Liam

Just come across this thread - the layout sounds fantastic. I have a family connection to Beattock in that my dad lived in the station house there between around 1965 and 1970, when my grandfather was area inspector. In addition, we have a holiday cottage in Moffat. 🙂

It’s unlikely I’ll be able to offer a layout, but I’m interested in turning up to show my face as a (semi) Midlands based RMwebber, even if by that point I’ll be primarily living and working within the Noble Realm of SWAG. 😀

Glad that efforts are being made to create a Midlands group though!

For me I’d say it’s the escape from the tunnel with the criminals inside in Oh, Mr Porter. 
 

While I would put that as (one of) the best, there are a few other quality railway sequences from more recent films. If we don’t let quality be totally defined by accuracy, I offer Paddington 2...

(Tornado was taken by road to Leavesden Studios and filmed along a short section of track there. Apparently the actor who plays Jonathan Brown, Samuel Joslin, was genuinely at the regulator - then aged 15!)

...and the tube scene in Darkest Hour. 
 

I also enjoyed (but some other members of this parish begged to differ) The Railway Children Return, and I also thought the climax there was very well done.

On 04/04/2023 at 13:13, Silly Moo said:

There are some fantastic but often not very realistic scenes in The Polar Express and who can forget Gromit’s frantic tracklaying in The Wrong Trousers? 

Still makes me chuckle today!

2 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Although that’s presumably more of an insurance issue than a safeguarding issue?

It is, but it also addresses the safeguarding issue.

On 17/04/2023 at 15:27, Phil Parker said:

Another thought - if transport is the issue, car sharing is often an option.  Once you get to know people, you may find some living near you happy to have company for the trip.

Yes, I’ve car shared a few times on my way home from my second club in Barnstaple (who slightly confusingly meet in Bideford). At the time this happened I was yet to pass my driving test, and realistically I could have waited an extra 20 minutes or so for the bus back to Barnstaple, but that’s the nature of model railway clubs; if a clubmate is able to help you, they will.

On 17/04/2023 at 12:54, stephennicholson said:

 

We  have gone down the route of requiring a parent/guardian to attend with the child rather than dbs checks. We have nearly 20 junior members so that works as well as pulling in adult involvement. We do have our premises so that does give an advantage.

 

Yes, for us in Redditch MRC we have a unit in an industrial warehouse, and it is strictly no under 16s allowed - that’s the rule of the premises which every tenant must follow.

On 14/04/2023 at 19:09, big jim said:

acton bridge up side? 
 

 

 

Norton Bridge? Although I think the main concern was the speed of non-stopping trains.

13 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

How about…

 

Coaches with doors that never open.

Services to a station where nobody ever boards a train.

Ground which has puddles but where it never rains.

Passengers who never actually move, even if they appear to be walking or running.

Rivers or streams that look wet but which never move.

Flat earth, not spherical.

The first time I went to Warley was when I was taken there by my parents aged around eight or nine. I remember seeing an N Gauge layout that had a stream with running water. Name escapes me but I think it was modern image as it had a Voyager and IIRC 66 on it. 
 

Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg also has a large inlet for the Scandinavian section of real water, which the model ships navigate through.

16 minutes ago, ELTEL said:

Another one being a coal mine over a tunnel 

The O Gauge layout at the NRM York?

55 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Given the weather hope they don’t regret their migration…..

Yes, it was bad enough for this human being while cruising along the Trent & Mersey! 

First house martins of the year spotted near Penkridge, Staffordshire.

On 27/03/2023 at 15:00, 6990WitherslackHall said:

Class pioneer 43002 Sir Kenneth Grange on display at the Railway Museum in York on 11/03/23

 

I met him when I paid a research visit to the NRM back in February. Glad that he’s been preserved in his original livery! 
 

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

I'd just like to thank @CME and Bottlewasher, @Miss Prism, @Halvarras, @billbedford, @TheQ, @Fat Controller, @Oldddudders, @hmrspaul, @LNWR18901910, @Liam, @MarcD, @Compound2632, @BR traction instructor, @wagonman, @DCB, @Welchester, @MrWolf (and everyelse that knows me) for all their contributions to this topic.

 

As a token of my appreciation, here's a copy of something I'd thought I'd lost. Just found while tidying up a photo library from 2004.

 

 

It's a picture of Ogbourne Station, painted by a local person, and given to me to use on the village website that year. IIRC, he'd painted it when young c.1950. The view is from the Up platform, with the signal box. Looking south across at the Down platform, with the Station Master, who seems to be watching the two rail workers. Note the cattle wagon in the small siding, partly obscured by the up signal. Cattle would be driven down the village High Street to be put in the cattle wagon for a trip to Swindon Cattle Market, in Old Town. In the background are the Marlborough Downs, with the ancient Ridgeway path running along the top.

