CKPR

Two other uses for plastic kit sprue from 'old-school' aircraft and AFV modelling: softening it over a candle flame and then pulling it to make 'stretched sprue' in various thicknesses to use as fine plastic wire and rod. chopping it up and dissolving it in one of the milder solvents to make DIY filler (use a small 'Tiptree' jam pot with a screw lid). Both of these techniques can be a bit risky so you need to take some sensible precautions (stretching the sprue outside and avoiding breathing in the solvent or DIY filler).

Now that there have been some sensible suggestions, I can offer the last two words on the topic of LNWR & MR stations - Carlisle Citadel !

Wagon = thar knows wot wagon is, soft lad Van = big wagon wit roof on top CCT = big van wit doors on t'end

If 'Python' is carrying a new motor car, this suggests a late pre-grouping source of traffic that could be seen anywhere in the country, as automobile manufacturing seems to have been a national industry from its inception.

Going from the photograph in question, I'm presuming 1918-1925 or thereabouts [I bought a tin of Humbrol 98 chocolate especially for the 'Python'].

Tell me about ! My clinical placements in York in the early 1990s always seemed to coincide with the 'campaign' as I think the seasonal processing of sugar beet was called.

I was just painting the GWR 'Python' CCT for the 4mm M&CR when I had a thought about why one was photographed in what looks like a post-WW1 M&CR train. The 'Python' is travelling alone without an accompanying horse box and it dawned on me that it might be conveying a new motor car from Oxford, Birmingham etc. Any thoughts ?

The French would probably insist on making an inventory of the silverware before our ambassador left (perfidious albion and all that).

Regarding soldering zinc, it can be done (I used Carr 'Black Label' flux for steel), but it's complete pig to do and you run the risk of actually melting the zinc itself as I found out trying to solder up some etched zinc coach side and ends. I know it's somewhat heathen when it comes to assembling metal, but using Araldite and screws is probably the best way to proceed - the copper coating approach sounds interesting but it seems like an awful lot of faff to me.

Decimal points, eh ? Aren't they forrin ? It's fractions from now onwards.

I would expect that there are long-established traditional Gloom Mongers in both Castle Aching and Ankh Morpork. Probably branches of the same business - Archibold Thruttock (deceased) & Son (also deceased). The Castle Aching branch of the business is run by the widowed daughter, Prunella Thruttock (not looking good).

Breaking news as Hornby scrap their entire OO range and retool for production in S scale in Margate, whilst from next Thursday, all new products from Dapol will be in gauge 1 (that's 3/8" , not forrin 10mm).

I've always fancied flying an aeroplane but those pesky professional elitists who call themselves "pilots" maintain a strict closed shop. They always give some lame excuse about knowing what they're doing and having extensive training and experience - all a load of guff to keep the ordinary folks from having a go. And as for those so-called "doctors" doing surgery - I mean, I've got a proper medical scalpel and 'O' level biology, how hard can it be ?!

And hence via dialectical absurdism to the Marxist- Groucho standpoint - "Gentlemen, these are my principles. And if you don't like them, well, I've got some others"

I allude more to the sewers of the human psyche rather than those of Severn Trent Water.

Which sums up populism in a nutshell.

"We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - Oscar Wilde These days we can add "...whilst most are contemplating the sewers"

Liz "Mmmm, cheese" Truss is our new Foreign Secretary. Should I just turn the lights off now and turn the sign to 'Closed' to save everyone else the bother ?

I'll try to find an article in an old 'Cumbrian Railways' on the M&CR's locomotive links as it showed how multi-purpose some duties were. From memory, one link involved engines working parcels & milk, mineral empties, passenger trains, then being used for shunting or trip working before working more passenger and goods trains whilst another link involved working one or two trains between Maryport and Carlisle with long layovers in the middle of the shift (with the crew booking off and on or working on another link?). With the M&CR being worked from both ends and with a third hub at Cockermouth, getting stock in the right place at the right time in an efficient manner must have been a priority. Light engine and ECS moves seem to be a last resort, with many locomotives moving empties as their first and last workings of the day - one movement on the Mealsgate branch seems to indicate moving mineral empties, ECS and mail in the same train!

It might be worth working out a set of putative locomotive links/ rosters/diagrams, which are cross-referenced with the proposed timetable workings and other jobs requiring a locomotive (shunting, piloting, trip workings, ECS, etc). Within their capabilities and taking account of the need for coaling & watering, as well as needing to be in the right place for crew changes, locomotives would be used in the most efficient way possible. Similarly, engines would be 'spare' on a specific link rather than with regards to the fleet as a whole [at any one time, the M&CR had a handful of 'reserve' locomotives (e.g. 'R1', 'R4', etc), which I think had to do with not scrapping old locomotives for which some work could still be found, possibly as a spare engine on a link]. Hence, the fleet composition is planned around the duties as set out in the links, rather than the other way round.

The truth is out there - radicalised in the so-called 'bristle wars' conducted under the cover of the TB cull, an army of fanatical jihadist badgers is now established in their stronghold in the Quantocks from where they intend to move out to retake the south-west and destabilise the Cotswolds. Remember, you'll never win a land war in Somerset !

Is Brown Windsor soup transported chilled using insulated tanks as per milk, hot, therefore requiring tanks with lagging and even heating akin to bitumen, or can it travel in a nice old-fashioned square tank wagon ?

Second only to a barmcake with refried potatoes and "Tiptree" brown sauce (the origins of this are lost in the mists of time and it may well be something of my own invention).

My first thought when I saw this picture was that this could be reproduced using the fencing from the ancient Airfix 'Station Accessories' set as there must be yards of this stuff still knocking about in search of a use.

Don't recall that wagon appearing in Peter Matthews' "Wagons of the private traders" in MRN !