Andy W

Can anyone confirm whether I have correctly understood this thread, regarding the use of head and tail lights on these railcars in BR days? The built in lights were by then used only as headlights, and an oil tail lamp would always have been used, as photos seem to show? Just trying to get organised while my W14W is in the post. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Now there's a new DCC idea - drivers that are visible only when you want them to be, ranks along with the ability to turn rear lights off when locos are hauling a train or units are in multiple. (Yes, I know some have the lights option, but many don't, including newly-tooled models released this year). You could add the rotating steam loco driver, so he can face the direction of travel when operating tender or bunker first.

I've not seen anything to say that these will have separately applied number (or name) plates as sold. Have I missed something? I assumed they would be printed on, in which case Narrow Planet (no connection) already produce Barclay worksplates to order with your choice of works number and year that could simply be stuck over the printed ones. They also do custom nameplates in a variety of sizes and fonts, and custom cast numberplates. I've done what you're thinking of with but with a Hornby Peckett and a DJM Hunslet/Austerity (for which the same worksplate service is available) and name plates that in my world are the names of female family members of the industrial concern's directors. Edited to add: In my case I supplied the locos with number plates, but left the worksplates as they came, because I couldn't come up with a convincing works number/year combination for my imaginary industry. Others with access to more source material might be able to come up with works numbers that were unused for some reason (cancellations?) or in the case of the Austerities, were destroyed/lost at sea during the war, or simply never returned to the UK after military use overseas.

No problem if they're pdf files. One of the reasons the pdf format was developed was to make sure fonts were consistent across devices. Scalescenes, to name but one, supply their downloads as pdf files.

BR built non-gangwayed vehicles with internal corridors to allow lavatory access as late as 1960, admittedly as DMU or EMU trailers. There were also MK1 non gangwayed hauled vehicles with internal lavatory access. Some of these consisted of open saloons with an end door leading to a central pair of lavatories, others had compartments with side corridors - I have memories of the AM4 (304) EMUs which as delivered had one coach out of the original 4 with a side corridor past first class compartments, then the lavatories, then a second class open saloon. No way of getting to the other three coaches making up the unit.

More than rumblings, work is well under way, and the Bedford-Kettering-(Corby) section has escaped the electrification scheme cuts and is still happening.

It is possible to fit the new chassis with one of the push-pull bodies from the split-chassis version, I've done it. All the fixing screw holes are in the same place, you just need to remove some plastic from underneath the bunker, takes less than five minutes.

It wasn't unusual in the nationalised railway and bus industries for decrees to come down from high that mileage must be cut by a given percentage in a particular area. Of course what the people issuing the directives meant was to cut costs. Given the primitive systems available for allocating costs and revenue, mileage was perhaps the only thing that could be measured accurately. Local management would respond by cutting timings that did the least damage to the fewest people, since they at least had access to passenger counts. This gave the Board and the civil servants applying pressure to them what they had asked for, but not what they really wanted. If economy cuts were needed (and by 1958 they probably were) then removing a complete day's work for loco, stock and associated crews, reducing signalbox opening times, destaffing stations were all effective methods, but most local (Divisional level) managers did this routinely, having survived the 1930s when this was standard practice. Of course while on-train ticket issuing was nothing new to the (G)WR, as soon as two autocoaches were coupled together it became impossible since there were no corridor connections. And they still hadn't learnt this lesson in 1958 - non-corridor DMUs! Mind you, South Wales today sees lots of paired Pacers...

That standardised short working lettering came in part-way through the 1960s. Before that there was even less logic - for example the 3A was an extension of the 3 rather than a short journey. The routes I used most were the 6 (Sandon Road) and the 9 (Quinton). The 9 shared the A and B short workings on the new scheme with all the other routes using Broad Street, then had 9C Ivy Bush/Monument Lane; 9D Kings Head/Bearwood; 9E Holly Bush/Hagley Road West (used for depot journeys to Quinton Garage so much the commonest suffix). The 6 didn't really have short workings, though all the Broad Street routes would use the A suffix for inbound journeys only terminating at the Town Hall when something prevented them making the city centre loop - congestion, road works, processions being the usual reasons. Then there were the other anomalies - like the 33/34 Kingstanding - Quinton in peak hours only, which used one route number in one direction, and the other returning. I have used the City Circle route, though only to see where it went. Swathes of slum clearance and derelict industry made me wish I hadn't bothered, though if I'd taken photos they might have been useful for modelling now.

