Hroth

I'm afraid this is the best you're going to get http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/21/article-1028228-01AC08E500000578-479_468x570.jpg Readies several buckets of cold water to steady the nerves of various gentlemen of a certain age.....

Ok, I'm a bit late getting around to this, but surely ATGBHSPFTFIUAS is a Leonardo da Quirmism for a "GWR Dean Goods"? Oh well. Where's the froth gone? According to Hattons, we're midway in their Dean Goods arrival continuum, there's no word from Oxford Rail as to actual progress and no-ones getting excited. Or is everyone off on their Holidays?

We call them castors now! Evidently, in Canada Curly Wurlies were initially marketed as "Wig Wags". I don't think people were paying attention. "Can I nibble your......." No. Lets not go there.

And Curly Wurlies too...... Edit for spelling, of course!

Yes - I saw that and restrained myself! Shows how poorly that slogan stuck - I associate "rich and thick" with " a milk chocolate brick" for an comestible that was evidently the snack of choice for lorry drivers!

One thing these prices demonstrate - its the reason why we made so many things at home from cereal boxes, washing up liquid bottles and sticky-back plastic! A big thanks to Blue Peter for showing us how!

Ohhh - the date at the top of the Squezy ad was 1960! I managed to make it into '66 so that makes the price difference greater - £2.10! Eeek! Its a pity those are Triang TT models, so we can't compare them to similar 2016 models... Still the equivalent prices of some 1959 items are: T3 (Mainline passenger set) @ 87/6 £92.45 T90 (Jinty) @ 32/- £33.81 T91/2 (Windsor Castle and tender) @ 55/11 £59.08 T95 (0-6-0 Diesel shunter - green) @ 33/6 £35.39 These are quite stiff prices when considered against average wages ranging from about £14 - 16 per week in 1959. ( http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1960/nov/29/national-average-wages ) Note how much professional footballers were paid!

Two bob, eh? Not bad! Though according to the price and inflation calculator ( http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html ) thats equivalent to £1.75 in todays sad excuse for money. It might be interesting to put some old model railway prices through it! I worry about the people in the illustration, they look like they've been ingesting huge quantities nasally........ (But I suppose that the graphic designer didn't have much choice of letraset figures to use)

It probably just depended on what was to hand at the time, although the one you illustrate would need a fair amount of pre-transmission preparation! And that Squezy is post 1971 as its decimal priced!

In those days, the BBC had a VERY strict "non-commercial" attitude to mentioning products on air, so common craft materials were renamed and trademarks obscured. The following materials were commonly used in Blue Peter craft projects: "Sticky-backed plastic" was code for Fablon (still available to this day!) Cereal boxes were usually Kellogs cornflakes boxes with logo and text rubbed off with wire wool Squeezy bottles were Fairy Liquid containers similarly treated Match boxes were Swan Vestas (large) or Bryant and May (small) similarly treated. The usual glue in those pre-PVA days was Copydex latex glue, with brown paper stuck around the container to obscure the manufacturer. And there was no thought to the health and safety implications of using discarded cardboard toilet roll centres! Colour was usually applied using Reeves poster paints, usually in a little glass jar with a screwtop lid of the contents colour (again with the label obscured). I've still got some of those in the attic, though the contents dried out long ago! Nowadays, you'll get an itemised parts list, I suppose....

An OO gauge version would be ideal to accompany a collection of Heljan class 15, 16 and 23 locos, probably awaiting attention..... My Heljan locos live in a run-down setting occupied by a Metcalfe 2 road steam shed and a Hornby diesel depot, obviously an attempt at "modernisation" in the early 60s!.

The pic does come up when you google for it, but the website it belongs to appears to be dead. I did find a rather fetching pic of Valerie Singleton, wearing only what appears to be a towel. It was in an article by Peter Purves in the Daily Mail about the sort of things he used to get up to on the programme..... Sadly there wasn't anything about the train set.

There you go, just the sort of thing I was thinking of to run the H&P Peckett on! So how many layouts are in the planning stage now?

Depends on how long you leave a stationary 12v loco on a DCC layout......

Its all down to age, taste and managing the market. At least we won't see Pecketts being flogged in Aldi! Although I'm surprised there hasn't been an attempt to sell a cheap trainset like "Caledonian Belle" through Aldi as a Christmas Special item. The price that Hattons are offering at present fits well into their demographic! They'd shift a hell of a lot of boxes that route and might even make a nice little profit, as well as raising the profile of model railways.

I suspect that the McClown won't be gracing a Peckett any time soon, although heavily applied dirty weathering with loads of claggy grease wouldn't be completely out of character! However, we might get a "Thomas the Tank Engine" face for the obligatory "Heritage Railway Thomas Day" train pack.....

That one looks like it deserves to be dunked in a mug of tea! When the first batch of Sentinels (Cattewater, NCB, Tarmac) came out, a sad little Hornby class 101 called "Sentinel", from many years previous, showed itself. Almost as confusing as the 9F called "Cock O'The North" which was current just before the real 2001 was released.......

I ended up doing roughly the same thing with the Sentinels, though as the Peckett is rather more expensive than those little beasties, my collection may well top out at two (Dodo and the H&P).....

Oh, come on chaps! If you can't justify a loco like the H&P Peckett on your main layout, just pop down to B&Q and get a chunk of ply and some timber battens, build a small(ish) baseboard and with a couple of points and a couple of lengths of flexitrack you can have a layout for it to shuffle around. A bit of work with some low-relief card kits (many are available!) and you can get a nice little factory environment to keep it company! There's no need to become a collector.....

And I got such a nice letter from Hornby a couple of weeks ago inviting me to renew my subscription. Perhaps they haven't had many renewals over the past six months...

And the wheels, and the splasher, which seems to be a similar shade to the cab side. Of course Hornby seem to have the same "green wheel" problem with the LNER livery B12... I'm just glad I don't need an Adams Radial, though I occasionally waver because they are so pretty.

A Peckett, a Sentinel and perhaps a pack of suitable wagons for each. All in liveries that will stay unique to club members and at prices that make it worth being a club member with a voucher. Thing is, they don't have to have a huge variety of items, just stuff that people will want and not reliveries of generic trainset stock. Problem is that if they have this stock sitting on the shelf, turning over relatively slowly, then when there's another panic the beancounters and stock checkers will sell them off to the retail sector to raise some wind, like the Hornby 2016 Hopper, etc, etc.

My last issue* of "The Collector" arrived this morning. Hornby are keeping up with the excellent reboot from the previous issue, 52 pages (inc covers) including pieces on: The S&DJR Simon Kohler on the future of "manufacturing in China" The Peppercorn K1 in model and reality The North Yorkshire Moors Railway Renaming/renumbering your model The Dover quayside railway The "Queen of Scots" Train No. 488 - A Survivors Story Young railway modellers at the Elgin MRC Plus the usual Juniors Section and product information. There's also a list of proposed release dates for the rest of the year, though some are dodgy - the Peckett and the B12 are listed for 16th December... Overall (first impressions) 9/10! * Unless something occurs to encourage me to renew!

Run with XP rating post-war, and you'd probably end up with corned beef hash or cream cheese! Seriously, as fitted stock, would XP be permitted as empties or when not carrying livestock?

The other thing is, its reasonably priced and with mucky brown weathering, who's going to say which company it belongs to?