Stanley Melrose

I had a pair of those wide-bottomed flares but rapidly realised I wasn't cut out to be fashionable so they were quickly re-cycled as bags in which my 4 kids took their gym kit to school. Waist/waste not, want not, I say! Stan

Incidentally, does anyone know a source/supplier of replacement sprung buffers (with the clipped top) for these coaches? Stan

Agreed that these bogies are much better than those on the Porthole stock but I found I had to tweak the phosphor bronze strips that include the bearings inwards to tighten up the distance between them so that the pinpoints were held nice and tight rather than sloppily as they were when I first inserted the replacement P4 wheelsets. I also haven't bothered adjusting the position of the brakes to make them more closely relate to the wider spaced wheels. Altogether a very nice addition to the coaching stock. Stan

See my post #2359! Stan

Going off at something of a tangent, I recall the reaction when as a 26 year-old head office chappie (from BL's Berkeley Square HQ) I arrived at Rover's Solihull Plant to meet the Management. One of my questions was about the Land Rover, "What plans do you have for the replacement model?" Smug faces all round as I was informed that there was a 4 year waiting list for the current product so why on earth should they consider designing and developing a replacement? The truth of the matter was simply that potential customers who desperately wanted a Land Rover placed orders at several dealerships in the hope of getting one from one of them. Once Toyota started destroying the Land Rover market, it rapidly became apparent that the 4 year waiting list was a mirage. The real waiting list turned out to be a few weeks. Later, when I worked for another multinational company, the standard issue for directors was a top of the range Jaguar saloon. The guy responsible for the company car fleet would place orders at several dealers with the promise to those entitled to a Jag that he would see to it that they got theirs asap. After some time when no one got a Jag, it was discovered that every time one of his orders was fulfilled, he had an arrangement with the dealer that they could sell the one he had ordered, usually for a premium, provided he got the premium. When this practice became known, he was fired. Best of all was the scam surrounding the company car scheme at Ford. None of those administering the scheme was on the pay grade that entitled them to a company car. At some stage, one of the smarter admin folk had the idea of setting up false records for the staff running the scheme that would entitle them to a company car. When that was eventually discovered, the management found that it had been in existence for years and covered several generations of admin staff. Apologies to those looking for information about Peckett locos but as someone has already pointed out, the fact that a few potential purchasers of Pecketts missed out is unlikely to cause Hornby management to lose sleep. Stan

I left the car industry in 1973 and I'm sure that all the body plants I knew of at that time were painting to order, i.e. colours could vary from car to car, as production scheduling was generally to match dealer orders (which I admit were not necessarily customer orders). The standing joke was always of the car that everyone on the production line swore they had seen was the one with two doors on one side and one on the other. Stan

Nah! EIGHTH ARMY PUSH BOTTLES UP GERMANS takes some beating. Stan

4ft 0.6"? Stan

Why no full stop after the "D"? Just wondering . . . Stan

Thanks - that's the kind of thing I had in mind. I'll certainly give it a try. Stan

I've printed my first few sheets of (white) styrene and am having difficulty seeing the scribe marks. I've wondered about rubbing something over the surface to mark the lines I've scribed but before doing so, I thought I'd ask if anyone had any tips - is this a good idea? If so, what is the best substance to use? Any ideas welcomed. Stan

I recall finding at least one error in the text but I'd probably be hard pressed to find it/them once more . . . Stan

And yet - it's some years since I read that if Apple doubled the wages of all their production workers, it would not increase the manufacturing cost by more than a couple of percentage points. That's why Trumponomics is rubbish. He can try and force US companies to bring back all the production he likes but that won't make many jobs as most assembly is robotised, even in China. There'll perhaps be a few menial jobs driving fork-lift trucks to accompany those watching the automated assembly lines but there won't be thousands of jobs - and those that are created will mostly be low-paid. Even the Chinese are shifting production of (relatively) labour-intensive work to other countries. Some of these worry about their costs - e.g. Vietnam concerned that Cambidia or Laos will take jobs they have worked hard to get. Then some of the poorer South American countries will bid for jobs and Africa is already on Chinese minds. Stan

