runs as required

Absolutely beautiful model locos - and fascinating to see them in those unusual post Grouping (the Claughton) or BR experimental liveries. But I'm a bit confused by terminology here. I thought 'semis' were the de-streamlined Stanier Coronation 8Ps with the chamfered smoke box top. Ivatt's post war 8P Cities and his 4MT seemed (like Hawksworth's panniers with stark outside cylinders and valve gear and Peppercorn's A1s and A2s) to be American influenced - fancy stuff like curves left off. In fact it's what Churchward tried to do half a century earlier at Swindon and got hugely criticised for until he relented.. dh

Wagner und Der fliegende Holländer? Nah! I can't imagine anything more exciting than driving a woodburning tram at night into the teeth of Force 11 gusts and rain! Good Luck to you. dh

Thanks for posting some great pics including that very pretty Italian looking Porsche 904GTS . Someone was rubbishing the aesthetics of Zagato bodywork earlier up the thread, but I can remember being totally blown away by the look of a silver Lancia Flavia Zagato parked in a narrow stone street in a hill town (Cortona) and shooting off nearly a whole colourslide film of its detailing (e.g. the amazing reflections on that rear side window that curls up into the roof.) dh

Delighted to read that you have survived those dreadful stress tests on a ever steepening running track. I found the experience totally exhausting - I needed a big pizza and half a bottle of plonk to recover from mine. Do you actually like the fact that it will not be seen - only you and God know it is there ? (rather like the detailed carvings by medieval masons high up on a cathedral) Because a charlatan like me might start scheming up an inconspicuous series of micro cameras that could recreate some of the period views you have posted of the concourse interior. dh Ed typos

I reckon I can claim to have had all three welded together into one 'Old Mariner' banger. I bought it in a fit of pique (after my T2 van had been destroyed by a drunk in a RTA and I'd not done well in the pay out). I'd been really pleased because I'd negotiated the vendor down about £700 below the guide price for cash in a pub in the west end of Newcastle. But I should have been sharp enough to notice that it was exactly the same gleaming blue as the buses in the 'Blue Bus Services' depot next door. Everywhere I went around Tyneside and Co. Durham until I got rid of it, irate guys would come up and claim the Marina had been stolen from them. They'd challenge me about details on the front, or back or even the middle to prove it. My son, customer complaints manager for a Ford agent in Lee Green at the time (because of his Geordie accent) advised me to play safe with old Mondeos after that. I'm now on my fifth. dh Ed for spelling

Dunno whether this will work using wife's iPad It's a pic of the Malta flat we are in this morning. They still have sparrows and a cock and his mate arrive to demand breakfast from us each morning. Used to be so common as to be invisible when I was a kid - I think we called them spuggies in the NW. dh

Impressed by the 3D print con you must have pulled on St Simon at the Folkestone exhibition - and also by the actual 3D model (wife's iPad doesn't seem to do Joker symbol inserts) dh

I blame myself for tuning in to watch those last moments. I agreed to take 14 year old fanatical rugby playing 6' 4" grandson (his other grandad used to play for Scotland) to watch them play Samoa last week and regret to say I got caught up in it all. dhig

Yes, you are right, of course I accept that .So perhaps should I have mentioned ‘proportion’? Also, for example Ferrari ‘make’ their F1 cars’ engines as well as their chassis – unlike Red Bull/Torro Rosso who source engines outside their organisation. Back in the mid 1960s I remember visiting Rolls Royce at Crewe and being surprised at how much of the vehicle was actually machined, finished and assembled in the factory. I suppose these days a Rolls Royce car would be largely Munich sourced components. dhig

http://nissaninsider.co.uk/made-in-britain-nissans-crucial-role-highlighted-on-top-gear/ and apparently the Mackems sold more electric cars to Norway last year than exist in the whole of California. dhig

1 There is a photoshopped chopped SD1 here http://s791.photobucket.com/user/y282pics/media/Picture5-11.png.html 2 2 Can I ask you experts about my daughter's Eos? Yesterday she collected her 8 year old from school but on the way home there was a very scarey bang and the entire glass roof fell in about them. Is that a common issue with such a roof; the car is about 8 years old? They are now starting an insurance claim. My son had a Porsche 911 variant (933?) some years back with a large sliding electric glass roof that frequently gave expensive trouble resealing and jamming due to body flexing causing mis-alignment. But the glass panel never actually shattered. Remembering that Porsche, I have to admit to misgivings when daughter and husband with two excited grandsons first demonstrated the fold away top of their Eos to us. dhig

That shed at Hinkley doesn't look capable of 'making' all those different engined machines in the same way that say, the vast Nissan plant on the old Sunderland airport site at Washington is. Are Triumph more an assembler of components commissioned from different global sources? dhig

Old Italian lorries were also RHD so that the driver would be on the nearside on mountain hairpins - they were never fast enough to pass anything. And I think 1920s Lancia Lambdas were similarly RHD. What side were Swiss Post buses driven from? dhig

