big jim

im so tempted to make my train announcements in a pirate voice now!!

I used to put lightning mcqueen (from the mini cars range) in the carpark of warmington at shows, not my idea but my little un was playing with it on the layout at home and i realised it was just the right size to blend in!

very impressive set, they even managed to make the video look like it was filmed in legovision!! we are going to the new legoland in florida in october, only 4 days after it opens, my little un is excited already

funnily enough i got that on CD from a car boot last week, the 1996 release on manifesto records with some cracking remixes on it, had it back in 96 on promo vinyl but only just managed to get it again to MP3 over. i've only just discovered elbow's "seldom seen kid", again car boot special, absolutly brilliant album

oh and another annoyance, and this happened to me this morning at wolverhampton, people who wont wait for passengers to get off before trying to get on.. some bloke tried to get on where i was getting off as i stepped off a LM desiro this morning, didnt even attempt to side step me or push past, just stepped up towards me from the platform after giving me eye contact too, needless to say he ended up back on the platform, im not the smallest of people!!

i know exactly where you are coming from on that one, thats my biggest annoyance too, must admit whenever i travel as a passenger i put my headphones in, got myself a cracking set of sennheiser noise cancelling earbud type so i cant hear anyone else and they cant hear me i have in the past when ive stopped a train in a station asked people making a noise behind the cab to keep it down, i normally add "im trying to sleep in there" if they are just having a bit of a laugh although this morning on my way home from work i got particularly annoyed by the young girl who got on at wolverhampton and started clipping her hooves.....sorry, toenails with a clipper, click, click, click, click all the way not to mention the toenails flying everywhere!!

we have just booked for florida again, not doing disney this year but will get the flexipass for universal, busch gardens, seaworld etc this time. also legoland opens the week we arrive so im prebooing tickets for that too. we were looking at flights from manchester to orlando international for a 16 day holiday but they all involved having to change planes at either paris or atlanta so we have ended up knocking 2 days off the trip and going direct from manchester to sanford for only £100 more. looking forward to it again, cici's here we come

i live over the road from the bentley factory so quite regularly see the cars out on test drives, also see a lot of those audi's sporty things (with bentley being part of the VW group) but the best had to be a bugatti veron and a konnezigg sat outside one afternoon!! regards the microcars, we used to have a daihatsu copen, cracking little car 700cc turbo engine in it, went like a rocket, 2 seater convertable thing, my wife ordered it, got it then about 6 months later found out wewere having a baby!!

ive got one of those sticky on sat navs which i rarely use, however when i started working in birmingham it was a god send to find my way to moor st for the first time the one in my wifes car however isna cracker, its an atfermarket alpine system (that has dvd player, ipod connections, rear screens etc) that one has built in TMC which is real time traffic reports, if i leave it running in the background while we play the ipod, even without a route set if something happens on the road we are on, or in the area, the screen changes over to the nav screen and advises us on the problem and will ask if we want to find a route round the obstruction, for example it knows that the A49 near whitchrch is shut so wont set a route that way, the first time i drove to work in it spaghetti jn was shut and it rerouted me before i got to the area, cracking piece of kit im about to replace it with a new alpine nav module which can be updated via usb and is about the size of a ciggy packet, the current one iin there s a DVD rom in the boot which is the size of a normal CD player

we went last year and did the whole disney thing with the 2 week passes, fantastic experience, not to be missed no matter what your age.... we also visited gatorland, the pioneer village in kissimee, and did an airboat ride in boggy creek which was fantastic, another place worth a visit are the citrus groves to the north of kissimee (past walmart and home depot) we went there and had a ride on a swamp buggy we havdecied to go again this year, luckily my mum and stepdad have a villa in kissimee so we only need to book flights and car hire, we are going over haloween again as tht is something you should really experience in america if you ever gt he chance... another reason were going is we are missing the golden corral and cici's pizza!!

richard, the owner is a member on here (richardsibley), he's really turned the shop round since he took it over, a pleasure to deal with (compared to the misery who used to own the place!), as well the extention makeing it a lot more roomy the range has increased too, as 60002 said there is a great selection of stuff on offer and some great 2nd hand (i got the NRM cromwell and bachy 1st run evening star off him a while back!!) that is of course if richard doesn't grab it first!! richard is well into DCC (and sound) and deals with howes for sound chips, also doing fittings, so if you are local to nantwich you can order stuff through him and he can fit it up if you didnt want to send locos via the royal mail to howes in all a great little shop, also over the way is a 2nd hand book and music shop that specialises in railway/transport books

had a message come over the NRN earlier while i was heading back from london asking the driver of 4M99 to contact network rail, anyway heard the whole conversation (which is unusual) and basicallythe train was a failure, spoke to our control while i was on a break and 70001 has failed with the southampton to trafford intermodal at tackley phoned bryan at howes who is not far from tackley and he went for a trundle over there to find a silent class 70 just south of the station, been there a good 2 hours as i write this, however bryan just called me to say a class 66 had dropped onto the back of the train and the whole ensemble is about to be dragged south back towards oxford too dark for photos thogh unfortunatly

steve, i think i'll just stick to the chiltern fleet for now!! managed to get hold of another 168/1 which is going to lose its centre coach to the 168/0 unit, the 2 outer coaches will then become another 172 thanks to more etches and bogies from PH designs, this time as its already in chiltern colours i will only need to paint the etches, the original full respray 172 unit will be ebay bound, its all very complicated!! to top it off i've got yet another 168 coming that will stay as it and another that will have its valances cut back to make a 168/2, so i should have the full fleet, 121, 165, 168/0-1-2, 172 and a loco hauled set i think the new layout might just have a chiltern theme somehow

