lee74clarke

Ay Up Derek, How are you? Been on here for a while really, just too lazy to post much! Actually, Grandad was my mother's Dad, spent most of his railway days between Little Bytham & Castle Bytham stations. Think that's where my interest comes from, listening to him and my uncle talking when I was a kid, about Pacific loco's, plus Deltics and the like on the ECML through Bytham. To be honest, when Tony started building his Bytham layout, with the Midland as well for good measure, that was like the railway I always wanted! Seriously though, a pleasure to be able to look at Tony's railway, absolutely first class, as well you know. Of the kit I have seen at shows, I reckon it's right up there with the best. I may be biased by the location though. Yes, David's doing OK, still peddling like crazy. Bit lost without Pat to be honest. Apologies to all for the off topic waffle.

Hi Tony, Bytham looking really good. I saw the grass sheets you tried in BRM the other day. That looked like the area alongside the road? You probably already know, but that area towards the station used to be allotments and orchard, so might be a nice little feature eventually? I am not sure how far along they came though. I know that, as my Granddad had his allotment there when he lived in one of the houses in the station yard. Incidentally, have you seen the photo of him that my folks have recently acquired? Came about from some distant source, but he's on the line, just north of the station with K3 61896 on a goods train behind him. I should add for anyone else reading this, that he did work on the railways, he wasn't trespassing! Worth a look though, nice selection of wagon's behind the engine. I would put a scanned image on here, but it is copyrighted, so don't want to get into any bother. All the Best, Lee

There was a guy I used to know (I say used to, as he sadly passed away a few years ago) who used to do oil paintings of steam loco's, mainly on the ECML around Little Bytham. He would openly admit they were for his own enjoyment and therefore certainly not Rembrandt's, but to my eyes they were pretty fine. I remember one of his works was Cock O' The North with a rake of Pullman cars at speed through Little Bytham, and although I have no idea of it's accuracy, it looked really very nice. If my pre-order ever arrives, it will probably end up on the front of some Pullman cars. But then my levels of accuracy are not very high i'm afraid. I have an old kit built Bugatti nosed P2 earmarked for conversion to BR green