The BCT tradition of utterly uninformative destination displays continued well into the PTE era, as this photo shows well. For those that don't know, route 11 is a 27 mile circle. Buses run both ways round the circle. Nowadays they at least display an A or C suffix to indicate whether the bus is travelling anticlockwise or clockwise round the circle, and the pointless destination Service Extra has been abandoned.All it ever told you was that the bus was available to passengers, and possibly not going the full length of the route. In later years the main use was when the correct destination wasn't on the blind because a bus had been borrowed or transferred in from another depot. Given the number of depots involved in Route 11, it was bad luck to find one without the right short working or full route (Outer Circle) destinations on the blind. Always a puzzle even for native Brummies to work out where a Service Extra bus was actually going to, unless the conductor was on the platform to be asked. A good destination for model Birmingham buses on railway layouts though, especially since the crews didn't always display a route number either. Nobody can tell you that your bus has the wrong destination for the part of the city you're modelling.

The Belfast & County Down Railway had a train officially known as The Golfers Express, which lasted up to postwar nationalisation in NI. I think you can assume a few golfers used it.

Has anyone worked out how to get the green versions to show white lights to the front and no lights at all to the rear yet? If so can they share the information, please? As mentioned in other posts, in the original green diesel era the red lights at the rear weren't used, an oil tail lamp showing red was used instead. Obviously not using head or tail lights at all is an option, even the front marker lights weren't nearly as bright as those on the model, but it looks odd if the interior lights are on.

I've never seen a 4mm standard gauge Parkside Dundas kit without wheels already in the packet. Couldn't work any other way as they had quite a few stockists. Even if you bought direct from them at exhibitions, the kits were already packaged with wheels, and if people wanted EM wheels, for example, they opened the packet and exchanged the wheels, except presumably at specialist shows like expoEM when they might have expected most people wouldn't want OO wheels.. I assume the 2mm and 7mm ranges were the same.

Would it be necessary to drain down the layout between operating sessions to avoid dust (or dead insects) falling into the water and floating unrealistically on the surface? The Black Country canal system was in a highly unattractive and polluted state by the 1960s but I doubt you could pass off something with six legs as a rather dirty swan, or a dead dog (not unknown on the prototype).

Actually less use than a London RT, since surplus RTs and RTLs found their way into fleets of independent operators right across Britain, and a few municipalities too. Then there was St Helens, who ordered some new.. Well, I'd better get on with building the kits for Midland Red double deckers I have in stock to populate my overbridges. A shame, these had a vastly greater geographic range than BCT New Look deckers. And of course there already is a diecast New Look decker model in 4mm scale, from Forward Models.

Yet more trolleybus systems that lasted into the transition era: Bournemouth 1969 (mm, Bulleid Pacifics and yellow doubledeck trolleybuses with two staircases side by side - and the trolleybus turntable) Huddersfield 1968 Maidstone 1967 Teesside (aka Middlesbrough) 1971 Derby 1967 Belfast 1968 (OK, steam/diesel transition on NIR rather than BR - but can we have a WT 2-6-4T as well please, after all both a trolleybus and a WT exist to be scanned) In fact all these systems have preserved trolleybuses just waiting for a scanning party.

And indeed the postman delivered a parcel from Kirkcaldy this morning, possibly that last order, at least as far as the Parkside bit of the range is concerned. However the PD website will still allow you to order their standard gauge wagon kits and there is no mention at all of any change. If it wasn't for RMweb I'd have no idea anything was even planned. Presumably any orders are forwarded to Buckfastleigh?

