Not Jeremy

Following said pow wow I have retrieved various useful items useful or otherwise for the aforementioned summit meeting, including phone numbers various, a scale rule, the floorplan, pieces of cardboard cut into layout type shapes and blu tack. I can also confirm that the hall is not only booked, but also paid for - so the show absolutely has to go ahead!! More to come.... Simon

Get your ticket ready for next Friday.... Simon

I believe that this is really great news. First attending the Bristol show back in the early 70s, then later (but still at the Victoria Rooms) representing "Whitemans Bookshop" with CK, I many years later had the pleasure of exhibiting at Thornbury with "Pomparles Siding", the G1 layout I built in response to the RMweb "Six square feet challenge". I was hugely chuffed to win the Moorcroft cup for over Gauge O modelling with my "Toad", usually the late David Buckingham was awarded this pot for his lovely G scale creations. Here's a picture of W68740 in later life, a prototype which is shortly to be recreated by Rapido in 4mm scale. Over many years the Association Bristol show has given a huge amount of pleasure to very many people. For all the criticisms that have been levelled at it, and any vicissitudes that it has gone through, it has always retained a great "buzz". Not least, I think, because there is always a great contingent of modellers from South Wales present, who are both good modellers and good fun. Warners taking it on is I think perfect, and I have already contacted Bev at Bourne to book space at the show for Wild Swan. It strikes me that the combination of fresh impetus from Warners together with the date being early in what will be a forward looking post Covid environment should result in an absolutely stonking show! Hopefully there will be an RMweb presence where we can all gather and argue over pointless details have a really good time saying hello to each other, and stuff. And there's a bar... I am really looking forward to what I am sure will be a "not to be missed" show! Simon

Apologies in advance, but I have just bought a CD which I am a bit obsessed about. It is nothing like "Bat out of Hell", or Blondie (really), and in no way replaces or replicates Bat Out of Hell and its glorious operatic lunacy, and yet reading some of the comments above I think it maybe has some strange resonance with what a lot of us liked when we heard Meatloaf back in 1977. Anyway, as it appears to be a bit unknown(?) I'll stick my neck out and put a link to it here: With Monsters and Gods Feel free to ignore it, I am not saying it is any kind of replacement or substitute, but it sure sounds good played very loud.... A cover of "Call Me", a Ska version of "Jackson" the title track and "Down On Your Knees" - all pretty knee trembling stuff. I'm playing it loud now - may my neighbours forgive me!! I do not mean this disrespectfully to the memory of Meatloaf.

On which note, how abut this fab picture from Chris Stein's Facebook page, posted today. Taken at about the "go faster" time...

Very sad, as others have said. Fantastic HST* music, that and Blondie's "Parallel Lines", driving too fast up and down the A3 late at night all those years ago... HST = High speed Triumph still not Jeremy

Apropos of bottoms, as it were, are there any footpaths or ways through on foot from the bottom to which you refer up to Stockwood Lane? I am asking for a friend....

Oh yes indeedy! Rat End to Netherstench via Stench Junction and Ant Hall halt, or something like that. I fear that I have always been something of a twit.... Not Jeremy

Well, there isn't anywhere called Simonsbottom, Simonsbath maybe, but I never built a layout based upon said place. You've just got to own it matey! And I didn't even mention "chunky halt".....

A great project, I really look forward to seeing it develop. I'm a bit younger than Bulwell but was still very taken by Mac Pyrke's layouts. Of course what CK didn't mention was "Timsbury Bottom", the layout name that really should have been used. Just sayin' I think imagination is important in model railways, I'm currently trying to pretend that part of my garden is on an estuary north of Falmouth, which is quite a stretch!! What a grand hobby this is. Simon

No problem here in Bath, and I'm sending lots of stuff to lots of places using Royal Mail, You seem to be terribly unlucky, or perhaps you just enjoy complaining - you do seem to crop up on lots of threads as the "voice of doom". Nothing in this world is perfect, but much as the Royal Mail has been royally shafted by privatisation it remains full of well motivated folk doing their best, and your complaining must really get them down. Hopefully they aren't reading! Cheer up John, things can only get worse.... Simon

Bloody Hell, hope he gets better, give him my very best wishes if/when you speak with him Tim.

