TT-Pete

Or Betamax v.s VHS? Does anyone know where we are up to with the phases? Feels like I've been waiting for the BR blue HST set for a long time now, I thought it was supposed to be Summer?

>> not forgetting my long time suffering helper, Gordon. There. Fixed it for you. :^)

Had the worst day ever. I paid a carpenter to build me a double bed and he's done a bunk. It's just one thing on top of another.

Ah, well now, there's a reason for both of those, the layout has to be working first. It was one of those moments best described as "Digitrax says no" 🙄, hence "Challenge" being very appropriate...

Black coffee 2 sugars, but not between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00.

Agreed. And there was definitely "challenge" on the Sunday morning... :^)

No problems at this end, but then I hardly go into newsagents these days so no idea if delivery is in sync or not, but agree with @Geep7 that it's probably Royal Mail-related.

Panther and diorama has seen a bit more work.

Getting parts for Roco locos is easy using their on-line search and order page: https://www.roco.cc/ren/spareparts You can search by model number and each part has a green/red ranking showing if it is in stock, it goes in the basket, in the post and in your hands a couple of days later, very efficient although quite a few bits for older locos seem to be discontinued these days.

Oldie but goodie:

Love this:

There is a small dogwalking park Berczy Park in downtown Toronto wedged between Wellington, Scott and Front streets, it has this whimiscal water feature/fountain at the middle; It has 4 concentric rings of doggy statues regurgitating water up to the next level. It's a hit with the kids. All doggies (mainly Pugs and Terriers I think) except for, at the outer edge - a lone cat. In typical feline fashion he is disinterested and looking away from the canine mayhem behind him. His ears are worn smooth as no passing and self-respecting child can resist giving him a pet; I think the sculptor may have been a cat person and had the last laugh with this figure perched on a utilities cabinet at one corner of the park:

Union Station - part 2 The green and white triangles are over what was the spur leading down to the MPD, now the museum roundhouse. It's nice to see that so much of the old trainshed fabric has been incorporated into the refurbishment, it really gave me a sense of yesteryear - The Fairmont Royal York is a magnificent structure. The Great Hall: The station frontage presented a bit of a challenge, the sun was always behind it and the only shot I could get without getting blinded was at the extreme right with the room window reflections from the Royal York across the street - So only one solution - it will have to be at night: Oh well, all good things come to an end, back to Blighty... FIN

Toronto Union Station has to be my favourite - Coming back from the railroad museum I took a random stairwell up from the Lower Simcoe street underpass (vibes of a brighter version of Waterloo Station Leake Street underpass back in the days when you could still drive through it) which rather to my surprise came out at platform level - Looking East - I was trying to give a sense of just how BIG these locos are, they really are the size of a house when you're standing at track level I love these classic innox coaches, reminiscent of French expresses of the 1970's - Looking West -

I have read that although the grandiose terminal building was modelled on the baths of Caracalla, the actual trainshed was a dark and gloomy low-roofed cast concrete structure that nobody misses. We walked back from the National Museum across the Alexandra river bridge, I noticed it is a trypical railway girder construction, has got commemorative railway company builders' plates on the ends and that the alignment points up towards the Fairmont hotel through the Major's Hill park, so I suspected it had railway origins. :^) (BTW what a barking idea to come up with a plan to deliberately remove all railways and stations from within your capital city centre in order to become car-centric. I wonder how that has worked out?)

Toronto Railroad Museum

But I am not so keen on Ottawa's station, so just for a moment let us pretend that the downtown Union station was not closed to all traffic in 1966; But unfortunately it was, so now we've got this soulless airport terminal instead...

And I also like Gare du Palais -

Hi John, I'd be interested in seeing those! Peter.

I like Gare Centrale -

retour So I make the 13:27 back from St-Constant On the way back I was looking out for a depot I had first seen from the taxi on the way into town from the airport (a railway enthusiast always picks this sort of thing up - much to the wife's dismay) and the on the train up (or DN) I had seen it again, so on the way back I was timed and ready at the window camera in hand; Does anybody recognise the location or any of the stock on display?

exporail 2

exporail 1 So, to the museum. Well it confirms what a lot of people have said about it being dark and gloomy. Fortunately there's just about enough light for the EOS, but it really is a dark place.