Michael Hodgson

Perhaps it should gae been fitted with whiiskers, like a cat?

Boats are even narrower at the sharp end.

Probably better than Malla Shite.

What strikes me about this photo is the extremely tall telegraph pole in the centre, although we can't see the wires. I really wouldn't fancy climbing that one to do the wiring!. There seem to be too many arms/insulators for them to run to the other poles in in the photo. Such height would usually be used where it was needed to clear a very tall obstacle or cross a longer gap than usual (such as to the other side of the canal but the arm are not correctly oriented for that). Presmably there is another pole out of view just to the right of the photo, and lines cross the road in the foreground.

Rails sometimes ask for a non-refundable deposit, sometimes not. When they don;t you still have to go through the deposit payment ritual of paying them nothing in order to validate the credit card they will charge in due course (if it hasn't expired by then!) From what I've seen the nil deposit is usually on models which are announced but the price is not yet fixed, although in this case they have been given an RRP. They generally include the option to pass on any increase in price if the manufacturer moves the goalposts, with your retaining the right to cancel in these circumstances and get your deposit back.

Just like the real S&DJR then.

It's not difficult to work level crossing gates with servos. Note that as the swept arcs on both the Peco and Skytrex crossings conflict with each other, you have to move one then the other. If they were hand worked, thus would be true on the prototype also of course. If they were worked from the box they would be worked by a gatewheel, and there would usually be four gates whose swept arcs do not intersect. Whether the gates are hand or wheel worked, the brown lever is a lock to hold the gates in place (and release the interlocking on relevant signals). I would wire the brown lever to isolate traction supply in the vicinity of the crossing, as otherwise its accident waiting to happen, rather like not putting buffers on a siding close to the edge of the baseboard. That should read 2 OR 5, 1 OR 15 - signals in opposite direction on same track are interlocked against each other. Likewise you would be able to clear one of the four signals 6, 7 11 & 12 at any one time and then only with the points correctly set, the crossing gates locked and for movement left to right the FPL lever pulled.

Not to be confused with Derby.

My instinct has always been to go for metal for strength, but if you have a 3D printer and the knowledge to use it, you do have the advantage that if you break something you can print off another one. A downside of anything with moving parts is that it will entail different components and an assembly job, so becomes a hassle. I suppose it then comes down to how clumsy you are = how often you think you're likely to need to do that. So I'd still be aiming to try and provide some protection where possible - by placing close to an overbridge for example.

Sorry to say this, but I see demolition as inevitable on safety grounds. It must be worse than when I saw it and the local council would probably call it an eyesore. Nobody is going to spend significant money on it, and if it is left long enough it will come down in a storm eventually. If anybody wants to document it, I would advise them to take the initiative now and approach the site owners with a vew to starting before it gets any worse. I don't see them getting permission to climb it even at their own risk. It would have to be surveyed photographically - perhaps using drones?

You may recall the a few years ago AIMREC had stands at some model railway shows proposing an extensive model railway museum on the site of Ashford works. That fell through at least partly because of the amount of work required before the site could be used for anything, partly probably for financing but they ended up with a much less ambitious site in a village a few miles away.

I visited the site several years ago to look at a MR signalbox (which we could only enter using the staircase stringers as the treads were unsafe!). which a friend was considering for relocation. The decision was against buying it. The decrepit coaling towers were fenced off from the rest of the site with keep out signs saying it was a dangerous structure, and indeed it looked it. Listing a building of outstanding interest is one thing; stopping it from collapsing altogether is quite another. Cancer Research UK is doing some excellent work but they are not trying to find a cure for concrete cancer!

Not sure, but it ought to have them. Our dog slipped while boarding and we had to help her up.

In theory you shouldn't need them if the vehicle can be designed such that the clearance to the platform is closer, and you only need fillers at the door openings. On a curve the overhang/underhang varies along the length of a bogie coach, and is greatest/least at the middle of the coach depending on which side the platform is on. So if we avoid centre and end doors on carriages, but place the doors in line with the bogie pivot we can fit the gap more precisely with a fixed filler. Then all we need is the tolerance for the dynamic movement of the vehicle on its susension and for track moving out of position relative to the platform In practice though, active fillers are probably easuer to engineer.

