GordonC

There was a railtour that took 205s up the West Coast Mainline to Carlisle I think it was. They couldn't work in multiple with 419s

I think that might quite quickly turn into something that the manufacturers couldn't win with. Did the Tri-ang AL1 and EM2 locos have 'scale' pantographs? In bulking up pantographs or shoe-gear for robustness would that make the appearance worse which is likely to cause more complaints than having them operational in the first place? I would have thought with the difficultly in what you're trying to achieve, not that I've ever tried, but I'd expect one of the easier issues would actually be getting the loco pickups fitted and that the associated trackwork and consistency in fittings would actually be the hardest part. Electric modelling seems to be deemed enough of a 'niche' market that I'd be reluctant to see additional things added to make it even more niche and increase prices for little benefit

... and its very impressive that it is possible like I said, but if you're going to the trouble of wiring or 3rd railing up every inch of your layout including tunnels and fiddle yards to avoid dead sections where the trains stop, then I wouldn't think it would be beyond your capabilities to come up with a working shoe arrangement to attach to bogie frames and move the wheel pickups over to or a metal pantograph on the roof to wire up. What are you expecting the manufacturers to do? wouldn't that spoil your engineering fun if they did it for you anyway?

All this talk of powered third rail or overhead is very impressive that it can be done, but really must have little practical use for the vast majority of purchasers. So is it not little more than appendage waving that it 'can' be done? More electrics to the standard of the Class 85 would be perfect

can you imagine trying to get it serviced? ... changing the oil etc. doesn't sound very practical to me and I'll stick to electric and with sound chips!

Is that the unit that often appears on the MERG stand at exhibitions? I presume there aren't too many around with opening doors, door warning beeper or the orange bodyside lights when the doors can open

those ones look far better in pretty much every way. Are the chamfered ends deeper on that one? What happened to those then if they were never produced as a kit? Was it intended to be produced then just dropped? I'm surprised they got that far and didn't progress them

Its looking good ... I think the gloss black around the cab windows is very unforgiving when photographing close up in bright light conditions. You might even want to use matt on that area rather than satin varnish

If London didn't suck up more than its fair share of investment, jobs and wealth from the rest of the country then there wouldn't be so much need to commute from further and further away.

No Inverness on the list?

Prices are getting steep enough without additional costs for things that cant be seen or have limited use

I struggle to understand the benefit of working pantographs, if it looks right then I couldn't care less whether the power comes from rails or the overhead. I'm sure it was mentioned in one of the magazine features recently where a club had found that when working with DCC and their electrics used overhead for power and commands that it was causing problems where the locos were presumably also getting the DCC commands through the rails and they ended up disabling the overhead because of it.

There must be class 40s and 47s due soon as catalogue models - I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of those. Are there any anniversaries or special dates coming up perhaps?

so are the periscopes fixed in position then? I assume they cant raise up since they'll quite quickly go out of gauge, but from where they are it doesn't look like they'd see much above the radio roof pods

What was in the raised roof sections of these coaches?

ah it must be that I was thinking of then, yeah you're right it was only 2014 that it was announced

Did Newton-Le-Willows not have a motorail terminal at one point? Was it not in use for motorail at all between the 1960s and 1990s? I didn't see it mentioned in the timetables shown there

Is that 4 years now though since the class 90 was announced and its still under 'design'. It'll have a lot of stages to go through before we actually see any models so it would be nice just to see a bit of progress. I doubt we'll see any models before 2018

that cant be true!! ... have you seen how popular Thomas the Tank Engine is? from branded merchandise to thomas days at the local preserved lines If a fraction of that interest can be captured and directed towards model railways then it could only be a good thing for the hobby. Just need to watch the initial costs of starter sets to ensure that doesn't discourage purchases too much.

Mermaids too

isn't Germany building a whole load of Coal-fired power stations to replace their nuclear ones? what is different about them that they're 'allowed' within EU rules and our existing ones aren't or cannot be made to be 'allowed'. We surely cant be expecting the increase in renewables over the next year to cover the shortfall from Fiddlers Ferry and Rugeley being closed.

Have Class 50s ever been used to haul the Royal Train? pre-Class 67's it looked to have always been Class 47s for a number of years

hmmmm there was an article in Traction magazine just the other month about a drivers memories at Willesden and I thought the diagram had the fuelling point on the south (London) end just outside the building. I could be mistaken though, I thought it was an odd place for it

Allerton depot may be another. I'm not sure where the fuelling point was, but it was certainly electrified and handled diesels too

what about the one at Willesden? Was the fuelling point there not located at one end of the electric depot for the local shunters and class 25s in earlier years. with the depot being electric I'd expect the fuelling point had ohle through it but perhaps it could be isolated when fuelling was taking place