runs as required

Can I ask please: Where do all those vast granite blocks come from? They now seem to be found all the way down the east coast and around E Anglia. Someone said they were Norwegian, someone else said from Foster Yoeman's Glensanda quarry. Someone else said they were shipped in by sea. Yours appear to have been delivered by train to the sea wall. dh

I'd like a piece of tin nailed to the side of the tunnel with some number on it - which is too big! So the train strikes it as it passes through. Like this: ...Jalum jalum...jalum jalum...jalum jalum...nnnnnnNNNNNnnnnnn ....to the far end. Then you could have men standing, holding pickaxes, golf clubs, anything they can get hold of. They're ready to bend the the tin back again, ready to strike the next train as it passes through the tunnel... Back to the asylum dh

That's absolutely true, Toddy doesn't use Photoshop. As the background to photo #2 shews, he sends his stuff to his "Friends in the North" who use Photoshop to make a pigs ear out of it. dh

The best photograph I have seen of the return to steam of the Flying |Scotsman is this one. I'd love to know how the guy took it. It must have been worked out many days before. If JMW Turner's 'Rain, Steam and Speed' marks the beginning of the Romance; this is an Elegy for the steam age - and deep mined (Yorkshire) coal. Maybe even Britain's industrial capability ? dh

Hey! This thread has materialised out of nowhere - presumably just like the prob did on Christmas Eve. Most interesting viewing (like the classic knot hole in a contractor's site hoarding). I assume the planning permission issue is one related to Coastal hydrography and the 'shall we/shan't we' Government vacillation over infrastructure planning. I learnt about hydrography when a group of Newcastle top-end-of-the-course students pressed the management into allowing them to work on a fantasy 40 odd storey high skyscraper off Seaham Harbour! As a retired old fart, I got actually paid to facilitate this group, who organised a whole succession of UK experts to come and give seminars on aspects of the project (as an opportunity to demonstrate they were up to being offered jobs in E Asia.). I learnt an enormous amount of stuff I'd have never otherwise encountered. dh

Thank you for such a prompt reply and for explaining how the temperature stability is achieved. I may have been a tad facetious in asking about including the Midland Hotel - your answer puts me in my place! Best wishes dh

Like everyone else I am in total awe about both the detailed intricacy and the magnitude of this project - all in styrene. May I ask two questions 1 what do you see as the final bounds of this recreation of Central Station, its approach viaducts and ancillary facilities? Will you eventually tackle the Midland Hotel? 2 You are modelling in Spain; do the delicate styrene elements stand up to the high temperature variations between summer and winter? I ask because I am almost a daily cyclist across the Hagg Bank bridge at Wylam. In doing so, I always think of you in Spain and your modelling in styrene. Best wishes dh

1 Good to see Jock's post appear over the week-end. I don't have Jock's email but with him in mind I've found and been digitising a number of Targa Florio and bike pics he might enjoy. Could someone please PM me with a suggestion about how I might get them to him? 2 Wife watches every drama on the TV, with "You just go upstairs for a bit and wonk with your train nuts on the computer ". (She's always been a coarse lady). I've never seen Vera, but wife tells me about her - I thought she was in something about Iceland. Daughter during her teenage acting years remembers pitching at Robson for a date. "I'd love to Pet" he responded, "but I'm married." dh

That point is one that interests me. What does a CA's CV look like? When I still worked as a university teacher I had a 'project office' responsibility - giving students nearing the end of long courses experience on live consultacies - including BR as clients (that's how long ago it was). A common feedback was that our students delivered so much more Bang for the Bucks than the 3 or 4 big international consultancies - you can guess who they were. dh

(Blush with embarassment) Nah... I was too excited; my daughter was the first to point it out. I rushed up to the top of the house to get a better view - and of course the camera/phone was somewhere else. You have to marvel about how big and brazen these animals are, out there rolling about enjoying the sun. Years ago that same daughter had an urban vixen leap in the back of her Ford Escort car in Lee Green/Eltham and make off with a brand new red high heel shoe! dh PS I nearly ran over a female blackbird this evening - a very close call

