Not Jeremy

Well as the, ahem, "Cat's out of the bag" I think it is safe to reveal that research started off some years ago under cover of "Reg and Colin's Great Railway Adventure". Who can resist an OB? Reg

I have just spoken to the printers and MRJ 282 is now in the World. Copies should get to trade customers and subscribers from early next week, with copies going out to the News trade from the end of next week. Whatever "target date" is or isn't given inside, work has commenced on 283 and things are now looking brighter for the future. I leave you with a shot of the cover.

I am sure it will be, subs will presumably go up a bit but that is not my decision as Cygnet remains an autonomous operation as explained earlier. Simon

MRJ 282 is now at the printers and should be available shortly. From this issue the cover price is raised to £5.50 per issue. In a break with tradition, here is some pre publication information: It is edited by Karl Crowther and features include his Kentside Branch and Hywel Thomas's splendid Morfa Bank Sidings amongst other delights. The cover features a great shot of Morfa Bank Sidings, image available shortly... Simon

Thank you very much for your comments. No plans as such but I would like to do more and have said so to Don. Twilight has gone well and is still selling pretty strongly, so I will follow our conversation up in the next few weeks. I am however already working on another new book for Wild Swan that does feature rolling stock, with others to follow hopefully. Apart from anything else it is a subject that interests me a lot! Simon

Yes, the Titfield Thunderbolt received supplies on Wednesday, it is very good. Here's my take on it: https://www.titfield.co.uk/Books/Wagons-det.htm#5481 Simon

Great post Johnster - gives us all hope for the future. We aren't all quite as rotten as some of us believe, even in the quaint old days bad things could and did happen in Blighty, it's those humans don't you know. Going back to the subject at hand, I have had numerous Flu jabs and never had any reaction at all. On the Covid front I was "jabbed" earlier this week (Astra Zenica) at my local doctors surgery and the efficiency, friendliness and ease of the whole experience was absolutely exemplary. If I had driven I would even have got free parking in the adjacent pub car park! I did have a slight reaction that evening (as advised possible on the accompanying paperwork) - flu type symptoms which made me feel pretty rotten, but I took two Paracetomol and went to bed and happily awoke the next morning feeling normal, whatever that is(!) So, if offered the vaccine take it. I am very grateful for having been offered it and given it and I am looking forwards to a brighter future for everyone because of its existence, it is a very good thing. There are lots of things out there that can kill us and I don't myself believe the Covid vaccines are amongst them. Simon

Just where is that "irritatingly sanctimonious" button when you need it?

John I believe the foreign subs have gone out in the last few days, so it willl hopefully arrive any day now. Simon

Sadly no pigeons, rather more prosaically Royal Mail or UK division of La Poste.... For information, issue 282 has just been given over to production, I must finish my advert before it's too late(!) This will be for (shameless plug alert) Wild Swan's new book "Geoff Williams' Aylesbury LNWR", which if I say so myself is a real belter. It features Andy York's superb colour photography of the layout when it was exhibited at "Railex" 2016, courtesy of Andy and Warners/BRM magazine. This should be printed next week if all goes according to plan. Simon

I do indeed send them off to Didcot.

John Isherwood at Cambridge Custom transfers does them I think, certainly in yellow for green painted PMVs as I have some in 1/32 scale.

I have just found a couple more from Jerry's wonderful show at Warminster back in those far away days of 2019. First off 2mm Mark and PMP enjoying Chris Nevard's Brew Street, Laurie Griffin background right with hand on head and CK doing bookshop duty background left. Then we have Barry Norman with a cuppa admiring the the North Cornwall lines while maestro John Greenwood is at the control panel. Thanks to everyone for contributing to the thread - it has cheered me up no end!

Touchingly naive, you have forgotten the most important question: "Can we flog the operation/organisation/asset off to someone else, preferably abroad and ideally for an obscene amount of money and in such a way that we b*gger up as many other people and organisations as is humanly possible"

And some six years earlier (can it really be that long ago?) here is "Il Duce" himself starting off the raffle at the Taunton members day as only he can....

Going back to cake, at some shows the distribution of such delights is strictly rationed. Here we see none other than Jerry the Clifford with his "cake police" at Warminster in June 2019. I think he was momentarily distracted by those bottles...

Here are a couple of crowd shots from Larkrail 2016, taken by my friend Steve Cook. The venue has a couple of useful balcony bits that are conducive to looking over the proceedings as Steve has done here. Although I never really plugged this show very hard, and didn't advertise it locally, it always attracted a nice mixture, including local families and their children. Lots of characters in these shots, quite a few RMwebbers I think, plus the Bristol S4 massive (sorry Rich!) Iain Rice is in there too, Lexie* was under the layout! *Iain's Jack Russell

Dear Rob Thank you very much for saying that, it is a very nice thing to read here or anywhere. Truth is, I have had very many lovely conversations with people over the telephone since the Covid thing broke, really with the theme of how lucky we are to have a hobby, but also simply I think because it is just good for all of us to talk to one another. The Covid thing is very strange, it coincided with big changes in my business and various other things in my life and the difference it imposed on everything has in a strange way turned out to be quite "useful". I hesitate to say that, because I do not think it has otherwise been a good thing at all in so very many ways. So by now, I am very fortunate to find myself very busy with retail mail order, which is keeping everything afloat whilst also providing its own challenges, mostly European.. (oops, wrong thread!) I feel very fortunate to be in this position and enjoy the contact the whole thing gives me with lots of people, customers mostly, but also suppliers, the postman, the DPD drivers, my friend George who helps me with the business, the list goes on. I am in the process of getting some rather spiffing (I think) postcards produced that I/we can put in with orders, which will hopefully raise a smile. Amongst these might well be the attached, which I shall leave you with: National service in Bad Oeynhausen, 1949: W.J. Castens crouches on a roof while his mate sits on the chimney, supporting our now European allies in confronting the Russian threat. So if anyone thinks I'm daft you can now see where I get it from.....

Oh it's not just about mugshots though.... For example, here we have some members of DRAG demonstrating some fairly advanced cognitive skills at Aylesbury in 2017

I love that picture, not least because you can really "see the boy" in John's face, just wonderful. Simon

David Lane and company's "Railex" is a thoroughly good show which never disappoints. One of the really nice aspects, and a measure of the huge care and thought that goes in to the whole thing, is the absolutely spiffing means of getting from the station to the show venue. Move along the bus please...

Thinking about P4(!), here is a portrait of the legendary and sadly late Roy Jackson. He is seem here "helping" in the fiddle yard of Geoff Kent's Black Lion Crossing at Expo EM 2018, to be fair he was in conversation with Mick Wakefield on his left when I snapped him. Such a funny man, and delightfully forthright in so many ways. Expo EM is a great show, but the evenings in the pub with Roy and his crew were something else. But then again this probably goes for the post show gatherings of so many groups of friends and exhibitors up and down the land. I suspect it is this aspect of shows that a lot of us are looking forward to getting back to.

Never mind the P4 Matey - where's thy pictures?!

I just love those cantilevered out Southern signals, thank you for posting all these really great pictures!

This is a bit "out there" but here is the very nice poster produced by the Wales and West Model Railway Association for their 1977 exhibition in the Victoria Rooms in Bristol. It was a great event, possibly the one where "Heckmondwyke" appeared? Of the layouts I recall at the show, I especially like "Pontypool Riverside" (I think it was called that) a wonderful GWR and LMS joint terminus, built in EM on a curve as I recall. I think by then I was helping to man the Whitemans book stand with Captain Kernow. He wasn't known by that name then..... Perhaps someone here knows more about the show that year?