runs as required

Only a few pages earlier you were all agreeing with James about the fascinating collisions of style during the years of hand-over between Dean and Churchward. Yet now you are all rubbishing those astonishing Krugers - as I (probably erroneously) recall* all the Krugers differed experimentally – even between wheel arrangements: the first had a leading bogie, subsequent ones a pony truck. Most extraordinarily for the (seemingly perpetually) Victorian image GWR - no one in Swindon gave a fig for their appearance! Not many Engineering Chiefs, right at the end of their illustrious careers, would give their plain-speaking blunt assistant free-rein to compare and test US and European thinking against time honoured Company practice in both boiler and engine design. I admire William Dean enormously for recognising train running in the new century called for radical re-thinking (compared to Collett tweaking the proven while the other Big Three and LT were facing forward into mid C20 changes.) Nevertheless Board Room directives about curved running plates and steps eventually levered Churchward into conforming. —— * There was a really interesting sequence of articles in “Backtrack” some years ago, on the detail evolution of those weird Krugers - against the emergence of the stalwart Aberdare class.

I spent wonderful wet Welsh teenage summers in small tents around the estuaries between Harlech, Portmadoc and back to the Rhinogs and Llan ffestiniog., climbing and volunteering at Boston Lodge. I always felt shortchanged by boring Collett 0-6-0s always seeking out his characterful Dukedogs.

Is our future King still enthusiastic about homeopathy? Since my previous neighbour (a retired senior hospital Consultant) diagnosed me over a shared late night bottle of Highland Park, on the 7 stage dementia scale - as around stage 2 on a good day but stage 3 on a bad day, I can't actually remember what this thread is supposed to be about

Yup, the original split screen, opening double doors job.. Can't think of a more beautiful residual structure for a glorious late June./early July Gertrude Jekyll style flower bed. Isn't the Garden Rail Editor from Royal Leamington Spa one of our moderators? Hint Hint - Wot about a narrow gauge German roundy-round interacting with such a carefully planted significant rusting relic?

Oh Dear! We do still seem to be some way from a p.p. new normal. I've just had my first post Lockdown trip from Gateshead (mid-May top deaths scorer) to ... guess where ... wait for it ... ... Leicester - current high scoring new SPIKE 2 As for statue bashing - is the word "iconoclast" now generally taken to be a pejorative attribute? It used to mean "willing to question existing norms"; now smashing icons equates to "mindless terrorist vandalism"

Correct about the resprayed Fiat Dino Farina spyder on the trestle - you have an excellent eye for detail ! What a beautiful shape displayed like that - ma zero punti per l'aerodinamica in sticking to the road ? I thought it was black, but my Huawei spy camera detects a hint of dark blue/purple "so deep yer could fish innit" as my old Wigan carriage painter would say approvingly of a good RR Hearse. 2 I will check the alloy wheel size (they look so to me)

A great pity - it could have had great visitor attraction potential. The 'Oxfords' were up visiting us, and went off for a walk in the afternoon along the river. Very young granddaughter came back with a cake-box for us, saying "and daddy bought a yellow Ferrari." We understood this to mean a sortt of car-shaped yellow iced spongecake! ! It turned out the car was not actually being worked on, but was a straight sale for someone up near Rothbury who did receive their sale price. Our solicitor son lost out only on paying the owner of the establishment the cost of it being transported 4 miles to our house. Some 4/5 years later I gather the full case is still being investigated by Northumbria CID; though the owner has been cleared of money laundering, a good many did lose on not receiving a restored car. Our local son towed the 308 across to Longton near Preston where Vic, a Dino specialist (who'd already rebuilt eldest's original front-engined Fiat 6V Dino that I've posted about a number of times) quickly sorted the 8V's mechanics.

REPAINT OF 'CAKEBOX' FERRARI The Old F@rts got a treat this weekend being shipped down for a family 'metre plus' get-together near Oxford. Highlight for me was a trip to collect eldest's 8V Dino* from Roberto's workshop in Leicester on Saturday morning. Rob's is a classic Italian backstreet highly skilled craft workshop where nothing is impossible - all with that unequalled Italian feel for style. There were some spectacular vehicles in (can you identify the respray on trestles in the top centre pic?), a Stratos almost entirely re-created from a total wreck, the cinquecento +, a MotoGP Ducati , and the Aston. Rob's take on the Aston is that DBs started in the early 1940s entirely Italian inspired, then because they were mainly sold in the US, became increasingly heavy until the one we were looking at is a two pedal automatic. Rob is Bilingual, but can only speak in gestures, both parents being from Calabria. Sadly the drive back turned was through heavy thunderstorms, (last pics are at Watford Gap). Eldest reckons that despite Rob's heavy Waxoiling, that vibrant Ferrari 'Cakebox' yellow will be bubbling again ere 6 months are out. --- *originally bought undervalued from a short-lived fraudulent cake-shop c#m car-restoration studio in present day Co-op at Wylam

Instead of going down the A1(M) ,across on the M18, then down the M1 to London, I'd like my children and grand children to stay connected via Line 1, go off to mainland Continental Europe on Line 2, Bristol and South Wales via Line 4 in the post-pandemic "New Normal" world we created. The Lines can have whatever fancy name and lurid livery skins the current operators favour, but the Line numbers are the basic network we all think of first.