Great news, good luck with sorting something out for this year. You can count on my (WS) support for anything you are able to put together. Quite apart from selling stuff I was really looking forward to seeing you all again! Fingers crossed.... Simon

Gee shucks, thank you Miss Prism, I will amend the post accordingly. Good job I'm not in charge of anything Simon

Another reason to buy the Rapido Titfield set is that they are including the correct brake van, ie AA20 rather than Hornby's AA19ish, unless Hornby are producing the "correct" brake van. Nice as locomotives are, and I think that Rapido are producing a stunner in this case, I have a real "thing" for brake vans. So to help the thread along, here is a gratuitous but very nice picture of an axlebox of an AA21 Toad. Diagram AA21 was the same as AA20 excepting that they were all built with vacuum brake, I think I am right in saying, so this is what we should be getting from Rapido. The image was taken by the late David Hyde, who very kindly left me his photographic collection, one of which this is. Note that 17410 has the footboard in the lower position. And of course those utterly splendid fellows at Rapido are producing AA20s with footboards in this and the earlier higher position to match the two different vans used during the filming. Personally, I am very much looking forward to getting a Rapido Titfield set, I think it may have to be the all singing, all dancing sound version too.... Roll on my beaut(ies)! Simon

Interesting observations, looking at my copy of the image there do appear to be quite a "gaggle"of men in the background, but they could be railway staff. Peter certainly liked to get people in his photographs, here is another favourite of mine, a July 1962 arrival of a Saturday through train at Burnham on Sea. Apparently the train arrived quite full, an amazing scene when you think of how things are now. And nothing to do with going back over the moor, although at least this isn't a GW line, but that loco.... Are we there yet? Simon

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This latest issue is now out and in stock here in Bath. It is edited by Barry Norman, it is now up on my website and my take on it is here. A decent issue I think, some of the content is even quite modern(!) Apologies for lack of a cover shot, I'll add one in later. It features Jim Smith Wright's Brettell Road at night! Simon

Well quite! I have coincidentally just been on the phone to Ginny Barnfield, who is well, and she is happy for me to share Peter's pictures here. So here are two shots of the aforementioned place, the whole frame of the previous shot and "Ashley Grange" on a down freight that went through while everyone waited for the train out of Gwinear Road(!) Oh dear, this is all frightfully "Great Western"... I should have said, these and many more pictures all appear in the Wild Swan book "Memories of West Country Railway Journeys 1960-1962" available here Simon

Thank you Ian for a very cheering bit of news on a bright and cold morning. Improved the taste of my tea no end! Thinking of the weather and future West Country delights in general, here is a rather lovely image captured on film by the late Peter Barnfield. A typically "blistering" day on the 18th August 1962 and the passengers from a Helston service walk up the platform at Gwinear Road to await a main line service heading up country. However we get there in the future it is a place worth going to. Simon

Closed October 1966.

I do like the cut of your jib, that would open up one hell of a Dawlish diversionary route! A few creative new junctions would offer a fair multiplicity of routes, highly scenic but rather slow

Oops, quite right, oh well....

Now you're talking! Antoine de Caunes, featuring Jean Paul Gaultier and, er, "Lola". Rapido - why, it almost made the licence fee worth paying! Marvellous stuff. Apologies for lowering the tone of the thread, enjoy this spiffing Titfield image in recompense, (tee hee): Picture copyright of Studio Canal, purchasable from their most excellent excellent website.

Apart from the witterings of dear old "Northmoor" here, I'm not aware of anyone who thinks that the LSW route would ever replace the coastal route. That is certainly not the intention of the website that I flagged up or any of the groups to which it is linked. It would be in "addition to", a pretty simple concept I think. Why anyone would think otherwise is beyond comprehension.