PatB

Not exactly a volume seller itself. Certainly not enough to make the power train economic to manufacture. Of course Leyland Australia used the engine in a mass market saloon, the P76, which might have made it work, given a bit of international cooperation, but... erm... didn't. Nor did fheir attempt at putting a slightly smaller variant in the Marina.

And I retyped that symbol at least 3 times, trying to get " instead of ' too. looks like my Shift key coordination needs some work .

Of course, something the British industry did do very well, and quite successfully too, so presumably there was a decent sized market, was the sporting small/medium RWD saloon, with all the big players offering at least one or two variants at one time or another, pretty much all of which were of at least some merit. Not that any of that's really relevant to why the Austin 3-Litre was a flop.

I was deliberately excluding Jags as they fell at the lower end of the prestige market rather than the upper end of everyone else (IMHO; I accept that the existence and position of any dividing line is open to debate). If you could afford a new Jaguar you could probably afford to fuel, tax and insure it without worrying overmuch. OTOH, those in the market for the products of Ford, Vauxhall, BMC/BL etc. may have needed to be more thrifty. As a corollary, if you had the budget to fuel, tax and insure a 3 litre saloon, you might very well be in a position to stretch to a Jaguar with only a little more effort, so why would you buy a Ford/Austin/Vauxhall with the same badge on it as Joe Bloggs' car next door? I'm not saying that the big cars didn't sell. Clearly they did. My point is more that the non-prestige big car market in the UK just wasn't big enough for all the manufacturers at the time to offer a model and sell enough to make money on it. Only Ford seem to have really succeeded post ~1970. The Austin bombed as even BL seem to have recognised the wisdom expressed by russ p above, and concentrated on the Land Crab and its Wedge successor, providing both with an upengined option, which, if I remember the relevant Which? magazine tests correctly, posted almost identical performance figures to the 3-Litre (103 mph top speed sticks in my mind, which was also the top whack of the Westminster when they tested it). Vauxhall, as previously mentioned, dropped the Cresta at the end of the PC's life. Humber disappeared except as a badge-engineered Rootes Arrow. Rover dropped the P5 and didn't introduce another true big car until the SD1 which also came with small engined options. Triumph stuck to the 2000, even if they did put a long-stroke crank in it to create the 2500. They could have probably built a 2000 On Steroids to take the Stag lump but, given that it would have been internal competition for Rover and maybe the cheaper Jags it wasn't going to happen. I suppose it could be argued that the British manufacturers could have sold big saloons abroad. Where though? Australia and Canada were making plenty of their own by 1970. Why would a US buyer want one when they could buy a homegrown really big car? Mainland Europe was probably an even more hostile environment for big engines than the UK at the time, and any market that there might have been would have been adequately covered by the likes of Volvo, Mercedes (neither of which seem to have been anything like as prestigious in their home countries as in Britain), Ford Germany (surprise surprise) and maybe FIAT with their bigger models that one sees in 60s Italian films but almost nowhere else . So I conclude that, below Jaguar level, there was only room for one or two players in the UK big car market. Ford got the lion's share and Rover eventually picked up the rest, and even they had to offer economy versions of their respective offerings to pay the bills. Something like the Austin 3-Litre which didn't have much major component commonality with its Land-Crab parent, or with anything else from BMC/Leyland UK for that matter, wasn't going to be well placed to succeed. Apropos of nothing very much, I think the last Austin 3-Litre I saw in the metal was a rather scruffy example, with the bodgiest Rover V8 transplant I think I've ever seen, at the Yeovil Festival of Transport back in the mid '80s. Lack of clearance under the bonnet had been solved by cutting a slot down each side of the panel with a blunt angle-grinder, lifting the centre section by 6' or so, and tack welding in triangles of (unpainted) galvanised iron to fill up the resulting gaps. Man but it was ugly, even by my standards, and I normally like ugly .

