adb968008

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Oops nice catch !.. measure twice separate once, seems to work in the bedroom ;-)

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.

I think Ive got dejavu ...

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

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

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.

They added some extra wording under the various Freightliner logos, saying. “a Gennessey & Wyoming company” and some health motivator statements next to the cab doors saying “Zero injuries our goal every day”. I dont see why “Bachmann should have released it bang up to date”, a point in time is a point in time, every model ever released aims to replicate a point in time, just because modern image isnt “as I saw it this morning” doesnt mean its bad... its now historical. its a good job you weren't around in the 1990’s, 33008, 47145 had a livery mod almost every month... even Limas every 2 week releases couldn't keep up ! a few quid on transfers during lockdown will solve your problems,

They added some extra wording under the various Freightliner logos, saying. “a Gennessey & Wyoming company”, and some ISO complaint markings next to the cab doors. I dont see why “Bachmann should have released it bang up to date”, a point in time is a point in time, every model ever released aims to replicate a point in time, just because modern image isnt “as I saw it this morning” doesnt mean its bad... its now historical. its a good job you weren't around in the 1990’s, 33008, 47145 had a livery mod almost every month... even Limas every 2 week releases couldn't keep up !

Sounds like someone who has had a long happy marriage.

A Leader, and a class 89, are to me, the obvious gaps in unique rtr classes, but i’m excited by the thought of a Fell first.

The gearing in the small wheel motors (101/156/73/Bil/Belle etc) I believe is not the same as the larger ones (87/86/90/91 etc)... this was certainly the case in Lima. Also 5 pole is confusing... Hornby did make some 5 pole ringfield motors too... it was just the same old ringfield motor, with a 5 pole armature in, (not DCC ready), it did standout over the 3 pole in performance, but it sits in-between the 3pole ringfield and the 5 pole “can” motor in their current models... examples in my collection include 86261/86401 in EWS livery, so i’d say circa 2004-2012 models.

Lima used pancake motors in a broadly similar design to Hornbys (a little more engineered ), on all their UK range except the class 20 and class 67, though the class 40 was designed to have the chassis mounted motor, it appeared with the pancake, the gearbox is part of the dummy bogie moulding. Iirc there was a Lima plan to upgrade the class 50 to a central mounted motor, as well as OO gauge bogies and filling the sandboxes, but BR started withdrawing them enmasse and sales went through the roof so it was postponed. I dont follow Hornbys old class 91 too closely, but R3365 (East Coast) onwards has the new 4 wheel bogie with the can motor, which was also used in the Freightliner class 86 and the current range class 90’s. Prior to this was the ringfield motor dating back to the 91’s development (Service sheet 208b) though it had a 5 pole armature instead of a 3 pole armature for a period. (service sheet 285), There isnt a service sheet for the new Railroad 91, but there are a few gaps between sheets 400-420, it could be one of them. The same 4 wheel bogie seems to be used in the R2772/87 class 87, R2939 class 33, and r3xxx + releases of 86,90 & 91. hope this helps.

I was drawn to the outward opening doors on the drivers cab of 10100 there... not many diesel locos with outwards opening cab doors, must have been awkward boarding from the track level, though noted 1st gen DMUs were mostly this way.

If Falcon was the Diesel -Electric version of a Western... maybe that 47 on a Mainline Warship chassis should be called Pigeon, a Hydraulic version of a 47 ?