Chris M

No criteria and certainly no insult to the Swanage railway was intended. Based on passenger numbers it could well be in the premier league. It’s just that there are a few heritage lines which tend be more well known such as the North York Moors or the Great Central.

Old railway lines often do make nice cycle tracks and I fully support converting as many old lines as possible to cycle trails. I think most cyclists (myself included) are polite and carful with other users of Sustrans provided trails. In fact most of the folk I meet when I am out cycling are pleasant although joggers almost never acknowledge me and always look very stern. My favourite little section of Sustrans route runs alongside the Severn Valley Railway between Severn Valley Country Park and Hampton Loade. Whilst I would never want to see a good heritage railway close it has to be admitted that there are a some that just aren't very good and probably do more harm than good to the heritage railway movement. I won't name names but I have got a few in mind. Typically they have a few industrial locos that are brought into use on summer Sundays to pull half a DMU along a mile of track and together with a lot of tatty rolling stock slowly rusting away to nothingness with very little prospect of much of it actually being restored to working order. Yes, I would be happy to see some heritage railways converted. I haven't been to the Swanage Railway but I hope to one day; from what I have read it appears to be well worth a visit and much better as a heritage line than a cyclepath. It doesn't sound like it is one of the premier heritage lines but almost certainly holding its own in the next division down.

Could be useful for taking the layout to exhibitions.

For me the class 22 is the loco I would most like to see running and there is still hope that one day I might. It would also be great to see more late Victorian locos - the ones that are around have something special. The Caledonian 828 for instance is a wonderful loco to see in action, I'm sure others of the same era would be wonderful too.

See post above. There is more to do yet but it’s well on the way.

Sorry about going off topic but here goes

I’m one loco short of a full set of liveries! This thread has provided very useful information. Maybe I’ll get the yellow buffer beam version in the new year.

I think you could well be right about EVs being a stop gap. I would even go so far as to say that the current EVs will be every bit as out of date as IC cars in ten years time. I wonder if other folk are thinking like me - keep my current IC car even if I buy an EV. That way I still have a car for long journeys until batteries get better. I will also have a low mileage IC car that just might become a sought after classic in twenty years time.

As I recall there was nothing unofficial about this policy. During Paul Jones' 30 odd year stint as exhibition manager he quite openly planned to embrace all aspects of the hobby wherever he could; that was official policy with the full backing of the club. That is along a policy of having some of the very best layouts from the UK and a small number of fine layouts from Europe. So far as I can see Crewlisle very much fits into the category of being an entertaining layout and is a good choice for Warley. With around 90 layouts on show Warley is able to invite a broad spectrum of layouts which makes it much easier to include "something for everyone". Crewlisle is pretty much guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser, especially among those who are just interested in the hobby rather than serious modellers. Having said that I like to think of myself as a fairly serious modeller but I always like to see layouts with plenty of movement. This brings me on to Beijiao. I saw it at Warley and thought it was very good. The modelling and operation were to a high standard. I would certainly rate it as well worth seeing. The big problem with it is that very few people (including me) can relate to it. As you go round exhibitions in the UK they are mainly UK based layouts with a very small proportion of foreign layouts. I think this represents what people want to see at exhibitions in the UK. There is a strong argument that visitors to shows should have a wider outlook and want to see/learn more about foreign railways but it has to be said that the foreign railways are usually the ones drawing the smallest crowds at exhibitions. There are of course exceptions to this. Personally my main love is UK layouts but I also love US and Swiss layouts but not so much other European countries. I think this is because I can relate to railways in these countries. Beijiao is a worthy layout and I am sure it will get invites to more exhibitions but I suspect it will never be as popular at exhibitions as it perhaps deserves to be based on the quality of the modelling. I hope it does get invited to plenty more exhibitions and that the builder's work gets the chance to be appreciated by many more visitors to exhibitions over the coming years. A lack of invites for any layout should not be a cause for concern at the moment. Most of the exhibitions called off this year loosely plan to have the layouts invited for this year at next year's show. This of course won't happen in its entirety but I expect it will be the case for many. At this point in time nobody can be sure when exhibitions will be able to come back on stream. Also exhibition managers may well be a little cautious about inviting a large number of layouts until we have seen how well the crowds come back when they do re-start. We can be hopeful that things will be back to normal at some point next year but nobody can say exactly when. I also expect there will be pent up demand so there will be good crowds when exhibitions do re-start but nobody can be sure of this. On the down side many of the clubs or other organisations that organise exhibitions will be low on funds as they missed their major fund raiser for 2020 so they may well have to be more cautious than usual when planning 2021 and 2022 shows; they won't have as much funds in the kitty to start with as they have been used to. All of this means that exhibition managers are not going to be sending out many new invitations to layouts at the moment. I was hoping to take my new layout to a couple of exhibitions in 2021 but now I really don't expect this to happen. Maybe 2022, but of course there has been a lot of modelling going on over this most perculiar year so there should be a lot of brilliant brand new layouts all chomping at the bit to be invited to exhibitions in 2022. It could well be that being invited to exhibitions becomes more difficult than it has been for 2022, especially if the cost of getting your layout to the exhibition is high or overnight accommodation for a large group is required. If I was managing an exhibition, and I have to say I am not in any way involved in managing any exhibitions, I would be looking in the main for good new layouts that were fairly local in order to keep costs down.

