GeoffAlan

You're some sort of anti London revolutionary, I like your style!

I see it when war reporters 'do a piece to camera' with an Armoured Vehicle is in shot or being discussed. The word 'Tank' is used for anything at all and 99% of the time it isn't. So it's not so shocking that reporters don't know the difference between a locomotive and a train.

It made a kind of sense for BR to allow one region to use Diesel Hydraulics as the technology was well established and so 'should' have been a great success. Diesel Electric propulsion was regarded in some quarters as having greater potential, but in need of more development. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we can say that the one was always going to be more reliable but back in the day that was not clear. That Western Region would be chosen as the odd man out is no surprise. I suspect they lobbied hard for the 'privilege' of being out of step with everyone else.

I suspect the whole thing was classic over ambition. At 71, with arthritic fingers, I'm still running and repairing my vast N gauge collection, acquired over the last 48 years and 6 layouts. My latest layout, started at age 65 is kato track, which would have solved the OP's problems re track laying, is still awaiting more detail, but is largely complete and providing much fun for me and my grandkids. I have a shunting layout in a hard plastic rifle case comes on apace.

Yes I have a twin track roundy roundy with an end to end on that size base board, although I ran an L ar one end for a terminus, that's 44"x 15" stuck on one end..

I attended a wargames show a couple of years before Covid struck, It was in an educational establishment and they provided the 'catering'. They ran out opf bacon for bacon sandwiches within 5 minutes of opening, apparently the exhibitors and sales staff had eaten it all. An hour later they ran out of bread buns! Some venues aren't run by numpties, but sadly some are. I gather the show, which was for a charity had paid quite a bit for use of the premises. The next time we attended we took out own packed lunches and drinks.

Not mainline working, but 9Fs used to run to and from Skinningrove without turning, although one was available at the Teesside end. Apparently drivers would check the wind direction and turn the loco such that the tender first working saw the fireman on the upwind side. The little devils!

A Wargames group I have contact with have missed 'their show dates' in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Due to obvious reasons. They tell me their 2023 show is unable to use 'their date' due to some venues not taking bookings, presumably due to the energy price insecurity, and those taking dates being booked solid for every weekend , thus pushing other local (<50 miles radius) shows and exhibitions into venues and dates, including 'their date' that they have not used before. I suspect energy costs, even if capped will increase costs too.

Having heard sound fitted locos at exhibitions I'm not impressed. While the starting off sounds seem OK, the sound of steam locos while running sounds like they have the thing in full gear and pulling hard. Not the sound of an engine with small cut off and running free.

I am, by inclination a republican*. However experience of politicians past and present has taught me that our constitutional monarchy had/has great benefits. Not only didn't we get a President Thatcher, or Blair, but will be spared Presidents Johnson, Truss and Starmer. Elizabeth II was my second monarch and Charles III is my third. I expect/hope he will prove to be as worthy a King as his mother was Queen. * No, not in the American sense, by any means.

The great unwashed don't believe they can do any wrong so signs, polite notices and much else short of a 105mm howitzer will be ignored. I always ask permission before I even take a photo and never touch even the vertical edge of a layout, but I'm in a rapidly diminishing minority.

The one that gets me at every exhibition is Flying Scotsman hauling a two coach train around minimum radius bends at a scale 300mph. On the other line is a JInty with three wagons and a brake van doing a scale 200mph.

It used to be, and possibly still is, illegal to display the swastika in West Germany and later the reunified Germany. So Airfix had to cut them out of their decal sheets on German WWII aircraft when sold in Germany. German manufacturers of railway models certainly left a blank where the swastika was under the eagle. I have several locos where it is missing. Although I've a couple where it is present! The law was introduced by the occupying powers in 1945 and for what were then totally understandable reasons.

I understand that Rule 1 means anything I do/run on my layout is fine, but what you are doing on yours is unprototypical and you deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered for even thinking of doing it! 😉

See underlined. My words exactly when my wife and I were discussing the war after the news mentioned it was 40 yrs ago.

