Wheatley

Your map is wrong. I know the line went through Borchester because some bloke built a model of it. Hornby black and white cows, despite having been painted by someone who's never seen a cow, don't look too bad if de-horned and painted black.

I'm amazed they lasted this long.

Some time ago, during an archaeological survey of a Roman field system in the Peak District by mature students, attention turned to an 18th century field wall on Roman foundations. It zig-zagged down a slope at quite a regular 'wavelength' whilst its partner on the other side of the lane was ruler straight. After much discussion of theories including building it round now-gone trees, Kev the Postman came up with Rouane's Theory of Distracted Artisans. This roughly stated that one should never try to find too much logic in anything done by a gang of blokes, especially bored ones.

I quite enjoy them but then I never expect them to be anything more than a pleasant chat which might shed a bit of light on how bits of the industry work. They aren't politicians and BRM and Railway Modeller aren't the New Statesman. If you want them to take an approach more similar to either mass market magazines or specialist industry publications they could just regurgitate corporate press releases because that's all that happens with those half the time. I suspect that if magazines started the interview with "So how did you manage to balls up xyz model so spectularly then ?" then they would run short of interviewees and quite possibly readers quite quickly.

Leisure travellers will be back as soon as the shops and pubs open. Commuters will take a bit longer but people are getting fed up working from the box room or dining room table. Not all of them, but enough, not necessarily in North Wales but look further east. What will reduce is the number of people travelling from (say) London to Birmingham for a two hour meeting then back again. They certainly aren't empty around Leeds/Manchester/Liverpool - they're not busy, but they aren't empty. Are the ferries carrying any foot traffic at the moment ? That won't be helping.

Agreed. I worked in a model shop in 1985/6. We could sell as many Cheshires, MR 1000s and whatever the LNER Footballer was as we could get. The only loco in BR livery which sold was Mallard, and that's only because it wasn't available in blue at the time. Even then we sold more Seagulls for people to stick Crownline plates on.

In all seriousness, the Northern Spirit Staff Suggestions Scheme once received an idea to turn the newly redundant 141s into centre cars for 142s by sawing them in half and welding the non-cab ends together. There was even a diagram showing how the sawn-through centre windows in the saloon (!) could be plated over on both sides with perspex to cover the join. Nina, the young lady clerk who administered the scheme, was crying with laughter when she passed it to me for evaluation.

Apart from those workplaces which are still open there's nowhere to go on a train at the moment. They'll be back as soon as the shops and pubs re-open, last summer was a rolling pub crawl in some parts of the north-west.

The Hornby one was plug n play, it extended the bracket signals with extra arms/dolls and some bits of gantry to bridge the gap: https://www.hattons.co.uk/420321/hornby_r089_signal_po02_signal_extension_set_pre_owned_like_new/stockdetail.aspx

Tracing paper ?

Quite a lot of preserved locomotives in the UK carry names or liveries which they never carried in service. It occasionally causes controversy but to my mind, if you've gone to the considerable trouble and effort to preserve the loco and keep it running, you can paint it whatever colour you like, call it whatever you like and embelish it however you like. More controversial is painting something in a sponsor's livery, the best known being the DH Sea Vixen which was displayed at airshows in Red Bull colours. For months the aviation mags were full of letters decrying this outrage and demanding that it be repainted in FAA colours until the owner beautifully shut them down: "The Sea Vixen costs a six figure sum each year to insure and display, Red Bull have covered those costs for the next three years. If in three years time any of your correspondents would like to send me a cheque for the next year's costs I will paint the aircraft whatever colour they like". Personally I quite liked 'City of Truro' in BR black.

a) Iands's 1624mm is the same as the 5' 3 3/4" quoted by The Stationmaster on a previous occasion: b) It depends. For a shunting signal 'as close as possible' bearing in mind that if the point blades were detected by the signal it would have to be directly in line with the ends of the switch rails as GWR discs had the detection built into the signal base. http://www.gwr.org.uk/no-groundsigs.html On other railways the detection was in a separate cast iron box behind the signal, with the signal wire running through it and the signal itself a few feet in front. For running signals it would depend on how the signal and any points ahead of it were interlocked. My own (non GWR) prototype had the signals a maximum of 40' from the point ends because detection / route locking was originally by depression bars which had to be longer than the maximum gap between the wheels on a 57' coach. (I think thats how it works anyway !) c) "Every platform has a signal on the end" is a modellerism, if it had one then the position would depend on where the signal needed to be - top of the ramp, bottom of the ramp, 20 feet off the end, wherever.

The basic signals are still available but not the gantry extension. But then Zero 1 was short lived, didn't stop DCC taking off.

Floor to ceiling shelves with the magazines in those triangular magazine file things, usually one year to a file in date order. You help yourself and take them to the till. Usually I go in with a list but i have been known to just browse, that's less productive though. There are preserved railway and society mags as well as mainstream ones. Model and prototype.