A really appealing rotary here - just 4 miles away at Ponteland @ £1750 and only 46,000 miles. http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201510147802989?postcode=ne403qp&quicksearch=true&price-from=500&make=mazda&model=rx-8&page=1&sort=default&radius=50&onesearchad=used%2Cnearlynew%2Cnew&search-target=usedcars&logcode=p but wife refuses to be prised out of her MX5 dhig

More about the Terraplane Blues here: http://cumberlandpost.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/way-down-below-terraplane-blues.html (topic for another Ladybird book here somewhere?) dhig

I thought they were actually called Terror Planes as an eleven year old. In the late 1940s. My dad had a friend (the motoring correspondent for The Manchester Guardian no less) with a battered 1933/34 Essex/Hudson Terraplane 2 seater with dickey. Its hood having long gone, he’d drive it in a flying helmet in all weathers and patched up its bruises brush painting over everything with grungy green and cream housepaint. I could never understand its appeal – a manky old banger with a front like a feeble model Y Ford – so very different from the XK120 that I fantasised about driving. The above gives an impression of how they’d race with each other up over the moor into Manchester from where we lived in N Derbyshire. My dad would drop me off from his Shell-BP rep's pale blue Hillman Minx on his way afterwards to walk down to school, my legs still shaking from the excitement. dhig

Lovely atmospheric video - maybe this bit of JMW Turner 'Rain (?) Steam and Speed' should have been a departure from Margate. I reckon the last time I saw 7000 so bulled up was as a Boy Scout visiting the Festival of Britain Transport pavillion. dhig

Oops! I last looked in when you were talking about Nash cars and I just remembered my favourite taxi I used to admire in Malta in the 1960s (where I was having my 'mid life crisis' when that Ladybird book first came out ). The taxi driver reckoned it was a Hudson (which he'd re-engined with a Perkins diesel) but It seems now, after Googling up an image it was actually a Nash Ambassador - the two companies having merged as American Motors in 1954. Whatever the badge the beast was 6 foot high enormous 6 light fast-back Tank with that amazing bathtub way of concealing all 4 wheels. Did it have a narrower front track to allow room? Malta was huge fun then - lots of old cars while the last totally OTT island built bus bodies were still appearing - the one shewn (either a Brincat or an Aquilina body) having leaning forward window pillars to give it a short head's advantage over the rest. It's actually a basic Bedford underneath - despite wearing a Royal Tiger badge ! dhig

I've just wasted spent a most enjoyable hour rambling thru this thread. It reminded me of working in Salop County Council in the late 1950s and wandering around the S&M at Abbey Foregate at lunchtimes and exploring grass grown remoter bits on site visits. In gratitude I attach below the diagram in the last post right way up dhig

The above post was another where I wanted to click twice - but 'Informative/Useful' won by a short head. But 'Thanks' also for the responses to those 'all round the target' posts. 2 It occured to me later that you must get a lot of excercise for your back ducking under somewhere near the camera - so as to access DP in the extreme right Lekky corner. dhig

OK third post in a row... How has your Fourgon got teleported to 'Norridge center' (sic) http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/103600-luggage-van-in-norwich-city-center-why/ dhig

Yet another dhig post - with a silly suggestion. If you ever get round to making that chalk cliff backdrop to the Marine Yard hacked out of a styrene board, it will make a really dark claustrophobic hell-hole of the DP section to work in afterwards. Have you thought of a roller blind (or a curtain) that is a photo of the cliffs as a kind of theatrical backdrop you can raise and lower? My daughter and son in law who include stage design in their drama teaching might do it with lighting in front of and behind a stretched gauze screen that carries an impressionistic image of the cliff face on it. [end of silly suggestions...I'll get my coat dhig]

Pity I can't do two clicks but 'Funny' was ahead of 'Informative & ermmm...Useful? Helpful?' (see? There goes my short term memory again) [and, Please Sir...about the glaringly missing NW bit of DP backdrop requested: sorry I still haven't got my A3 printer back working, Please Sir, sorry please Sir] dhig [edit: and looking again more carefully at the first pic, that Lloyd Loom chair we can just glimpse the arm of on the left is a mile or two out in Le Manche ne'st pas? Craftsmanship /Clever]

Thomas Tallis illustrates just the point I was trying to make in post 420 above Luckily for us Tallis and Byrd survived by being extra canny through the murderous burnings of Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" and Queen Mary's era through to the end of Queen Elizabeth. dhig dhig

I enjoyed an article my wife (lapsed believer) got me (agnostic*) to read last week by Jonathan Freedland: "Religion, like sex, is absurd but it works" . As a non believer he was writing about attending a Yom Kippur celebration at a synagogue with his mobile phone switched off and all emails stopped. He writes of how much he gained from the shared experience of community reflection, childhood recollections, and contemplation. He then suggested that 'Belief was optional' I decided that must always have been true - and it certainly worked for the Catholic church in the music that followed from the Counter Reformation in places like St Marks Venice. Vivaldi's vows as a monk seem to have been infinitely elastic! dhig *as an 'agnostic' I identify with this: "I used to be uncertain, now I'm not so sure"