railsquid

Small order of parts placed last week, dispatched in around 24 hours (which is about normal going by previous orders), took 8 or 9 days to arrive by the standard delivery method, 7 days-ish is typical but overall well within normal parameters.

An actual electric locomotive from English Electric... in the Japan Railway Museum just north of Tokyo (kind of like the equivalent of the NRM in York). ED17-1 in Omiya by Rail Squid, on Flickr ED17-1 - "English Electric" by Rail Squid, on Flickr However judging by the instruments in the cab, the actual electrical bits have long since been replaced by Japanese versions.

The "Scales" filter on the pre-owned section has lost the "N gauge" option, though other scales are still there.

Increasingly, going by the rate people are uploading their old photos of what were once mundane scenes, it's statistically likely I'll find myself in a shot of Bham New Street on a Saturday in the mid 80s.

Looks like the connecting door was kicked by a horse.

Oooh, a Dark Satanic Biscuit Factory down sarf

Apparently the small nominally Welsh village where my parents live, bisected by Offa's Dyke and within a Herefordshire postcode, was given a brand new shiny Welsh name, the village signposts updated, and it took a few months before anyone realised the spelling was wrong. The area was served by a pre-grouping railway, to keep things vaguely on otpic.

Don't forget to put the N gauge stuff back, the preowned list is showing "OO" only.

Did I ever post this? Thomas the Tank Engine and the Toy-Like Tunnel by Rail Squid, on Flickr

Entirely from memory... (The) Gambia - former British colony in western Africa, basically a long sliver north and south of the Gambia River, surrounded on all sides except the west by Other Former Probably British Colony whose name escapes me, as does that of its capital, principal industry probably very cocoa-related. I seem to recall some kind of civil war or uprising not so many years ago, but I may be mistaken. Namibia - formerly Deutsch-Südwestafrika - former German colony north-west of the Republic of South Africa, who annexed/adminstered it until the early 1990s(?), capital Windhoek, has or had lots of diamonds, home to part or all of the Kalahari Desert.

Let he (she/insert gender identification of preference) who is without sin cast the first... I have memories of a GSCE Geography field trip from the Midlands to Yorkshire/Cumbria, where most of my classmates had no idea where they actually were. This was the late 1980s so most of a generation away from universally available mobile navigation devices of whatever shape or form, I was the only one in the back of the van who could provide answers to the oft-repeated question "are we there yet?".

Curses, I though this thread was "Pre-Groupies Pedant Weekly", I was keen to know what life was like in those innocent days when one could attend exhibtions without being accosted by a gaggle of "innocent" young things asking if they could come and see your fiddle yard.

Watch out for the telegraph poles as well, they'll go for your legs. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-23/man-lucky-to-be-alive-after-trapped-under-telegraph-pole/8977746 I post this only because it's my brother, and it seems to have generated a disporportionate amount of news coverage (there was even a TV news helicopter at one point apparently), which leads me to think there must have been a seasonal lull in poisonous alligator bear attacks or something.

J1679 on the previous page - reminds me very much of some wooden pull-along trains of my childhood, albeit mid-late 70s. No idea how long they'd been in the family though.

C6858 - odd to see Class 37s in the American West

Intrigued, I googled around a bit and also found this: on another thread. Also, a potted history of trams in Portsmouth: http://www.welcometoportsmouth.co.uk/portsmouth

pretty consistent 7 ~ 8 days to Tokyo with the standard airmail option, luckily Japan is blessed with a highly reliable and efficient postal system (customs fees, if applicable, can even be paid on the doorstep to the postperson) and customs seem mainly worried about bags containing, ahem, herbs (only packet I ever had opened was one from my mother containing herbal tea leaves).

I do sometimes wonder what the logic behind pricing for some of their second hand items is. I do also notice the good stuff will go very quickly, often on the same day it's uploaded, so the further back you look in the listing the higher the proportion of less desirable items. At least that's the case for N gauge. Speaking entirely personally I'm sure I could probably get many of the items ordered slightly cheaper elsewhere, but ordering from overseas it's not worth the hassle. YMMV and all that.

Yes, 1972 ~ 1987. The new version is utterly immemorable, fortunately Moor Street is quite a gem.

Some passing through Snow Hill station from about 5:18 on this video:

From the previous page J3618 "London Cannon St Bridge and station April 74" fascinates me for some reason, feels like a bit of Victorian London superimposing itself onto the present (when the photo was taken, which is itself long enough ago that there were probably a few people with a living memory of the era still around).

Having lived in Redditch, that sounds like an attractive alternative. Is there a layout thread? For my part, pending delivery of sufficient circular tuits, I will be constructing something to be known as "Birmingham Knotmore Street", in a mildly alternative universe where the GWR mainline through the West Midlands was never closed.

Sounds a wee bit hand-wavy back-of-the-fag-packet stuff to me, but then I'm no tunnel engineer. Really?

And it's not clear what "verbal approval" was granted by whom for what. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/20/elon-musk-hyperloop-verbal-government-approval Personally all I see (as long as there's no proven working prototype) are the are first 4 letters of this concept. Also did tunnelling technology suddenly get way cheaper?

Looks like someone's been using the cab side of that 81 for some sort of target practice.