Andy Hayter

Are they gas or liquid tankers? To my inexpert eye they look like gas - butane or propane - in which case there will be no dribbles but perhaps some rain washed staining.

The prices suggest to me that this is a sell off - unless DJH kits have become very cheap recently.

I fear there may be a misunderstanding here but not wishing to raise rabbits, I will just say visit the Clark's website - no mention of taking over the business but a lot of cheap DJH 00 kits alongside the second hand offerings.

I think it was doughnuts rather than just cakes, Mme Craddock had been demonstrating how to make ring doughnuts - hence the double entendre.

Apply for postal or proxy voting.

Ditto. My handwriting now looks like shorthand - but nothing that a Pitman trained secretary would ever decipher.

No one has mentioned Wizard models yet. A large selection of coach and some wagon kits in brass. https://www.wizardmodels.ltd/cat_carriagekits/

Not dissimilar here in France except no charge for paint and people are allowed, indeed encouraged, to take away the part full cans to redecorate for free. The only downside is that there is just one recycle centre for 10 communes - small by population but huge by area. So we frequently see things in the communal waste bins that could have been recycled. As you say, make it easy. à

I'll guess you'll not be wanting my recipe for Thai Chilli sauce then - and especially the variant where I substituted Antillais chilli (aka Granny's bonnet) for cayenne

Probably not relevant to your situation but the extra costs become excessive costs on low value items. I bought some laser cut window frames a month ago. Cost of the item £3.95, cost delivered including VAT and delivery - just over £22! If the item had just been put into an envelope and sent it would have cost £ 6.15. Illegal of course but it makes the point. Someone is making a killing out of this but it's not me.

I think I beat that when I was working. When my work location moved from Frankfurt to Cologne, we took the decision that Christine would move to our second home in France - always planned to be a retirement home - and I would commute each weekend. Over 1700km round trip or a tad over 1000 miles. The travelling was softened by a number of factors. German tax laws allowed the travel costs to be offset against tax. Work required a lot of travel and I could start on Monday mornings just as easily from Lyon airport as from Cologne or Frankfurt. Despite no Low cost operators having flights, Air France and Lufthansa could both offer cheap flights from Düsseldorf and Lyon except in the holiday periods provided I could book a couple of weeks in advance. Work schedules sometimes prevented such forward planning however. In such circumstances I had options of either driving or Thalys/TGV (rarely cost effective). The door to door timings were interesting. Flying - best time 7.25 hours (Tram, train, skytrain monorail, plane, TGV and finally car) Driving - best time just over 8 hours including stops. Driving at holiday time could take a lot longer however. Thalys/TGV - best time 8.5 hours (Tram, Thalys, maybe Paris metro depending on whether the change to TGV was in Paris or Brussels, TGV, train, car). So in fact the travel time was not a major factor in choice although obviously driving prevented me from doing anything constructive while travelling. When I retired I cancelled a number of railway and model railway subscriptions because I no longer had the time to read them all!

Weymouth Harbour?

Old Jouef turns up from time to time as bulk lots. I have always assumed that this is from stock of shops that have ceased trading, owners retired or even small traders who have died. In France Peirredominique.com seem to be masters at finding such block stocks from companies that have long since gone or have evolved into something new like Jouef. For instance they carry extensive stocks of Jouef Champagnole ( the company before assimilation into the Italian companies) They don't seem to deal in old track however, so just as a throw away thought perhaps they or a similar company have passed the track on to Hampshire models as a bulk lot. In a similar vein I picked up a number of interesting Playcraft wagons form a second hand bookshop dabbling also in bric-a-brac around 1990 - at least 20 years after Playcraft morphed back into Jouef. They had far more than I needed at the time so it wasn't just a handful of items from a play box.

Edit to add: A Jouef catalogue site suggests the DS was issued in 1979 and was last made in 1994 but remained in the catalogue until 1996.

If as you say everything is live all of the time that current is applied, then you need to treat the slip as an independent section on the layout - assuming you are using cab control and analogue. If you are using DCC then sorry I cannot help. As for the price, these were made when PECO double slips were around £21 or even possibly earlier. "New Rails" were put on the market between 1974 and 1979 although the double slip may have been a bit later. By 2001 track was being marketed under the Lima Rivarossi brand with very different product numbers and all change again in 2006 when Hornby took over - again new product numbers. So the very latest date for your DS is 2000 and probably much older.