Gardening this week

Chemin de Fer Blonay-Chamby is another place well worth visiting especially if you like LGB. They have a mallet and a snow plough that look like they were originals for LGB models. They even do fly shunting at the lower station to get the loco back on the front of the train. Actually seeing a real railway fly shunting was a real treat. My favourite ride was in a very old wooden coach - I just loved the way the whole thing creaked as we set off.

Duchess of Hamilton wasn't shown as having a mainline ticket in the book. 46229 was on mainline service from 1980 to 1985 and then again from 1989 to 1996 . This fits with the book being put together in 1988.

From the 1989 Platform 5 book. As the book was published in 1989 the main line ticket was probably good in 1988. City of Truro Earl Bathurst Defiant (castle class) G*W Clun Castle King George V Burton Agnes Hall Sir Lamiel Lord Nelson Taw Valley City of Wells Clan Line 43106 44871 44932 45305 probably LMS livery 45407 LMS black Kolhapur LMS Lake Bahamas BR Green Princess Elizabeth 48151 BR late logo 53809 1054 - LNWR coal tank (I always expect this to be a Western when I see it advertised) Sir Nigel Gresley Union of South Africa Mallard Blue 4472 673 Maude Green Arrow LNER green The Great Marquess 2005 LNER 75069 80080 Evening Star Sorry its ten years too late!

As a daily passenger in the Midlands during the privatisation period I have to say I loved travelling by Chiltern Trains. Somehow all the staff seemed interested in providing great service and gave the impression of loving their job. This was right down to the folk selling tea and snacks. Even when things went wrong you felt they were trying hard to fix it and when there were little problems you could kind of detect a sense of humour with the situation. In stark contrast I hated London Midland Trains. The staff just didn't seem to want to be there. They were certainly more interested in clocking off bang on time than they were in providing anything like customer service. Information about what trains would be running when things went wrong was usually sadly lacking; I'm pretty sure the staff on the ground weren't given any information from those in control. My point is that the managers of a railway have a significant effect on the whole ethos of the staff which in turn has a significant effect the passenger experience. I worry that a government controlled railway will lose that special touch.

Agreed but the example I have at what happened with Virgin shows that the government body in charge (the SRA) had absolutely no interest in increasing rail usage.

The system of a nationalised track system but with private companies running trains does have its good points. Rail usage has certainly increased a lot under the marketing of the TOCs. Nationalised industries have always been more interested in existing rather than expanding. Back in the early days of Virgin Trains they were struggling with overcrowding. Virgin wanted to run longer trains but the SRA said no and forced them to reduce their marketing department instead. We can expect the post COVID world to be different. I can see long distance trains flourishing but will the commuter traffic ever get back to anywhere near it was? I expect companies will review and reduce office space while expecting workers to continue working from home. We might also be seeing the end of the city centre shopping experience. This could leave the railways with a lot of expensive underused leased stock. On the plus side there will no longer be a need for meetings where blame (and cost) for delays is argued over by the various parties involved. The down side is that running late won’t really matter all that much.

I’ve been fencing.

Yes - the best miniature railway ever. What a shame it is no more. Every time I go to Cornwall which is at least twice a year (except this one) I wish it was still there to visit. The grandkids would have loved a day there. At least we still have Pecorama which is a lovely day out - well I hope it will be next year. There is still a wonderful miniature railway in Bouveret, Switzerland which is well worth a visit if you are ever in that neck of the woods. https://www.swissvapeur.ch/le-parc/galerie-photos/

Warley Club has sadly lost some members recently. The most recent being John Seward last Tuesday. The club has made a tribute video to John and the other recently passed members.

I thought yesterday was a brave attempt at trying to make a virtual show more interesting. There were some rough edges but it is after all an event put on by a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs. In fact the NEC exhibitions have all been put on by a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs right from day 1. There are plenty of videos to see on the Walrey Model Railway Club youtube channel. I've contributed a few N gauge videos but there are lots of videos in all scales and from various manufaturers. More will be released during the course of today. Here are mine

Reminds me of my garden railway on November 5th

Every car I had with an A series was a brilliant starter. My only Ford wouldn't start if it was below freezing even when kept in the garage. I found that leaving it in the garage with an electric fan heater blowing under the front of the car for ten minutes helped on cold mornings.

The thing I loved about cars with A series engines is that they would start on a cold morning. That might not sound much but moving from a 1970s Ford it was quite a revelation for me.

Some modern engines have chains. The Honda 2.2 diesel did and the current Honda 1.5 turbo does.