www.calmview.eu/lincolnshirearchives/calmview/Overview.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&r=((((text)%3d'loco')+And+((text)%3d'arr')))

It's definitely worth going for the guided tour (rather than self-guided) option to get all the anecdotes. You can also get there from Edinburgh by the Borders Railway.

You can buy a Roxey kit safe in the knowledge that it can actually be built into an accurate model (and that you will enjoy building it).

Which is what tends to happen with people in specialist roles in small companies.

There was a problem with the buckeye auto-couplers fitted to one of the first batches of Southern suburban units in the 1920s, which were then removed and replaced with the centre buffer. This experience supposedly put Raworth (who was responsible for the design of EMUs) off using them.

Blood and Custard has more details: https://www.bloodandcustard.com/br-2epb.html

I'm still bemused as to why anyone would want to recreate a 210. It would be a fun novelty at diesel galas for a year or two, but that's about it.