spikey

Anyone in need of an early BR Hornby B1 (R3451) and about to buy one from Hatton's now they've dropped their price to £114 can save themselves £14.01 by buying from Kernow instead. A penny under £100's the best offer I can find online, and certainly a long way from Hornby's £174.99 ...

Is there a way to tell simply by observation whether a Bachmann pannier has the older sprung middle axle chassis or the later type with proper wheel bearings? To clarify, I mean without any dismantling, and without looking up the part/running number.

That's quite a job title. But then just think - if you were in the pay of the Bundesbahn, you'd have been one of the stellvertretende vorübergehende überzählige Verkehrsaufsichtsbehörden ....

No, not the plan for when Betty Windsor turns her toes up, but rather a wonderful 1975 British Transport film I've just discovered, very much of its time, about the works being carried out at London Bridge Station. If it's new to you too, just ignore the singing schoolkids and check out the sideburns, the work clothes of the PW gangs, and the apparent fact that to get on in BR management, a chap needed to smoke a pipe.

Love it.

Some folk do, but seemingly very few. It's a non-starter for us on the grounds of cost: we'd need to hire a cherry-picker on account of the tree's size, shape and position. We're going to wage war with water ...

Alas, experience tells us that anything hung in or from the tree attracts the attention of the local morons passing on their late-night transit from pub to estate.

Indeed. In our case, we'd be shooting towards the highway. It being illegal for some unfathomable reason to poison the wretched things, our only hope is a water warfare.

Now is the time when our damson tree starts thinking about sending out buds, Mrs Spikey and I start looking forward to freshly-baked damson pies, and the wood pigeons start looking forward to eating the buds off the tree. Wood pigeons being fit for nothing but eating your crops and producing more wood pigeons, we hate the things with a vengeance, and when I come to power, they will be one of the first things to go. Meanwhile, having accepted that any other way of keeping the blessed things off our tree would be either ineffectual or illegal, it occurs to us that the branches of said tree are no more than 5 yards away from, and are below, our bedroom window. I reckon this would be well within range of a high-powered water pistol/gun/rifle thingy of the brightly-coloured, apparently pump-action, type that I saw an objectionable child wielding in the park last year. Does anyone have a child possessed of such a device? If so, I'd welcome a user report and hopefully a recommendation of a good one to purchase.

Indeed it was, and I am obliged to you for the explanation.

If you search Ebay for "Bachmann 31-636", the 4th item down (at the moment) is a brand new one, running number 6417. The one below that is also a brand new one, same running number, but this one's got a coppertop chimney! Apart from that and the price, the only difference seems to be that the second one's in Oz. Does that somehow account for the coppertop chimney, or is there another reason?

Thanks gents. T That'll do me, and the BV in question will now find its way onto Ebay. This has though got me wondering just how reliable my memory is, so the follow-on question now is - what's the general rule for the colour of brake vans 1948 to 1960-ish?

When did the small red-on-white "Danger overhead live wires" signs start appearing on brake vans? I have a Bachmann BR 20T brake in bauxite with them on and I can't remember if that's kosher for very early 1960's.

Thank you very much for that, which is exactly what I needed to know. Never having seen the model of the Riddles 4MT 2-6-0 in the flesh, so as to speak, I could see those roofs being a real PITA, so it's good to know that they're not. Looking at side view photos of the model though, the floor levels do seem weird. So does it all actually look OK then once the gap's closed up?

Thanks John, but i'm after knowing how much you can close the gap on the Bachmann 4MT 2-6-0 with its differing floor levels.

I've long fancied a Bachmann 4MT 2-6-0 but I'm always put off buying one because of that huge gap 'twixt cab and tender and the attendant difference in floor levels . Is it actually possible to close the gap so that the ensemble looks more prototypical, but will still negotiate 2nd radius curves?

I couldn't pay on Friday, and whilst trying to work out why, noticed that the credit card I had linked to my PayPal account as the backup had been renamed (to something about art!). Phoned Ebay and was totally unable to understand the person on the other end, so phoned again and was told by somebody who could almost speak English to remove the credit card, then I'd be able to use my debit card. Did as instructed et voilà, success. I have no idea what that was all about, and even less idea why PayPal's renamed my credit card, but a swift Google reveals that I'm not alone ...

And that "help to buy" was actually "help to build/sell".

In the context of electricity supply and demand, I commend readers to https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/homepage?&_k=oo3fzj which right now, with gales all over the kingdom, shows windfarms producing 29% of the nation's output compared to the 28% produced by the burning of Vladimir's gas ...

Hmmm. I wonder which they'll do first - that or build genuinely affordable housing. No doubt that's the marketing spin, but my money's on the truth being more to do with the size of the buyers' backsides.

Funnily enough, as I cycled up the lane only yesterday I spotted an enormous white 4 x 4 parked ahead and was really struck by how wide the thing was. "Why on earth does that need to be so wide?" thinks I. Then as I drew almost level with it, out the adjacent house came the driver and her passenger. Tempting though it was to stop and see just how much the car sat down on its springs when they got in, I passed on the opportunity - but at least now I understand why if they did a remake of the original Mini or better still the Austin A35, it would have very limited appeal.

Around here, the pressure is on to build lots of new houses, despite the infrastructure being scarce able to cope with what we already have. And as I understand it, everybody's going to be driving an electric car before long, despite nobody quite knowing where the electricity needed to charge the batteries in all those cars is going to come from. Why then are none of these new homes being built with solar panels on the roofs? Would it not have been prudent to make them mandatory?

How much is my layout worth? Far more to me than it would be to anyone else ...

I have no idea, but I can assure you that in 1951-ish, the section that ran from Corporation Bridge along Corporation Road, Grimsby, was so constructed that the front wheel of my dear Mother's trusty Raleigh was able to engage in a groove of some kind, so as to lead rapidly to my being ejected from my seat on the front thereof and deposited upon the road surface to my considerable dismay. I never really forgave her for that. My only other recollection of the trams is being taken on them when I was slightly older, and being much impressed by (a) the way they swayed and rattled and (b) the way in which at the end of the journey, the driver (?) walked briskly along the aisle, swinging the seat backs on both sides over to the other way ready for the return journey.

Brilliant! Thanks Keith. I hadn't realised that mine defaults to usb transfer too. And I had no idea that there's a "lite" version of Libre Office, which I've been using on the laptop for years now. I do believe that's me sorted, gentlemen. Thank you one and all.