PatB

I've mentioned it before, but in the post apocalyptic movie Doomsday a fully functional steam locomotive turns up, in the middle of a Scotland which has been quarantined for nearly 30 years, without any apparent supporting infrastructure. It and it's associated rolling stock appear to be South African.

Didn't we see this one a couple of months back? The shape of the meltings looks suspiciously familiar.

Goodness! I may have to track one of those down as a reminder of my old FC. I particularly like the one on the right of the third row down which appears to have the same dodgy, made-up camo paint job and incorrect 7.50-16 tyres that mine came with . Edit: And having now looked, I see there are loads of them on Ebay. Corgi/Husky must have sold a lot more of them tha Land-Rover ever did . I think I feel an impulse buy coming on.

Nice bit of local adaptation there .

Wrong it may be, but beneath that dodgy viaduct thing there lurks what looks suspiciously like a die-cast model of a Series IIa or IIb Forward Control Land Rover. Given the rarity of the prototype, I'm amazed that such a thing exists. Blimey, I wouldn't pay that for a real one. Mind you, the Australians got the two-stroke diesel working better than Metrovick did in the Co-Bo .

They could have made some effort to disguise the Triang sectional platforms, and Streamline never looks quite right .

Interestingly, back in ~1969, Which? magazine did one of their extremely thorough objective tests on a group of prestige saloons which included both the DS21 and the Ro80. Also in there were a Jaguar Mk1 XJ6 2.8, a Rover P6 3500 and a Volvo 164. There was, IIRC, a sixth car but I cannot, for the life of me, remember what it was. My memory keeps trying to tell me Audi 100 but that was in another group in another issue. Maybe one of the smaller, more basic Mercs. They absolutely loved the Ro80 until the rotor seals started going .

Yeah, but given that 99% of the preserved carriage fleet consists of various flavours of Mk1 anything set in the 60s has a good chance of getting it close to right simply by default . Another one which made me wince a bit was the use of a first generation DMU in the drama/thriller/police procedural 5 Days, set nearly a decade after the last 101 was withdrawn.

It certainly looks like it might be but the text notes that it's built to 8 mm gauge and I was under the impression that the C&M was 9 mm.

I get irrationally annoyed when, amongst any other silliness which I'm prepared to turn a blind eye to, a continuously braked train becomes divided and the brakes don't come on. Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows was the latest offender IIRC, although my annoyance was probably compounded by the rest of the film being so mediocre and unimaginative. I'll discount the Lone Ranger 'cos I enjoyed the rest of the rather cartoonish action so much.

Ugly as sin but looks reasonably well finished. Depending on how well the mechanics have been done, 800 quid for a working(?) 7.25" loco isn't bad at all. I think it might be another one. Those things are being churned out by the containerload in 3rd-World sweatshops. Harleys, trucks and muscle-cars in a similar "naive" style are also common subjects.

Wasn't me .

I know that I have been known to express some affection for, shall we say, less than perfect models which, nonetheless, represent commendable initiative and effort on the part of those responsible but even I have my limits. I mean...what?

I assume it's part of a model of British Railways' little known experimental gravel burning loco, an idea mooted by someone who noticed that carbon and silicon are quite close together in the periodic table. The whole thing was abandoned after several years of effort on the grounds, as stated by engineers involved in the project, of being 'bloody stupid' and 'utterly barking'.

Should be fine as far as current is concerned as a mains 90W motor should only be drawing ~0.4A. As others have mentioned, a double pole switch would be better for full isolation but, as long as you ensure the switched side is on the live wire I wouldn't see the installation as actually dangerous. I don't know what the law says though. Something else you might consider is a sewing machine foot switch. Dead-man protection and hands free operation in one unit.

Given the staggering (to someone who remembers anything but the original Z1 as being cheap but powerful old hacks) sums now being asked for anything air-cooled with a Z in its model designation I'd imagine you could see a decent proportion of it back if you really wanted to .

