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Ah, but after glorious brexit there won't be any environmental or safety rules so we'll be free to run them on bunker c oil and just duct tape up any cracks in the engine blocks. Worth buying a few just in case.

*All those diesels for a start... Glad to see that the midland inspection saloon has gone to a midland railway based preserved line with safe undercover storage. Did nobody else want it or did nobody else get told about it? * whilst I'm not being entirely serious about getting rid of preserved diesels, given limited resources and the fact that it is easier to buy one than restore one, resulting in large numbers of some classes (20 or 30 of most classes which survived into the 1990s) preserved it would make sense to have some rationalisation with the remainders used for parts - in what future will there be a demand for 40 or so operating class 37s on preserved railways? And yes, I'd say the same for steam locos where we have more than a couple of the same class if they're unrestored and have little or no hope. That isn't to denigrate the efforts of those who have saved/restored locos, but there's far greater historic significance in something unique like the T3 than there is in having 18 Black fives I'm afraid, hence why it is important that the national collection is kept as such rather than being slyly got rid of. The various Great Western new build efforts seem to have come to this conclusion. Perhaps this can of worms deserves it's own thread though.

Perhaps swanage could loan it to a museum until such time as they have suitable undercover storage for it? I think there's space at locomotion shildon.

Many companies seemed to stay loyal to a builder, presumably the locos they'd had from them in the past having worked out well, and contacts with the right personnel (eg. The repeat orders of Kerr Stuart locos with bagnall despite the goodwill having gone to hunslets, many of the people went to bagnall).

I can retyre my Citroen c1 all round with pirelli or Dunlop tyres for less than my colleague pays for 1 of his. Of course if I was desperate I could just nick the wheels off a mobility scooter.

I struggle on this, as in the populated parts of northumberland/durham every valley, stream bed, moorland or hill you could find had had a standard gauge railway shoved up it by 1840. But part of me likes to imagine that all the sg lines to alston, weardale and allendale weren't built, the lead industry didn't collapse and a big 2'6" network running from stanhope to alston via nenthead, with a branch through rookhope to allenheads and a line over hartside into penrith. In WW2 the government might've even diverted a couple of the garratts and 4-8-0s it was building for Sierra Leone in order to help with the traffic... But I always struggle to make it believable, I suspect a temparate colonial system somewhere on an unknown island might be the answer.

You don't need a urinal, just put a drain somewhere on the floor and people can use whatever space they find, even more efficient. I swear I've been in some public bogs that operate this policy, though usually I'm only in there long enough to discover the smell and turn around...

so, to paraphrase that post by Andy Y: If you send the magazine a review sample early, we'll give you the 'traditional' review, otherwise you get what people post on here. I suspect you might be receiving lots more review samples if that becomes policy!

In those petrol strikes a younger version of myself filled a few trolleys with all the rice and pasta in our local ASDA, stashed them in the clothes department and loudly asked why the shop had run out at customer services. Lots of people then got quite panicky and irate. Teenagers are awful people aren't they! I do think that perhaps we need to legislate or encourage freight to be moved by rail, with local distribution by lorry/van (potentially autonomous/electric in the future). It is much more efficient in terms of energy. Containers (of varying sizes) should make it very simple, and the road capacity freed up would be of value to everyone else. Unfortunately the powers that be are rather influenced by the road lobby and our rail network lacks the capacity and investment needed. Logic and efficiency don't seem to come into things though, a hydrogen/fuel cell based motoring system is far more sensible than batteries - the embedded emissions and pollution from the extraction of the chemicals required and their manufacture are atrocious compared to using solar power to produce hydrogen and compress it. Of course you can't make money from leasing a battery to people for the remainder of their days (I suspect the car manufacturers' plan is that we switch from owning vehicles to perpetually renting them off them).

Ironic really, you're from a beautiful town surrounded by delightful narrow gauge rack equipped lines, mountains and some preserved steam locos and yet you want to get some farish diesels and build a model of a scruffy midlands industrial estate (or similar but in steam days). We look forward to seeing what you get up to. In my experience Swiss people tend to speak better English than half our population (despite it usually being their 3rd or 4th language) so I wouldn't worry too much.

looking at the BP garratt list they seem to have often split batches with contiguous works no.s of the same design for a single customer into multiple orders. Even if you claimed the 30 LMS locos were one order because they were the same type with sequential work's no.s, the 46 Rhodesian Railways 20th class locos (which BP has as 3 orders) delivered in 57-8 with sequential works numbers beats them.

Whilst I agree that in China heads at the top of a major car company would roll (maybe literally) if it was caught like vw, I also suspect that said car company might only be caught if the individuals controlling it had fallen out with important persons in the Communist party or perhaps they were viewed as expendable. The Chinese government can be extremely tough when they choose to be, and very unaware or unable to act on matters when it suits them too.

indeed, plus more built in peacetime - one list gives 1198 20HP locos built up to 1932 to the same design. Many of the later locos (not counted in that list) didn't differ that much in design, so depending on how you count them the true figure might be even higher. That must be the winner for the UK?

