Wheatley

Like you suggest, a significant proportion of those are people either questioning whether 'generic' is a good or a bad thing, or taking umbrage at nasty mean Hornby's underhand tactics in trying to stop poor little Hattons' bid for total market domination. I suspect the actual level of interest in actually buying any might be a bit lower, but a good scrap always attracts a crowd.

Unfitted departmental trains hung on on the ER until about 1990-ish. They were certainly still reasonably common in 1988-9.

The difference is that Beatties are pretty as are Model Rail Sentinels, Rapido J70s etc. Which is how I finished up with a Peckett I don't need. And 'only 1 rake" of HAAs is still over a grand at Cavalex prices, very few people will have bought ten Beatties because they look cute. I can always justify the odd atypical wagon, eg the odd horsebox at £25 or whatever they are now, they can be tagged onto a passenger train or sits in the end loading dock. But the only people buying these will be people either already modelling Consett - Tyne Dock who would prefer not to build another 9 Bradwell/Alexander kits, or people who will now consider it because the awkward bit is now available RTR, or the occasional collector who must have one of everything. I don't have a dog in this particular fight, I just think it's an odd choice of prototype. I also totally get that it might have been done to a certain standard to keep the tooling costs down, but the "does anyone have any photos of the inside ?" question a couple of pages back suggests that isn't the case.

Generally plumbing (a couple of big pipes and valves anyway), maybe a stove to stop the tank freezing in winter. Beyond that the one at Settle was used as a stable, at least one other was used as a garage for the parcels road motor. The one at Garsdale was used as a village hall but I'd suggest that was atypical (odd place, Garsdale). I suspect most of them were used to store the sort of junk which accummulated at stations and was never thrown out while ever there was somewhere to store it 'just in case'. At Appleby in the 1990s the new water tower was used to store benches, flower pots, poster frames, paint and brushes, and about 500 out of date detonators which Red Star wouldn't accept for carrriage for disposal because no-one at Leeds would give us a cost centre number to get rid of them. In the end we blew them up under a steam charter.

Butanone is usually the recommended solvent. I didn't have any last time I built a girder bridge so I used thin superglue, nothing has fallen off yet !

There is nothing on Highways England's website or press releases about some dastardly plan to demolish the entire Historic Railway Environment while everyone is looking the other way. What there is are press releases on civil engineering companies websites about several million pounds worth of contracts awarded last year to carry out HRE works on behalf of HE including demolition and infilling, but also including inspection, maintenance, repair, stabilisation and restoration. Anyone who thinks HE can maintain a network of civil engineering structures, some of which have had no meaningful maintenance for 70 years or more, without demolishing some if it before it falls down by itself is being unrealistic. What there also is is a dispute between HE and a local group who think Queensbury Tunnel is critical to the local cycling/tourist infrastructure about whether certain works carried out last year were necessary or correctly done.

I'm with Harlequin and the others, build it somewhere else even if it's smaller, leave the loft to the boxes of Christmas decorations and spiders. Apart from anything else it's a lot harder to fall out of a spare room/shed/garage/conservatory and a lot harder to void your house insurance/NHBC guarantee doing something silly in there.

There must be enough people daft enough to pay the high prices asked otherwise it wouldn't be worth their while breaking it. But there clearly are so it is a viable business.

So ? That's free market economics, if that's how the dealer chooses to maximise his profit then good luck to him.

Quite. Some of the language used earlier in this thread is OTT ('unscrupulous.... greedy... shameful ...). If I've got one, whatever it is and I'm disposing of it then with very few exceptions it's entirely up to me whether I sell it as an ongoing project, give it away, break it for spares or landfill it, no matter how rare or unique it is. Annoying possibly, but hardly unscrupulous. There's a Series 2 Landrover sitting on the drive which I'm realistically never going to finish. Its a runner but it needs some welding. I could sell it as it stands for about 2 grand or break it and make double that. Which I eventually do will depend entirely on what I can be bothered to do, not what anyone else thinks I should do with it.

