runs as required

Can't you simply flip then around (do a 180deg) then, with a thin pair of pliers, tug - to adjust the connectors to suit ? Or are you saying they are different radii curves? In which case ebay...? And use the proceeds to buy air miles Enjoy the Easter break dh

How do you manage to solder upside down - behind a tin burka? dh

Yes you are right! Very sorry. Oh dear, I'm sure I remember stragglers getting returned via the 'western' . Funny thing is those hoppers were part of the wallpaper of growing up in the Goyt Valley, biking along the canal bank to and from school. Later my wife's stepfather was a Peak Forest signalman - where my kids and I enjoyed spending happy hours. dh

Good to see you back in action. Hope you didn't lose a lot of data on the Hard drive. dh

Ditto But you could also see them on the LNW line up to Buxton - for example several on the Birkenhead-Buxton miixed goods - and with an 8F on front and a SuperD banking this way you don't have to buy 15 dh

There is another RM thread here bemoaning the lack of daylight percolating down to the platform at New Street III Trying in vain to trawl up any actual sections through the NS station redevelopment, I came upon some conflicting links to proposals for HS2 Curzon St (the former L&B Ionic portico is a World Heritage site) First there is the familiar Higgins Arup plan here but there is also this 25 year vision for the future which I find really difficult to comprehend. I think it pulls the whole HS2 station further in towards the CBD with the old L&B portico standing to the northside of the station throat. But the staion still remains a terminus. dh

OK here’s some silly ideas (I actually used to get paid for having them!): Election outcome:Tories win, Osborne stays in de facto control, then becomes Prime Minister at some point, HS3 gets built via Knutsford International between Leeds and Birmingham, HS2 gets built eventually (and mostly in tunnel) Election outcome:Uneasy relationship between Tories + UKIP Britain out of EU; HS3 gets built before HS2 (with Chinese funding) Election outcome:Uneasy relationship between Labour + SNP HS2/3 projects get cut 'put on ice' as government struggles to find cuts L’pool – Leeds – Hull/Newcastle get alignment/stock upgrading New Borders line gets extended through Hawick down to Hexham via Kielder (mostly on former Border Counties trackbed) for equal access E-W along N&C. enjoy dh

Sorry I've been out all day.... This is my point - surely it cannot have escaped others.... I am against the glib way politicians lash out public (‘taxpayers’) money ‘pump priming’ a costly venture at a 60/40% public/private investment ratio then sell off the costly completed asset, often as not, ridiculously cheap to a foreign state owned interest. The French sprung to mind because of Eurotunnel and TGV, but here in the north the Chinese own Northumbria Water with the largest Reservoir in Europe – at one time supposedly the basis for a national water grid. I'm still old fashioned enough to believe in maintaining control of "the commanding heights of our economy" like most other nations do. dh

Neither have I the inclination and need to read this report (or plough through any other into the pros and cons of HS2 then the HS3 alignments northwards through the "power house"). But I understood from a BBC radio report (either on Today or PM) that the Lords were indignant that of an estimated project cost of £50 billion £31 billion would be "taxpayer" funded. I think this to be unacceptably excessive public leverage of a project that may well end up wholly owned by the French - in a political context in which we may be outside the EU dh

The only positive I've heard coming out of all the pre-election ballyhoo is the SNP proposal to start building HS2/3 from the top downwards. Presumably it would carry on from the new Borders line through to the North London line, Stratford HS1 and onto....... dh

Couldn't resist copying this classic across from another thread hahahahaha My! Oh my! There is such a lot of beautiful stuff thats arrived on your thread Andy since I last looked - before going off to endure a wet week plus down in the Med. I just love those wonderful videos of long slow runs through Bitton! What a great impression of space. A prototypical 'feel for space' seems rarely achievable in modelling. There's often a compulsion to squeeze in every last detail. The contrast between the space on one side of the room and the intricate density of the fiddle yard and depot on the other side of the room works beautifully. As for the quote above, may I ask have you tried it with paper? By which I mean setting out on paper a diagramatic amendment to the yard with a thick felt pen then test "shunting" it with a blue tack divisible train. I had this recommended years ago, long before the days of computers, as a much less frustrating way of trialing/testing than actually relaying track. I so love your before/after of the Jinty. Can,t wait for the pannier to get worked over. And those great back drop paintings. dh

I've just returned from a week away and I can honestly say I was looking forward to getting back and seeing where you had got to on painting the Stirling single driver. It looks wonderful - and so much better than the photographic grey. I have to admit to suggesting earlier you stay with the grey! But it might be good to have a re-post of the outshopped grey alongside the final painting like the old works photos. dh

Thanks for commenting on the lintol - actually I like the way you leave it a bit ambiguous - at first glance it could be either material. Vernacular building was traditionally something folk did when there was nothing more pressing such as harvesting, sheep shearing or potato picking happening. It was also good after some kind of extreme weather had toppled a large disused building or a great tree. I had a mate with a farm beside a bend on the river Irthing in Cumbria. He'd pray for a great elm or a beech to get washed up on his land after a (fairly frequent) flood then attack with a chainsaw to convert it into structural beams, usable timber and firewood. He'd claim enthusiastically "see how chainsaws can leave marks just like a medaeval adze!" He could fool the planners with his artistry! dh edit: granma grammar

