PatB

Just won this. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/221567903560?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 It was up for a BIN of 85 quid a couple of weeks ago (which I still didn't think was too bad) so I'm quite pleased to have got it at something of a discount. There was a 101 as well but someone evidently wanted that one more than I did. Just need to cough for some 2mm Association wheelsets now.

That's not foliage, it's some stray cat fluff.

Hmm. Would have looked better if they'd used code 55 .

Noisy and odd,certainly, but the slow bit is only true if you try to drive it like something which actually has some power but needs to slow down for corners. The trick with a 2CV is to wind it up as hard as possible and then not back off for anything. Yes, it'll drag its outside door handles on the ground under hard cornering, but once you realise that it's not actually going to fall over, you discover that the boingy suspension does an excellent job of keeping all four tyres on the ground and, consequently, gripping.

Given the general standard of 1970s r-t-r, yes.

Back in 1981 I managed to persuade Dad to take me to a few meetings at Smeatharpe in Somerset. The main items on the program were bangers, hotrods and F2 stocks, the big F1 monsters not seeming to have much of a presence in the south. The bangers were always particularly good fun. At the time, the two models of choice were the BMC Oxbridge variants and the Mk1 Triumph 2000. The latter were fast and handled well and so did well on the straight racing, but the Oxbridge was staggeringly tough.and was the victor in every "last car rolling" demolition event that I saw. The first meeting we attended had, as the program closer, a banger caravan race. I don't think Dad or I ever laughed harder at a motoring event. By lap 2, one end of the oval had disappeared under a huge pile of twisted aluminium and shattered hardboard. Every so often the heap would heave a bit and another Austin Cambridge would emerge, dragging a couple of lengths of angle-iron and the remnants of an axle which, under the rules, were sufficient to deem it still attached to its caravan . Great fun.

The wonderful thing about the 2CV is that you can take all the seats out, open the roof, and get ~15 people into it to get from your rented cottage in rural Wales to the pub. Apparently .

Which, whilst magnificently loopy and a major technical achievement, doesn't appear to have worked terribly well in practice. The gentleman in question has run regularly at the Lake Gairdner speed trials and it's notable that he no longer uses the Merlin special. I seem to remember its times were not as impressive as might have been expected.

I was always under the impression that Pipers Mead was a permanent layout, although I vaguely remember the many of the buildings were constructed on separate bases. I may be wrong, though, given that it's nearly 40 years since it was Railway of the Month in RM and 25 since I binned my original RM collection.

Less than 3 quid a yard for O gauge track wouldn't be too bad if it hadn't been held down with 6" nails through every other sleeper.

I've always felt that Mr Fish has been unfairly pilloried for the hurricane incident. Had the public been forewarned, what, realistically, would any of them have done, or, indeed, been able to do any differently? I contend, M'lud, that the most likely answer is "not much".

Not down to the seller though, as it started at 99p. Could the unsuccessful bidder m***n be our old friend micmcn I wonder? Would explain a lot about his pricing .

Presumably run by the company behind the Holiday Homes for Pets Pie Co.

Fantastic little layout. The only negative comment I could possibly make (and this is not a dig at you) is that the close up shots are not kind to the Peco points. Like I said, not a dig at you, but more a comment on the lack of r-t-r alternatives to modern standards.

A few years ago, a party of bushwalkers got lost in the forest in the south-west of Western Australia. They were found, safe and well, a couple of days later. I've always been amused by the announcement by the search and rescue authorities which included (wtte) "Fortunately the party included a person who had been lost before and so was experienced in what to do". My immediate thought was that maybe they'd have been better off if they'd had people with experience in not getting lost. Or, at least, been careful about who wsas allowed to read the map .

You haven't lived until you've experienced the precision gear selection of the Heath Robinson linkage that Land Rover saw fit to use UN the IIa forward control. Especially after its suffered two decades of desperate bodging. I remember spending eight years grateful for any gear I could find and being very practised at finding uphill parking spots. Even Land Rover acknowledged the system was rubbish when they fitted something much simpler and more robust to the rather better IIb.

Does this mean you were involved with the Royal Signals in the Bristol area around that time? If so, you may well have met (or at least known of) my father, who was CO of the 37th Wessex and Welsh about then.

I've been holding off posting, just in case I've been scammed, but now the tracking data tells me the items are now, at least, in Australia, I'll take the chance. I just bought a BR blue Farish Class 24 for 55 quid and the same firm's Class 46 for 60, with very modest postage cost. Both from the same source and both allegedly new. It remains to be seen whether they come with all their bits (detailing packs especially). Their source being Taiwan there is a possibility, I suppose, that they might be seconds which have made their way out of the back door of the factory. However, for ~20 quid each less than I've seen from the major box shifters, I decided to take the chance. Edit: Well, they turned up a couple of weeks ago (I'm working away from home so didn't get to open the parcel straight away). They're boxed and complete with detailing bits and instruction sheets. I haven't run them yet but, on face value, they appear to have been a good buy.

I suspect that the canvas tilts were removed to stop them flapping themselves to pieces when subjected to any sustained speed over 45 mph or so. Possibly to keep them clean as well. It's easy to hose down a Land Rover body before handing it over to the customer but a layer of railway soot/diesel smoke on the canvas would look terrible and be difficult to remove.

The models I remember seeing in MRN were 16mm scale but originated before it became commonplace for garden railways. IIRC the enterprise involved the late Colin Binnie applying his homebrew injection moulding techniques to make the A-frames for the track. As for the full size L & B, 36 years isn't a bad run for an essentially light railway. Roughly the same as many of Colonel Stephens' lines lasted, anyway.

Nup. They were the real deal and are nowadays recognised as having been a rather bad idea. Mind you, for several decades after the discovery of ionizing radiation it was considered to be a healthful and invigorating phenomenon. Google "revigator" and "radithor" for some truly hair raising examples of what our not so distant ancestors believed to be a good idea. Which brings us back, somewhat peripherally, on topic as old revigators and Radithor bottles are quite collectable and get bought and sold on Ebay.

The mantles out of Tilley type lamps are (or were) also quite spectacular Alpha emitters. Being Alpha radiation it's very short range but, OTOH, it's also quite nasty if ingested.

I'd buy it, if the price didn't get too ridiculous, provenance or not. Given the fairly modest state of the bidding, I don't really see much motivation to fabricate the story so I'd allow the benefit of the doubt. Funnily enough, i just BINed a Farish 46 for a price that I found attractive. If I were to buy the marker light housing (which I'm not going to), I'd be tempted to detail and renumber the model as 46 009 and make up a display case for the two. I was 17 when that test took place and remember the debates around its validity amongst the more engaged of my fellow 6th formers. There were those who argued that the test was somehow rigged to be favourable for the flask. My own opinion was that smacking a couple of hundred tonnes into it at high speed was pretty severe, regardless of any fiddling with the loco. I was, and remain of the view that there are many reasons to find a replacement for nuclear fission power, but the risk of a flask train being involved in a crash severe enough to result in a leak is way, way down the list.

Given how many recentish, mass-produced models are described as "rare", I find myself asking the question "what the hell have Bachmann and Hornby been doing for the last 10 years?" because it doesn't appear to have included making more than a dozen of any given item .

Yep, that appears to be the one. It would have been the May Bank Holiday VSCC meeting at Donington in '84 when I saw it, or, just possibly late in the '88 season, those being my only two visits to the track. I think I may have a very poor photo of it at the Old Hairpin somewhere. I didn't actually realise at the time what a distinguished pedigree it had, assuming that it was just something knocked together when old Rovers were relatively cheap and common.