One of the other features of "The Coastal" (if it even had a name in 1973-1975 when I used it regularly) was the device on the counter dispensing hot Vimto with occasional air bubbles appearing through the purple liquid. I'd never seen one before, or since. Not easily modelled in scales below 7mm...

Wildly off topic, but the service frequencies are defined in the franchise agreement, and many of the fares are regulated (though admittedly not advances - do SWT sell many of these at the moment?).

Ooh, doesn't it just. Without knowing where the actual prototype is/was we're all assuming this is meant to be GW in origin. Certainly the blue engineering brick lower courses and detailing with mainly red brick structure is very GW, for structures designed in-house from the 1880s onwards. That aside the only differences I can see between Bachmann and Oxford versions is the placement of the goods office chimney, and the absence/presence of a handrail on the steps up to the office door.

And one bizarre use for a BG - in the dying days of heritage DMUs based at Newton Heath availability was poor to say the least. Spare loco hauled stock was drafted in and took over some workings in and out of Manchester Victoria, hauled by 31s and 47s. Control seems to have been on top of getting the locos to depots for exams or maintenance. Unfortunately no similar arrangements seemed to be made for the stock, and what had arrived as 3 or 5 coach sets of Mk1s and early Mk2s gradually shrank as vehicles were red-carded without repairs or replacements. On one day I was at Manchester Victoria the bottom of the barrel was reached and an Oldham Circle train was formed of a Mk1 BG and absolutely no seated accommodation whatever. Everyone just got on and stood for their journey, and the 47 kept time (as you might hope, given the power to weight ratio). The north side of Manchester did have a reputation for creative interpretation of the Rule Book. On the same day I watched a very Mancunian supervisor laying into a guard who had asked for a replacement DMU because the buzzer didn't work. "In that bag you're holding you've got a green flag and a whistle. When you want the driver to set off, you blow the whistle and wave the green flag, and he'll put the power on, unless the signal's against you. Now get off out of here, you're 10 down already." (that's the toned down version, I don't want Mr York to ban me from the forum).

I seriously doubt it will be stonecast - that would mean the model was made out of plaster. Stonecast is a brand name for a plaster-based modelling material, Ten Commandments use it for low relief buildings and it is also used in some of the Harburn Hamlet range. It isn't used for products intended to have widespread distribution because of the weight and fragility. If you meant that it will be cast in plastic resin, that's highly likely, given the success of Bachmann's Scalescene and Hornby's Skaledale ranges. I have Bachmann Scalescene models with openable doors, so it is certainly possible in this material. I like the look of the Oxford goods shed, and wouldn't baulk at taking a saw to the door frame if necessary - while a shed this size wouldn't have staff on hand 24 hours a day 7 days a week, meaning the doors would be shut overnight and on Sundays, you wouldn't have the chance to run the pick-up goods then. Of course given the prevailing wind and weather conditions the loading bay doors might have been shut more than we think, to protect the goods in transit from rain and the staff from freezing.

So Dave Franks has explained the future for Lanarkshire Models & Supplies after the Parkside Dundas changes, and it is good to hear this high-quality range will continue. What will happen to other 4mm ranges that Parkside Dundas sell (and probably do the moulding for) such as the Grand Junction LNWR modular building components and Red Panda's wagon and chassis kits? Do I need to order any of these within the next couple of weeks to be sure I have enough for my next project?

Y'know, if someone wanted to sell products into a specialist market, you'd think they'd proofread their webpages before making them live. "Bullied" coaches, indeed! Not just once but several times.

If you are lucky enough to have a local model shop to buy your locos from, and you patronise it, wouldn't you expect them to take the loco out of the box and run it up and down their test track a few times while you watched? If it behaved like the loco in the video, wouldn't you also ask them to change it for another example? Now my most recent purchases are various retailers own commissions, and none of these are local retailers to me so I didn't have this option. I do follow the "30 minutes in each direction on a rolling road" principle for everything I buy, and indeed anyone who doesn't is asking for trouble later on.