Wheatley

And where there was no telephone provided, the message was often conveyed by taking the lamp off and waving it at the box so the bobby could see it. I've never seen the down one used but the up refuge is still occasionally used by the Engineers. It has also been used for stabling bent 156s after the accidents at Ais Gill and Crosby Garrett in the 1990s :-( Incidentally, Regulation 3.5 (Warning Acceptance) was still permitted on the down line as late as 1992, in clear weather only. It was either for setting back into the down lie by or was a throwback to crossing over into the yard (which was on the up side) thirty years previously which no-one had ever seen the seen to rescind.

Not necessarily an ancient mould problem, I've just finished removing a load from a 2016-tooled Airfix kit (Lanc bombay doors).

Durham was another, the Palatinate in that case being the Bishop of Durham. Hence all the road signs reading 'Land of the Prince Bishops' as you cross the county boundary.

Simply because a loop would require facing points, see LMS2698's answer. Because of the increased risk of derailment all facing points had to be lockable, which added to the cost both of installation and maintenance. In LMS/BR days loops were installed at Long Meg sidings and Blea Moor specifically to increase capacity. It meant you had two locations where goods trains could run 'straight in'. So you might let an express goods run to one of the loops rather than stop it a couple of boxes further back to set it back into the lie by. The goods was still held for the higher priority train, but it was held that bit further on with that bit less ground to make up. The cost of providing the loops was balanced against the cost of holding up traffic, it was presumably not considered necessary / cost effective to put more loops in between those two. At locations without lie bys (and with light-ish traffic) another option usually permitted was to use the main to main crossover on a double line to set the goods back onto the opposite running line (obviously provided you had time to do it). One of those things you never/rarely see modelled.

I stand corrected, thank you. Ok, as well as the fact that there is a fundamental regulatory obstacle, there however a number of commercial, contractual, resourcing and financial reasons why they would not want to. :-)

Assuming we're talking about using the assets currently available rather than building new steam locos, then there is no regulatory or statutory reason why a TOC could not run timetabled steam services. There are however a number of commercial, contractual, resourcing and financial reasons why they would not want to. A one-off like Tornado on the S&C was reasonably straightforward if quite heavy in terms of management time arranging it. It was effectively a charter train which just happened to be running in the path of a timetabled service so provided the 'turn up and go' ticketing option was still available (which in theory it was) then the DfT was happy that the franchised service was being delivered and the only ORR interest was in whose operating licence it was operating under (TOC's or charter operator's - doesn't really matter which as long as one of them is formally responsible for managing the risks arising). The loco, stock and crew were all hired in. But if you were operating for a longer period you really want the traincrew resources in house where you can manage them effectively, not only in terms of their competency (Wooton Bassett) but also in terms of guaranteed availability. On the Cumbrian Coast it is relatively easy, a DMU driver can be trained to drive a 37 fairly quickly, everything is just bigger, heavier, dirtier, faffier and takes longer. But driving a steam loco is a completely different skill set - it's the difference between being allowed to drive a 7.5 ton Ford Cargo on your car licence, and taking a horse on the road. The The Ford Cargo controls are the same as the car, just bigger and laid out differently, but although taking your horse on the road involves the same rules (Highway Code) steering and braking on the horse is totally different and a Ford Cargo isn't scared of cars/lorries/birds/plastic bags/tufts of grass blowing in the wind etc. If you take driving in house that poses a training and competence issue which even BR ICSTU struggled with in the 1990s when everyone was working for the same firm and ex-steam men were still around to ask. If you take on the additional task of managing steam competence then your driver managers need to be steam competent too or you need to hire that specialism in. If you hire in drivers then you have the additional problem of managing your supplier to make sure their drivers are competent/sober/healthy can stand unaided etc. Your traction resource is transient - the pool of available locomotives goes in and out of boiler ticket all the time and is largely maintained by third party volunteers. They all need to be individually licenced too whereas for vehicle acceptance purposes one Class 158 is very much like another. Don't assume that 'unusual' = 'popular' either, or at least 'popular with the people the DfT are paying you to run the servivce for'. The 37s on the Cumbrian Coast are attracting traction cranks from far and wide but the regular passengers for whom it was provided (essentially Sellafield workers) are all car pooling because the 37s are unreliable. If your Plandampf services are too full of gricers then your core travellers/voters/constituents/council tax payers will get vocal and the DfT/Transport Scotland/Rail North will start asking questions about core services. There's a reason Tornado was on off-peak services out of season on a lightly used route, north of the bits which directly affect the Leeds/Bradford commuter services and only for three days in half term. It can be done (assuming there's nothing in your franchise agreement which says it can't) but whether it would be commercially sane to do it is another matter.

Presumably you know how many of those 150,000 views are unregistered members, will you share that ? (and even then that's still not the number of readers, it's the number of times it was read.) I presume you also know exactly how many page views a month the diary section gets and I bet it's not 150,000. My point is that it isn't a fair comparison so the numbers are meaningless. You're comparing apples with oranges and expressing the answer in either bananas or pears depending on which suits best.

Yes, but you've only got 32000 members, so at least 118,000 of those are the same people reading it several times. On that basis I'm at least 30 RM readers because I've read a bit of the last issue every night. How to lie with statistics.