I do agree that near universal reliance on China is a major potential risk to the hobby but not because of the Red Sea and Suez. Amelioration measures are already in place. They do make shipping more expensive but with modern container ships, the $1m extra costs comes out at around $50 per container or a few pence per model. I see the real threat being Chinas international politics, their increasing control of worldwide supply of raw materials and their progressive annexation of international waters. Were they to overstep the mark, we really would have an existential problem - embargos on imports, all moulds held in an ostracised country along with a great deal of intellectual property. However, this is drifting far from the subject of Warley even if it does illustrate just how unimportant (in the whole view of things) the loss of one important show is.

Probably a bit over 30 40 years ago I was told by a local brewery manager, that for his city centre deliveries the horse and dray were more economical than a lorry. This was in the days still when there was a pub on perhaps every third or fourth street corner with this brewery supplying maybe a quarter of them. Things have probably changed a lot now with smaller pubs having shut or been reborn as independent wine bars, tanning salons or whatever; as well as rationalisation of breweries and subsequent closures. However if a brewery remains in city centre and has a reasonable number of local hostelries nearby taking the product, the economics have probably not changed a lot.

Same here. Minus 6 just at the moment but plus double figures forecast for next week.

I am in a very similar situation to Philip. Rather bigger volume to heat but sited over a centrally heated lower floor - not that you would know it. A key thing is that we enjoy significantly colder temperatures than you will in SE England. It is said by the experts that reducing your heating by 1°C reduces your heating bill by 10%, so the obverse is heating your railway room by say 6°C more than you have to (because we start at a lower temperature) means that we are going to need 70-80% more energy to heat the same volume as you do. I do use a little local heating but can really only stand about one hour before the cold sets in. Added to that, glues and paints take a lot longer to cure.

I think Tony, that you are conflating two different issues. If I take Keyser kits, where I cut my grown up modelling teeth - with mixed results. I cannot now remember why they ceased trading - if I ever knew - but I do know that if I and many other had not bought their kits and put them away for future use, they would have ceased trading sooner. What I do know is that the demise had nothing to do with Hornby releasing the Turbomotive, nor Bachmann the 2-8-0 Robinson or the LNWR coal tank. The same goes for a whole host of other companies - Colin Ashby, Ian Kirk, David Geen, D&S, Nucast and a whole lot more. Had we not bought back then, the likelihood hood is that they would have disappeared sooner than they did - albeit that some ceased trading due to personal circumstances and not immediate financial collapse. The fact that I and many others bought DJH kits back in times of yore, helped them develop the business back then so that they are here today. If the rtr crew are now crowding them out, it is a completely other issue. I have some DJH kits in the part built and round tuit piles. Not one of them is in their current range and nothing in their current range meets my current interests.

I believe that the Nova car sold badly on the Iberian peninsular. Something that gives an impression of "new" in English, means doesn't work in Spanish - Nova = no va = no go. Good morning all. Here our snow has disappeared much quicker than it arrived - still odd patches in sheltered hollows but essentially gone. Now just cold and damp. I think I preferred the snow.

With a shortage of cars post-covid, I suggest that you stick out for a good deal on your car. I know things are a bit different in France but when my 9 year old Duster was written off I was a bit gob-smacked to get €12k from the insurance - admittedly low milage.

Not sure where 35 working model railways comes from. Their own blurb shows just 12 but full marks to Key Publishing, each has a short description and picture. So much better than a simple list, with if you are lucky, an indication of the scale. WoR please note - again! If you could give an indication of where the 35 comes from I would be grateful since it might just influence me on a GBP500 investment to attend.

Today was the annual post New Year dinner for all of the old codgers citizens of my age or older in the commune. Aperitives, cold meat collation with salad, wild boar stew, cheese*, ice cream dessert, clementines, chocolates, galette de Roi**, coffee and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of wine. Best part of 4 hours start to finish and at no cost to participants ( attending spouses who are under-age have to pay €15 = around GBP 12.50. * The French eat cheese before dessert - supposedly it fills the stomach and so reduces the amount of dessert you need - not that you would think that looking at everything that arrived after the cheese today. ** A frangipane pie with, like traditional Xmas pud, a little gift buried somewhere within. The winner gets to wear a paper crown for the rest of the day.

A morning spent shovelling snow so that we can safely walk between our two buildings.