GordonC

I wonder how well the Mk1s and Mk2s will sell these days with the prices they've reached compared to the basic nature of the tooling. When they've produced pairs of coaches in BR Blue and Grey with weathering & passengers they've hung around on shops shelves until being greatly reduced. You would think those are the kinds of coaches that there would be fairly steady demand for, but perhaps the majority of modellers have bought what they need

are the Class 20/3 inner-end lights non-working??? I'm a bit surprised if they're not supplied as working from the factory

14m!!! I'm jealous!!!!

The photos always look really impressive! how big is the room the layout is in?

are the DIP switches inside set correctly? There was a leaflet in the box for how they should be set for DC & DCC. Had it been DCC fitted at any point?

Is there really a better choice available though? If you cover the colour of the rosette could you pick out one party's candidates from another (in terms of policy rather than physical appearance)? Politicians should be public servants and representative of the people living in the country, but what we get now just serve themselves in the short term and are disconnected from how most people in the country live. They all fall somewhere in the scale between incompetent, dishonest and corrupt and dont seem to get held to account or to their word by journalists and the media like they used to. They only seem to be answerable to what spivs in the money markets think ... that can change a PM and Chancellor in days .... whereas there can be a firestorm around lies and behaviour which doesn't change anything for ages. Rishi was right when he said about the system being broken, but I couldn't trust any of them to do anything about it.

Are cars less affordable now than they would have been in the past?

There's a graph of annual new car registrations here (https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/) and the changes do look quite stark. Covid will have greatly changed working practices and finances so a drop since then is quite understandable and with the current cost-of-living crisis then buying a new car will probably be on less peoples minds. Would online shopping and remote working (it did happen before Covid too, but to a lesser extent) before then have reduced demand? and perhaps an aging population? would there be less older people driving and replacing cars since 2015?

I'm not sure where they'd be going and hadn't seen anything announced, but I was getting the impression the Class 175s had somewhere else to go. The fact that 2 fire damaged vehicles had been sent off for repair would suggest that not only some of them had future employment, but all of them. There would have to be limited options of older vehicles to replace - Class 150s, 156s, 158s and/or HSTs or exporting abroad spring to mind? It was the 321s, 365s and 442s that really surprised me in getting rid of them so soon - I would really have thought they'd have a lot more life in them. It really makes you wonder why things like the 331s were ordered when so many other mid-life units have been turned to razor blades so soon. I know the Covid downturn wasn't seen in advance, but there's still a quantity of redundant EMUs there. I'd think some of the Class 220/221s might disappear sooner rather than later too. I'm not convinced they've ever been popular and with Hitatchi IETs for Avanti will get rid of theirs

a certain gentleman had the right idea on November 5th - if only he had a party we could vote for!

are we victim blaming here rather than thinking of how many lies have been spun by politicians in manifestos which have been broken? Big promises, closed chequebooks

Even if they're not going ahead with the line as agreed for the last 10-15 years, to have a fire-sale sell off whatever land bought along the planned line is insane and ridiculously destructive for any hopes of building at a later date. The route needs to be protected with no planning permission granted along it for at least 20 years

Cant find more up to date figures, but from 2021 https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/crossrail-huge-cost-hikes-at-three-stations-and-on-19-main-works-contracts-09-07-2021/ Whitechapel station - £831M Paddington station - £685M Bond Street station - £660M Canary Wharf apparently had a £500M budget and needed £80M to finish and a few more here from 2019 where costs would only go one way https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/crossrail-huge-cost-hikes-on-stations-and-tunnels-revealed Maybe it is how a modern, high-density railway should be, but if that is what gets spent on a single station in London then why cant 2 extra platforms be funded at Manchester Piccadilly to solve a bottleneck that affects large parts of the North of England. Around £800M it was estimated a few years ago. The money spent on Castlefield corridor was entirely wasted without dealing with the bottleneck further down the line. The costs for HS2 may have initially been reasonable, but by the time all the objections to construction add in extra tunnelled sections it would be interesting to know how much that added on to original forecasts

They probably ran out of money to spend on the trains after gold-plating all the stations

their giving a damn only applies to the London area - the rest of the country is irrelevant

Hadn't heard of Tramalan before, but looks like it now might be Majestic Kits http://www.themodeltramshop.com/majestic-kits-00-whitemetal/

I'd never seen a picture of the thin stripe - were many done like that? hard to believe, but it looks even worse than the more common version!

I think the decorated samples look really good and it definitely fits the area and era I model, but that price is painful for something that'd be 'nice to have' rather than 'essential'. In the late 80s when DMUs were a bit mix and matched, even a driving end would be good to have to use with other units, but selling as 2 and 3 car sets gets expensive for that.

How on earth can you think fares wont go up on HS2? Is there a premium for the Javelin's on HS1? It might be replacing fast services on the WCML line at the moment, but there will also be £60bn spent on it by then and that will need paying off one way or another.

deliberate vandalism to recover a minimal amount of money and make sure the decision cannot be reversed without even greater cost

I'm not even sure cars need 450 miles of range all the time - if they made an 'extra range' battery pack that could be fitted or hired for the rare occasions that long journeys are made, the vast majority of EV car usage must be completable in 250 miles. But do you really want to lug around 450 miles of battery around all the time for the odd times its needed?

So bearing in mind the big bill that HS2 will cost, how much more will tickets be for trains that divert onto HS2 compared to the existing WCML? and if it doesn't go to Euston it's completely useless - what will OOC be like when offloading HS2 trains onto Crossrail which is apparently already busy? How much more will it cost to convert the OOC station into one that can handle every train terminating there - it'll be another Waterloo International built at great cost for a short-term role

.... and just after they've already cancelled phases 2A and 2B where the most benefit in having HS2 would have been visible. Who on earth would be volunteering to fund it??????

Proposed future development Wythenshawe Loop The original plans for the line included a loop from Roundthorn tram stop to the existing line at Manchester Airport via Wythenshawe Hospital and Newall Green. The line would have had stops at Wythenshawe Hospital, Newall Green and Davenport Green.[7] Although axed in 2005 to control costs, the Wythenshawe Loop remains an aspiration of TfGM. The route could link with HS2 Manchester Airport High Speed station.[8] TfGM have submitted a bid for funding to extend the Airport Line to Terminal 2.[9]

I also note he was saying on the TV in the previous couple of days that he 'would not be rushed into a decision' and a 'decision had not yet been made' which would have to be nothing short of a complete lie.