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Portable ramps - which as I said could be carried by the recovery truck. And as a land rover driver I can assure you I could drive on and off of there quite easily without ramps!

Strange recovery - surely it would be easier and cause less damage to just reverse back to the entry point, then all that would be needed would be a couple of ramps - which as it happens so regularly the recovery trucks could carry.

Locos don't have "parking lights" there is/was no requirement to display any lights when - "parked" - stabled In a depot/sidings (i.e. not on a running line) Any movement carried out in sidings/depots should be at speeds to stop short of any obstructions whether lit or not. If you had left most locos with tail lights and cab lights on for long then they wouldn't have started again, and locos were stabled with the battery switch out - i.e. the loco was electrically dead.

I've got three Nat west credit cards (mainly because my partner used to work for NW and she used to get commission when "selling" credit cards ) and though one was always Mastercard - just in case I ever had problems with Visa - the other two have changed from Visa over the last year or so. Though at the moment my NW Debit card is still with Visa. I have never noticed any difference between Mastercard or Visa when using them.

A quick phone snap I took this morning of a couple of Turbos approaching Bathampton Jct, taken whilst walking along the canal towpath. A look on Realtime trains tells me this was the 1142 Salisbury - Cardiff.

Our local tip accepts them or they used to. Funny true story - sorry its long! Back in 2007 we went to Iceland (beautiful place) when there was still a direct ferry from Scotland. We were camping so took two calor bottles but the one thing we didn't cater for was the regulator breaking. As we were driving a Land Rover we had some tools and managed to take it apart but couldn't fix it. Luckily we were just outside Reykjavik at the time so spent several hours being directed around trying to get a replacement but they don't have calor there, so we had to buy a new bottle and regulator, on returning we couldn't leave it behind as the ferry dumped you on the Faroe Isles for three days en route, so to cut a long story short after the bottle had been emptied, and as calor didn't want it - it was a different shape - I took it to the tip. When there I asked one of the staff where the gas bottles go, he pointed me in the direction then looked at the shiny new odd shaped bottle and said that's a funny one, to which I replied 'yeh it's from Iceland' and he said in all seriousness " Won't they want it back" As I laughed I had to explain to him, the Island not the shop!

As Paul has just pointed out everyone has different experiences/ideas. I took early retirement/redundancy four years ago at 57 and have never regretted a minute, I have been offered a couple of part time jobs since but have turned them down. I have no set routine, some days I have lots to do, on others I'm just lazy and do very little but either way it's true what all retirees say - "I don't know how I found time for work!" What I would say is you need something to keep you active, personally I have taken to walking/hiking and try to go once or twice a week for at least 10 miles, and have found I enjoy it (even without a dog - though I do also walk dogs for relatives and friends occasionally). But as long as you are happy about retiring financially as you seem to be, then I would say just do it and go with the flow, you will find there will always be things to do , don't worry and enjoy it - we are all getting older who knows what's around the corner.

They are indeed https://skytrex.com/collections/railway-models

Nice to see the ABS kits have resurfaced, seeing that I'm tempted now to get a couple more. White metal might be a little dated now compared with newer kits but Adrian made some lovely castings - apart from the buffer heads!

That looks like a real multimedia kit. Personally I always wash with Viakal - the liquid in a bottle rather than the spray - and give it a scrub with a toothbrush before rinsing with water. As for priming I just use halfords primer, on both brass and resin, and have not had any problems , but whether or not etch primer is better I have no idea

My mojo has been missing for a while so I've not done much apart from a fiddling around with a slaters LMS brake van that's been completed except for the handrails for around 5/6 years - anyone else hate doing handrails? So I thought I'd return back to the subject of my first post - stone wagons- and show another of my earlier projects. MTV wagons, for these I used a tank chassis - the same as BR did - and scratchbuilt a body on top. Not a very good photo but the only one I still have of work in progress. I used Heljan class B tank chassis and as these are metal without doubt the hardest part was grinding/filing off the tank saddles to give a flat base to mount the body on. I also had to file the buffer baseplates from the headstock so that I could move the buffers out to the correct positions (they are too close together on Heljan tanks) in all it all took ages and I wouldn't want to do it again. Alhough looking at the finished photos I should have taken a little longer on the chassis to fix the spring hangers to the solebars! - maybe I'll revisit them at some time The bodies are a straightforward box built from plastikard and plastic strip I reused the original buffer bodies with some scratch plastikard baseplates, and added the changeover levers. I only did these two, but overall I'm pleased with them and they're something a little different

We've got these voi scooters on trial in the Bristol area, and they're an absolute nightmare, most of them make (bad) cyclists look like angels. They are supposed to be only ridden by licence holders and obey the highway code, but they just shoot across pavements/roads and out of junctions and lights at will, seemingly without a care about other road users, often ridden by young teenagers/children and very often two or even three up. Or failing that someone with ear pods in or a drunk coming back from the pub! with no idea of their surroundings. I've had a couple of close shaves with them and I'm sure the motorist will get the blame when the Inevitable happens. But if the government are making money then I'm sure they'll be legalised and coming to an area near you all soon - be afraid!

If you took a loco onto shed just for the fitters to look at a particular fault and were in a hurry to get going again then you wouldn't bother with fuel, but generally otherwise all locos would be fuelled regardless of how much they already had

Usually but not always - if you were on a quick turnaround and the fitters wanted to check something else at the same time they would keep the loco running

Yes my thoughts were probably a welder they often had chairs with them or alternatively he may just be sat on a sleeper

You should've walked up to the tower Jim , that would've given you a good workout

Yes that's westbury (north) and I also think you're correct in saying 1984 for when the remodelling took place- I think I may still have a copy of the signalling notice somewhere.

Not disbelieving you but strangely I don't remember anything being dark green. I remember filing cabinets and shelving units as all being grey, and all the lockers I ever had (except once when I had one of those strange cage ones for a bit) were grey as well. Also in the 70s/80s most of the wooden benches you saw in messrooms/shunters cabins had been painted (BR) blue.

I agree, I could never be bothered at the time, even after mobile phones I only took a few. I would love to have a few photos as reminders now, especially as a lot of the places we used to go no longer even exist!

I was thinking of posting this It was sat outside the traincrew building at AD jct for a couple of years - It was there when I retired a few years ago , it could still be there!

Probably a bigger problem would be how many drivers are left that are passed for vacuum.

It was just something that was done years ago, though you did have to give yourself a lot of room to stop! Class 47s light loco would regularly be taken off the clock, and I've personally had 37s up around the 100 mark several times, though I remember well a 37 reading around 115 on the speedo, but I wasn't driving on that occasion and the reason I remember it so well because the whole loco was shaking and I was relieved when we began slowing down!