Wherever I worked - almost always as an "in house" salaried (rather than "Consultant" status) job runner, we certainly knew who the really hostile Contractors were and tried our damnedest to keep them and their ever antagonistic contract challenging profit maximising specialist managers at bay. Not surprisingly these morphed into the UKs volume House Builders the Government depends upon for its housing policy. It has been most depressing to see how much the total of all professional fees has gone up from about !3 % of estimated pre contract project price (for something like a new university campus) to between 25 - 30% before contingencies. Incidentally such a campus usually included an "Estates yard" with DLO workshop provision. Before Lockdown, I was shown round Rugby Public school's new buildings - these include an impressive newly built Estates Officer's Department with DLO workshops for carrying out fairly extensive remodelling and alteration work. They prefer where possible to avoid external Contractors to control costs - and I was reminded that Public schools do have Charity status.

I’d forgotten all about Direct Labour Organisations although they featured prominently through the 1950s - my years as an architecture student, later a “Civic Design*” post grad, in Liverpool. The Interwar City Engineer Sir Lancelot Kaye’s “cottage estates” in a broad semi-circle around “Queens Drive” Liverpool (IMHO some of the best housing ever built in Britain) as well his ‘Bullring’ flats that appear above the spectacular Exhibition model of ‘Lime Street 1946’ were DLO built – as I believe a lot of the C20 reservoir projects in the north were by Local Authorities. In my first qualified job for BR(E) CCE’s in Kings Cross, much of our work was carried out by the Region’s District Engineers' DLOs. The DEs would all turn up to report to the CCE on Friday morning then liaise in the Chief’s various drawing office sections over drawing board lunchtime to mid-afternoon sessions before returning to Peterboro/Ipswich/Doncaster/Sheffield etc “My” R&D Group had a love/hate relationship with the DEs because the GM (Gerry Fiennes) was loath to to use Contractors for ‘minor works’. The DEs were forever proudly substituting and re-using worn or lifted rails and other redundant s/h kit in place of the drawing office carefully chosen “nominated’ specified items. On “front of house” station improvements the (mostly ex LT Designers) could get their way to achieve a ‘Brand’ look for the Region using an external Contractor - even though any subsequent re-furbishment or repair would always have (an easily spotted) homely improvised DE’s look. * Civic Design as a name for T&C Planning became archaic as the “Public Realm” was increasingly privatised and ‘gated’ after 1978 to be merely ‘Regulated’ by LPOs ... until now with the "new normal"?

Something like this ? Bravo Vous Avez Dépensé 2000 Calories - YouTube https://images.app.goo.gl/D18HdAb9czAtzyZ97 Happy to help Deliberately Old Fashioned Bicyclists

Malta's extreme sacrifice in 1942/3 was forgotten by Britain even before the war was over. Dom Mintoff came back from his Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford in 1944, after close association with Labour's policy makers, confident he would be responsible for post-war reconstruction within a Malta with UK County status -( exactly the same as the Isle of Wight!) Atlee and Bevin quickly dropped that notion after their '45 election victory; Mintoff never again trusted Britain.

Floyd was clearly boyhood role model for our breezy likeable PM. And David Davis (host of BBC Home Service 5pm Children's hour) is the voice of Mr Toad the escaping Washerwoman on a 2-2-2 A tonic for any jaded Amateur accountant seeing double entries

One apparently substantial clockwork railway doesn't appear (from a digital search*) to have been commented on in this alluring thread so far: I once owned a second-hand autobiography of Cecil J. Allen: "Two million miles of rail travel"; Ian Allan. 1965, which I can only write of from memory. I'd leant the book to an old student friend, an accomplished organist like CJ Allen and a collector of old bound sets of RMs with Rouse Martin's and Allen's timing articles. But sadly my friend died suddenly of a heart attack a dozen or more years ago. A closing chapter concerned the (mostly outdoors) I think end to end 0 gauge clockwork railway on a timber trestle running in a U shape around CJ Allen's lawn. Allen and a group of friends would selectively invite underprivileged boys from their Hertfordshire neighbourhood to come and be instructed in the operation of the railway. The group carried out carefully planned timetabling, following the Rule book in the proper execution of the line's block signalling. He claimed many went on to make a career in the railway industry. There was a photo which appeared to be Basset-Lowke trackwork (though I am no expert). I was surprised that there could be so much precision brought to operation and regulation of clockwork locomotives. *You do have a post about a clockwork 0 gauge Midland Spinner being commissioned for his own layout by OS Nock.

