Wheatley

That visitors to preserved railways tend to either buy railway-specific stuff (books etc) or cheap tat suitable for school parties and kids rather than hand-crafted artisan products ? Having said that, the NYMR online shop has some nice stuff including vintage luggage.

Gaugemaster now hold Heljan spares but they don't do repairs and their instructions for warranty claims are to contact the retailer. If you don't want to go through Olivias you might be as well just ordering a motor and some steps from Gaugemaster

Probably less than the delay penalties for knocking a few TPEs these days.

Same as Dagworth here, except I used flat bar and filed a round (ish) handle on them. They are painfully robust when it comes to track cleaning, they've damaged me more often than I've damaged them.

The dangers of converting waybeamed bridges to ballasted decks without allowing sufficient access for future maintenance are demonstrated by the collapse at Stewarton a few years ago: https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/derailment-of-a-freight-train-near-stewarton-ayrshire

Deaf people who can't read ? No community has 100% literacy.

Only if it's been replaced by that Chinese one in the NRM and some tube stock.

Oops ! Yes, now I've blown the photo up a bit you're right. CCT.

Just a thought - by this description "...a series of rail fastenings, intended to maintain the correct distance between the rails, had broken...", do they mean the chairs/baseplates, or tiebars added to stop gauge spreading ? If the latter then the defect had already been identified and was awaiting rectification. If the former then it seems odd to add the second part of the description about them being to keep the rails the correct distance apart.

The tamping issue raised by Mark can manifest itself as a viscious kick as you go over the bridge, the track on the waybeams is fixed rigidly to the bridge whereas that either side can move a bit on the ballast.

Nice. Your first 'unknown Lima CCT' is an LMS 42' parcels and luggage van, could be coded CCT or GUV depending on who was painting it. Your 'ex LMS CCT?' Is a SR parcels and miscellaneous van, PMV. The 12t vans in parcels trains were a side effect of the LMR habitually diagramming more vehicles that it actually had available, and relying on vans and other vehicles 'borrowed' from other regions.

Yes, I had to write a letter to the AOM explaining how travelling the extra 5 miles to my current box was causing financial hardship ! (he'd been suitably primed by my Traffic Manager who was all in favour of the move) and it went through in the end. This was Sheffield AMO, they could be remarkably petty over uniform, leave swaps, rostering and other minor issues which saved pennies at best but massively eroded good will, but did nothing about things which could really save money like taking points or knocking off night shifts for newspaper trains which hadn't run for ten years.

As well as flank protection this is a good example of the 'human' rather than mechanical reasons for doing something which, in our engineering-centric hobby, we sometimes forget. More lever movements per shift meant more points for the box, which risked it going up into a higher grade, which meant you had to pay the signalmen more. Once awarded, points could not easily be taken away, so my first box was a Class B despite it only being a passing place on a single line with two pairs of points and four signals. Ten years before it had been a double junction with goods loops and a couple of connections into yards. Persauding HR to let me downgrade myself to a much busier and more interesting Class A box turned out to be harder than I had expected despite both my manager and branch secretary supporting me.

I sat in on an insurance seminar the other day, the various and numerous ambulance chasing legal types are already writing their template letters for people who are suffering or going to suffer musculo-skeletal injuries from having to spend a year working from the settee in their pyjamas. At least one of the companies on the call has already decided that, post covid, their home working policy will be that if you can't create a DSE compliant workstation at home, then you're in the office. I think commuting will change but I don't think it's going away. I have created a compliant workstation but that's not what I want to use that particular space in my home for long term, and there's nowhere else suitable. As soon as I can I'll be back in for most of the week. I might be in a minority but I doubt it will be a minority of one.

Forgot this part of the question. I don't have the Mainline/Airfix version (I wanted one but my pocket money wouldn't stretch that far back in the day) but I do have both the first Hornby iteration with the awful plastic tender drive, and the first of the loco drive ones. In both cases the bodies are absolutely identical apart from the paint. However, since then the 40685 release does appear to have had a retooled taller chimney. There was some variation in the real ones, 247 and no doubt others do replacements. The tapered dome is about the only major let down on the moulding.

They ran the commuter services out of St Enoch for years. 5 or 10 coach trains, all/most stations and not all that flat.

They're for transporting pre- fabricated pointwork, which is wider than a normal track panel so it's tilted to keep it in gauge. The Hammerton-Cattal loop is being relaid with higher speed pointwork and modern signalling at each end, replacing the current semaphores and token working.

Various Airfix/Dapol workmen and passengers converted. Some changes are quite subtle, head swaps etc, others are a bit more involved. The basic shape is obtained by slicing and re-gluing, then filling up any gaps with filler and re-carving. Filler can be used to turn a jacket into a 3/4 length coat or an overcoat for example. Also an Airfix RAF Recovery Set outrider converted to what hopefully looks a bit more like a greasy biker on his cafe racer. The PWay men in the set are quite useful for head swaps as I have no use for them in their 'action' poses.

Apologies, I read things into the replies to Woodenhead's "They're gone..." post which weren't there. Northern's MD was on the last trip, he was an engineer at NH when they were introduced.

Drivers and depot staff still miss scotches, 'Not to be moved' boards and fuel/water hoses attached, so the human is not the only answer. If you can teach a door monitoring camera to tell the difference between a person and a wheelchair then you caan teach it to recognise a NTBM board. Having said that I wouldn't trust any politician to check his own flies never mind anything remotely technical. Edit - Now I've read the whole article properly, some of it actually makes sense. Like reforming the comedy fares structure and not letting the DfT meddle in things it knows nothing about (such as transport). Oh dear, I think I'm going to have to lie down in a darkened room, I'm agreeing with a Tory journalist.

Given that the article starts "Northern bids a final farewell..." why is anyone expecting it to mention Cornwall ? It's based on a Northern press release, I dont expect Northern give a fig what happens to the GWR ones. As long as GWR dont try to send them back...

The Dapol ones are really useful for cutting and shutting, the plastic is easily worked and glued, they're cheap and they are (mostly) consistenly to scale. You do finish up with a slightly macabre collection of severed limbs/heads and dismembered torsos though.

Can of worms regarding accuracy ? Or just lots of variation in the originals ? Without digging out the original thread I believe the real ones weren't even all the same length. It goes together very well and looks the part.

Your local supermarket may have a machine which converts loose change into tokens which can either be cashed in or used as payment. Don't tip the whole carrier bag full in at once though, it jams the machine. You may guess how I know this...

And where there was no phone you waved a bardic, or your arm. Or very occasionally the actual tail lamp.