adb968008

Another picture of the LMS tender on 42942 here, with a Blue & Grey mark 2... seems ELR wasnt the first time this combination was created after all.

(images are from flickr)

Though given how “clean” this is I doubted it lasted very long.

Besides initial delivery from EE in the 1960’s, the only class 73’s north of Birmingham until privatisation I can think of would be the Mersey rail 73/0’s.

A 73 in Birmingham was a hugely rare even in itself.
 

On the Midland and Eastern 73205 got around a bit with its rtc test train and ex-class 33 83301. This was Intercity livery.

I dont recall seeing 73’s at BR opendays up north, might have happened.

I thought I had a 108 here, but I think its a 116...

eitherway its a long way from Home in Bolton, only time I ever saw one in the North west, but it would be c1989... its all Blue, with a 101 centre car in it... 

42942 got a bit of over enthusiastic cleaning, rubbing through its BR logo and revealing its LMS letters in 1967...

https://www.anistr.com/media/1e073bb7-933a-450d-b9f3-7298e6795b09-steam-loco-crab-42942-goole

on a tangent Horwich LYR 0-6-0’s ran around with BR logo, but LMS numbers... 11305 was one example, not to carry 51305.. but the cab side numbers were BR style..

https://railphotoprints.uk/p730306914/h88456AEB#h88456aeb

On 25/04/2020 at 20:18, mdvle said:

Guesswork.

 

Bachmann are possible, Hattons and Hornby less likely anytime soon.

 

There are 3 choices for a manufacturer:

1. dedicated production run - talking thousand to thousands of units
2. add on to an existing planned production run
3. plan a new production run with multiple liveries, NHS included.

Hattons would be in 1 or 3 given they are in the process of receiving the current large order.  Given not just the abundance of Class 66 stock on hand, but the amount already in the pipeline from Hornby and Bachmann, this would be dangerous.

 

Hornby have some with an eta listed as July - this would imply they are already in production.  If pre-orders are bad Hornby could possibly take some of this production run and change it to NHS, but the factory would be very unhappy and there would be a cost.

 

Bachmann are currently listing theirs for September, so they likely still have time to add a variation and add it to the order prior to the production process starting.  But they would be need to be quick.

 

As anything, anyone wanting this is best to provide feedback directly to Bachmann and to your retailer of choice (who can then also provide feedback to Bachmann).

 

 

 

 

of that List Hornby would be the one with the highest population density reach.., beyond usual modellers.

Given the long lead times, would it be relevant when it arrives.

Apologies if already covered, but why the ship yard grey choice of livery anyway ?

its hardly LNER standard and it wasnt a freight loco?

On 12/03/2020 at 17:30, G-BOAF said:

Restored in 2004, withdrawn with boiler issues in 2013, after a late 2011-2012 gap for tube repairs (according to 3440's Wikipedia entry). I would hardly call this 'years left'

After prolonged tube repairs an extension could have been sought, this is an industry norm.. the “10 year” ticket is a myth in reality, many drop earlier, many have repairs to prolong etc... how many years did Tangmere run ?

Are you working saturday Dan ! I feel a call is overdue..

i remeber as a kid, dialling Bolton, was 37- (a 5 digit phone number).

it later changed to 0204 + 5 digit number.

later still it became 01204 + 5 digit

and finally 01204-5 + 5 digit number.

My parents phone number still has the original last 5 digits, ever since the gpo charged my dad to connect it in 1969... and I still have the GPO’s invoice somewhere.

On 15/04/2020 at 09:41, phil gollin said:

.

 

There were three Leaders, even if only one ran.

 

Much more interesting  ( I GUESS ) would be the original Class 70 electric locos, 2 of one design, and 1 "unique".   At least they ram in service and in various liveries  -  a much more commercial proposition.

 

.

Modelling 36002 and 36003 might be kind of an interesting variation of the toolings though.

Unlike 20001-3, Leader has a bit of a cult following, due to its eccentric ideas.. i’d imagine its curiosity value is much like GT3, where as the Bulleid electrics were fairly mundane.

7 hours ago, TomScrut said:

 

Rails have a load of GWR slam door ones for £27.99

 

https://railsofsheffield.com/groups/3051/Hornby-gwr-mk3-passenger-coaches

 

Or are you talking about the sliding door ones in your last bit of the post?

good for adding buffers and numbering as GWR Sleeper seated coaches (with a bit of latitude but a lot cheaper than trying to source the sold out Kernow numbers of the same item)... one pack of 3 sold for £200 on ebay, yet a TGS, Buffet and Trailer here would be £80, transfers from Railtec under £10, and even better the Hornby numbers come off just by rubbing them with your finger.

