Wheatley

The stripes it has on the manufacturer's website - https://uk.Hornby.com/products/br-vent-van-era-4-r60028?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7dfglPn69wIVC7h3Ch3GMgN1EAAYASAAEgIhCPD_BwE At least it appears someone noticed before they got out into the wild !

R60028 - either the stripes are wrong, or everything except the stripes is wrong !

Your telephones need to be a bit further from the track, they should be positioned so that anyone using them is in a position if safety - ie able to stand at least 4' (16mm) from the nearest rail or 6'6" (26mm) if the linespeed is over 100mph. 'Zone phones' would be common around any concentration of points as well as any SPTs which happened to be nearby, they were used to communicate with the poor unfortunate sent to wind points by hand in the rain when they failed, or with the S&T for routine testing. Cables would run from each piece of equipment back to the trunking, whichever side the trunking is on, orange pipes to take cables under the track are correct for the1980s as far as I recall but out of favour now. They were supposed to protect cables from tampers but in practice they just made them easier to hit Nice to see this sort of detail being added, as a signalman I tripped over plenty of it.

The R965 is incompatable with the power pack from the newer and truly dreadful R8250, I think off the top if my head that they're different supply voltages. What Sam said - buy a Gaugemaster, their Combi is the cheap end of their range at £40 and will outlast any number of second hand Hornby ones. Second hand 965s of unknown and possibly dubious provenance are currently £20+ on Ebay.

The problem being that self-evaluated common sense is often characterised by the lack of same.

There may well also be an unholy row/discussion about variations to contract going on between Network Rail and its contractor, limiting what can be said in public.

You'd have been at Skipton around the time we were stirring a tin of paint with the Buckeye Lifting Tool to tart up the 'APPLEBY' rockery sign then ! Never did any training anywhere else to compare it with but the ER signalling school at Donny was certainly unique. If you forgot to mention the lever collar in your answer you were likely to collect one in the chest while everyone sitting in front of you ducked ...

So following Mark's lead whilst looking online for the later book, I hadn't twigged that M30204M was of course the notorious High Value Package Vehicle in the Great Train Robbery. There are one or two photos of it online ...

Thank you, I will hunt that down. I have Mr Johnson's earlier 1985 book which has the apparatus side of the same vehicle !

Indeed. I trained on them at Neville Hill (ER) and the first thing we were taught was that if we were caught using any kind of lever, bar or stick to help lift them we'd be Form 1ed as that was a guaranteed way of losing body parts if it slipped. On returning to my new supervisory posting at an ex-LMR location the first thing I was handed was the official LMR Buckeye Lifting Tool, a sort of lever/bar/stick thing with a knurled handle ! My RO2 took one look at it and decided it would make a good paint stirrer.

There's also still no mention of cranes, wrong or otherwise, in the Network Rail statement. Something has clearly gone wrong somewhere but there's insufficient detail in either the NWR statement of the MP's interpretation of it to suggest what.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a photo of the letter rack / non -apparatus side of one/either of these please ? They were both 57' sorting vans built in penny numbers, there are a couple of photos in Jenkinson and Essery Vol 3, but they are of the apparatus side. As far as I can tell from the plan view in the drawings they had shorter sorting racks than a normal sorting van with the 'bulges' only extending 2/3 of the vehicle length, and a sliding door in the non-bulged bit as well as the usual outwards-opening door(s). In that respect they gave the appearance of being a combined sorting/stowage van. It's for a possibly ill-advised kit bash of a Hornby one so absolute accuracy is not essential and if necessary I'll do it by combining standard components, but it would nice to be somewhere near. Thanks.

Run the majority of stuff 'as it comes' and modify the 5% which has issues, be they dodgy back to backs or Dapol's bizarre square flange on its milk tankers. Granted that 5% would have been a lot bigger in the 1980s, but the majority of currently available stuff should now run reasonably well on the majority of currently available proprietry track.

After removing the acrylic strips dribble a few drips of cheap cyano into the ballast either side of the joint. The pound shop stuff will do. You might have to give it a mist over with some matt varnish if it goes shiny.

Described by one pilot as 'Like flying a council house from the upstairs bathroom window". (Reasonably sure that quote is on the SHFNI thread on Pprune if anyone cares to look ...).

More thread drift, sorry. In the 1960s Metalbox provided tins for the Carnation Milk factory in Dumfries, and McNeil & Libby' creamery at Milnthorpe on the WCML. The traffic was handled in the bizarre D 1/214 single end door vans. I assume the odd design suited the loading arrangements at Metalbox, which at the Petteril Bridge site at least consisted of three parallel sidings terminating in a loading dock. It certainly didn't suit the arrangements at Dumfries, they were handballed off by a bloke standing in the 4 foot!

Nice. Agree about the splashers needing to be a bit shorter.

What Stonojnr said, most normal people go straight to Youtube or Facebook for any sort of crafty/DIY/IT tutorials these days, I've just spent 20 minutes learning how to multiply by percentages in Excel. Some are obviously better/more accurate/less lethal than others but that goes for any advice, even some from alleged professionals. Why if they don't have what you want ? That said you could always pick up a couple of brushes, tube of glue, packet of track pins etc if it bothers you. Browsing in the shop then buying on Amazon is naughty, but that's different.

I vaguely recall from the first run that someone did find a photo, but I can't recall if was on here or another forum. What I do remember is that it was a black and white photo from a contemporary magazine, and the difference was fairly obviously not white/ice blue, but clean/not clean.

I have a 3' x 2' board made of 5mm foamboard which lives indoors, it's survived more than 10 years so far. It has a skin of 2mm ply around it but only to protect the scenery from knocks. It was free from a skip in A2 sheets though, not sure it's cost effective if you have to actually buy the stuff. It is effectively a big box girder with access holes. If I was doing it from cardboard I'd do the same but use corrugated cardboard in 2 or 3 laminations and seal it well with shellac or a size made from waterproif pva before going anywhere near it with glue or paint. Ikea flatpack furniture comes in huge sheets of the stuff. My biggest concern with an 8x4 sheet would be damage to it from knocking it into things, they're unweildy. A traditional baseboard damages whatever it hits instead if course.

I've been modelling the same line in the same time period for 40 years. It closed in 1965 and never saw deisel traction other than the demolition trains, yet I seem to have acquired nearly two dozen deisels including multiples of some classes because I like them. Some are almost appropriate to the area and period so they stand in for the regular locos as a 'what if...', others are way out of period so there is a small pool of appropriate rolling stock and they appear as guest stars from time to time. Some have been gifted to my lad for his train set. I can't explain Thomas and Nellie. Despite his comments quoted above, David Jenkinson also had a number of what he called 'funny trains' - out of era, out of area, which played no part in the planned timetable but were occasionally allowed out for a couple of circuits before disappearing back into the storage loops. Edit - beaten to the funny trains by Kevin!

From the conversation linked above, they were gradually replaced with posters from the 1930s, the last to disappear were the VIROL ones in 1958 when the contract finally expired. Anything surviving after that had been forgotten about !

Have a read of this from page 17 onwards, you don't need to be logged in. https://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1846&start=400

No RAIB in those days, and no-one killed or seriously injured, so minimal formal interest from HMRI. There is a post on UK Rail Forum suggesting that a hard copy HMRI/HSE report exists but its not on Railways Archive or anywhere electronic.

At least it's only a WC they've repainted and not one of their proper engines.