You should be so lucky! My (second) wife (the first died tagically young) was a librarian at some stage in her former life and the first thing she did on moving in with me was to re-order all the books on the bookshelves in alphabetical order. She' "tidied" the garage and I can't find anything. Fortunately, she refuses to go anywhere near my railway room and my "study" where my computer resides and my models get massaged towards achieving that mystical state of "completion". Stan

Best of all if my memory hasn't failed me but I'm fairly sure I was told by someone who knew that when the Health and Safety Executive moved out of its Sheffield offices and they became the property of the University of Sheffield, the bill to make it comply with Health and Safety Regulations was eye-wateringly large. Stan

On page 90 of Volume 2 of Bob Pixton's 3 books on the railways between Liverpool and Manchester there is a photo of a MSC Peckett (No. 2 "Irlam") hauling an ex-Midland Railway 6 wheel coach. If anyone is interested, I'll scan it and post a copy. Stan

Couldn't let myself go to bed without checking my memory so Page 57 of Volume 2 of Bob Pixton's books on Liverpool & Manchester, this one on the CLC Lines states "The line is rising down (sic!) to Walton at a gradient of 1 in 200 and behind us it falls at 1 in 80 for a short stretch, then 1 in 100 towards level track at Huskisson". HTH Stan

I'll check in the morning but from memory 1 in 80 from Huskisson at least up to Kirkdale. Stan

But it's ideally placed to (not to) watch Sickly Dumb Prancing or the caterwauling of Let It Shine that my wife insists on having switched on now that the other rubbish has finished for a while. Never mind, Dad's Army is on soon. Stan

Leading to the rise of websites such as RMWeb for realtime news and the probable eventual demise of printed magazines - not just those related to model railways. Stan

Ah yes - my most abstemious Christmas since I was about 13! I did have one pint (£7.90) and my wife a glass of white wine (£9.50). We also bought a couple of bottles of wine to go with dinner but I won't terrify you with the prices. It wasn't that we couldn't afford the booze it was just common sense to go without at the prices charged. I've made good progress with redressing the deficit since we returned . . . Stan

My wife and I have just spent Christmas on the Hurtigruten trip from Bergen to the top of Norway and back. It was excellent and all that Coryton states. The highlights (literally) were the Northern Lights on Christmas night and the husky sleigh ride on Christmas Eve. Highly recommended! Stan

When from 1962 to 1965 I was at university in London, my dad usually slipped me sufficient funds to pay for a meal (lunch) in the dining car on the trip from Liverpool to London - although he refused to top up my grant so I had to work in all the vacations but that's another set of tales. My recollection is of silver service and my favourite query by a dining car attendant was, "A little peas, sir?" as he served the vegetables. I also recall with delight the mashed potatoes served in a French restaurant car around Easter 1958 as I went abroad for the first time on a school trip. They were swimming in olive oil and so delicious that if I close my eyes and think back, I can taste them now. I wouldn't touch the "food" offered on any of today's trains in the UK but I do collect the wooden stirrers which have numerous uses for the modeller. Stan

There were two at Edge Hill until quite late in their lives - used as a pair to take passenger trains down to Liverpool Riverside thus minimising the axle loading. Stan

My diddy little trolley arrived from Sheffield on Saturday and I have started to think about the possibility of conversion to P4. It's not going to be easy! The OO wheels measure a smidge under 20mm outside and the trolley itself has the stepboards pretty close to them so there is nowhere near sufficient clearance for anything like 2mm wide wheels set to 17.8mm BtB. I loaded a copy of the November 1969 Railway Modeller article into Inkscape and resized the 7mm = 1ft drawing included with it so that I had a 1mm = 1in version. This indicates that the prototype dimension over the wheelsets is 5ft 3.5in with a BtB of 4ft 5.5ins so the wheels are 5in wide. So, any enterprising supplier of a conversion pack will have to contemplate supplying wheels less than 2mm wide as 5in = 1.67mm in 4mm = 1ft scale. I wonder how skinny wheels could be that would still run over pointwork without jamming in the gaps around frogs? Even then, converters will have to consider cutting off the plastic stepboards and at least replacing the supports with very thin etched parts - and maybe the stepboards as well while at it. Then the inevitable question of whether the trolley will move without traction tyres will arise . . . Stan