I've been up to the ears in grandchildren over half term - so I've only come upon this thread today (though I saw the story in the papers). My reference to our grandchildren - ages 15 down to 8, mostly boys - is relevant because not one has shown any noticably sustained attraction to Hornby products (including Scalextrics - I wonder what proportion of Hornby's business is trains?). What depressed me is that I spent a lot of time trying unsuccessfully to lure the kids away from screens. I cannot honestly see where the likes of Hornby can respond to a 'must have' wish list for an under 30-year-old cohort. dh

First woodpecker I've heard in 2016 drumming away in the sun this a.m. as I crossed over to the compost bin with the huge amount of left-overs from an intensive half term's child minding. [OT and a large dog fox languidly stretched out in the sun just out onto the grass from his covet - our overgrown holly hedge] I reckon we deserve this break in the weather, wife and I nearly overwhelmed by a fiercely stormy walk back along the coast from Dunstanburgh castle to Craster last Tuesday dh

I do sympathise. The cob at Porthmadog (Portmadoc at that time) in driving rain was my first introduction to really knackering p.w. labouring - way back in 1956 when I was a whole lot stronger. And aso a potholer by hobby. dh

Thank you for the post on the Necropolis railway - and the delightful photos. My favourite great aunt lived out on the Southern Electric and a trip through Waterloo station was always exciting. Aunty Hetty used to tell us about the Funeral trains that left from Waterloo - I hadn't realised they'd lasted as long as to 1941. It was good to contrive to just miss the train 'cos you could then go up into the News Cinema above No 1 platform and watch cartoons. Was that originally the Necropolis train departure platform? As to licenced premises on hallowed ground, maybe it was unique in Victorian days. Nowadays (assuming hallowed mean Holy, consecrated or sacred) Durham Cathedral has a licenced restaurant just off the cloisters - as does Norwich. Sunderland Minster has one such within the main church building to attract lunchtime visitors.. I reckon a preserved line or two ought to institute a Funeral train - where the Wake party could hoy out the ashes of the Dearly Departed at a suitably orchestrated Ritual stop on a bridge or w.h.y. dh

Yup, you could be right - Neverttheless a 'B picture' carp painting. Not a really class act like that JMWT. dh

It always heartens me to read Jock's blog. He's the epitome of that great symbolic Turner picture 'The Fighting Temeraire'. There was an interesting closing 3 way discussion on the 'Today' programme earlier about ways of coping with"The Big C" being a 'generational' thing. Presenter Nick Robinson has come to the programme still audibly coping with his cancer. He was interviewing and agreeing with a woman who advocated talking about it and its impact on everday life - like Jock and his family. On the other hand there was a man whose elderly father had died stoically without the C word ever being mentioned. That situation reminded me of my mum who had died of bowel cancer in her early sixties. She put up a fight through all the awful stages of it until the end without ever a mention of cancer in her hearing. We always whispered about it out in the back kitchen. On 'Today' they thought this was part of the wartime 'stiff upper lip' way of keeping calm and carrying on. I hope I'd choose the Jock approach. dh

This RM thread has enlightened me about why 'announcements' of new products in the model rail world are made so far in advance of their appearance (e.g. in the case of the Bachmann Dukedog about 3 years). It must be the cheapest form of market research to simply sit back and wait until there are over 20 pages of intense commentary to analyse before going on to make irreversable decisions about the detailed spec. dh

There really ought to be a 'Grrrroan' button ...on the other hand I'll have a go too What about the Cornish one just south of Truro "Foeck Hall" ? dh PS Bouncing Free! Mi'marmalade has eventually set - it'd also make very serious glue would my marmalade!

Now might that have been out of a Camp coffee bottle with the Scottish Jock soldier on the label by his bell tent (with the pennant announcing 'ready aye ready!) ?I'm sitting around bored out of my brain waiting for my dark marmalade to reduce down to a 'set'. Over the years I've given away bottles of eye wateringly sharp whisky marmalade - but I've certainly 'gone off the boil' with it this year. :-( dh

Thank you for that video of Ian Nairn. A great hero of mine. As a first year Liverpool student I assisted in mounting his famous exhibition 'Subtopia' in 1956; it had a huge effect on me. But a very sad personal story - rather like his contemporary Tony Hancock - he had no sense of his own worth and drank himself to death at only 53. At least he never saw the shambles of rail Privatisation. dh