Nevertheless, most of the railway and aircraft modellers I know (as in actually know, not know of) don't use any modelling sites, even though they might look up the weather forecast or football results on their phone. I do, and I still rely on the RM listing rather than looking on here.

A remakable amount of this went on towards the end of BR, especially after the likes of Stratford's silver roofs and Union Jacks were officially sanctioned (or at least not officially stopped). Tinsley's painted nameplates for example. It wasn't always boredom or entirely unofficial either. The reason the S&C signal boxes are maroon and cream to this day is because the RRNE Line Manager at Appleby thought the official RRNE colour palette looked crap and asked the Works Supervisor across the yard to ignore it.

They're just threatening people, not the long term ecology of the planet. Ok, if Russia and NK start lobbing ICBMs at each other that might skew the ecology a bit but human beings murdering each other won't, even murdering each other in large numbers. Mind you, if you take an even longer term view, the planet will eventually adapt to the plastics problem and survive. It might not be habitable by us but it will survive.

BBC reports quotes a witness who said it started in "an old Land-Rover". As the owner of one of those I can confirm that they can ignite quite happily all by themselves once you get enough oil, fabric-covered wiring, DIY mods/repairs and dodgy connections in the same place. Which is why mine has a big chunky battery isolator fitted, with the isolator key chained to the ignition key so you can't leave it unattended and switched on. I'm intruiged to see how many insurance claims 1400 burnt out vehicles will generate ...

"Seeing as we're using the profit from the house I just sold as the deposit for this one, and seeing as my salary is four times yours and is paying the mortgage, we're having this one with the built-in garage so I can turn it into a train room rather than the one you want with the concrete sectional garage miles away from the house and no spare room." Turns out you can make a concrete sectional garage very cosy, and a bit of plexiglas on top of the pergola linking the back door with the garage keeps most of the rain off as you trudge between the two with the stock boxes.

I think it's a more than a little churlish to complain that a competition set up by, administered by and presumably paid for by the author and publisher of a book requires you to buy a copy of the book to enter. It's like complaining that the 18.83 Challenge was discriminatory to non-P4 Modellers. Yes it was, that was the whole point.

That. I'd rather post it through the door of the nearest charity shop than faff about with that.

Ah, that's a good point actually, mine is firmly in LNER territory.

Conversely my local retailer has sold out and re-ordered twice now, I had to wait for my BTK to come back into stock. The equivalent Comet kit is 45 quid plus maybe a fortnight's worth of free time to build it. Life's too short for that - my two Thompsons will go in the rake almost 'as is' with some re-profiled Hornby Gresley coaches, the time saved means I can concentrate modelling time on building things that RTR doesn't do.

I believe (at least some of) the trains ran whether there was a load for them or not. Given the state of industrial relations in the car industry at the time* you might get away with empties in both directions. (* Or was that all a bit later ? I was 4 months old when the Waverley closed)

Stunning flush glazing, the correct (and very noticeably different) roof profile, proper vents rather than representative blobs, full complement of buffer beam and coach end appendages including optional buckeyes and vac/steam heat pipes, full underframe detail including longitudinal vac pipes, part of the brake linkage represented under the floor and a first class paint job.

Nothing crude about it either, looks like a bog standard Thermit weld.

Exactly, the 'rule' in this case is your conditions of service, not the Rule Book ! It's not doing things like discretionary overtime, working your booked rest day, agreeing to having your shift swapped at short notice etc. If you suddenly start working to the Rule Book when you haven't been before you'll very quickly be on the carpet. A straightforward example in this context would be agreeing to be 'stepped up' to work a slightly earlier service than the one you've booked on for to cover for a missing colleague. Someone else is then 'stepped up' to cover you and so on until either the traincrew supervisor runs out of bodies or the errant colleague turns up having mended his puncture, remembered what shift he's on etc. It happens all the time in normal working.

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No, I think I've been consistently anti-anti-rivet-counter. Dave(1562) is entitled to his opinion of the model, it's certainly very pretty. What grates is the view that because he's satisfied with it then no-one else is entitled to express a contrary opinion. If he had said "I'm very happy with it and XYZ doesn't trouble me" that's fine, but his inclusion of the word 'bitch' twice in that context suggests a certain lack of tolerance of those doing the criticising. I'm not for a minute suggesting that any other manufacturer is perfect, every RTR release does indeed have issues (possible exception of Hornby's Peckett which seems to be heading for some sort of model railway sainthood) but I'm grateful to the rivet counters and subject matter experts who point out any issues and allow me to make an informed choice on purchases. Some 'issues' bother me, some don't, I can either ignore them, correct them, or build my own. I can overlook the fact that Bachmann's BR cattle van is a scale foot too long for example because the rest of it is very nicely done, but their squashed LMS van really annoys me despite its correct length underframe. But it's my informed choice, and it's only informed because someone took the trouble to cast a critical (in the literal sense) eye over it. It's just a pity that so many of those prepared to critically evaluate products (even the slightly annoying ones) have been routinely shouted down on here so often, for so long and by so many that they've taken their bats elsewhere.

That'll save manufacturers a few bob in the future. "Accepting whatever-you-care-to-throw-at-us Standards".

Good. For Kenton's benefit, the offence was "endangering the safety of persons being conveyed upon a railway" contrary to Section 34 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. It is an absolute offence, there doesn't need to be a complaint from an aggrieved party.