Michael Hodgson

Comes of loose shunting at 90 MPH !

It isn't easy to find what actually is out there. Google doesn't find the stuff that is there, the Shapeways site isn't the easiest to navigate and it seems I essentially have to go through the same sort of process on their various competitors' sites, assuming I even know who they all are.

Yes

Yet. Give it a few years. They will have run of options once they done them in every crest from IoW Central to Garstang & Knott End and Harry Potter.

I didn't know Hornby had produced Mallard In MSC livery!

That's why I like warm beer.

You mean they haven't?

Well I would say box above has 6 sections - 3 pegging instruments from the box in rear and 3 non-peggers to the box in advance. And you have twice as many sections on a four-track line without increasing the number of junction. If you take a station like Lincoln, in one direction Pelham Street box had instruments for each of the through platforms as well as the non-platform through roads to High Street and to two routes in the other, so the block shelf was very full. And that was after St Marks station had closed and lifted. A really big station like Rugby had as many as 7 boxes, so there would be a lot of instruments from one of these to another, but although there were routes to quite a lot of places from the town the junctions were signalled from separate boxes. When power signalling came in a place like Crewe lost a lot of smaller boxes and Crewe North and South boxes then controlled larger areas. By contrast a big seaside terminus like Lowestoft has a thundering great lever frame and a very long block shelf carrying a single Up/Down combined instrument.

If you want a beautifully restored station undisturbed by trains and passengers, you should have gone to County School in Norfolk when it was first done up. Not yet connected to the rest of the Mid Norfolk Railway last time I was there it was looking rather sad and neglected again but I do believe work has since been done to bring it back up to scratch for the northern Extension which should get there before too long.

Interesting. As it happens the GP in question and her husband (also a doctor) are both ethnic Chinese. It's a good job we have kept in touch - from the other side of the world she told me to go see my GP who made an urgent referral to hospital where I was told this afternoon that I need an operation to remove a growth which may or may not be cancerous.

The government announced today that the beer garden should reopen from 12th April but subject to a limit of six. I'm a bit confused because Boris didn't explains whether that meant I could only have 6 pints, or if it was most people allowed in the queue for bar or the bogs..

Hmmm. My partner's former GP would have been able to get PPE had she still been in this country. As it is she had just emigrated to Oz and is now working as a GP down under. She couldn't get proper face masks etc when this all kicked off, so she went to the local equivalent of B&Q and got a welder's mask. I thought she was joking but I've seen the photos!

The tea chests I remember certainly weren't varnished, although I suppose that may have been desirable if there was a risk of water damage in a ship's hold. They were made as cheaply as possible in the tea-growing countries (though the wood may well have been imported) and only intended as single use packaging, a bit like our modern expanded polystyrene fast food packaging. The same was true of orange boxes, so they were generally available for nothing once they had been used. I do remember they were often lined inside with foil which I suppose must have been necessary to protect the tea. One of the oldest photos I have is of myself and my brother aged about 5 & 3 inside one.

Under Staff and Ticket working this would typically have been a lump of wood, labelled with the stations between which it was required to be carried, simply handed over between driver and signalman. If a second train was to follow in the same direction, the first was shown the staff but given a signed paper ticket authorising the journey, and the staff would follow on the last train before a train could run the other way. There would only be one such staff for any section. OES Staff working ("One Engine in Steam") was the same system without the paper tickets, used on short branches whose entire traffic could be handled by a single loco. The bluebell link is to electric train staffs, which are metal rods and they are used the same way as key tokens or tablets. They must be put into instruments at each end. There are several such staffs for the section, but the instruments only allow one staff to be in circulation at any one time. This is more flexible as you can change the direction of travel without worrying about which end of the line the staff is at, just so long as there's nothing already on the line. The full size instruments use staffs perhaps 20" long and about 1" in diameter, so quite heavy. Miniature Electric Train Staff was the same thing reduced in size, the staffs are about 6" long and about 1/2" diameter. The configuration rings ensure that a staff can only be put into the instrument for the right section of line. If the staff is turned from a single piece of metal, the rings can't move, but of course if they are made more like washers forced onto the staff, there is the risk of the type of damage referred to by Phil.

Stop giving the cat a vindaloo!

Love the effect created with these, especially the tea chests. We move house every couple of years when I was little, and the humble tea chest was the standard way of packing up smaller items prior to moving day, rather than the stout cardboard boxes now favoured. You could expect to see them on any Pickfords van, so they probably also got carried in the conflat-type containers. We generally had half a dozen old tea chests in the loft.

Don't worry, I had never heard their German name - we call them smoke deflectors. I have only just seen this thread, I have always liked the Claughtons, especially the larger boiler version but without smoke deflectors. They seem to be a notable omission from the RTR market although kits have been available. I understand the reason for those oval holes above the driving wheels was to allow access for lubricating the coupling rods. Excellent work on the 3D print, congratulations

Sorry, quite right - blue over black

I usually read that as "I haven't got a high enough IQ to test it"

That's 12":1 ' scale weathering.

Oh what a surprise. EBay is a de facto monopoly and it isn't regulated by the government.

It should be noted that in that situation only the point nearest the platform is used by passengers in the facing direction, so it would be fitted with an FPL, but the other end of the crossover wouldn't, so the question of locking both ends of the crossover with the same lever doesn't even arise. Even where both ends of a crossover do require FPLs (perhaps a large station throat), any particular movement is either in one direction or the other, so only that facing end needs to be locked. There would be two separate FPL levers, and only the relevant one is included in the locking of signals reading over the crossover. However some diagrams show FPL levers locking two points in other situations, if they are arranged toe to toe for example (saving the cost of a lever) And if points are motor worked, the FPL is built into the motor assembly so you don't have a separate lever, the point lever would be black above blue. The cost consideration isn't just provision of equipment where it isn't needed. Odd as it may sound, it is preferable NOT to lock a trailing point - because if it is run through, the damage done to the p way will be less than if it was locked.

Different pronunciations depending on whereabouts on the river you live, yes pronounced NEEN is some places, but NENN in others. The real surprise is they all use the same spelling! Here in Hitchin the town is named after the river Hit - but it's the Hiz a couple of miles away in Arlesey. At Shefford they have a RIVER HIT sign which they had to modify so that there isn't room to insert an extra letter before the the name of the river.

Looking like excellent quality prints

No, it's the P4 lot who look down their noses at EM modellers. And they in turn look down their noses at OO modellers. Or to quote Ronnie Corbett, "I know my place".