I feel I've done all that photography thing - from the early stuff juggling light meters and aperture/shutter speeds for depth of fucups focus through heavy interchangable lens SLRs with bells and whistles ( pre and post digital) to a couple of generations of digital compacts . And in truth I've always been disappointed with my 'catch'. Holiday snaps have invariably been of dirty black foreign locos (under-exposed) in absurdly bright sunlight in highly reflective dry landscapes. I now have to admit to finding that the camera on my recent iPhone 5something and my wife's Samsung Galaxy bring home 'a good enough' raw trawl of images that I can happily tweak on Photoshop into what I need. The "idiots' eye" camera on the phone means that at exhibitions I can relax and engage in interesting exchanges with exhibitors without all the fumbling with small dials and my spectacles. dh

The old Stanhope and Tyne trackway (see pic looking down towards Waskerley) is now part of the Coast to Coast cycleway. The 1834 line, 33 mile long, used the traditional NE waggonway approach: negotiating ‘wayleaves' with landowners - before raising capital to use Parliamentary Act powers for limiting land costs emerged as much the preferred method for longer lines. The S&T, engineered by R Stephenson, lasted only 5 years before being declared insolvent because of its high land lease outgoings and was disposed of into several shorter sections. Even more dramatic, the alignment of the former highest stretch of standard gauge railway in Britain at 1700 ft. can be followed from where it leaves the S&T, (later the Stockton & Darlington) at Parkhead Junction and contoured westwards across Stanhope Common to the top of the former Rookhope incline. The Rookhope railways closed when the inter war Depression killed off the mines, but the S&T from Waskerley over the moors to Parkhead survived - being a branch of the S&D, then of the NER and LNE and finally BR (as freight only) into the mid 1950s. They must have been Hard Men the old railwaymen working on these moors in winter. These days the café (in the former Parkhead station at the top of the old inclines plunging down Crawleyside to Weardale) is an excellent warm refuge for cyclists to stoke up their boilers ready to tackle the next Coast to Coast stretch. dh

I couldn't even begin to think of pedalling up that Rookhope slope But yes the Parkhead Station cafe is a wonderful refuge. My Oxford 15 year old grandson when he comes to stay always wants to bike up to it from Waskerley and whistle back down with the wind behind us. Strange how he is gripped by those moors and old mines compared to the Wall country and even the Coast! 2 Happy Anniversary Jock. Stanier aesthetics: the above grandson's dad is into cars, but when he was 11, just back in UK after our years abroad he kindly humoured his dad by asking my help in buying a S/H loco (in an excellent long gone family owned model shop in Newcastle alongside Marlboro Cres bus station). He came out with a Black 5 (which still runs well). Coleman's well balanced draughtmanship is hard to beat to my eye. (mind you, that son built a Bullied Q1 from a kit while in Ghana - and painted it all over Malachite Green!) dh

Ennerey the Eighth had his blow thru then left us a beautiful spring day. I persuaded madam to sit in her customary Miss Daisy seat in the back of the Mondeo equipped with her library book and off we went up onto the west Durham moors to hear whether the curlews have arrived yet (no). But we had an excellent lunch of slow roast Pork belly, at the Manor House on Dere St (the old Roman road from York up to Hadrian’s Wall) overlooking the Derwent Reservoir. Afterwards I took Miss Daisy off to walk along the Stanhope and Tyne (see pic looking down towards Waskerley). This was R Stephenson's old negotiated 'wayleave' 1834 line that went bust before Parliamentary Act powers became the accepted way of limiting land costs. Then even more dramatic, we followed the alignment of the former highest stretch of standard gauge railway in Britain at over 1700 ft to the top of the former Rookhope incline. This mineral line branched off the S&T, later the (S&D) at Parkhead Junction above the Weatherhill incline (down Crawleyside into Weardale) and contoured across Stanhope Common. The Rookhope railways closed when the inter war Depression killed off the mines, but the S&T over the moors to Parkhead survived being a branch of the S&D, then of the NER and LNE and BR (as freight only) into the mid 1950s They must have been Hard Men those old railway workers; even today in the February afternoon sun, it felt raw on those moors. dh

Hang on! That 10 chain curve bit of your layout doesn't yet exist.... It's got to be Virtual Reality. So who needs a REAL model anymore hmm? dh