I'm told Langley troughs are still there, with replacement track laid over the top of them.

It seems to me that model railways frequently introduce a short circuit into their traction supply. Whether that's deliberate or inadvertent as is normally the case when operating is irrelevant. The circuitry needs to be able to cope with it without causing any damage. Something that confirms the ability to do so has got to be a good idea.

Excellent job, and I do like the wood finish. You'll have to decide whether you are working the instrument to your fiddle yard operator who uses an identical one, or to a simulator of some sort (or possibly both options). One way of modelling bells I've usd that isn't too loud is to take the bell from an old fashioned GPO telephone and modify that to single-stroke working. Your wiring of the instrument is unlikely to justify following full size practice, as that includes complexity such as minimising the number of telegraph line wires between signalboxes and a latching design for safety so that the instrument keeps its last indication in the event that line wires come down in a storm (generally one wire with earth return on this style with miniature signal arms), and separate power supplies at each end. I've used non-protoypical circuitry for simplicity using home made miniature 3-position instruments, as did Tri-ang with their short-lived RT268 block instrument. One thing you'll have to decide with this two-position style of instrument is how to represent the "Normal" condition of the line in your block working, the third position of a more modern block when there's no trains about. There were differences between companies in their rules. Some instruments had additional aids such as reminder flaps or indicators to reduce the risk of errors (such as in the GER flap instrument, or in the Harpers blocks used in Ireland) https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co209395/telegraph-block-instrument-great-eastern-railway-telegraph-instrument The complexity of design could complicate which plungers you pressed to work the bell depending on the state of the block/message you were sending, since this could affect the instrument's indication. Some railways equated Line clear (miniature arm in the off position) to be the Normal position, as logically the line must be clear if it isn't its occupied. This probably made sense to railwaymen who had been brought up with Time Interval before block working was introduced, when signals had only been at Danger for a short period after train had passed. Other railways equated Train on Line (miniature arm at Danger) with Normal position, as it was seen as safer to regard the line as blocked except when it had been specifically established as clear for the passage of a particular train. The miniature arm should then show the same indication as the signal outdoors. I believe the SR inherited both practices at grouping and perpetuated the old procedures in different Divisions of the company. As you're modelling a fictitious company, you've got that choice to make.

They certainly got a good turnout to see the modernisation/rstoration of their system.

They might want to connect with another monorail elsewhere in the EU in due course . https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g211855-d3267800-Reviews-Lartigue_Monorail-Listowel_County_Kerry.html

Fish in vanload quantity may have disappeared by then, but fish by rail still existed. In the early 1970s I bought a 7-day all Wales railrover making as much use of it as possible. On its last day of validity I travelled from Pembroke (or Fishguard?) on the last train of the day. This was an overnight train to Paddington via Gloucester calling at Chepstow a few minutes before midnight. The Guard had inspected tickets just after Cardiff, and presumably checked the few had boarded at Newport. I was the only passenger to alight at Chepstow where nobody was waiting to board. So he was very surprised to see me as he hadn't seen a ticket "to Chesptow" and he told me that the train didn't normally stop (although it was advertised as a normal stop in the public titmetable) but had done so only because he had to collect a crate of fresh salmon for Billingsgate that had been caught in the Wye. It had been left unattended on the platform and was apparently a regular if intermittent traffic flow.

It was arguably more of a propadanda victory. Apparently the dams were repaired and factory production resumed relatively quickly.

Loco is carrying what used to be class D headcode, which was originally a partly fitted express freight, which this clearly is not. The alphabetic codes were replaced by numbers in 1962 I think. The classifications of goods train by braking characteristics changed a good number of times, so it may be possible to narrow down the era by reference to the class, always assuming the train was carrying the right lamps!

Recommended career opportunities for one-armed men? Other than banditry, I suppose.

I think you meant try not to ?

The hives would have been an ideal product for somebody who's into 3D printing, and you can then run off as many as you like, so that doesn't strike me as especially impressive. However I don't think you could knock up reproducible vegetable patches and chicken runs as convincingly - the gardens as a whole are a very impressive job. There's clearly a lot of very fine detail work there. I decided to give Thornbury a miss this year, but it's one of the shows I like.