ikks

Harley Davidson.....Australia.....trouble!!....c'mon!, get real. mike

The Caledonian?? Mike

This quite a stunning piece of work......well done. Rgds.........Mike

Not like some other northern retailer............rudimentary packaging in a voyage to OZ, I ended up with basically a kit................tested before sent!!...........I don't think so!!!!!!!!! Mike

yESSSSSSSS..........The WCML lives!!!, brilliant stuff, you chaps have it down to a tee. Could let me know please, when are you bringing it to Adelaide . Mike

Fabulous thread, I love the photos and places Jonesy visits..........takes me back 50 years!! Mike

Oh Oh Oh,sacrilege !!! , it looks great..........there are a lot of tossers out there, I say stuff 'em. Mike

Thank Goodness for Dai Woodham Great photos by the way......many thanks for sharing. Mike

Thank goodness, Ruth and I don't believe in any of the religious stuff, so we just enjoy our life........don't have to put a label on any day except our birthdays and our get together anniversaries, I despise the commercialism of all of these "celebration times". Having said that I loved the lead up to Christmas as a kid(which started about only two weeks prior to the actual date) but once the presents had been opened, it became just an ordinary time. Rgds Mike(miserable old fart)

Yes I agree Broc, it is a brilliant model and deserves etched deflectors which with mine is going to happen........there is a thread on here somewhere showing the Hornby Brit with ( i think !) Dave Frank's or Mike Edge etched deflectors and the difference to that front on appearance is absolutely incredible............anyway Hornby have done a magnificent job with this one, just waiting to see what the guru's in MRJ can do do to it. The Princess for me would have to be Hornby's next project....beautiful engines. Mike

Hi Brocp, I emailed Islsey re the fitting of metal deflectors pretty much when this model was announced, he answered no, they could not incorporate enough detail in metal and.that I would be pleasantly surprised, as these were new tooling and much thinner than the old design. Having said that I do not own an older version for comparison. I will still replace mine with etched versions as mentioned in an earlier post. Mike

I must have been lucky , I just turned the loco upside down to look at the drawbar arrangement and it just fell out! Looking at some of the earlier posts, doesn't it show how far this industry has come in such a relatively short time, look at the differences between SWS and City of Edinburgh it really is mind boggling!! The only things I will do to this one is,add coal, change the deflectors for etched ones and change the bogie and trailing truck wheels.......Ultrascales and Jackson-Evans which I have in stock, so no extra cost . Mike

I had always thought it may have been football related, but that was a little late in the day. It would've been 1960/61; Mike

Where he was eaten by a croc!

I saw a Royal Scot heading north through Tamworth hauling a complete rake of SR green coaches on one occasion........don't ask me what they were though, we were really interested in the locomotives then. Mike

I always had my models out on display in my flat and most folks were very interested, when my last girlfriend(now my wife of 30 years )first visited she had little comment except to recall her grandfathers life on the South Australian Railways, Never been any derision or argument about my hobby , basically you do what you want.......she collects and has a quite valuable mob of Teddy Bears.......nuf said...............tolerance and each to his own MIKE

Far too much information..........YUk

In my humble opinion, the Princess Coronations were the best looking of any British Pacific once the sloping smokebox had been "fixed" and (sorry gents) before the diagonal cab stripe had been applied. I for one will never forget the ground shaking experience as they roared through Tamworth or standing at the north end of Crewe station and seeing an ex-works example back onto its train..................hard to get enthusiastic about my hobby once they and the Princess Royals had gone. Mike

Unfortunately Salford never carried late BR Maroon Mike

My SWS arrived today, picked up from the PO box by SWMBO , explanation accepted brilliant model Hornby have excelled themselves have to save up for a green one without the TTs stuff a beautiful beautiful semi Mike

I just shelled out on Sir Bill......................now this and in gloss which I love, SWMBO ain't going to be impressed Must win the lottery Mike

Wow! absolutely brilliant, never been interested in anything other than British Railways but to to see these locos kept in such fantastic condition in 1966 is incredible, beautiful stuff. I traveled to Italy in 1965, just south of Derby was this Jubilee covered in filth, unrecognisable, number or name, it was in a disgraceful condition. We traveled to Rome all the way by rail.....unforgettable, Metz depot on the French/German border was full of of steam and from a distance it all looked in pretty good nick. On the return trip I saw a number of French steam locos all looked to have many years of service left in them heading north to Paris. From Paris to Calais, the real bonus........double headed what I now know to be Chapelon Pacifics, fantastic, wish I had a half decent camera then, Can't go back Mike

I had a good one.........not!!! A few weeks ago, I won a Midland Compound for about 80 pounds from a guy in the States he had quoted postage for a UK transaction so he said he would get back to me with the postage to Oz but he would be away for two weeks could I wait? Yes no worries I was in no desperate hurry, anyway just after the two weeks were up, I received a message from Ebay asking me to pay for the order, thinking it had come from the seller, I promptly paid. A couple of days later I get a message from the seller telling me he had decided that he couldn't bear to part with it and he would refund my payment which he duly did. I was p1ssed off because I thought that if you won an auction the seller was obliged to supply the item...........evidently not , my opinion is that the winning bid did not realize his expectations. Mike

Nah!!! I was on the train,,,,,timin' it wiv me Timex Hopalong Cassidy Wotch........ it was 128mph as I observeded could not be questioned !!..........beat the duck!! 'ands down Mike

Same as in Vic, only beer available was from the Carlton and United stable when I arrived here in 1971, began to change a bit around '73( I think) when the Carlton workers went on strike and the State was running dry Courage was imported from the UK..............it was bloody awful, I then began my journey around Oz and found a similar situation in all States SA....only West End and Coopers, WA.......... Emu Export and Swan Lager Qld,,,,, only 4xxx and NQ Lager, NSW.....Tooheys and Resches, Tassie... Boags and Cascade. I reckon the real change came in the 80's and everything was available any where...........brilliant, except for the fact that my bloody quack has told me to stop drinking beer . I lived in Vic. for over 30 years with a few years in other States from time to time and rigidly stuck with the Carlton product, even continuing to drink cans of Vic Bitter for some time after moving to SA. Then one night after lecturing me for a while for drinking Victorian beer out of aluminium, SWMBO came home with a slab of Coopers Pale Ale stubbies............beautiful stuff , now my staple diet(although I do eat occasionally ). However I do sample some of the local small breweries stuff, if you ever see it, try Goodiesons bloody nectar. Mike