They (or the notorious collection X) already have a NGG13 of course, maybe they'll use it as a learning exercise on how to fix one up? presumably this means that the railway is getting some cash paid in for the workshop time - anythign that keeps a workshop in operation can't be bad, regardless of where it ends up working.

when you say allowed to deteriorate somewhat, this photo was taken in 2011. it was restored in 1992. The basque railway museum keep it in good condition so far as I know. I'd also guess (though I haven't checked the measurements) that it is a good deal bigger than the southwold locos. There is another Sharp, Stewart 060T in spain, El Elsa is still at Sabero so far as I know, it was working (not preserved) into the 1980s but I think the stock is now stored. Although I may well be wrong on the current situation.

Convert the dimensions to mm, then work out the equivalent size in 4mm/ft and look at the markits or Alan Gibson catalogues. Remember that due to tyre wear loco wheels can be an inch or two smaller than their nominal diameter, so you can often get away with a close match.

I'm not sure too many people will like the idea of sitting in a 7' diameter windowless cylinder stuck inside a 7' and a bit steel windowless tube. If something were to go wrong (even a mundane breakdown or delay) how do you get out? I know you can't really get out of a plane en route but the pilot can attempt a landing or divert to another airport and there is a chance of survival. Is technology developing to a point where physical face to face meetings will not be as necessary as now? I wouldn't say it can't work, but I think there's an awful lot to work out, and not that much benefit. Building new, proper railway lines for freight with heavy engineering works to reduce gradients and curves is probably a more useful use of capital, but doesn't generate the same headlines. Funnily enough that seems to be what China are doing in order to strengthen their grip on trade through the belt and road project.

I used a similar motor and bevel gears (about 400:1 gearhead though) to power a 00 scale Y7 and it worked well - it could pull 800g of lead balanced on a Bachmann 16t mineral. Rather than scrap the mechanism is it worth investing a few quid in different ratio versions of the motor to see if they're more successful?

I suspect "grabbed and suffering bruising" is an exaggeration and lawyer speak for "more cash needed". It is a very dangerous incident which could've been much worse, but that statement screams compensation culture.

And how many can be available tomorrow/next week etc. If it all kicks off? If there's nowt else for them to be doing then parking them up to hoover the ship out and touch up the paint makes sense.

Who'd have thought that nigh on a decade of real terms pay cuts (or below inflation pay rises) might lead to retention and morale problems? The best qualified, most experienced being the most readily employed elsewhere should they decide to look about. Funnily enough MPs pay has risen by nearly 16% since 2010 (over double the 1% cap), presumably they don't work in the public sector? Relevant to the discussion as the other side of the coin with ocean is that she has quite a large crew who can be redeployed elsewhere (as mentioned in the article) or moved off the payroll.

Ocean has had trouble with the davits being designed for dumping a lifeboat on the odd occasion and therefore not working when expected to drop several parties of commandoes off in a day in Sierra Leone. The ships sewage systems filled up with excrement due to clever (uphill?) plumbing for the heads. The transmission has no reversing gear so you have to stop the engines to go backwards, theres only a bow thruster which isn't good enough to hold its position. The fire suppression system took about a decade to get working and it was not built strong enough to withstand much damage in a 'real' war where people fire back at it. There are other issues too but essentially a cheap ship built down to a price. Some of the problems are due to using commercial rules and products which aren't durable enough for warships, but some of the issues were down to bad design. It's done its job well considering the limitations, but had the contract gone to swan hunter she'd have been operable into the 2030s, more reliable and probably have been more resilient to damage in an actual war. Given the cost difference was about £60 million, which is about the same as her last refit 4 years ago cost and she's now being decommissioned, it seems fair to argue that the VSEL price mightn't have been a bargain in the long run. As it happens, her primary uses have been anti drug/anti piracy work or sitting offshore launching strikes against enemies without any naval or air capability. I would've thought most of the crew would've been a bit nervous in a Falklands type situation compared to a properly designed and built warship (which would also cause trouble given the problems with the plumbing).

The Sun is the source of power. Everything else is just storage. (Now where did that hydrogen come from)

As I recall it basically boiled down to swan hunter offering to build a warship and vsel saying they could build a ferry with a flat top and painted grey for £60 million less (and fiddling their bid so it'd be lower on paper).

In the west, there doesn't seem much point, but in North Korea or Zimbabwe where labour is cheap, coal natively produced, foreign currency and supplies of parts and imported diesel more problematic, the advantage of a loco which can burn pretty much anything, make power and have replacement parts made in any foundry with wooden patterns, sand casting and a couple of 100 year old belt driven machine tools seem clearer. In Zimbabwe in 1980 they reconditioned a bunch of Garratts in about 1980 for this reason.