Anyone who doubts the necessity of always using a good dated photo in conjunction with the 'as built/intended' drawing need look no further than any Black 5 which had any involvement with St Rollox at any point in its career. About the only thing guaranteed is that it would come out with the same number of wheels it went in with, anything else was fair game. Currently picking my way through 6 of the wretched things.

Deleted, didnt need saying.

But those (blue/grey) are the Newton Chambers double deckers, the one at Kelso is just a CCT with branding. There were similar unbranded ones in general use. It's stabled in a bay which other photos show to have been used by bog standard parcels stock, so Occam's Razor and all that. I've really no idea though, but neither has anyone else so far.

Dunno. It could be cascaded rather than borrowed, I don't know when the CCT(E)s came off that duty. Its a bit academic without a date for the photo. Edit - there are other John Boyes photos in the same set dated 1963, some show other bogie NPCCS in the bay (GUVs, BGs) and rather a lot of Beetles and other SCVs. Interesting place.

In general parcels traffic ? Apart from the branding it's essentially a CCT, not one of the double deck ones.

Vaccines - what do we do with all the people under 50 who don't have an underlying health condition and who aren't front line health care or first responders - ie the majority of the working age population ? Because they aren't on any deployment list. Do we tattoo them as well as the refusniks ?

The MU jumper cable sockets and plugs under the buffers seem to have started off white or pale grey on most liveries, the last couple of inches of the vac pipes where they meet the headstock should be blue (lh) and red (rh). None of this seems to have lasted long in service before getting covered in track grot and brake dust though.

I joined the navy to see the world. What did I see ? I saw the sea... Back on the subject of compulsorily tattooing people we perceive to be a threat, apparently middle aged men who keep their own company, pursue solitary hobbies and obsess over detail make up a significant proprtion of serial killers. What do we want our tattoos to say ?

Time to put you back on ignore I think.

You are confusing RAIB with HMRI, now part of the ORR. What else are you confusing or half-remembering ?

Portpatrick appears to have been chosen originally as it was the closest point to Ireland, something which appealled mightily to officials in the Post Office who knew nothing about the place other than where it was on a map. No amount of 19th century development would have got away from the fact that it was still a hole in a cliff, and you had to go past a perfectly adequate deep water port to get to it. Tripping the boat train down the 1 in 40 to the harbour four coaches at a time would make intetesting operation on a model though. You don't need to permanently close the Town station, just derail something large on the runround points for the day :-)

We each draw the same amount of hobby money out of the joint disposable income each month. If I was spending mine on tarts and beer I can see how that might be a problem but it's not really about money any more by that point is it ?

13. It's my money, I'll spend it on what I like. At least I've still got most of the stuff I bought, you feel free to carry on spending yours feeding bedding plants to slugs.

The P4 standards dictate the relationship between wheel and track in terms of things like gauge, wheel profile and width, flangeway dimensions etc to ensure consistent and reliable behaviour, especially through pointwork. The rail length is not a function of any of those, it is a function of the prototype and varies with the prototype in the same way as the number of bolts in the chairs or the colour of the locomotives. Therefore it is not set out in the standards (as far as I can see). Many (most ?) P4 modellers will notch rails and add dummy fishplates or lay in prototype length panels with functional fishplates, but then so do a lot of OO modellers.

First proper gf worked on the railway with me so my interest was not really a surprise and I didn't hide it. The current Mrs Wheatley liked trains to start with so I took some of my train photos on our first date and she didn't run away. In between the model aeroplanes have caused more comment than the trains. "Why is there a big aeroplane on top of your wardrobe ?" Because it won't fit on the shelf in the study with the others, obviously. The only time I ever got an adverse reaction was when I persuaded a fellow archaeology student to come out for the day to survey a "hill top defensive structure". She was expecting a hill fort but found herself holding the other end of a tape measure while I recorded the former Q Shed at RAF Binbrook. Not amused. In all cases I've been up front, if they don't get it that's fine, but if they object or take the mick that isn't.