A few weeks ago I mentioned how clear the view has become across London, this picture is taken from Woodmansterne, near Banstead, a few miles from Sutton.

The white building is St Helier Hospital, about 4 miles out, beyond it is London’s highrise.

To the right behind the trees (out of sight) is The Shard.

Usually thats as good as it gets, but for the last few weeks now, clear as day you can see right across London... my picture is only an iphone picture but you can see the green hills on the otherside...

This ive not seen in 8 years being here, usually anything beyond London is a haze but even my iphone picks it up now.

question is what are the hills I am looking at in the far distance ?

next time I walk that way i’ll take the camera usually reserved for railways to get a more detailed photograph, never associated North London with green hills.

my other discovery was a narrow gauge railway... in an overgrown park in Carshalton Beeches...

we found rails set in concrete at 3 locations in a straight down running down towards Carshalton Beeches, and also evidence of demolished concrete structures (including what looked like a pair of concrete platform bench ends) in the undergrowth...looks 1930s or later type concrete mixtures, when we followed the path it has a definite railway like camber / scaping, even a junction outline.

no idea of any railways in this area, though over at Wallington there used to be the surrey iron railway, but this is a few miles away from it.

Also in the undergrowth was remains of steel bars, maybe a gate and a broken up concrete ramp/hardstanding area in paralell to the rails beyond the bollard above.

22 minutes ago, vaughan45 said:

As this virus is not just going to disappear, unfortunately I think that society will have to accept the level of risk that as was common until the middle of the 20th century with diseases such as TB, Diphtheria and Polio etc. being endemic before the days of mass vaccination or large scale antibiotics. It should be remembered that the death rate from TB was far higher than Covid-19 (75% at some points in history), although it could take rather longer to cause a slow lingering death.

 

Unfortunately the days of living in an environment with limited risk are now over and coupled with other issues such as disease strains that are resistant to antibiotics the likelihood is that more of us will not live to great age and depending on our co-mobilities could find our lives ended rather sooner than we expected. The old 'normal' has ceased to exist and we will have to adjust accordingly.

Which begs the question thats occured many times in history...

do we let it rampant loose, with 3-4 months of horror, mass graves, fire pits, accept Charles Darwin’s evolution of the species.. but then its gone, over.

Or the current approach of forming an orderly queue and wait your turn to catch it, sometime in the next few years, not knowing when its your turn, just to die in a hospital bed instead of on the street.

This isnt a purely British question, the whole planet is exposed, even if we got our cases to zero, one flight from an obscure corner of the world can set it going again, indeed viruses mutate so it could come back at you a few times from different countries in a few years time... giving a virus too much time to mutate isn't always a good thing.

Instead of a vaccine or cure, the solution may actually be like fire fighting, in that you identify a mild strain that you can give to many, that causes the severe strain to fade out... China already did say there was a mild strain, but global travel and the viruses characteristics saw the severe strain travel widely... thats similar to how the 1918 H1N1 pandemic travelled, but its 2009 H1N1 cousin was much less impactful, as many already had immunity from other related strains over the years.

On 21/04/2020 at 19:53, Nearholmer said:

Back to something I raised here a few days ago:

 

As seems common with some other countries, the UK rate of new cases of COVID seems “stuck”, rising at a roughly constant rate (c5000 each day in the case of the UK).

 

The speakers are the daily government briefing seem a bit vexed by this, and don’t offer clear hope of that steady increase ceasing.

 

If, as I hazarded before, it is a simply of a function of natural transmission even with a high proportion of activity and contact “locked”, then I can’t understand why it should decrease or cease, at least not for a very long time. 

 

Can anyone explain to me why it should decrease or cease, and give any thoughts as to how long that might take?
 

Is it that we are waiting for it to finish it’s deadly business in enclosed environments like prisons and care homes? Or, is it that hospitals themselves are the hot-spots, with staff the major transmission route? Or, is it that is has not yet done its grim work in places further from London?

 

Of course, even if/when new cases cease then decrease under the current lockdown, that doesn’t mean its over ......... I re-read the ICL modelling report, and can well understand why the PM is reportedly very concerned about a  very nasty ‘second wave’.

 

 

 

If your infected, your spreading.

even in lockdown, your in proximity of family. If your at work, your infecting others... your touching product on supermarket shelves, parcels in delivery, coins in your pocket, door handles... its still spreading so it will keep on going.

lockdown isnt total isolation, lockdown just means more people arent exposed to it as could be... whats reducing the spread is less people moving about, thats all.. virus is as large and lively as ever, just invisibly waiting.