They were. The ones on my 250 Sport twin were anyway. The wiring insulation was made out of what appeared to be congealed chewing gum (no, I don't know if the pink was synthetic fruit flavour or the green was peppermint ), the bakelite type resin that made up much of the switchgear internals was soluble in WD40 and very little of any of it was effectively sealed from the elements. However, all the terminals were nice big screw-down jobs rather than fragile spade connectors, the handlebar switches could be stripped, cleaned and reassembled in about 5 minutes for both sides and the dynamo itself and the huge 6V battery never gave me trouble. The two main annoyances were the points plate which, if assembled and adjusted as per the manual, caused the engine to run backwards and the rear brake light switch which would, on rainy nights, switch on the brake light and run the battery flat just in time for me to discover it as I was leaving for work in the morning . The former was dealt with by developing a points adjustment procedure from first principles and the latter ceased to be a problem when the switch succumbed to applications of WD40, leaving the rather more reliable front brake switch to handle the task alone. All that said, I was never totally stranded by electrical faults and, on the bright side, the world with no headlamp is barely darker than the world as illuminated by 35 Czechoslovakian Watts and I still feel considerable affection for the Bouncing Czech.

Theoretically no worse than the BMC A-Series which didn't seem too disadvantaged by its lack of mains and non-crossflow architecture. However, the one time I had to work on a Chevette I was disappointed to find that, although everything looked roomy, it actually seemed very difficult to get spanners/sockets to the necessary fasteners. Mind you, I'll allow that some of that may have been lack of familiarity with the beast. I did always fancy a Chevette with improved suspension and all the Blydenstein tuning goodies as a bit of an alternative to the once two-a-penny hot Escorts though.

But they can't be extinct! They're practically new .

IIRC (apart from the aforementioned FC Victor, Vauxhals aren't really my area of expertise) the Brabham Viva was rather less fierce than the Lotus Cortina, being basically a mildly warmed over HB. It was, perhaps, more akin to the Escort 1300GT as a small and mechanically simple sporting saloon rather than a homologation special for production car racing. The really hot one was the Viva GT with the OHC 2-litre Victor lump, easily replaced with the later 2.3 for even more go. Which, I suppose, Vauxhall did themselves with the later droop-snoot Firenza; a car much more in the spirit of the Lotus Cortina. To be honest, I'm staggered that there were any PB Crestas still extant in 1986 . Did it have the classic overhead clock, perfectly positioned to trepan the unbelted 1960s driver in the event of a crash? I can also identify with the remoulds throwing treads. That was another endearing characteristic of the Oxford, probably not helped by my driving it like a 19 year old who's been watching Starsky and Hutch repeats a bit too much for his own good . I daresay it would have been worse if the tyres had had enough grip to generate any heat by friction . Mind you, I never got it to scrape its front suspension crossmember over humpbacked bridges; something which the supposedly boring old farts at Which? magazine achieved whenever they tested a Farina.

My uncle, on the other hand, had the desperately uncool FC Victor 101 automatic. It would appear that someone at GM had the bright idea of attaching the US designed, 2-speed Powerglide slushbox, which was probably fine when bolted to a honking great V8 with torque out the wazoo, to Vauxhall's rather feeble 1.5 litre four. The result was to stifle what little 'power' there was and to ensure, as the thing clonked from low to high, that any semblance of 'glide' disappeared too. There was also the small point that autos are supposed to provide a relaxed drive; something decidedly lacking when you attempted to overtake a truck (a fraught enough exercise in any bread and butter 60s saloon) and found that, in spite of keeping the kickdown firmly in operation, at about 45 mph and with oncoming traffic looming, the bl@@dy thing would stop screaming its head off and start chugging instead as the 'box attempted to deal with the situation. With it's comparatively precise handling, relative lack of body-roll and its wonderfully sophisticated 3-speed Borg-Warner transmission my mum's Morris Oxford Series VI was a veritable sports saloon in comparison .

Seeing all those Vivas reminds me of so many models of car of which there were always zillions around and then you'd turn around and, suddenly, there weren't. A while ago I was informed that there were fewer than ~200 roadworthy Morris Marinas remaining in the wild. My reaction was one of stunned disbelief. I mean, they're all over the place aren't they? Apparently not..........

And bonus evidence of a Castle in early Grouping GWR livery hauling a rake of Mk1s in mixed blue/grey and maroon .

Looks like another interesting relic of a less affluent, less well commercially supplied era. If I had the disposable income and storage space to collect anything other than useable models, I think I could be tempted to start hunting down and buying such pieces because I think they are worth preserving in their own right as a tribute to all those who put in such commendable efforts. What models like this represent is too important to condemn them to the bin.

I recently re-read Guy Williams' book on 4mm loco construction and was interested to note that he was, in the late 70s, enthusiastic about the Triang XO4. If it's good enough for Pendon ... .