Realistically, the 3-Litre was almost certainly a better car than the Farina Westminster it was designed to replace. Whatever its weaknesses, II strongly suspect that its commercial failure was more due to the UK market being unable to provide enough sales of "non-prestige" big cars like the Austin, the big Fords and the big Humbers (sort of semi-prestige I suppose) and the Vauxhall Cresta to sustain more than a couple of models. It's notable that the only real continuing success in that market was Ford with Zephyr/Zodiac and the subsequent Consul/Granada family, both of which were, perhaps significantly, also available in small-engined versions which, I'd be fairly confident, outsold the big ones. Vauxhall, of course, dropped the Cresta and just up-engined the Victor instead. Given the number I remember seeing not so many years later I don't think the Ventora was any great success either. Thinking about it, Rover did OK with the P6 too but, again, the 2000/2200 provided the bread and butter, with the 3500 being an up-engined middleweight saloon rather than a true big car itself. Big cars just haven't been big sellers in the UK. Or weren't in the late 60s anyway.

Whilst I can see the advantages of not using water, I'm sceptical of the claims of low-cost infrastructure. As we know, reliable railway permanent way.is neither cheap nor particularly low impact.

When I first arrived in Perth a couple of decades ago I was astounded at how profligate with water West Australians were. Considering we're on the edge of what is, effectively, one enormous desert, chucking it about as indiscriminately as was being done at the time seemed a little unwise. Even though things have changed a bit, thanks to increasing costs and relentess government campaigns, its still coming back to bite us as South West WA becomes both hotter and drier. The reservoirs will probably never be full again and the groundwater which forms the main source of supply is being depleted. Mind you, if rainfall ever did return to earlier levels much of Perth would return to its natural state;a low lying, sandy swamp.

I'd be fairly confident you're right for the early plans. I think, by the time the later editions of 60 Plans came out he was referring to the Mainline Dean Goods.

Nothing sinister under that particular one. There are assorted bits of Land Rover and Triumph Herald under a few bits of Bristol though. We did once find an old Post Office Telephones manhole under some paving we were replacing. Lifted it, had a look and found what appeared to be some quite complex wiring. Looked at the slabs we were taking up. Agreed that nobody had seen that manhole for ~30 years. Paved back over it. It was a long time ago yer 'Onour.

I don't think they're exactly rare or desirable, even now. At the recent Perth (WA) show one trader had a tray of them at very reasonable (for Perth, so not truly cheap) prices. Were I more affluent I'd have scooped up the lot, if only for their X04 motors, along with the tray of Dock Shunters on the same stall.

I suspect those two were singled out because they represent the greatest volume of what might be called privately imported goods coming into Australia. At a guess anyway.

I first came across the rubbery stuff on pedestrian rail crossings here in Perth in 1996. However, I can't think of any road crossings that use it here even now.

Having been at the pointy end of compliance (in other fields) on a couple of occasions when new, not very well thought out regulation was introduced, I confidently predict that the whole situation will be a debacle of inconsistent, half-ar5ed chaos for at least the next year. But at least Gerry Harvey may be slightly less pervasive in our media for a while, so that'll be a plus .

This thread is hilarious . Seriously though, in spite of having lived in WA for 22 years, where the temperature regularly has a 4 in front of it in summer and where I've seen 50+ on worksites in the North West, I think the most uncomfortable I've ever been was just after May Bank Holiday 1990 in Bristol. Dad and I were putting a patio down in a south facing corner, using pale slabs against a white painted house. My goodness but it was hot. Fortunately I was young and fit in those days and so survived quite well. That particular hot spell also enabled me to buy an enormous sheepskin and canvas coat (Swedish army issue I believe) for pocket change at my favourite surplus store. It subsequently kept me from hypothermia on many ill-judged winter motorcycle trips so it wasn't all bad .

The rot set in when they stopped putting the classified ads on the front page .

