brack

But it's not a human league song....

Is this crowdfunded? I know nothing about you but I'd love to send some money towards producing the model. I'm a bit short at present after I'd sunk my life savings into a DJM Eurostar fleet in all 7 proposed scales, but I've invested some money with prince olatunde in Nigeria and when that comes through I'll have plenty spare.

There were similar metrovick designs but for diesel engines... Soon to be available in 4mm scale...

Boulton & Paul produced the gun turrets for an awful lot of allied bombers in ww2, there was more to them than just the defiant and a few obsolete 30s designs (frankly everything the RAF built in the interwar period looked incredibly dated as soon as monoplanes appeared and the luftwaffe (oops, condor legion) showed what modern air power could be in the spanish civil war. Blackburn produced plenty of ineffective fleet air arm fighters/fighter bombers (pretty much everything the FAA ordered in that line was crap until they realised you could just navalise a spitfire or import US carrier plane designs). However the Buccaneer was good. Both companies most significant contributions might well have been building other companies designs - B&P churned out an awful lot of sopwith camels and blackburn produced most of the fairey swordfish.

Genius. We'll build a lovely new high speed line, You can get from Birmingham to sort of london, travelling in luxury in 45 minutes, then a 25 minute walk and 3 changes/30 minutes on the tube, head deep in some strangers sweaty armpit to get you to an actual useful terminus in london. Dava has it right - the environmental impact I regret, but frankly a double track electrified railway is significantly lower in impact than any other solution to the problem and I suspect less impactful on the environment of doing nothing and driving more cars, lorries and planes around. Faffing about with an out of london terminus compromises the project significantly for little gain. If we are to do it, then do it properly, not investing a fortune in something hamstrung by a short sighted compromise we will later regret (eg. ECML electrification on the cheap, the mess made of current electrification projects).

I was thinking the boundary looks very short....

If you want proof, every time I search for o gauge on ebay you cant move for thousands of 70-80 year old Hornby tinplate items.

I'd sort of assumed that from the track plan and dimensions, but with a 48ds and some tight points you mightve squeezed something in O

4mm or 7mm?

Ironic announcement that they've taken over the LLC ruston 48ds?

I suspect such foreign currency as we might acquire in the coming months and years should not be squandered so frivolously. I myself am confident that my stash of 170 trillion Zimbabwean dollars will be more valuable than sterling this time next year.

The miracle of tasteless capitalism - a sort of circular economy where some pointless tat is sold by a gift shop, given to a 3rd party who holds on to it for the minimum length of time so as not to appear ungrateful, then donates it to a charity shop, whence it can be purchased as a gift for some other poor soul, who will keep it for a few months before putting it in a plastic sack for another random charity.....

I have a 7mm JE kit on my shelf, having started it yet but the frets and bits have been out the box, perused and poked a couple of times. As a pretty inexperienced solderer of brass kits it doesnt look scary and seems fairly straightforward.

Dont ask, dont tell....

They were the smallest and lowest powered loco that Alco made for their domestic market at the time of purchase. Yes, there were smaller locos around, but by the late 40s when they were built class 1 railroads had mostly moved to 900-1000hp for switchers and 1350-1600hp for cab units or road switchers - the 660hp models didnt last long in builders catalogues post 1950, alco turning out the last S1/S3 in 53, which is pretty much when EMD stopped making SW1s. Just because in 1949 we'd decided the shunters of 204 or 350hp were good enough (and were still building pregrouping steam shunters) doesnt make a 660hp loco big by it's own manufacturer's standards.

If not, for testing purposes, an old pair of headphones/ earphones, snip the 'phones off the end of the wires, strip the cables and solder to the track will do the trick. On the topic of last wolves, the last wolf killed in the wilds of england was the hexham wolf, killed by a train in the winter of 1904, but I suspect we mightve covered that ground before on this thread.

Interesting, dad has the irs books, so I'd have to ask him. The dates mentioned for both shanks' cowes and the black hawthorn are very similar. Plenmeller colliery closed 26 may 1932 according to durham mining museum, who are usually decent on their records, which doesn't quite tally with Bradley, but it is perfectly plausible that sections of the colliery and associated tramways closed earlier as the little limestone seam worked out. Plenmeller common was opencasted a few years ago and the site of the colliery has been a plastic bottle factory for years (went round it twice on school trips) so there isn't much left on the ground. Sorry for diverting things - I'm from haltwhistle, so it piqued my interest. The LSWR picked up a decent amount of odd stuff, I'd certainly be interested to see what else they had.

I have a file of industrial locos that gives the plenmeller colliery 'Cowes' as black hawthorn 116/1870, ex IWCR no. 3. Is one of those IDs wrong? Edit: found origin of said list: The contractors locos file from the industrial locomotive society. Can be acquired from here: https://www.industrial-loco.org.uk/downloads.html

Yes, but mostly by the mayor of Teesside, who is nothing to do with any of this and is just making his mouth go for publicity - it's nothing to do with him as neither the metro nor hitachi are within his constituency. Metro bosses have been quite clear that awarding the contract to a supplier who is not the best value would be illegal and they're following the procurement rules. It'd be nice if Hitachi could supply them, but unless they can tender a better price at comparable quality than the others I dont see how or why it should happen.

Put a 99 on the front of the no. Eg. 4001 is 994001

In the north east Haugh is often more -Hoff than -huff I'd say. Although redheugh (and other heughs) almost gets a -yuff or hyuff, and Houghall in durham is Huffle/hoffle (but then I might not be saying those that correctly as I'm from the middle of northumberland). Unusual pronunciations survive as a very easy marker for identifying non natives - A southerner once very politely asked where cowpen was. Sadly for them the place where my great grandparents lived is pronounced coop'n.

The minitrix pacific is bang on for the Krauss 15" Pacifics, I started work on a 3d printed kit (had even spoken to people at ravenglass about it), but was beaten to the punch by someone else (who I believe used a kato JNR pacific chassis), then I got ill, then we had another baby. so I gave up.

Uranus was first seen by William Herschel using a telescope in his garden in bath

Gun runners you say, I think I can get us perilously close to on topic in one move?

Yet. Let's not tempt fate too soon please.