railsquid

The plate tectonics have quietened down a lot since 2011 but I must have felt hundreds over the past couple of years, enough that I can actually give a fair estimate of their magnitude and approximate epicentre. Must stock up on emergency liquor supplies, come to think of it.

"Mint in box, only taken out for eating, empty package surreptitiously replaced in box" is the usual drill...

Torches in every room, small tabletop stove with plenty of spare canisters, several weeks' supply of bottled drinking water, various non-perishable foods, helmets, heavy duty gloves, first-aid kits, water canisters, portable toilet, plenty of toilet paper, wind-up portable radio which can also charge mobile phones, lots of batteries. Not paranoid, just living in Japan.

Evening. One of those nice almost spring-like Tokyo days which deludes one into thinking winter is on its way out, but as it can snow in April and we had 30cm of the stuff at the end of January last year I'm not putting the snow shovel in storage just yet... Project Sprog Drop is approaching final egress, a date has been set for artificial induction if the incumbent doesn't pop out of his own accord in the next week or so.

Evening, long time no post. Another last train heading east out of Tokyo, drinking with former co-workers from the former company from hell. It's been less than a year since I quit, but I am still meeting people who joined after me but were fired or left of their own voilition.

Do you do house deliveries as well?

Oooh, obviously we're dealing with an ebay amateur here. Description is missing the words "kit built", "hand-weathered", "vintage" and "rare".

How else do you think they hoover the track?

Apologies if this a stupid question, but how come there are still 56s around but no 58s? (My one and only cab ride was in a new-ish 58 so I kind of have a soft spot for them).

No better way to achieve the highly-desired mockling effect, IMHO. However, to achieve the true "You are buying a lovingly hand-crafted scratch built vintage model !!!RARE!!!" effect it needs to be towed behind the Land Rover through a muddy field as well.

WTF is "mockling to the roof"?

"Kit-built", eh? I remember those 80's RTR kits from Hornby vividly... http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hornby-R877-KIT-BUILT-BR-BLUE-CLASS-24-BO-BO-DIESEL-LOCO-24113-MINT-BOXED-mw-/370792028750

Great thread, excellent pictures. As someone who's always been interested in railways, reading this thread (and others here) from people at the operational end of things has been very enlightening - it's an aspect I never used to have any access to, and it's fascinating.

Many thanks!

That's an interesting livery, what is it?

Presumably it was used on RHTT trains?

Thanks "top of a backfilled great central under bridge on the buckingham road" Aha, I thought that might be the case. Appropriately enought the actual bridge carries a stretch of abandoned road (link: http://goo.gl/maps/nZDVy); I guess it was easier to fill in the cutting and route the new road around the old bridge rather than replace/widen the bridge.

Hmm, that was evidently what I was originally looking for. Original link worked for me, but Google Maps does funny stuff some times, especially with the new version. This should work: http://goo.gl/maps/8t4FM Thanks, I was reading your Colas thread (which is what caused me to go poking around that direction). Haven't got all the way through it yet.

I just found me a new timewaster...

Aha, I guess it must be here? http://goo.gl/maps/0hHwp

I was looking something up on Google maps after reading a thread here (can't remember which one), anyway I noticed a stretch of what was evidently abandoned railway and followed it for a while, fascinated by how its course was still a very visible landscape feature (even where it's been subsumed into a field, its traces are very visible). At some point south of Brackley in Northamptonshire it crosses another abandoned line on an intact-looking bridge, which I find kind of fascinating for some reason: http://goo.gl/maps/xIHym I presume the line going more vertically on the map, the one crossing the bridge, is the former Great Central.

Better skips have ended up as layouts.

I lived in Berlin for many years, it was like a battlefield on New Year's Eve. I vividly remember spending one evening on the top of an apartment block watching the place literally be covered in a blanket of firework fumes. Had two cats at the time, one was fine as long as she could check me and the ex were not put out by the noise; the other was a complete scaredy-cat, I used to have to make him a soundproof fort (well as much as possible using all surplus blankets, quilts etc.) which he retreated into for the night.

Bingo. M4.2 northeast of Tokyo. One of the less useful skills I've picked up over 6 or 7 years in Japan is the ability to tell which direction earthquakes are coming from, their approximate epicentre and magnitude.

Well, Happy New Year from Japan!