Ah! Elizabeth David! As an 'amuse bouche' until James re-emerges from his Hell of Annual Accounts ... let me tell how underpinned our young marriage was by Elizabeth David. In 1961 we received a wedding present of a 'chicken brick' together with a couple of Elizabeth David paper-backs ['French Country Cooking' and 'Mediterranean Cooking'(?)] from the new opened original Habitat store in the Fulham Road, Chelsea - after which we set about flaunting ourselves as real "sixties swingers". A couple of years later we were working in Malta - training ex RN Dockyard workers as civil engineering draughtsmen, which was great fun. But the food in Malta was abysmal - totally British NAAFI - just one half-hearted Italian restaurant on the whole island: the "Bologna" in Valletta, and spaghetti only sold, along with 'alphabet pasta', in half size Heinz tins. So we struggled with sourcing Mediterranean veg and we compressed poor stringy old hens into our 'authentic' brick until it cracked in half. No tears - I managed to Araldyte it back as good as new. We had some publicity about our UK funded retraining project and were flattered by a very stylish lady from Hille furnishings visiting and coming round for lunch in our flat. Helping in our tiny kitchen, she laughed at our Chicken Brick and revealed how it had been invented by Terence Conran (they were all inter-related) as a showy gimmick for the new Habitat Brand along with the whole cult of spaghetti - and tall glass jars - and of course the famous Robin Day stacking polypropylene chairs launched by Hille. Her visit paid off, for the firm specified the chairs for a new university campus for Malta - and many more subsequent projects across the world. Many years later we came across a TV film crew filming in winter at a trashily congested tourist spot in Malta : the "Blue Grotto". We asked what were they filming? The slipway was doubling for the original unspoilt Greek island where Elizabeth David had picked up many of her post war Mediterranean recipes! (sorry very OT! No rail-related content whatsoever)

So could that piece be polished clear and sparkling with a suitable Tcut type polish and polishing tool?

Gosh! Melmerby's link to the the Beeb report above about the Carlisle re-opening with the South Scotland MP urging for a station stop at Langholm would make for an expensive diversion, compared to a GWR style Langholm Road stop (7-8 miles distant) adjacent to the A9 in the vicinity of the old Langholm branch Riddings Juction. I hadn't realised what an interesting history the Langholm branch had until I Googled the booklet by Bruce McCartney here on the branch. The Caledionian secured the defeat of the original 1845 NBR bill to extend from Hawick to Carlisle via Langholm. The CR later proposed a line via Teviot dale and Langholm to Hawick - which may well have resulted in a CR/NBR confrontation like Peebles. In 1859 the NBR eventually succeeded with the Liddersdale (Waverley route) - opening in 1862, the Langholm branch in 1864.

Did anyone posting hereabouts on RMweb ever know Professor Tuplin D Sc, MI Mech E in life? I first came across him in the Times Bookshop in Dar es Salaam in 1971 as author of a Pan paperback "British Steam since 1900", which still sits yellowing on my bookshelves. It introduced me (in a land of spotless EAR Garratts) to typologies and aspects of steam engineering I hadn't thought about before. What particularly struck me was that he appeared to have not a shred of doubt about the veracity of what he wrote - a sort of 'Shock Jock' trenchant David Starkey - at the time a refreshing contrast to streams of repetitive books by OS Nock.

So, in the case of the LNW, Frank Webb would be summoned down to Euston and told by Moon in front of all the Directors hungry for the Divi , to provide: train, rails and sleepers and signals - all at least cost ! Phew! No Pressure there then ... ... in fact plenty of time to ponder - over afternoon tea on the 2 o’clock corridor back home - about tactics in tonight’s Crewe Town Council meeting.

From my (clearly eccentric Asberger’s ?) personal Point of View, I suggest this thread's conservative middle of the road boring ‘keep it all properly clad beauty’ Brit inside cylinder 4-4-0 paradigm against which all are judged, is well overdue being renamed: 'Exceptional "Thinking Outside the Box" Locomotives Most Worth Scratch Modelling”

Funny, I only posted about this 1:6 scale scale Marx 'Armoured Horse' 7 hours ago on p28 of the Regency Rails (pre L&B early railways) thread as being, with his separately boxed Knight, the favourite toy of my young son, now in his mid fifties. The tattered old boxes and the various bits and pieces of armour and the poor old jointed Knight in his underpants, are scattered in the bottom of cupboards and boxes all over our old untidy house, after being played with by all the grandchildren. The eldest, now twenty, is called Max after his father's misreading of the toymakers name Marx actually being the Knight's name. A pair like this I found just now for sale in the US (as the original 'Vintage' UK toy for $199 !

This horse with beautifully moulded plastic detachable armour was my eldest's favourite toy He already had "Max", the similarly moulded Knight (Valiant's rider). The various parts must all still be scattered around the cupboards in our decrepit old pile overlooking the Battle of Newburn Ford - fought between the Scots and the English over control of coal revenues. The Scots decisively won here also in 1640 by placing a cannon on the top Newburn's late Saxon church tower and routing the King's troops garrisoned in Newcastle. Early hardwood oak railway networks (documented earlier in the thread) are a part of the past hereabouts too, while Newburn even crops up in Swindon work's past.

At least the place where you sail got past the Great Censor in the sky.

I was certain wife’s iPad had got it’s knickers in a twist; she certainly does have a love affair with effingham Crace and the Grauniad. It has to do with being born in the land of the Manchester Guardian - where non Conformist chapel Ministers in Chorlton Hardy (bet this dignified posh suburbs name gets censored) would pray "Oh God! As Thou hast doubtless read in the Manchester Guardian &c. "