HonestTom

All the stonework is attached. Next up: painting!

You can get a surprising amount of building material from one carton. I already had one box (I had this idea a while back) so I only needed one more. Anyway: progress!

Work on Castle Lockdown continues. As a (model) stonemason, I am giving myself an allowance of beer in accordance with medieval guidelines.

Hullo all. With modelling resources hard to come by, I thought I’d try my hand at a project using nothing but rubbish. I thought a ruined castle would be the very thing. Using a small cardboard box and a kitchen roll tube, I made a shell. The stonework is mostly egg cartons, which have a very stony texture on the inside. My progress so far:

Here’s my effort with the Dapol plastic kit.

I'm not complaining - I get a lot of enjoyment out of working Lima wagons up and I can get them absolutely dirt cheap. I've got several vans in service and I even managed to bash an Interfrigo out of one of their reliveried Italian wagons. The quality of the moulding is absolutely superb.

And here are some more videos I've been doing recently, if anyone finds themselves with time on their hands.

I have a lot of friends who work in hospitality and entertainment who are absolutely livid about the current situation. These industries are typically on a knife edge - for a lot of venues, even big ones, going dark for a month might as well be permanent closure, unless they can claim insurance. Unfortunately, because the government refuses to actually impose closure, they can't claim insurance. It really is the worst of both worlds for them.

I have one of those vertical boiler engines and they represent pretty good value for money in my opinion. I added some extra detail to mine - controls and pipe work. I also extended the skirts down with a bit of plastic strip to hide the motor bogie.

I never thought of using that kit as a brewery, but assembled like that, it definitely has the look.

Hella bad move. Alcohol kills the virus.

Aww. Well, the other day I came across Tweezers Alley in Central London.

Many thanks, although I must admit that the people who really have the short end of the stick are in the high consequence infectious diseases team. My department isn't as directly affected as some, but we are certainly feeling the impact - I'm having to field calls from people asking what they should be doing, whether they should attend clinic, etc etc. And as I say, we're getting some absolute toerags who feel justified in stealing our hand sanitiser, toilet paper etc. So much for the national unity people were preaching about a month ago, and I'm sure you can understand why I get so irritable about panicky speculation. But on the whole, I have it easy compared to many in the service. HCID are basically saints at this point.

True, and I am firmly in favour of taking reasonable precautions to slow the virus down - I don't think self-isolation is a bad idea per se. But I do take the view that if the virus is infectious for two weeks before symptoms show, I reckon that's the time when it's most likely to be dangerous. People who are symptomatic aren't likely to be seeing too many people whether they have COVID-19 or a heavy cold.

While I believe that many of the cases of self-isolation are a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, I do find myself wondering if the small silver lining will be less transmission of other diseases. For instance, fewer colds because those who would normally fight their way into work are now isolated while they recover.

That's because it's having an economic impact. It's easy to get politicians to sit up and take notice when things are likely to hit them in the wallet.

Have we mentioned Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate in York?

I'm quite prickly about it because I work for the NHS, where we have to deal with the actual reality of it. Doom-mongering is counter-productive. The simple fact is, we don't know what's going to happen. At all. The person saying "oh my goodness everyone's gonna die it'll be like 28 Days Later only worse" is no wiser than the person saying "it's just like the flu." Except the former is preventing me from getting my work done because some public-spirited citizen has stolen our hygiene supplies.

As I mentioned earlier, I work for the NHS in an institution that is very much at the eye of the storm. Yesterday, we had to put out a press release because some idiot journalist was circulating an entirely phony claim supposedly from one of our clinicians regarding the severity of the situation. Meanwhile, we've got people stealing hand sanitiser from our clinical areas, in a service with a high number of elderly and immune-compromised patients. I have absolutely no patience for press hysteria, nor for the disaster fetishists who spread it.

I recall a while back there was a proposal for a J50, which is one I could definitely go for and I think would be a good choice for heritage railways. As for ones that are definitely going ahead, the one I'm probably most excited by is the Night Owl. I wasn't even particularly aware of them before the project was announced (I'm not much of a GWR guy).

Langley do a Darjeeling Himalaya B class for the Arnold chassis. I believe the Gem Dolgoch uses the same chassis.

I mean... I guess that would work... sort of...

Ultimately, it's a question of how much you trust the government to act purely in the public interest. I'm not sure that I'd trust the politicians on either side to do that. And in the specific case of coronavirus, I'm not sure how much good it would do. For me, I work in Central London. I know for a fact that the virus has been seen in the area. Say we institute the Singapore system. I get an alert on my phone - so what? What do I do? Evacuate the area? People are here from all over the country, and indeed the world. All the alert does is tell me that I may or may not have been exposed. Great! Tell me something I don't know. Meanwhile, my location and movements are on some government database.

As Terry Pratchett put it, "The innocent have a great deal to fear, mostly from people who come up with slogans like 'The innocent have nothing to fear.'"

Does not numbering your wagons count as a crime? Nobody's spotted that my wagons have indistinct white blobs where they should have weight, numbers etc.