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How about an N5 and an A4 double heading a passenger train? I recall seeing some photos taken at Rotherham during some appaling weather, with very deep water around, probably in the 1950s. Nowadays they wouldn't even try to run anything in such conditions as the electric gear in the ground (and some way above it!) would be very wet and quite unsafe!The ECML trains were being diverted and the N5 was added as a pilot loco.

When I was a youth in the 1970s we lived at RAF Scampton (complete with those wonderful Vulcans!) and my dad used to take me to Lincoln trainspotting. It would have been from 1972-4. we used to spend most of the time on the footbridge because you could see everything from there plus some of the DMU shed and the goods lines (and the coal depot - still open and rail served). My favourites were the two station pilots, D2021 and D2022. They were blue with D numbers when we first saw them but later became 03021 and 03022. The parcels bays were still in regular use at that time.

Happy days and a station I have looked at modelling myself once or twice.

Good luck with the project, it is coming along very nicely.

There was no need of Robinson 'Pacifics'. The hoped for traffic on the new mainline never materialized, and in anycase, the large engines he did build were mostly a flop. Pity, as they were beautiful designs. It would be interesting to start with an LMS 'Jubilee', Caprotti valvegear, and build a cosmetic GCR 9P Lord Faringdon so that it would have properly proportioned boiler/firebox and ashpan and modern front end.

The rebuilt B3s with the Caprotti gear looked awful! In our imaginery loco thread, can't we pretend that Robinson kept tinkering with the 4-6-0 designs and eventually cracked it with a loco that looked wonderful and performed as well. Having said that, recent writings by people around at the time (notably Richard Hardy in articles in the GC magazine "Forward") tend to restore some of the reputation of the 4-6-0s. He seemed very fond of some of them and reckoned that they were masters of the work they were given. I might get the number wrong but there is one story of the staff at Retford turning out to see a B7 on something like a 32 carriage train during the war! It is rare to see or hear anything bad about the Atlantics, Directors, O4s and J11s and he must have been very close to getting the others right. The LNER Garratt was proposed before grouping by the GCR and was to have been 2 O4 frames back to back. There is another might have been to play with, especially now the Bachmann one is available to butcher!

Quite easy to do.

If Raven had taken over it would have been electrified by 1930.

Armstrong Whitworth would have built some diesel shunters and steam would have been relegated to colliery workings before WW11. That leaves the problem of how to power the Aberdeen traffic. An elongated Raven A2 instead of the Gresley P2?

Bernard

A fleet of electrics like No 13, all apple green with full lining, hauling teaks. A place like Doncaster would have seen a right mixture, with steam on the coal traffic and possibly on the services to Lincoln, Hull etc. Something like the centre cab electrics from the NER as shunters and perhaps even Tyneside electric type EMUs on the stopping trains. The mind wanders (or even wonders!!). I prefer the idea of Robinson being in charge (I am a GCR fan after all!). A fleet of B3s and the proposed Robinson pacifics on the expresses. Doncaster could become the change over point, where the steam comes off and the NE style electrics go on for the run north. The proposed 2-6-0 on the lighter duties and B7s and O4s on the fast and slow freights. All the passenger locos in full GCR green livery (except lettered LNER). One day I will have a GCR period layout and one or two of the proposed locos are in the pipeline.

That I like, and of course the supplementary question to my post above about where smaller railways might buy their locomotives if they survived into the 50s, is what would the larger ones who had their own works have done if they weren't absorbed in the Grouping. What for example would the Caledonian have done if it wasn't absorbed into the LMS; the Horwich Crab is popularly supposed to have been based on something on the Caley drawing board, but what would it have looked like if Hughes never got his hands on it? What would the Grand Central drawing office have produced if it wasn't taken over by the LNER and Gresley - or for that matter if Raven rather than Gresley got the CME job when the LNER was created?

If I recall my railway history correctly, I read somewhere that Robinson of the GCR declined the post on the LNER and recommended that Gresley be appointed. There have been many proposed GCR loco ideas published, including a 2-6-0, a Pacific and a Garratt. Imagine an ECML with no A4s! I have toyed with the idea of modelling the 2-6-0 every once in a while as it was a handsome looking design.

I moved to Calne in 1969 and remember being taken by my Dad to look at the remains of the station. It had closed a short while before and the track had been lifted but the station buildings were intact, if a little the worse for wear. If I had been any older than 9 I might have better memories or might have taken some photos!

I recall that during the school holidays we would go down to the Harris factory and watch the pigs being slaughtered. I couldn't face it now but back then it was just something interesting for schoolboys to watch!

Calne sparked my interest in model railways and my first kit was a Ks Dean Goods. I must have been about 11 or 12 and although I glued the body together and painted it, the thing never ran. It was to go on my own model of Calne, which never happened.

I had the pleasure of operating on Chris Hewitt's model briefly at York show last year and although it is a few years old now it still stands up as a very good layout.

Good luck with the project!

I have seen some models based on preserved lines at exhibitions over the years. It seems to me that the usual reason for building them is "I can run almost anything I like". This is fair enough but if you run models of real locos that were never preserved, on a mythical preserved railway, you are well into "freelance" modelling. If you are going to go "freelance" (and I am not saying that this is a bad thing - done properly it is a very interesting branch of the hobby) then you are probably better off going the whole hog and modelling a "freelance" fully operational railway rather than a "freelance" preserved one. Even the best real preserved railway is very limited operationally. When was the last time anybody saw a goods train being shunted properly? 99% of the time operation consists of a number of fixed rakes of carriages going along a line, backwards and forwards all day.

I would be bored silly after a very short while.

I prefer the idea of modelling something like the private line of the "Duke of Somewhere". This still serves his private estate into the 1970s, with DMUs on passenger and Class 25s on the freight service to his quarry, where he has his private collection of locos bought straight out of service, which run up and down the "main" line with his ex royal saloon, while his industrial tanks and obscure diesel shunters work the internal quarry sidings.

A little imagination can give all the freedom of modelling a preserved line but with much more operational potential.

just trying to keep the code 100 out of shot.

One of those rare moments when you do a double or triple take just to make sure! As cropped for the POTW (losing the slight depth of field problem on the canopy) there is really not much to give that away as a model. The "wet" on the platform is superb.