Having owned a K100RS and an R1100RT I'd agree that, whilst not fast in an absolute sense, BMWs are easy to ride swiftly on a sustained basis which, over more than a few miles, is more important for A to B times than racetrack characteristics.

I tried smoking while riding precisely once. The incandescent end of me fag came off, spanged off my right eyeball, dropped into my beard, setting it ablaze, before dropping down the neck of my jacket and blazing a fiery trail all the way down to about navel level. Oddly enough I didn't bother trying again .

Well, it worked for Lima . Seriously though, I think I'd rather see a reasonably plausible "in the spirit of" heritage coach than no heritage coach at all, which might be the other realistic option. Given that Mk1s are plentiful, (presumably) cheap, mostly not terribly historically significant, and well understood by the heritage railway community it would make sense to use them as a basis for such beasties. As noted upthread, however, the economics of new build coaches are problematical. Mk1s offer designs like the TSO that are pretty much ideal for the bread and butter operations of a heritage line, which, I would guess, are what pay the bills. Replica or restored older designs of coach, while nice for the enthusiast, probably won't extract much more cash from Joe and Josephine Public than the existing Mk1 stock. I suspect that, as long as the coaching stock is reasonably cosmetically clean, smart and not modern, the effect on revenue for most of the year would be minimal. Where such builds would come into their own would be for special events aimed specifically at the enthusiast, and, as noted upthread, for film and TV work (if there are any producers out there who care enough and don't have access to CGI). For myself, I'd like to see something significantly different.Much Big 4 stock is a sufficiently close ancestor of the Mk1 that the "feel" will be much the same. So what about some proper 4 and 6 wheelers (no, not rebodied CCTs, although I do also applaud those efforts) or some clerestory coaches. However, that's me speaking as a (not fanatical) enthusiast who probably isn't worth that much, financially, to the heritage railway movement. I don't know if anyone's done it, but a replica Pullman dining car might be useful. As well as use on prestigious dining trains such a coach could also serve as a proper static restaurant whilst not in operation, offering another revenue stream for a railway.

What I got out of those video comparisons was how nice the Bachmann Percy chassis is. It's actually got proper crossheads and slidebars, unlike the Hornby equivalent. Very interesting for prospective 0-16.5 loco builders.

Big toolbox on the running plate perhaps.

Not the UK, or a shop, but the building I worked in in Canberra a few years ago had a turntable underneath to get (I think) the bin trucks into the loading bay. It was chequerplate steel and a slippery b&$*@%d of a thing to cross on a bicycle if it was raining. On a smaller scale, I remember a house on St Johns Lane in Bristol having a very restricted yard that someone had put a turntable in to make it possible to park more than one car in it. Apropos of nothing very much, I lived in Wallingford when the one supermarket in town changed from Key Markets to Waitrose. That was long before the flash new building went up though. It was in the much more constricted premises further south which, if Google Streetview is to be believed, looks as if its now been demolished.

The non-De-Luxe Anglia must be a rare beastie. Even when 105Es were still a relatively common sight I can't recall seeing a standard saloon. I remember one or two vans though.

Having eaten at outback roadhouses I'm plagued by visions of their junior employees being sent out to collect toad sausages so that the proprietor can fill up the bain-marie at zero cost .

Has this ever actually happened? I tend to regard it as an urban myth, given that I've never seen a verifiable case cited. I have heard from reputable sources that "good faith" type provisions would generally protect anyone making reasonable attempts to assist.

If you haven't already, check out this site. https://sharp.dft.gov.uk/ I haven't looked in detail recently but it used to hold some surprises. In particular it used to upset Arai enthusiasts . For myself, I've favoured HJC for the last 15 years or so. I find them a good fit and their mid-range models generally feel better finished than other lids of equivalent price. Only issue is the visor mechanisms on the ones I've had have been a bit flimsy. I bought some cheapo visors and gear plates off Ebay for my current helmet and they were significantly better in all respects than the factory standard bits.