Thats possibly why the number has stuck where it has, its reached a % of population thats exposed by daily movements of the unlocked few... the only way to “kill” it is 100% isolation.. thats not going to happen, the only other way is 100% exposure thats also unlikely.
 

Right now the government is buying time in this lockdown, stocking up on ventilators, setting up field hospitals and other equipment so they can handle a much larger peak than the one we are currently exposed to, so that when they lift the lockdown, they can handle the increased case load of infected people that will inevitably follow, whilst trying to seek ways to minimalise those exposed..

this is just about %’s and keeping it as low as they can for as long as they can, but economics vs virus, the virus will win, we just have to hope for a milder mutation that we can afford to catch and it results in this severe version dying out, failing that.. a vaccine.

Until then the puzzle for government is how much time they can afford to have many people at home, how much equipment they can secure, if they can hold out for a cure/vaccine and if not, what % of the population they can let face nature's natural selection.

If they announced when the Blue Merchant Navy was coming, that would suffice for me.

13 hours ago, daz9284 said:

Intercity Swallow and loadhaul :-D

On 21/04/2020 at 21:19, cambo74 said:

 

Hi guys - yes it was indeed me that did the 68s ........ had a couple of spare locos around and thought why not ... have also done a Railfreight Red Stripe and a Large Logo one .... sometimes they work, sometimes they dont - think the 68 suits most liveries tho ..... have got a few spare body shells which m thinking of doing in Railfreight Sector Liveries ........

 

Thanks for the kind words about the level of resprays tho and please feel free to follow my workbench thread on here .....

 

Ben 

1980’s Scotrail or Regional Railways i’d have though more relevant.

14 hours ago, truffy said:

8mm equates to 2ft, not 2m. Rails should be kept at least 26.3mm apart for socially responsible self-isolation. 

Oops nice catch !..

measure twice separate once, seems to work in the bedroom ;-)

On 20/04/2020 at 11:42, TomScrut said:

 

Yes they are. Nationwide shortage of points and connectors it seems!

Social distancing...

A point is where rails converge, connectors join rails...

no excuses, keep your rails at least a scale 8mm apart at all times.

2 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

You could always do some modelling.............................  

I think Ive got dejavu ...

16 minutes ago, Half-full said:

ssssssh, that means doing some modelling!

Don't tell anyone but I've already modelled the stock in my photo on the page before.

2 hours ago, DBC90024 said:

On the decals issue, you could always approach Railtec or Precision to see if they would do some ...

 I have acquired a 2nd and have been wondering what to do with it.. as for source..

numbers

https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=2716

zero injuries

https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=2078

14 hours ago, classy52 said:

 

Here we go...moving on.

Making statements attract responses.

The mark of a man is to embrace opinions you disagree with, not by getting irritated because they dont agree with you.

I don't buy the argument 2015-2020 period sells more than 2014-2015.. why, not because of this class 90’s livery, but because of everything else you own.. unless intensely diligent, you will end up with models outside even a 5 year time frame, not to mention inaccuracies of those within it... thats why model railway companies made “eras” .. time slices, not absolute years. Those eras overlap...

I dont know your circumstance, but I suspect most work around an era of interest, overlapping to suit, and where desired allow tolerances, or make use of modelling skills to get a specific scenario.

https://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/era-system

note era 10 covers 2007-2017, era 11 starts in 2014.

Arguably eras 4,5,8,9,11 are most popular. This freightliner 90 strategically sits over 10,11 nicely. Those in 10 /11 will be happy, those who want the latest will make adjustments, and the silent majority wont care.

I work in cloud computing, and the down side of the lockdown is that business has gone mad, any thoughts of extra modelling time have shrunk.

But the absence of new releases coming has seen me focus on some oldies, ive been remotoring Lima 31’s (and fitting a Railroad 66 motor into a Triang 31 !), as well as recovering an old SP Daylight thats had split axles since 2001.. made new axles from some plastic rod online... first time Ive run it in 19 years, alongside....

(i seem to have been breeding terriers too.. though they are all 30 odd years old).

kind of puts perspective on things...

I finally got round to testing my first three yesterday.

All three are perfect...

nothing missing, nothing loose, nothing wrong with the finish.

 
my Freightliner, DBS and L/L Blue all passed my testing, including on a 1st radius curve (i only have 1), set track point, angled gradient without issue, first time.

if it runs on my shabby track it will run anywhere.

just want to add a bit of balance to the negativity, now Ive a bit of spare time I intend to order a few more. Beats the pants off Bachmanns for detail, thats for sure, and I used to think Bachmann’s were’nt  bad.