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Did half of the journey home today from spending Christmas at son’s. We had done the usual of checking the best days (and sometimes route) to travel. In summer, we have to know where the wildfires are, in winter where there are possible snow blocks. We went over a 5000 foot pass today, with a lot of snow on the sides of the road, but the surface clear. No snow falling, though some was forecast for later. A couple of 4000+ foot summits for tomorrow. We stopped for lunch beside a frozen lake with several guys out on it, ice fishing. One guy had a couple of nice floes stacked up beside his chair. 😉

Another example of trying to include meaning in a derived code where the items to be coded are not guaranteed to produce unique results. First three digits - OK, since they aren’t intended to be unique. Last two digits - should be consecutive numbers, with no attempt to include significance. People who need to know will know the appropriate number for a particular engine. Think about it - in your spotting days, did you ever confuse 46222 with 46257?

View from the cafe at lunch today:

CBC have done an item on some model railway layouts in the Vancouver area: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/Hidden_Museums My wife used to work in Moscrop school mentioned in the article, but says that that layout wasn’t there in her time.

Actually, the scariest incident was at Checkpoint Charlie!

There’s already been a few flurries this morning north of you here in Nelson, so officially a white Christmas. About 2 inches forecast over tonight and tomorrow, but no more for the drive home later in the week.

Very brave/foolish of you to confuse someone carrying a machine pistol like that! On the very few occasions I have found myself in the company of someone with a firearm in their hand I have found that the best thing to do is to try to calm the situation down as far as possible … and keep it that way!

From the Locomotion advert above: …The locomotive's (90774) first British Railways allocation was to 66C Hamilton (West). After three months it was reallocated to 68A Carlisle Kingmoor on 15th May 1954, 65F Grangemouth on 16th April 1955 and finally 84H Wellinton where the engine remained until 13th December 1962 when it was withdrawn … Eh??? Where are the pictures?? As opposing evidence: https://www.flickr.com/photos/78965852@N03/8499492397 Note that the nameplates (at least on the fireman’s side) have been removed by this date.

It didn’t stay there till withdrawal: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gricerman/12040176004

We finished icing ours a couple of days ago and brought half of it with us to our son’s where we’re spending Christmas, along with a jar of home-made marmalade. Tastes seem to have skipped a generation in the family. None of our kids liked our Christmas cake or marmalade. The two grandsons here love them both. A chunk of the cake was eaten at dinner last night. Then my wife made them up a lunch today - crackers, hummus, banana, carrot and cucumber sticks, and crisps. She asked if there was anything else they would like. Answer - “Marmalade toast, please.”

Where there’s a will … https://www.flickr.com/photos/28083135@N06/28584004286

This may be the topic you’re thinking about: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/100561-loco-coal-wagons-what-was-their-purpose/ It contains a reference to something I remember seeing in some Scottish Region sheds in the 1960s - wagons marked “One journey only - Loco coal”.

A friend of mine was doing a flight check on another pilot on a twin-engined aircraft. As they were on the final approach after the test, the pilot being checked said “Dave, I’ve already done the engine failure on approach!” Dave said “I’ve not touched anything!” 😳

Staged, but still: https://www.railpictures.net/photo/734478/#remarks (with a road over the top.)

Is the service intense enough for the station to rate a full-time station pilot? If so, I think some of the problems and complexity go away. (Based on personal observation of Gourock over many years - 4 platforms, carriage sidings, goods yard and engine turning, watering and ash-raking facilities.)

I instantly recognized “Up There, Kazaly” - words and music. I have absolutely no idea where I would have heard it before. That is going to bug me for the rest of today, at least!

Hold that thought!

The title doesn’t specify road level crossing, so here’s a rail level crossing in East Dubuque, Illinois. https://www.railpictures.net/photo/577694/ This is an aerial shot of the arrangement, with the train about to enter the tunnel mouth: https://www.railpictures.net/photo/605201/ With the railway on a narrow shelf along the bank of the river, there’s no room to construct an approach to a bridge from there. Instead, the track to the bridge swings away from the river some distance back (at bottom of picture below), then approaches at close to a right angle through the tunnel:

There are at least 19 Bachmann models fitted with operating FREDs: https://www.walthers.com/catalogsearch/advanced/result/?name=Rear+end+device&sku=&scale[]=20789 https://www.walthers.com/catalogsearch/advanced/result/?name=Fred&sku=&scale[]=20789

The first hydroelectric dams on the US portion of the Columbia river had been built in the 1930s, and some small ones had been built on a Canadian tributary earlier than that. However, the original reason for the negotiation of the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the US, under which the whole river is operated as a single system, was flood control. Massive floods in 1948 had caused damage all the way from the Kootenays in British Columbia to the mouth of the Columbia at Astoria. This included the complete destruction of the city of Vanport, at the time the second largest city in Oregon. The first two dams built under the treaty were the Duncan and Keenleyside in Canada, which were (and still are) purely for water retention. Of course, once you’ve got all that water under control you use it, mainly for electricity generation and agricultural irrigation.

Bachmann do an operating FRED as a separate item: https://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=6721 It includes a replacement truck to power it.

What - no Cèilidhs?

Now look up chasuble.

And parts of it were in the Scottish Region, too! The ScR would have been a problem if the idea of “regional” liveries had been extended. While all of the other regions had a major inheritance from one of the Big 4, with relatively small parts from others, the ScR was split down the middle ex-LMS/ex-LNER. Which colourscheme to choose? And never mind pre-Nationalisation animosities, even then there were still pre-Grouping ones.