The Pilotman

So, you must be one of the people on the bridge in this video:

Is it possible that the only spare part they could get was yellow and they haven’t had time to paint it blue yet?

Well, fair play to @St. Simon for offering up his knowledge for free when he has also written a book about it.

Didn’t you write a book about all that?

Certainly beyond; Penzance and Newquay were frequently visited by classes 45 and 46 (Laira had an allocation of the latter) and you could also include South Wales, East Anglia, Scarborough, Paddington, Eastleigh and Brighton as places where class 45s could reliably turn up at various times during their lives.

These Paignton trains (a pair of 31s and a WCML rake) were a regular feature on Summer Saturdays in the late 1980s. At one time I believe three such trains could be seen in one day. Often, one of the Euston-Birmingham/Wolverhampton rakes of mainly Mk2 stock was used but frequently spare Pullman rakes (like the one in Brian’s picture above) were used too.

Two superficially similar Farish class 46s have appeared on eBay. It says they’re non-runners so not attracting a ridiculous price. Yet.

Fifty shades of grey

Great shot of it here on Martin Loader’s site: http://www.hondawanderer.com/D1015_66719_Gossington_2021.htm

That subject has been debated on here in multiple threads over the years. Whilst you might get an idea of how many active RMWeb posters are trying to be prototypical, that almost certainly isn’t indicative of what happens in the wider world.

You may be right. However, when the subject of outrageous prices appears on here someone invariably says something along the lines of “an item is worth whatever someone is prepared to pay for it.” Based on previous experiences, I can’t predict what price someone is prepared to pay. So the reason for selling them using “sealed bids” was to try to find a middle ground between offering them at too low a price and selling myself short, or appearing on an “eBay Madness” type thread. Anyway, it’s academic now; I’ve gone home and taken my football with me

I recently put a couple of Farish Mk2F Blue/Grey TSOs up for sale on the classifieds section here, hoping that a fellow RMWebber might be interested. I thought these coaches were in demand but after two weeks fewer than thirty people had had a look and they attracted exactly one (low-ish) bid. Therefore, I’ve taken them off and at least one of them will be offered up to the ravenous hordes on eBay.

In the Summer of 1985 there was a 2A25 0650 Cardiff Central to Reading working which was a DMU and ran via Hereford and Oxford. No idea of the timings but I would imagine travelling from Newport to Reading on this train would probably have taken about three times longer than on an HST using the conventional route. The OP’s mention of slow animals reminded me that my first purchase from a well-known Cornish retailer* this year in the post-Brexit postal chaos took over a month to reach me at an average speed of about 1.5mph. * I know that some people get annoyed when posters refer to certain shops or websites in this way. What I would say to those people is, “build a bridge and get over it”.

A nice little mixed (Speedlink) freight there. I think the rear loco is 86613 County Of Lancashire.

Let’s be thankful that the object of all the negativity is only the marketing strategy and manufacturing process of a model train manufacturer and not something really important.

Yes, but not for long apparently. See the post by @Steadfast posted on August 20th above.

A temporary omission, I expect. It certainly had stag logos (plus black headcode boxes) but the time it was named a few months later.

Oh yeah, I’d forgotten Dapol were doing the 59s as well.

And as if by magic….

This is a nice surprise. I suppose that with Dapol having done this wagon in OO, it should have been foreseeable that they might do them in N too. To be honest, I was expecting Revolution to come up with something for their early versions of the Class 59 to pull, but these will do very nicely.

For anyone who can’t wait and/or likes a challenge, you could try to work out what might be underneath the blanked-out panels on this mini-catalogue that Revolution will be handing out tomorrow at TINGS. This image is freely available on Revolution’s website so I’m not disclosing anything that’s not in the public domain. If I were a betting man I’d say the short title block might cover something like “*** Wagon” or “Mk* Coach”. And if it’s a *** wagon that goes well with the early versions of the loco pictured directly above it, that would suit me (and doubtless plenty of others) very well.

Wanderer above a sea of cloud. A Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 descending towards Heathrow somewhere over southern England.

And presumably the currency in use there is pieces of eight or doubloons…

One of my former BR colleagues was mad (and I use that word advisedly ) about class 37s and would call up on a Saturday morning if he wasn’t working and ask me to put an enquiry through TOPS which (I think) showed all the Class 37s that were planned to work passenger trains that day. Based on the results, he would scratch a box and set off accordingly. With his trumpet.

Thank you both for your contributions. So it looks like 8 coaches + 12 car flats would be about the maximum allowed weight-wise for this train given the following “back of a fag packet” calculation: 8 coaches at approx. 35t each (280t) + 12 car flats at approx. 24t each (288t) = 568t Of course, on top of that would be the cars, passengers and luggage: 4 cars per car flat at approx. 1t each (48t) + 48 families and luggage at approx. 400kg per family of four (19t) = 67t So all in all the actual train weight could be somewhere around 635t; between the trailing load of D600 provided by @anroar53 and the maximum unassisted Brush Type 4 load of 690 tons as given by @The Stationmaster.