number6

From memory I thought that Ken Loach's The Navigators was bob on. But when just I checked they used a Class 25 and the windcutter rake on the Great Central to represent the recently privatised BR... Opps! But the rest of it was really good stuff.

From the Alan Harrison Collection on Youtube - which to those of us of a certain age is catnip. Jump to 4:45 a pair of peds going quite fast - one assumes no heat or air con? From the caption on Youtube: A pair of Class 31s head south with yet another Mk3 Pullman rake. This is presumably 1V49, the 0840 (SO) Liverpool Lime Street to Paignton service, which was actually booked for a pair of 31/4s from Birmingham.

I'm sure I read in Modern Railways back in the 70s of an up WCML train losing power at speed somewhere around Watford and managing to coast all the way to Euston. The driver lowering and raising the pantograph at speed to test. I can't quite remember but I seem to think he made the wise decision to stop at the bottom of Camden Bank before the station throat instead of running out of momentum and coming to a halt across the whole thing. Cue 'Those were the days' comments.

...hate to say it but they weren't Mk1s but a Hawksworth brake and two Colletts It cheers me up no end when there is a train faux pas. You realise that every other item we have no specific clue about is also wrong too. My uncle couldn't watch any movie helicopter winching without wincing.

Beeching Reversal? HA HA HA HA HA! I was watching Tomorrow's World review of the 70s last night [don't ask]. In 1979 money the Tyne metro cost £7m a mile and that was considered cheap. [see 30.22] and those were existing rail routes.

Love the Morris Commercial. I don't need the fancy livery - a nice dark green or blue would be fine. This bridges the gap between the twee modern and restored vintage vehicle - I reckon we'll see increasing numbers of old cars retro fitted with electric motors - see in the USA where this is really taking off.

How often, if ever, would it be that they would all be charging at the same time? - I can already schedule the charge time on my EV. Seeing as most charging at home is done overnight when power draw is v low all one would need to do is factor in some time difference between the vehicles: et voila. Its more about ease of having them plugged in and no need to move them around between charges. Uk Power Networks will upgrade over 100A if it is thought that is necessary. Even if that costs £1,000s that is something else to factor into where you spend your money when buying a car. Perhaps forego the alloy wheels or metallic paint? [I'm being a bit facetious because the need to simultaneously charge three EVs at once argument has got to be bottom of the reasons for not chosing one.]

Sigh! I put a heavier than necessary cable into my charge post at home to cope with the possibility of two future chargers and would just buy the boxes and have the guy who fitted the first one do the others for whatever it costs. Not everything should be 'free'. Plug those three cars in when you get home and by the next morning all would have been able to top up their batteries. Just imagine the advantage of having three vehicles as soon as a car to gird takes off properly.

Also late to the digression but carriage fans should have a look through as well. Those early images from the first few years of 1950s are fascinating. On cursory glance spotted ex-LNWR and Ex GE coaches and they were both behind the loco - in the latter case an S&D 7F. It really was the anything goes line. Re captions. Add them as comments on Flickr?

This is blue on blue conflict - careful people. Sounds like the 5mph option Hyundai offer is quite useful and will be resorted so infrequently that the issue of holding up other road users isn't even worth worrying about. There are bikes and pedestrians, horse riders, mobility scooters, wildlife, lost delivery van drivers, Littlehampton residents and broken down ICE drivers pushing their cars to the petrol station all 'holding up' more traffic. And I'm wondering how many ICE cars run out of petrol on a daily basis - I'm not linking to the Daily Heil but they had an article that referenced LV insurance calculating over 800,000 drivers a year run out of fuel, that is over 2,000 a day. How many Ionics are creeping along the highway at the same time?!

In Downtown Denver Co. they have right hand drive hybrid electric buses - the drivers refused to work left hand drive when they replaced the fleet a few years ago. The reason being better view of boarding passengers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Mall

That is being trialed in the UK as certain politicians drive past at unlimited speed (with a sharp corner and cliff edge coming up... )

It’s a discussion I’ve had a lot: the buying of an EV vrs buying a load of used ICE cars for £100s of pounds over the same period of time. Of course one is cheaper on the forecourt but we aren’t just talking cash in our pockets here. It’s false economics because the continued use of fossil fuels has cost impacts on all of us that far exceed the price of it at the pumps. The price does not account for the costs of damage to the environment, our kids lungs and everyone’s quality of life. We aren’t just looking here for the cheapest way to drive - look at every queue of traffic: most people are choosing to drive vehicles that aren’t the most economical option. Just having a bit of extra fancy trim or paint job shows most people are prepared to spend thousands more on stuff that’s just decoration. So if I choose to spend that on an alternative fuel that’s my prerogative... I don’t like contributing to a problem that’s been obvious for years and I’m happy to be ‘doing my bit’ while I also enjoy the quiet, the drive and tech of EVs. We aren’t comparing like for like here - paying for and keeping an old ICE vehicle is commendable in some senses but irresponsible in others. As to this idea that driving more than one EV over ten years is worse than driving one old petrol car for the same time? I think basis of this argument here is only that two cars have been built when one would have done? And not about the impact those vehicles have in terms of emissions? EVs using electricity produced from renewable sources produce up to six times less carbon emissions over their lifetimes than a petrol vehicle. All my charging is done using renewables both at home and when on the road. A second hand ICE driven for another 10 years is going to be very ‘dirty’ compared to two 5 year old EVs over the same period. Into the equation also goes the advance in gaining more efficient EV power use introduced in those five years compared to the zero advance in efficiency in the old petrol car. Happy motoring!