I remember, back in the 1950s heavy goods lorries, like the ERF and Foden 4 axle lorries being limited to 20mph, lighter lorries were limited IIRC to 30mph. Frankly some of the bigger lorries had the same issue as unfitted goods trains, not a lot of power and very poor brakes. Even when the limits were lifted quite a few of the older lorries still carried rusting 20 or 30 plates on the rear for a good while.

I have the Sonic 56xx and three, so far, one on order but in batch three, Hunslets. All run well.

The N gauge society commision items from a variety of manufacturers. Their first locomotive recently arrived (A Hunslet DH shunter) and is brilliant. While they did it for love of the scale and hobby, It rather proves that commissioning a model is the way to go. If our traditional manufacturers are doing it so can anyone else.

I can understand your frustration. No doubt Hornby will cite lack of available chips, Covid and Brexit. However, this has been going on for years and Hornby are by no means alone in over-promising and under-delivering. I'm referencing promises made long before these problems came along and multiple manufacturers. One took 11 yrs from 'grand announcement' to actually in the shops, two announced a loco then dropped it, in one case a couple of years later and the other some years after that. I now treat announcements as a testing of the waters and if sufficient pre-orders materialise, then the published progress dates are a wish list for the actual production process from CAD to box in shop. Treat them as an over optimistic guess by the manufacturer.

I ordered a wheelchair to be delivered the day before my wife came out of hospital following treatment for a Brain Abscess. Yodel were the sellers chosen 'delivery agents' and I paid extra for next day delivery. It didn't arrive, and according to what I could glean from them they didn't know when it would arrive, so I cancelled the order. Then ordered an identical one from a different seller to be delivered the day after she was due home. The latter arrived on the due date and several days later, on arriving home from her first outpatient physio-therapy, we had a note through the door saying yodel had called. I went onto their online site where it proved impossible to tell them I had cancelled the order so again called the seller and informed them of the attempted delivery. Several more notes came through the door over the next few days, most when we were out, but once while we were in, no audible knock on the door and the door bell remained unused. I decided against kicking against a wall of blubber. The day of the next physio-terrorist appointment, shortly after returning home, I popped out into our garden to go to the bins only to find a battered cardboard box containing a wheelchair. It had been thrown over our 1.8m rear gate. I called the original seller and asked them to collect the cancelled and now damaged wheelchair. Their response was they'd get Yodel to contact me. Yodel eventually called and demanded that I take the battered item to a 'collection centre'. I replied that hell would freeze over, the sun explode and the universe end before I'd run after them. So I contacted the seller yet again, who arranged for a different and better courier to call and retrieve the damaged item. Yodel, pay extra and we'll wait over a week after the due date to throw the parcel over a fence. Great advertising, they should use it. At least it would be honest.

Scammell Recovery trucks saw a lot of service as Rescue recovery vehicles for HGVs and Ford Pilots (used by the military as staff cars) returned to civvy duties in a variety of colours, some hand painted others more professionally painted. Antar tank transporters saw service in heavy haulage, sometimes two tractor units pulling and one pushing when moving huge roads.

I remember reading an autobiography of a railwayman based somewhere just outside the GW area. Apparently the guards hated getting a GW Toad, in place of their normal LMS ones and it was all down to the lack of verandah at one end. Also he stated that the preferred orientation, should they get lumbered with one was verandah next to the train.

I used to build 1/72nd Armoured Fighting Vehicles. After my 5th scratch build was yet again followed by a kit from a firm called ESCI I gave up! Hence railway modelling!

People who say, 'to cut and long story short', then go into lengthy and irrelevant detail about their trivial story.

The only reviews i half believe are the ones that are unhappy with the product. Sometimes it's obvious that the reviewer is a nutter, other times that they didn't know what they were buying and some have had genuine problems with the product, seller or manufacturer. Glowing reports in small numbers mean nothing, it's too easy to use fake accounts to post multiple glowing reviews. You see it quite often in reviews of sellers on ebay, but it happens elsewhere too.