 

The picture and your words sum up a wonderful way of life in England which sadly now only exists in small pocketed areas today.

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Did you see this railway at all?

 

I understand there is also a light rail system now, partly on some of the old railway trackbeds.

Unfortunately not, but we did see the new tramway. That looks very smart and I was told upon returning home and down at the model railway club for the first time afterwards that the trams in Mauritius are the same design as those on the Midland Metro.

I hope you don’t mind me bringing this thread up. We went on holiday to Mauritius for Christmas and it’s a fantastic island. On one of the days just before Christmas, we hired a driver and car to do a whole day excursion around the island and one of the places we stopped off was a tea plantation. There’s a museum there that explains all about Mauritian tea, and in this museum I was astonished to find a steam locomotive boiler.

There was a technical drawing next to the locomotive and this said the builder was Bagnall, Stafford. The railway on Mauritius closed in 1962 and then this boiler was purchased by the tea plantation (a company called Bois Cheri) and used IIRC in the tea leaf burning process. 

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

There were some growing wild at the bottom of  that "Green Wall" by New St Station, pre Covid

Same with Worthing Beach (or A N Other beach along the South Coast) due to the water companies releasing raw sewage into the waterways which then flooded into the sea and washed up on the beach. Despicable.

9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

I always find it fascinating how the same train can get so many different names.  At Paddington and Old Oak the Sleepers were always 'the sleepers' to any of us who over the years had anything at all to do with them;  with the destination name added back in the days when more than one ran from Padd and O at one time used t assist in ordering the stores for the Sleeping Car Attendants.  

 

The two ladies at Old Oak who actually made the beds - by then in the days we were down to just the one sleeper train - always called the train 'the sleeper'.  When i was on the Taunton patch I think all my staff referred to the Penzance/Plymouth train as 'the sleeper' but in the Westbury area the Up train, in particular, was always 'the waker' to many of my Signalmen but 'the sleeper' to everybody else. (The waker of course derived from it being the first train of the day on what had been a dead time of night before the stone trains began running at night.)

 

Oddly in my entire 26  years (plus a bit of a 27th year before joining BR full time) on the WR I never heard the train called 'the beds' by anybody and even when we referred to it at meetings down in Plymouth and Cornwall it was always 'the sleeper'.

I’ve always called any sleeper train ‘the sleeper’, although GWR call the Paddington to Penzance one the Night Riviera, and in a film I saw last year someone called it the Stella Express!

Also, I believe the Euston-Fort William sleeper is sometimes unofficially known as the Deerstalker Express.

You can hear the trains on the West Coast Main Line from our cottage in Moffat, Dumfriesshire. And even at the university campus at Northampton can a train sometime be heard, even though there’s a mile between the locations and there’s much more in the way of settlements there than up in Moffat/Beattock.

14 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

Carry on Cruising is it? 😉

You’d hear me singing all the way! 
 

I hope people don’t mind me briefly resurrecting this thread. I’m off to Boat Life at the NEC on Saturday, and I was wondering what the Spoons is like there? I’m looking to go there for my lunch.
 

Now that I think about it there are two Wetherspoons at the NEC. Hopefully they’re not too expensive? I’m conscious that the Wetherspoons inside Birmingham Airport is very pricey, practically double the prices of a normal Spoons.

15 hours ago, sjrixon said:

Guess I'm going to need a new layout thread and a new name..

 

Great Western Randomness, with a lot of interlopers from other eras and regions. We already have a Mallard and Flying Scotsman, my son also wants a class 37.. Certainly going to be a mixed bag this new layout.. 

One way to facilitate this is to have a layout based on a preserved railway located in what was GWR territory, thus allowing you to also use your GWR buildings and other infrastructure. Obviously the first line that springs to my mind is the Severn Valley Railway, where I volunteer at, but you also have the Glos Warks, West Somerset and South Devon railways to name but a few. 🙂

On 04/02/2023 at 13:04, Phil Bullock said:

 
Yes that’s easy to believe … they are so secretive, often only recognise them by their calls. We don’t have significant conifers in our garden but others nearby certainly do…

We have a conifer tree on the right hand side of our garden, and then our neighbours to the back of our garden have a fir tree which overhangs into our garden, and is used by many birds on their way to our feeders. Our goldcrest can sometimes be seen around the two large trees, and there is another goldcrest in the area which I saw the other week along a path. 

58 minutes ago, NHY 581 said:

Liam, 

 

You have my utmost sympathy. Your current situation looks very tricky indeed. Please be careful. You don't want to get sand in your gravy. 

 

Rob. 

Only one thing springs to mind Rob of things that are worse than getting sand in gravy, and that’s getting sand in Bovril. Thankfully I believe that’s covered by my travel insurance.