spikey

Ah. My thinking in using the white is that the Wills sheets are a very strong red, and I'm not aiming for a red brick look (at least not a new red brick look). Might I ask why not acrylic primer? Isn't that the safest aerosol on plastic? Whatever, I know I won'r be able to match the Scalescenes papers, but - I have no colour printer and I don't really get on with card Thanks to one and all for your input. ETA - do those Precision Paints colours dry matt i.e. no sheen at all?

For what it's worth ... https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/environmental-services/best-approach-disinfecting-surfaces-amid-novel-coronavirus-outbreak

My first attempt at a scratchbuilt factory building is almost ready for painting and I've ground to a halt. The walls are Wills brick sheets (the thick "brick red" stuff), to which I'll shortly be applying a coat of Halford's white primer, and the intention is to paint all the walls in a "base" brick colour next, which I can subsequently modify as required with washes, dry brushing, picking out bricks in different shades or whatever. I've been faffing about experimenting with the Tamiya acrylics that I have to hand, but I seem to be incapable of mixing the colour I want, which I can only describe as Victorian brickwork more at the washed-out pale orange-y end of the spectrum rather than the red. My question therefore is - does anyone make a paint which might be suitable straight out the bottle? It doesn't have to be spot on as supplied: as long as I can modify it to taste by mixing in another colour, noting how much of that I add, and know that I can do the same with another bottle/tin of the same paint and get the same colour. Must dry matt, and ideally it'll be an acrylic, but I can go to enamel if I must, and application will be by brush ...

To anyone who's not read it, I commend the above marvellous book by Simon Bradley (Profile Books 2016), which I'd never heard of until I chanced upon it on the "returns" shelf in the library. 551 engrossing pages of railway and social history plus notes, sources and whatnot, written in an authoritative but engaging style, and yours for £9.99 (according to the outside back cover). Where else would I have learned the origin of the term "commuter"?

Tat? Tat ??!! I can assure you, sir, that there is not even the slightest hint of tat upon my model railway.

Let us hope then that the Gubment has secret contingency plans to ensure the survival of those young fellows on building sites whose diet seems to consist entirely of Not Poodles, crisps and brightly-coloured fizzy drinks. ETA - for those who aren't aware of this hopefully-trustworthy source of information ... https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

Well, here's an apposite quotation from Daniel Defoe's "A Journal Of The Plague Year". Human nature doesn't seem to have changed much since 1665/6 ... ... nothing was more fatal to the inhabitants of this city than the supine negligence of the people themselves, who, during the long notice or warning they had of the visitation, made no provision for it by laying in a store of provisions or of other necessities, by which they might have lived retired and within their own houses as I have observed others did and who were in a great measure preserved by that caution.

Dunno about the other locos, but if they keep going and knock another £14 off their B1 price, they'll be the same price as Kernow ...

IIRC they were about the same age as the Station Commander, so old but not ancient! By chance I ended up looking after them for a few minutes while they waited for a car to pick them up. Herr Galland was definitely well aware of the effect that meeting him had on the likes of me, perhaps the more so with this being in the Officers Mess at RAF Biggin Hill, but he was pleasant enough and courteous. As to my impression of Mr Bader, I'm not sure. I do remember thinking afterwards that if I had to pick one of them for my boss, there wouldn't be much in it but on a gut feeling I'd go for the man with the cigar.

What's puzzling me is how long can this virus exist on surfaces like clothing (such as gloves, woolly hats and so forth) and on solid surfaces?

I read that if/when it comes to it, the supermarkets and their suppliers allegedly have a plan to concentrate production and distribution on "the essentials". I can see a lot of people being very grumpy when they discover what "the essentials" turn out to be ...

As a young Pilot Officer, by sheer fluke I had the pleasure of meeting both Douglas Bader and Adolph Galland in 1967. Abiding memories are of resisting an impulse to stand to attention and click my heels when being introduced to Herr Galland, and the foul stink of his cigar.

Ahah! So those are the same mechanicals as the current ones then?

Am I correct in thinking that the only Hornby B1 available with the same mechanicals as R3451 "Stembok" is R3338 "61310" in BR green?

Au contraire, rarely have I known a man so happy with his lot in life. Or, come to that, a man who could stand alongside an open cesspit manhole cover and scoff a pork pie while the pump on his wagon did its thing.

Verily, you never really appreciate what a wonderful thing mains drainage is until you've spent many a year with a cess pit (emptied regularly in our case by the wonderfully-named Bill Brown, who was blessed with no sense of smell). True you can't stockpile waste disposal, but as long as you have a bucket and a plentiful supply of newspaper if you have a garden or plastic bags if you don't, the lack of mains drainage should be but a relatively minor inconvenience for most.

Hah! Next door but one has just admitted that he and his missus both thought we were daft when we mentioned over Christmas that we'd finally achieved an objective we set ourselves a year or so ago i.e. to have at least 3 weeks' supply of food and other essentials in stock. And if you're thinking of getting in a decent stock yourself, FWIW our starting point was to determine how long things do actually last us. The results were generally a revelation. Funnily enough, some things we'd assumed lasted far longer than they actually do, but others we get through far quicker than we thought. If nothing else, at least our shopping's a lot more efficient nowadays ...

Unless of course your nephew's lad dropped his 64XX, it suffered terminal body damage but the chassis is OK, and I have a 57XX body which is surplus to requirements ...

It does indeed, Pete. Thank you. Interesting though hardly surprising that nowhere does Hornby tell punters that the nameplates come in the detailing kit. I'd have thought that was a plus point well worth making ...

How is it that if you do a Google search for "Hornby R3451", whether or not the model comes with nameplates fitted seems to depend upon who's flogging it? For example ... https://www.track-shack.com/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=r3451&PN=Hornby-R3451-OO-Gauge-BR-4-6-0-Thompson-B1-Class-Stembok-61032-Hornby-R3451.html#SID=74 and https://railsofsheffield.com/products/29973/Hornby-r3451-oo-gauge-br-4-6-0-stembok-61032-thompson-b1-class-locomotive

I am obliged to you, sir. One final question if I may - is it a lot of work to fit a later (i.e. post split chassis) 57xx body to a 64xx (centre drive) chassis?

OK ... so have I got this right? 57xx are rear-wheel-drive and have sprung centre axle. 64xx are centre axle drive and are unsprung, but they have bushes. Therefore the way to tell the chassis apart even if the bodies have been swopped is simply to check for the presence of the semi-cylindrical bulge under the centre axle . If it's there, the chassis is a 64xx.

Hmmm. The question arose after I was talking to a bloke who reckoned the "new chassis" was a retrograde step, but I'm now beginning to wonder if perhaps there actually isn't a "new chassis" ...

Thank you, sir. Is it actually a download, or just a read-it-online?

"Download your free BRM Digital Edition" says the email I got earlier today. OK, thinks I, so I do as instructed creating an account and whatnot. Then I click on "Click here for your free issue" and nothing happens apart from I get "Log in successful" and a blank PocketMags page with forward and back arrows on it. Is it me, or what? Running latest Firefox on up-to-date Windows 10 laptop.