Once it's open again this lot have extensive stocks of old magazines https://www.vintagecarriagestrust.org/magazines.htm If you find the issue you need from one of the sources already mentioned they will deal with phone or postal queries. Note that checking whether they have it in stock almost certainly involves one of the volunteers putting the phone down and walking next door to look, so I don't expect they're open at all at the moment.

White for the actual ceiling, for reflectance as already mentioned and because anything else will add a slight colour cast which you'll have to correct or mitigate. Graduate it down the walls to pale grey/blue if you want but I wouldn't on the ceiling.

Caley739 has it. The system is explained in volume 1 of Mr Larkin's "The Acquired Wagons of British Railways": "It took until 1949 to devise a scheme and by 1957, when it was finally abandoned, quite a substantial number of wagons had still not received new numbers. This was because wagons could not be renumbered whilst loaded. New numbers commencing at P1 were issued in a totally random manner as follows: P1 to P1550 - Appleby Frodingham Steel Co. P1151 to P1900 - WH Arnott Young & Co" ... and so on. The companies listed are wagon repairers, the list goes on to include NCB and BR workshops etc. So P1 to P1550 were wagons renumbered at Appleby Frodingham after unloading, not wagons formerly owned by them. Two examples from the book - P4364 owned by Maltby Main Colliery, renumbered by Bolton Railway and Ironworks Ltd, P81313 owned by Newstead Collieries Ltd, renumbered by North West Wagon Co, Wigan.

I can see where you're coming from with this, something like a cross between finescale Lego and the Hornby junction signals which could be assembled a few different ways round. A robust ready-assempled arm/pivot/lamp unit which clips onto either a post or a doll, and a similar arrangement for the counter-balance arms. Different height dolls which plug into brackets or landings, which themselves plug into or clip onto posts. Base unit to contain tiny solenoids for the operating wires to connect to, they don't have to be the size of a PL10 after all. Walchaerts valve gear is quite fiddly and delicate but all the RTR manufacturers have managed it. The argument that it woukd be too generic doesn't hold water either these days, you could float a battleship on the froth being generated by the Hattons/Hornby generic coaches. It would be expensive but what isn't these days ?

Multiple bolsters/stancions on such a short wagon suggests it's for carrying short lengths of rail, presumably offcuts from the 'rail breaker' whatever that is (big pair of shears ?). All I can see on Paul's link is another similar wagon.

Never owned a cooker posh enough to have a clock on it, and the microwave gets switched off at the plug in between jobs so is permenantly set to '00:00' when it is on. Food goes in the oven until it goes brown, or starts to bubble, or smells done. There is a proper clock on the kitchen wall (a posh one which resets itself from the Rugby Transmitter twice a day).

All the Big 4 have at least 1, sometimes 2 styles of mainline corridor stock represented, and at least one style of non-corridor stock (although not sure about GWR). That still leaves plenty of gaps; as well as the vestibule and specialist types mentioned there was a bewildering variety among the main types. With the exception of BR Mk 1s the best you can with RTR is often only a representation. There were, for example, at least 4 different varieties of LMS period 3 corridor brake third (BTK).

Of course - translator -v- barrier, I should have known that, thanks. I got some very funny looks taking photographs of the underneath of that DTS for my DC Kit of it ! I still haven't finished it... Additionally - any number of retired BGs, GUVs and CCTs full of repair slips, job sheets, work cards and anything else that had to be kept even though it was all on LOVERS or RAVERS, just in case it was necessary to find out down the line who had last touched whatever it was that had just fallen off in traffic so the appropriate fitter could be sacked. These had a habit of expanding to fit the space or number of condemned vehicles available rather than anything being systematically cleared out every few years. Mobile load banks: https://departmentals.com/photo/041620 https://departmentals.com/photo/061224 Stores van: https://departmentals.com/photo/024535

Fuel in TTAs or TEAs, not in large numbers usually. Neville Hill still had a couple of well wagons for large components (HST engines ?) the last time I went past, I'm sure they were there in the 90s. Definitely there in the 90s was a Class 101 DTS in use as a messroom and a little earlier two Tightlock-fitted brake vans for moving demic 141s. Around the same time Heaton had a BR Mk1 inspection saloon. Some depots had mobile load banks, essentially a large resistor which could be plugged into a loco to simulate a load. Tinsley's was in a 13ton van, Healy Mills's was described by a colleague as "an old steam engine tender full of water with two crocodile clips attached to it and a ladder to check the water level. " Whether these were still in use by the 90s I don't know, you could always have one dumped at the end of a siding. In theoy I suppose almost any M&EE departmental stock still in use at that date could show up. Translator vehicles for HSTs etc, breakdown vans at larger depots etc, snowploughs...

If they've got the repair phone line number on them then at least you know where the label with the number on is :-) The washing machine, cooker, fridge etc are machines to do a job, not part of the decor in my view. Function over aesthetics, including not spending an hour rummaging in a drawer for a phone number when it breaks down.

Once you've sussed coaches you can start on wagons. I've found 12 identifiable 'as built' variants of the BR Std Diag 1/208 van so far.