Swiss music is the worst! I've been bingeing on BLS/Lötschberg footage recently. Now if they put chargers on the car trains through the tunnel... And sorry yes confusion re leasing and PCP and HP - like all finance really, it comes down to personal circumstances. For me its worked really well with v low borrowing rate and repayments and the ability to switch to a new EV design when they are available - perfect. The low running costs of EVs are the key here too - no longer am I putting £2,500 of fuel in the car each year. Last year was less than £300 for the same mileage.

Who buys a car outright any more? Robert Llewellyn talked about this on Fully Charged recently with regard to his Tesla. If you 'buy' a car using a lease its not really the total cost of the car you have to consider – more how much you pay as a deposit and per month. So by leasing an EV you bypass the cost differential between it and the fossil burning variety. I paid for a diesel car full price using my debit card once - and had carefully calculated how much it was going to cost me over its lifetime. After eight years it died [camshaft] and ruined my maths because it became worthless instantly. Since then I only think of cars as a monthly figure - running costs and leasing costs. Worth a thought? My feeling is that many EVs are going to have a long life - its apparent that they have less to 'go wrong' and wear on tyres and brakes is less, no clutch to go, a much simpler drive chain, all the associated cooling and fuel related gubbins missing it is possible that they could be running for many more years than their ICE cousins. I guess I also look at electric locos and units on the railway and see the same thing [OK I admit I was looking at Switzerland!] many first generation electric locos from the early 20thC were still running into the 1970s and 80s. Look at early USA electrics, the long life of SR units? To go off topic - electric traction has been around a long time and the car industry has been resistant to it for much longer than it should:

Cutting those big door hinges off that Airfix cattle wagon was well worth the effort.

How much do you bet? I have been on the wrong side of popular opinion (the lefty greener side) for most of my life. And had a lot of finger wagging and tut tutting at choices which now are generally accepted as mainstream - for topics much more important than which fuel source to use in a car. But blimey: it is extraordinary how much negative energy is expended by people who don’t like EVs! Enough to power me along: I literally drive for miles chuckling to myself entertained by their antics in proving they are right and I am wrong. People who just want them to fail, want them not be cheaper and cleaner, not to contain and help develop more interesting, innovative technology and engineering, and dare I say it won’t even admit they also sound better. And I take this criticism while I watching and listening daily to the lurching and shuddering of ICs, the racket of crunching gear shifts, rattling engines, the toxic fog of smells and fumes, all those pedals and levers... It’s fine, you are free to think what you like but it’s one of those things - Subaru used to say in their best adverts : ‘You don’t get it until you get it.’ (Caveat: I had lots of Subarus so I know what they refer to) Happy motoring, regards

We used to always take a run at non- electrofrog points! I am presuming the unit was crossing back from the northbound platforms heading south? That is four turnouts in a row - with associated gaps - I would have assumed even at 10mph you would coast across - or is this more like getting gapped repeatedly losing power and momentum? Curious to know how the unit reacts when gapped? Does power come back on immediately or does it take a while to get power back to the wheels?

This isn’t meant as a criticism of what you are doing but just noting it’s good to know you are mortal because even with four square miles of space you have still been tempted to squeezed in that line right down the edge of the board! Presumably you’ll have something to stop a Healey Mills to concrete floor moment? Possibly a whole extra board? I only say this from painful experience. Mine was actually a slightly too close to the edge line with wool-jumper-snag-of-small-etched-detail-rake-of-kit builds-ending-up-on-the-floor type incident.

Couldn't agree more with your intentions. It was a photo of a rake of MR opens in some loop sidings on the Norris layout that inspired me for years. Just plain everyday railway 'landscape'.

Genius ideas. Thanks. And when you are finished with the spaghetti glued to some card add one of those little calendars and give it to your Mum on Mother’s Day like we did as kids!

Ah. I love this argument. Always makes me chuckle. Reminds me of this quote: Carlo Calenda, an Italian economics minister, said it was insulting that Boris Johnson had told him during a recent meeting that Italy would grant Britain access to the EU’s single market “because you don’t want to lose prosecco exports”. “He basically said: ‘I don’t want free movement of people but I want the single market,’” he told Bloomberg. “I said: ‘No way.’ He said: ‘You’ll sell less prosecco.’ I said: ‘OK, you’ll sell less fish and chips, but I’ll sell less prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.’ ” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/16/european-ministers-boris-johnson-prosecco-claim-brexit

I’m minded to buy it at the new price to show my support to his approach! How neatly this thread explains another reality of Brexit: how Europeans see us, our own surprise at the new value of our currency, the impact on free trade and the folly of this self inflicted misery (in the narrow terms of model railway software).

Everyone should welcome a Hastings Diesels railtour on their layout... is there anywhere one [or two] of these units hasn't been?

I'd have expected nothing less! Plastic waste blowing around model dioramas will be a 'I remember when...' moment in years to come when we've finished cleaning up the planet and you don't see it anymore...