MrTea

The water tower comes together quite nicely. I’m about 90% of the way through building the engine shed too.

80s and 90s French nostalgia Part 6 Couple of off-piste selections to finish off thread with: Steam outline diesel, narrow gauge taken at a ‘Parc d’attractions’. I’m not sure quite where this is but I suspect it’s somewhere in central France as we visited the Tarn Gorges area in summer 1980. Narrow gauge again, but this time in the Pyrenees in summer 1981. This is the petit train d’Arouste - great fun if I remember right. It also seems to have the SNCF rounded on the nose of the loco.

80s and 90s French nostalgia Part 5 In 1989 we had a summer visit to Switzerland - in fact this was the trip that kickstarted my interest in all things RhB. On the way we travelled across France and this time we stayed near Mulhouse on the outward journey. The French National Railway Museum is located there so it would have been rude not to visit.

Nice bear. On the subject of Flying Scotsman, how about this segment of the latest marketing email from Hornby: (and don’t get me started on the fact that it’s the best part of £85 for what’s essentially a coach!)

One of my favourite loco classes. Can’t wait! 😍 This might whet your appetites:

At the Darlington Locomotive Works Open Day on Saturday there was some more detail on this from both Steve Davies (the Chairman) and David Elliott (Director of Engineering). Sadly David is having treatment for prostate cancer at the moment so he's been putting a lot of work into ensuring as much of his thinking is documented.

I've dipped in an out of the episodes as and when I have time to watch them, but I found the Leeds one particularly interesting as I'd noticed that our company's new office (Globe Point) looked to be close to some interesting old buildings on a visit up there in November: Now I know what's across the road and why it's interesting! Here's the link for anyone else who'd be interested to find out more: https://uktvplay.co.uk/shows/the-architecture-the-railways-built/series-4/episode-9/6324792200112

Hi Andrew, I think your layout idea sounds great. I don’t know if you’ve seen my layout thread, but it’s fair to say that the plan for Veja Megstra evolved as the layout build continued. I opted for a double-sided layout with a station on one side and a pure scenic section on the other. With the gradient involved that seems to have worked quite well and it meant I could keep the station loop on the level. Here’s the ‘Bergun’ side under development. Here’s the station board, which is opposite the slope. Overall view before the scenic work on the winter side started.

80s and 90s French nostalgia Part 4 In summer 1983 we visited Switzerland and travelled through France and Germany on the way. This time we stopped in Alsace for a night, where there just happened to be a local heritage railway. These pictures were taken at Volgelsheim on the Chemin de Fer Touristique du Rhin http://www.ried-express-cftr.fr/index.html I gather from the railway’s website that operations started in 1982 so we were lucky to see this.

Thanks Phil for the corrections. I’ve amended the details on my post. I don’t know where the middle photo was taken but I think it was on the first of the two trips where we took the motorail.

80s and 90s SNCF nostalgia Part 4 We were fortunate that both my parents worked in education and therefore we were able to take several weeks holiday during the summer break. In the early 80s driving to the south of France with two infants wasn’t exactly an appealing prospect for them but fortunately there was a motorail service from the channel ports to destinations across France. The highlight for me was the shunting and the changes of traction in the middle of the night at Amiens. Diesel locomotive at Calais, summer 1980. Electric traction from ? in summer 1981. SNCF electric locomotive at Narbonne, summer 1981.

80s and 90s SNCF nostalgia Part 3 My Mum had a pen friend who she’d kept in touch with since school. We visited them in Angers on the way back from one of our camping holidays in the summer of 1980. Express service waiting at the platform Shunting operations. Railcar on a local service. Me with my younger brother (nice dungarees Rich!) overlooking the station.

Hornby don’t need to rush with 2007 as the real thing is probably the best part of 2 years away from completion! My daughter and I had a trip to Darlington today to see ‘Prince of Wales’ new home at the first open day at the new facility. It’s a really impressive operation. But as you can see the locomotive still needs a boiler amongst other key components.

80s and 90s SNCF nostalgia Part 2 These shots, also courtesy of my Dad, were taken in Paris in the summer of 1990. If I remember right we stayed outside Paris and commuted in for a couple of days of sightseeing. Push-Pull double deck set. The electric loco hauling the double deck set. I think this is one of the turbo train sets.

I’ve been going through some family photos my Dad kindly scanned for me and found a few good ones of French railways I thought might be of interest. I’ll add captions if I can find when and where the images were taken. Here are some TGVs to start off the thread: These were all taken in Paris in the summer of 1990, I think at Gare de Lyon. Yours truly aged 14.

Our mate Victor certainly seems to have a penchant for Gresley Pacifics in Crimson Lake doesn’t he? @AY Mod those Falcon jigsaws you’ve found are an abomination! I won’t be able to unsee them.

Bachmann have announced a 1990s blue version of Linda today. Not sure how I’m going to resist 😍

Maybe this is where (some) model manufacturers have been going wrong all this time: perhaps they have been using jigsaw box lids as reference material - it would certainly be cheaper than laser scans or sourcing original drawings! 🤪

Buy them this jigsaw: I can’t work out whether the A3 looks good in crimson lake or not! Come to think of it the door on the carriage looks rather odd too.

Managed to squeeze in a bit of modelling whilst on holiday on Sunday. It was a soggy day here in the Lake District so I took some time to complete the roof on the engine shed I’m building from a Scalescenes kit: This is the R029 009 Structure set. I built the water tower first and that seemed to go together quite well. I’ve been building the loco shed a few steps at a time during the evenings in the last month or so.

Here’s a sketch of the layout plan: It’s following some of the lessons I learned from building my n scale Swiss layout with essentially two scenes, back to back. This time I’ve added an off scene fiddle track to store and swap trains. The bottom left of the plan is a loco yard/works, inspired by Boston Lodge albeit on a much smaller scale. This sketch was done about 6 months ago and the layout is now partially complete. But I might start a separate thread for it.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. A few more items of rolling stock have been acquired including - shhh - a Peco/Kato Small England. However the big news is that I’ve started on a small (approx. 80cm x 60cm) roundy FR-themed layout for the stock to run on. Here’s the first building:

So, it’s from the 2857 Society. http://www.2857.org.uk/2857_about.html I can’t remember when ‘1’s were added to telephone number area codes but this looks to be from before that. I’d guess 1970s or 1980s?

I’m pretty sure that’s the source of ours too. I think there was a sticker on the back last time I polished it up.