Northmoor

TV and film makers do make a lot of effort to get things "right" with things like period clothing, so it's odd that a generic steam train often seems sufficient. I suspect it is often driven by what location is available. If you want to film a Southern station for four days in summer, Horsted Keynes might not be available because it's operating! I can even live with incorrect trains but what often jumps out at me is 21st Century language used by WW2-1960s era characters. There are a lot of terms common speech that have evolved only since availability of the Internet became commonplace within the last 20-25 years. More sensitively, TV dramas show a level of widespread liberal tolerance that I suspect wouldn't have been common in the era represented.

This is the main benefit of oil-firing, you don't stop operating steam - which is what the public will pay a premium for - no matter what the drought. The Snowdon Mountain Railway has never, to my knowledge, had to suspend services. Converting 4965 is smart thinking if it means Vintage Trains don't have to cancel and refund passengers, while everyone else is. Note though that the Ffestiniog used to run on waste oil collected by it's members and I think, topped up with domestic heating oil when supplies were low, or probably the other way around. It wasn't bunker oil, that has long been illegal to burn outside international waters (most ocean going vessels capable of using it start and run on diesel until sufficiently far from land). They converted to coal when the price difference became not worth worrying about and since the quality of waste oil couldn't be controlled, they couldn't guarantee their emissions met regulations.

London Underground get round this by (as well as passengers not opening the doors) using CSDE (Correct Side Door Enable). A transpondery-thing under the far end of the platform releases the doors on that side only, with no input from the driver (sorry, operator).

Most of Venice is goodness-knows-how-many-hundred-years-old and all its buildings stand on wooden posts driven into the alluvial mud. Apparently any removed are as hard as stone.

I remember years ago a piece in a preservation society mag - Ffestiniog I think - about placing and securing some very sturdy posts. The writer insisted that the problem many had was setting them in concrete instead of packed round with stones. I can see the logic; concrete is porous and if in very wet ground, will hold water long after the ground has drained. With stones, as the ground drains, the wood can dry out as well. There is the other advantage that it's probably easier to adjust the position (and re-pack with more stones if the hole starts to open out).

A former neighbour of my parents was a cookbook writer, specialising in gluten-free cookery. She believed her books were unusual in that the author had actually made all the recipes, multiple times, to make sure they actually worked. I know they weren't Iain Rice's work, but many of Railway Modeller "Plans of the Month" suggest no-one had ever actually tried to fit them into the claimed space. I can certainly remember one or two where putting a ruler to the page suggested some curves were less than 15" radius, in OO.

Dad's cars: NWW 191K, TDE 916, HBX 188N, B39 YDE, D157 YFR, D222 PEJ, then UBX 383T (my first car). The only ones I don't remember are the Mk1 Cortina we bought off the neighbours and only ran for a few months, and the side-valve Minor Dad still has but its re-registered with an A-prefix which I can't commit to memory. Its original number was OWL 501, which the previous owner sold for more than the car fetched without it. For some reason the registrations of cars I've owned as an adult don't stick in the mind in the same way.

When Dame Vera Lynn was withdrawn in Greece, it was oil-fired. It had to be converted back to coal-firing after repatriation to and during restoration in the UK.

That's because glass sheets are made of float glass whereas bottles etc. are made from blown glass. They aren't chemically identical.

I believe the same logic is occasionally applied on Death Row in America, in the instances where executions have been delayed as the condemned person was ill and they were waiting for them to recover.

I've just reminded myself that Second Generation DMUs are now approximately as old as the First Generation DMUs were when the last were withdrawn.......

Look at it this way, you have the excitement of finding a model(s) you forgot you had, or hadn't seen in a long time, for a cost of nothing. There are people currently surfing model shop websites to get the same endorphins and spending money to do it.

This is why I walk all our broken glass to the bottle bank at the end of the road. One broken bottle in your bin contaminates the whole load, diverting it to landfill. I can't understand why roadside collection still accepts glass, for this reason. Mind you, I still can't understand why so many adults think it's OK to leave litter everywhere, something that has definitely got worse in the last few years, it's like people have just stopped caring. Moan over (for now).

Mainline 75001 was I think, my first "really good" model loco (as opposed to Hornby train set locos of the era). I don't care that the current Bachmann/Hornby/whoever's model is superior, I will never part with my 75001, although it hasn't been run for years I will always treasure it. It's worth reminding ourselves that the model was released about 45 years ago. Mainline and Airfix really did bring Hornby kicking and screaming into the 1980s. Yes, the mechanism design turned out to be a poor choice in the long term, but everything about the proportions of body and tender on the Standard 4 look excellent to me.

How is this rake braked? I thought all air-con Mk2s were air braked only and wasn't aware the Black 5 provided air braking, so presumably the 47 is there to provide brake pressure (but how is it controlled?). If Riley's Black 5s all have air braking then I have even less sympathy for WCRC than I started today with. CDL fitment is routine on air-braked stock, so WCRC could have used air braked Mark 1s all along, there are plenty of them around. This is, I suspect, why WCRC are stalling on CDL fitment; vacuum braking will become unacceptable on NR before too long so the company doesn't want to commit to the expense on stock that might have to be withdrawn altogether before they have earned the installation cost back. CDL is a red herring.