Martino

South Buckinghamshire Light Railway.

Easter Sunday running on the SBLR. More at https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthBuckinghamshireLightRailway We also had a visit from our local Black Racer, keeping the line free from bugs and stuff!

Very nice Sir.

Night shift at East Burnham Signal Box, Crown Lane level crossing.

Good grief Keith, that’s amazing. What a transformation. Well done Sir.

Thank you very much. I’m blushing.

My Father also said it smelled odd. But I don’t suppose he’d had the pleasure of too many jets in those days.

First day of daylight saving here in Northwest Florida, so trains had to be run.

I have a large box of stuff I have retained from disassembled bits of kit. I know they will come in useful one day. I’m sure of it. I think. So far none of it has. Even the screws, nuts and bolts so lovingly sorted and placed in similarly recycled containers have had limited use. However, I know the day after I consign them to ‘another place’ I will desperately need the exact things I just dumped.

I agree with TomJ. Although I look back and wish the GW main line was as I remember it (with Westerns, Warships, Hymeks, 61XXs et al) I feel that Brunel, Gooch and countless of their successors would wish to move forward and not look back.

That’s really excellent. Also very neat and tidy. How do you keep it like that. I’m always suffering from leaves, twigs, weeds, and all sorts of other garden detritus. Not to mention that my one year old Collie has decided to chew anything that isn’t metal! It’s a very impressive railway you have there.

Carpet monster? My workshop is in a room off my garage. We’re in Northwest Florida, so some wildlife does get into and lives in dark corners of my workshop. So far, no snakes thank heavens (if I found one I’d be in the next state in three minutes flat), but many lizards from tiny anoles to bigger (five inch) skinks. I’m convinced that these guys behave like ‘borrowers’ and spirit items away. So, Railway reptiles.

I’m now attracted to 32mm track for 2’ narrow gauge, but like many others of the Great OutDoors Railway leaning, I started with 45mm track - the infamous LGB. For many who are just starting out and possibly unsure of direction it does give a wide range of options. It’s relatively cheap, especially second hand. Indestructible. Capable of many incarnations: narrow gauge (at 15mm or 16mm/ft it’s like 3’ or metre Gauge), standard gauge, as gauge 1. UK, IoM, Irish, European, North American or Colonial - virtually anything. Open to buying RTR, kits or bashing/scratch. It also has good resale value. It’s worth a thought unless you’re weded to 32mm track.

Continuing to relay parts of the railway on stone blocks, about 30’ today. Also installed a bridge I built a couple of years ago that has been clogging up the workshop. Here’s Peckett 0-4-0T ‘Betty’ doing a test run with a narrow gauge toad. https://www.facebook.com/TheSouthBuckinghamshireLightRailway

Just remembered the Triang Caledonian coaches. I did try to remove the raised beading on one side, but gave up and painted them both chocolate and cream with the lining picked out in black. I’ve still got them. And the Kitmaster BR Mk1 Restaurant car that first got repainted chocolate and cream, then I decided to create recessed doors like the Ocean Liner saloons (I was working with the GWS at Taplow at the time and we had 9118). Luckily I only did one door and was able to largely correct the error. Oh what a misspent youth.

Oh the shame...... A Wrenn 8F with the motion reduced and the cylinders carved off with Airfix prairie cylinders instead. An Airfix 61XX body. A flat front footplate. I thought it looked like a GW 2-8-0T. Of course the boiler was too small and all the dimensions wrong. Thank heavens I kept all the Wrenn bits, so with new cylinders and valve gear the 8F survived and still does. Let’s not consider the multiple Airfix pug bashes, even a sort of Fairley at one point. ....and then the Airfix diesel shunter bashed into various double hooded variants, even growing a pantograph at one point. Oh, the stupidity!

Those look like the ones. Thank you VERY much. That makes me very happy.

The first I remember was my father’s 0 Gauge he had in a large box stored at my grand mother’s house. He’d had it since the ‘30s. Hand made track on wooden sleepers. A 4-4-0 clockwork tender engine painted dark blue with two Pullman coaches, I assume tinplate but appeared very detailed to me with steps Windows etc, not printed. Also a 0-4-0 green tender engine with a Great (crest) Western on the tender plus a number of metal trucks. This used to be set up in the garden as an oval on the grass. I’d love to discover the make of those items. I presume some were Hornby. That was mid ‘50s. Like a complete idiot I traded that all in at Beatties in Holborn against a Wrenn Castle. I was then given some Hornby three rail track and some unpowered wagons and coaches. My father then built a baseboard for an oval with siding and installed what I think was Wrenn track. Two rail and we had a transformer in a box and aTriang controller. Shortly after a Triang Britannia, with smoke, and a Jinty arrived with Triang Pullmans and a bunch of wagons. This all grew over the years as my father rather fancied a layout himself. He always avoided Triang, which I loved, and instead bought Hornby or made Kitmaster coaches. 50+ years later after girls, cars, discos, marriage, children, divorce, house moves, career, remarriage and a move to Northwest Florida I still have some of my 00 collection although regrettably none of the early stuff. No layout though. We do have a splendid garden railway 15mm/ft on 45mm gauge running round the garden giving an impression of British Narrow Gauge.

Steve, you are a true magician. Well done Sir.

One divorce, one breakup of a long term relationship and then remarriage and emigration has caused a number of clean outs. Every now and then I thing “I’ve got one of those somewhere” only to find i did, but two or three moves ago. Equally, suddenly finding something and saying “why have I still got that old junk?” I do regret getting rid of some of my old mags - early RMs, a whole set of Railways South East (I think that’s what it was called) and numerous other stuff. Recently had an estate sale of my Parents in Law’s old home and actually took a whole load of stuff from our house and added it to the sale. It was quite cathartic and actually generated cash. What I REALLY regret was trading in my father’s 1920/30s 0 Gauge stuff and my early Triang, Hornby and French Hornby stuff to buy a pannier tank kit (which built badly and sold) and a 61XX kit, which I still haven’t finished, back in the late 60s. Still, I’ve now got a 16mm garden railway, and a few choice 00 locos which I managed to keep and I’m recollecting new magazines shipped from the UK at vast expense which will need to be culled or sold one day. As it’s all UK stuff it will mightily confuse the US residents when the time comes!

He who ignores history is destined to repeat it......or words to that effect. Regrettably, all of us in the railway sphere have very mixed memories. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner!

That’s very, very good.

As a long time travel industry guy, a marketing professional and someone both enthusiastic about rail travel and a fan of the (historic) GWR, I find these ads charming. I’m pleased to see the current GWR making use of their historic roots. I’m an ex-pat, so can’t say if they’re living up to how I imagine the old GW were in terms of service. I hope so. Certainly their image appears to be doing the right job. I’d certainly like to buy examples of posters and if the GWR are not making them available, I think they’re missing a trick. I like the way the current GWR’s marketing folks are thinking.

I agree that it is a conundrum as to how it should be printed to be correct. The same applies to H0 or HO. If one used a font where 0 and O are the same...... However it would have been easier all round if we’d all stuck to gauge in millimeters or inches and scale as a measurement/foot or indeed metre, or ratio. Therefore running 45mm gauge track at 16mm/ft scale would be perfectly understandable. I think I should stick to drinking this single malt......