pete_mcfarlane

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.

I think the plan was for refurbished 3H(M) units to work Victoria - Uckfield portions after the East Grinstead line was electrified. The DEMU would work in multiple with the 4-VEP working to EG and they'd split or join at Oxted. 1111 was wired up so that it could work with DEMUs, but could be quickly altered to work in multiple with EMUs. The plan was to refurbish the remaining DEMUs to this standard, and then swap all of them over to the EMU compatible mode in a short period of time. None of this happened, presumably because of money, and 1111 ended up being banished to the Marshlink line with other oddball DEMUs.

Manufacturers getting together and deciding on who does what model would probably fall foul of anti-competitive practices laws. It would be seen as dividing up the market. So not something any business would want to do. So we get duplicate toy trains but protected from price fixing on more trivial things like petrol and food.

I guess the real problem with 313s (and other modern units) is the lack of buffers. With the 4-COR (or Mk1 based units) you can tow them around as hauled stock using any air braked loco (including a Nord 4-6-0 if you are the Nene Valley....). I don't know what you can do with a 313, except turn it into a cafe like the East Kent did with a 365.

I did 'The Ghost train' about 15 years ago - the script comes with extensive instructions on how to do the train effects, 1920s style. Nail laths to the stage in the wings and push a lawn roller over them (for the noise of the train moving), whilst somebody else opens and closes an oxygen cylinder to make the chuffing noises. "Great Scott! Bolshies!"

Now that is a nice model. You seem to have models of everything - are there any locos that you don't have a model of?

Interesting that you went for the S3/6 rather than the earlier S2/6 that generally seems to be regarded as better looking.

I know a P4 Midland modeller who reckons the Jidenco Midland kits were pretty good. I have a vague memory that they were from somebody else's range that Jidenco acquired. My own experiences are limited to wagons - a LMS wagon that came with a steel underframe rather than wooden (but did get finished), and a Southern Ballast wagon of a type that couldn't be found in any of the 5 books on SR wagons.

Was the ill relative called Bunbury by any chance?

Maybe we should write letters to the Grauniad about how 'expensive' model railway shows are?

71s were HA A standard 33/0 was KA - there's more detail on the various codes used for 33s here: https://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/locos/d/d6570.html