Its great to see you back in action again - and with some lovely subjects too. I still love that old Sammy Longson's rusty limespreader you made last year. Can I ask a practical question about the barn's long lintol? Does that represent a timber one - which is more likely costwise on a vernacular farm building - which might by now be deflecting a bit with the load of limestone walling above over.... Or is it a gritstone lintol? In which case I reckon it ought to look deeper in relation to the clear span and the load it carries. That span in stone would have been an expensive component for a farmer to come by - more something an industrialist like Arkwright would splash out for on one of his mills. A good general source is Brunskill's 'Handbook of Vernacular Building' - a lot of its images can be found on line. Best wishes dh

Oh dear! I see I am about to post not far after Jock - the hardest act to follow - and that was a lovely one tonight Jock. Stepping across the Q addressed to Stationmaster, could I just suggest that you take a very good photo record of the G&SW document (warts and all) before whatever mode of disposal gets decided upon. My mum-in-law, whatever else she wasn't in the classic Les Dawson Mancunian tradition, could bake a cracking good fruit cake. Years ago J managed to persuade her to write her recipe down on a torn back of envelope . For the last 20 years a framed photograph of that battered grease stained document has adorned our kitchen wall behind the worktop. Great Grandma's fruit cake still vanishes at one tea time sitting. . Dead Cats Our 9 year old Heaton grand daughter has been growing aware of death recently. Last week-end she talked with J, her grandmother, about ours - and how did we think about it. She was very interested when J explained how we'd made wills and had left our bodies for medical research. Later she asked at tea time, could she ask for things she'd like to be left to her.? I asked "Like what"? She replied "I'd like to ask to have Sam the cat's gravestone". Last autumn I'd had to take their old cat (14) to the vet to be put down. Later we'd made together a concrete gravestone in our garage on which, while it was still green, they'd scraped out a pic of Sam, inscribed his dates and labelled him "King of the Road". J and I reckoned this exchange around our kitchen table was yet another great benefit of having pets. night all dh

Wow - well impressed! I have to confess you are well outside my comfort zone with all this ECoS kit. Does it mean that you can go off and continue harassing the staff at the real DP with your photographing while the trains continue to come and go back at 1:76 DP? dh

Being enjoyably sidetracked by Pete's film music post above, I was actually about to post about three operas we saw this week in Newcastle Theatre Royal by Opera North touring from Leeds. Manuel de Falla’s bleakly Spanish La vida breve and Puccini’s comedy Gianni Schicchi on one night and Marriage of Figaro the second. But the two genres are of course intertwined. We bumped into a distinguished old musician friend the first night who objected to being dragged along to get distracted by the visuals from concentrating totally on the music. But he did concede that knowing what the two of us did (designer and psychotherapist) we'd have a very different agenda. Wife always enjoys opera as the "singing of thoughts" (I think Jonathan Miller's definition). I certainly look forward to the visuals, not least because the usual old opera maxim "more is more" by economic necessity and trailer dimensions these days has to be "LESS is more". I thought the first double bill night was far more successful in design terms than the second. It was very hard to imagine the garden in the marriage's last act, being sung amongst the functional back props of what looked to be advertising hoardings (the reverse of the set for the Count's palace). dh

Interested to hear that soundclick film music piece Pete. I've never properly understood how film music gets written and developed. Is it an endlessly iterative business where the original ideas have to be worked and re-worked as all the visual editing continues through to the final cut? Then in the pre-digital days I've always supposed the composer and conductor re-worked and played the final score watching the sceening? Finally someone like Eric Coates would prepare a version for concert performance and release as auio recordings? dh ed sp

Good to hear you'll be around for a bit longer as well Jock. Sounds like you played a blinder.. Heh! Heh! Dan's old red/white 900SS got through its MOT OK today after yesterday's fettling in the sun. The garage charged him less a) because they'd nivva seen one like it before and 2) he kept them entertained while they did it. 'Night all......

You just be careful with your threats, some of us have had quite enough of them already!dh edit: typo - plus': though would very much like to see your L girder ( spline) proposals.'

Oh dear! How very embarassing Allan; 'I cannot tell a lie', that ain't my thatch in the pic you are looking at. The posted pic is a much reduced jpeg of a 1:76 scale composite elevation I built up for Jaz from images trawled off the web and manipulated using photoshop into an orthogonal set of plans, sections and elevs. It was the prize won in a competition by Jaz run on another modelling site. Though my technique got the Green Light from my IP lawyer son, it was outlawed by the other site after it was taken over by an American group. It was deemed it not worth risking within the context of the very differing IP legislation in the whole 50 odd US states . I now have to operate under the radar with my technique - though it is based on some very expensive automated software developed by the Germans after re-unification given the scale of their historic building restoration programme. Very sorry dh

Thanks for that step by step guide on the thatch Allan. Yup! Definitely beats NESW The shredded wheat got really difficult to control when I tried to apply that neatly trimmed scalloped thatched ridge topping between the chimneys NB pic is not to scale (sorry don't have any pics of my dog's breakfast.) dh [Edit: your Bob Marley 'hanging dreadlocks' could at a stretch be fashioned by someone as clever as you into Wisteria along the eaves!

Howzabout 'Pompa Capricciosa' below ? But only for the piano accompaniment you understand... dh (pity it didn't quite sync when he got it working eventually)

Bonjo everyone back to a normal Geordie grey ootside Good luck Jock - wife's trick is to turn up looking a million dollars "Mack'em think yer worth saving!" A magic little LNER J15 arrived yesterday; last night "I had a dream": a sound from the Liverpool Street Jazz age enjoy (ugh!) dh

Is it true about UKIP wanting to ban "Ode to Joy"? dh