woodenhead

That loco was the tipping point for Bachmann with Farish - once it came out and was compared with Dapol's output we had the beginning of an N gauge renaissance as Farish upped their game. Such a pity it's fallen back a little since then in terms of output though the chaps at RevolutioN has spurred a Modern Image revival, maybe their tie up with Sonic Models will see more steam outline if the 0-6-2 is anything to go by.

Still red on the inside. At least Avanti will deal with that, Cross Country haven't done a thing inside the Voyagers apart from ripping out the shop.

It's not Colas that get's everywhere, it's Big Jim - he get's mates rates on fuel as he's worked for them all. You chose your prototype carefully though I do believe the colour yellow did affect your choice, but seeing as they buy in traction it gives you almost carte blanche to run what you like in and out of the depot which you couldn't a few miles down the road at Toton. The only ex BR TMDs I can think of that still operate are Toton, Crewe Electric and Kingmoor - they are all single FOC and are more for loco storage these days.

Now I see his dastardly plan - for years this site has been using 'PM AYMod' as a means of reporting issues - this has been a subliminal exercise for us to vote AYMod at the elections, years of conditioning reinventing himself from Il Duce into the softer friendlier AYMod the modellers friend has been leading up to this election

A lack of cab signalling doesn't help either. All those plans Railtrack had and then they went about slashing maintenance costs in the pursuit of profit. Kinda glad they didn't do the cab signalling now.

Good for 140mph as well - maybe one day eh.

Another thing to note about this model - it is modded - it has a sprung coupling hook - it can be seen in a couple of views, Lima didn't do such things on any of their models. There is also the bleed of yellow colour around that window - if it had been simply sprayed green in the factory why did they miss that bit. I don't think this is a model straight out of a factory but one that someone has bought and made alterations to.

New website will not be letting passengers re-select their seats as it did with Virgin - confirmed by Avanti https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/teething-problems-take-shine-new-17383992 All the new trains will be supplied by Hitachi - the electrics will plough the London-Birmingham and London-Liverpool lines, the bi-modes will go on North Wales service as expected. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-manchester-piccadilly-london-euston-17374771

The website is a little more alive now, still a lot of broken links and simple acts like adding a return don't work as smoothly as they should - apparently on a weekend journey I can get an upgrade - they don't spell out what the £25 upgrade means - I would presume First Class but they are not marketing it very well. Also not sure if you can alter your reservation seats - not actually got that far on the ordering to find out. One nice touch - you can select to try and get a seat near a toilet. Early days I guess but the Virgin site was good. Looking out of the Advance fares - weekdays in January look quite expensive but I can see that in Feb a Saturday Advance fare to London from Manchester (and a similar return) can be had for £25 per journey - I need to look out for these for Ally Pally in March. Nice prices for Model Rail Scotland - I can do TPE from Manchester (will that still be a 350) or Pendo from WBQ for a similar price.

I had to look to, it seems like an odd name for a loco. It had an even more esoteric name in the past "Escafeld" - a pre-Norman name for Sheffield.

Excellent simulation, this sort of software must be a real boon for architects and project teams as they can walkthrough all aspects of a project before the expensive digging even begins. I did notice that the graphic of Cock Lane bridge was followed by a simulated mini-skirted young lady hanging around the bridge

I can remember Deltics leaving Doncaster initially on one engine then the second would join in once the train was rolling - it was quite noticeable.

They've sensibly given up the web page release at the moment, not sure I'd want an Android or Apple app yet.

The new franchise holder negotiates with the rolling stock companies to have suitable stock - Virgin didn't own the trains a ROSCO did. In this case it's the same trains today as yesterday with some new trains ordered at the time the contract was signed to be delivered a some point in the future enabling First to meet it's obligations on the new contract.

Unless it is Daleks or Cybermen - then the Dr is an advocate of war - Kill them Kill them all, Kill them all now, Kill them with ultimate malice and then kill them again. I still hold that one of the best scenes involving Daleks and Cybermen was their initial encounter where both had broken out of their respective dimensions and had come face to face not knowing each other - Daleks throwing down insults before blasting the Cybermen. I guess it was the war the fans wanted.

I wonder if it is also own clothes day on the trains so that they match with the state of the website.

I think we need to just pull back a little here as it's getting into one of those threads: Olivias are selling a loco that has had the TTS chip removed - either by them or by Hornby when they supplied Olivias perhaps with some unsold stock. Olivias have clearly marked the loco as analogue at £115 so no false advertising. It is confusing though as a potential customer and as it is not unknown for humans to make mistakes there is nothing wrong in checking with Olivias as to the status of the loco at £115 Olivias are known to be rude, we have plenty of evidence and no point going back to that old chestnut Olivias have been in business 11 years now and still appear to be trading so people must be happy with the service at some level Hattons work with Olivias - if it was bad for business they wouldn't so they must have a level of confidence in Olivias to deliver product to Hattons when required You don't have to buy from Olivias Hornby 4F TTS models can be found elsewhere - Ebay though will be the most likely source but some shops may still have one or two and secondhand sellers may have them.

The Avanti register page is not yet pretty either If you're not ready to accept custom don't put your page live - this looks amateur - and this is from someone who has been known to do the same thing on intranet sites and regretted it. Edit: I looked below the shopping list - all kinds of links, where is your style, where are your images - oh dear. South West Trains header back now on tab top, it looks like someone is copy pasting in pages from their other site and editing on the fly.

It's clearly being worked on - now the page is a dirty big shopping basket image and a couple of links in the top left to register/my account. You'd think this would have gone live at midnight or in the middle of the night when the trains weren't actually running, not in the middle of the morning of launch day. Virgin aren't going away either it would seem

I doubt Einstein had an atomic bomb in his mind when he declared e = mc2 - but people take ideas and push boundaries.

I am guessing it's in the title - Freightliner - it's used by Freightliner to marshal Freightliner trains in Freightliner terminals Your options then being a Freightliner terminal - quite a big layout to build or a TMD.

So what has changed recently - it's RHTT season?

The Avanti website is down - unexpected header in the tab area

I was surprised myself at the number of 142s I saw in Manchester and I was actually sat in one from Flixton. Probably more comfortable than the 156 I returned on

To demonstrate the general public's take on the railways, I was on a EMR service between Oxford Rd and Piccadilly today, a lady was late getting to her Virgin service. Discussion began about the transition "First have bought the trains from Virgin, they have made Virgin remove all their markings from the trains" Whilst we train enthusiasts understand the franchise concept and the handover process, many of the general public believe the railways to be completely private, to be bought and sold like this and that it isn't that Virgin lost the franchise but they chose or had to sell it to First. And no I didn't put on my best nerd voice and put them right, even at crawl speed I did not have the will to educate.