the problem you describe is being discussed in the fault finding section of the forum, i have had major probs with both my iphone 4 and ipad accessing rmweb, getting the same problems you describe, down to the point i have tried different browser apps, opera and atomic web. even though atomic web worked fine to start with it is a bit hit and miss now as to whether you will be logged out, but to be honest safari is the same, despite not working at all last week sometimes it does sometimes it doesnt now, ive since removed opera as i dont like the user interface i visited the apple shop last week and tried rmweb on the store ipads and it worked fine, however trying on my pad at the same time (on the same wifi network) it wouldnt let me in, andy seemed to think it was a cookies problem and advised me to clear my site cookies (bottom of the forum page), i also cleared the ipad and phone browser cookies with varying short term results, since i highlighted the problem to andy via email (i couldnt log in to start a thread) other users came forward with similar problems that seemed to be linked to when you try and use the "search" function you get kicked out then cant get back in, if i do log in it says it was sucessful but then says i still need to log in

carried on with the 168, filled in the light clusters and repainted the ends, also got some networker wipers and handrails for it as well as adding numbers and cantrail stripe, going to add led lights to it after all, got some bi-colour type for the combined head/tail lights, just got to figure out how to wire them in now!! posed it on warmington, in reality it wont fit into the shed as the head shunt is too short! also getting there with the 172 as well.... still need to add things like the cantrail stripe, silver light surrounds etc

the tinted glazing arrived from hurst today so i made a start on cutting it up to fit the 172, only done 1 side so far but its looking good, not glued in yet though as i want to trim a couple back a bit more to stop the "bowing" effect you can see on a couple of panels also tidied up the 168/0, hand painted the new cab ends, will need to rub down the yellow again as the paint dragged while i was puttng it on, i think the brush still had some thinners on it, other than that i need to add light cluster masks which i will make out of plasticard (the unit wont have working lights) and handrails and wipers which i believe are available as spares from Hornby. a nice addition to my "custom" chiltern fleet

to compliment the 172 ive made a start on a class 168/0 unit, basically a cab swap on a Bachmann model with a Hornby networker.... hopefully the weight will help to bond the step to the body a bit better i will need to file down the roof corners to get them a bit rounder where the Hornby cab meets the Bachmann body but its quite close so wont need much, then its paint the ends, fill in the light clusters etc and we're done only other problem is the 168/0s are all 4 cars so ill have to try and get a spare centre car to add to the existing 3!

simon, i used humbrol "french blue" on the model, its lighter than the blue on the Bachmann 168 but when i put the can next to the blue on a real unit it looked pretty damn close, closer than the Bachmann model infact as well as the 168/0 im planning on doing the chiltern mk3 loco hauled set in its new colours complete with electric doors, im hoping to try and get some drawings for them at some point

have a word with pete for the etches for you simon next on my workbench is gonna be a 168/0, that should be interesting

just ordered some glazing from the hurst site as well as some cant rail stripes, also enquired about some custom decals for the units, he has done me custom decals in the past for an arriva unit i made so hopefully he may come up trumps for me

i got the frames looking what i thought was flush but you cant really tell until you have primed it, as you say once the blue is on its not as noticable, thats why i have only done one car, i can learn from my mistakes, i did similar with the 165, the first one was totally dismantled where as the 2nd one was not, and it came out better to be honest e real thing does have a seam along the top edge of the windows anyway, the bottom is however flush i may well paint the 2nd coach with an airbrush instead of aerosol too

took this the other night in stourbridge, the 66 on the left had just returned from rowley regis after banking a steel train up old hill, the train on the right was waiting to go into the goods loop so the other loco could drop on the rear to bank its coal train up there too

there should have been one knocking about, i was covering another drivers job when i flew past you yesterday as he should have been working the 172 test train (5z72) unless it was caped coz of the incident in wembley

right lets try again.... so id got as far as loose fitting the windows, the next bit was actually fitting them up the first thing i had to do was cut back some of the existing window frames so they didn't show behind the glass with the smaller panels i completly cut them away i then glued the windows in place using a thin run of superglue then masked off the existing yellow ends and gave it a coat of primer (having rubbed the body down of course) i could then see where the gaps were showing so i rubbed it down a bit and filled them with miliput which i let cure then rubbed down some more once happy i gave the unit a coat of white again rubbed down any rough bits and touched up, still a couple of gaps but its going to be in a blue area once happy i masked it off ready for the blue which it duly got once dry i demasked it to see how it came out, very happy with it, a few paint bleeds but nothing a touch up didn't sort out an ideal companion for my chiltern 165 next up was the doors, for this i had to remask the whole unit again as i needed to airbrush the blue as it fades out towards the top onto the spraying kitchen towel removed masking removed finished product including the rudimentary exhaust i then added the red line using fox transfers starting to look very much like a chiltern unit now i started to put the cantrail stripe on but it must have got damaged in storage as it started to break up once i touched it so i'll have to order some more other jobs needing doing are another coat of (the correct shade) of yellow below the front window, yellow band above the disabled door, things like buttons painting in, chiltern decals (somehow!), numbers and finishing the exhaust. then theres the glazing, pete has done it so i can cut the Bachmann glazing back to fit in the new frames but i might look at something different using "tinted" plasticard as it will be easier for me to cut to size and fit to the unit oh and of course the 2nd coach!!

here is a quicky from myself and 250bob, howes 37/4 (on 1 min chip) and a class 67 on bobs layout.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7aO_qAEtnI