GeoffAlan

Hello, my name is Geoff and I'm a shopaholic. ^^This could be my story.^^

I hope you get a cut. Another order from me.

A small following..... Very good! I do so much hope you meant it!

The J72 seems as far away as ever. I pre-ordered one from Hattons and cancelled some months later when it became obvious that there was little chance of seeing one anytime soon. I'm afraid the Dapol cancellation of 'their' J72 has put the Farish one onto their back burner. I've just had a bit of a search and the J72 seems to have been announced for 2015/16. I'm beginning to doubt it will be on general sale before 2020!

I was camping with the Scouts at Tebay during the last few years of steam One of our Scouters was a BR locomotive engineer. We took a lot of the Mickey out of him after watching diesel hauled trains being banked up the incline by steam locos. 'Not up to the job' being a common refrain. Of course his staunch defence of the diesel revolution was correct, but we were sad to see the steam go.

I've a slight colour vision 'blindness' and particularly in poor light, pretty much everything but bright sunshine, I 'see' some blues and greens as the same colour. So I rely on paint manufacturers getting it right for me. There's nothing I can do to correct this, as it's a genetic fault. However, I can remember BR in the Blood and Custard days and particularly seeing trains of coaches with a wide variation of shades within the general description of Blood and Custard. Apparently the paint faded in use, Given, as the OP states, that, with the unreliable colour rendition of film and digital cameras I'm not sure we can ever be 100% sure we have the right colour on our models. I have personal experience of car paints fading, from a crash repair in the 1980s. So we paint and weather our models and in my case hope! Does it really matter? That is very much a personal choice.

I suspect we'll get used to the Halo, like we did higher cockpit sides. I fail to see how a support on the centreline will help visibility, but it should add some protection. Frankly two supports would look better and allow for clear forward vision. We'll see!

It will have to be a great season the offer more drama than 2017. The racing wasn't as dominated by overtaking as I'd like, but with aero-dependent cars this will be with us until the powers-that-be massively reduce the allowed areas for downforce. But the drama of who would cave in and who would prevail kept me interested all year!

I have just found this thread! The original video took me back 60 years to my first electric train set. I'd had a very second hand ) gauge Hornby Clockwork set before that with both an 'LMS' and identical 'LNER' 0-4-0 complete with carriages and wagons, before that and being 6 my Dad screwed the HD rail down onto a large board that barely fitted behind the settee in the 'Front Room'* when put away for visitors. (*Always with capital letters.) I ended up some years later with the original duchess of Montrose and two Blood and Custard carriages and a short goods train, plus a BR 4MT and quite a lot of stock I'd bought from pocket money. Pride of place was a bright red brakesdown crane which came with plastic wheels and couplers, so as to be 2 rail compatible. I had a lot more rail and points and laid it straight to the carpet when I wanted to play. My friend Michael had a Triang set and we once settled an argument about respective pulling power by putting a long straight of each type of track end to end with some string between the couplings. The Duchess hauled his American outline, but BR logoed, locomotive backwards as if it wasn't even their. The 4MT did the same, albeit with a little wheelspin! Happy days and a start to a lifelong interest in modelling, trains and having fun.

Some of my N gauge fleet, including split chassis models, have similar problems. I've recently been using graphite powder in all the main bearings. You don't want to get too much in or it'll short out!

There used to be a Southampton/Cherbourg overnight ferry. I used it a few times and had no issues other than the first time where we booked couchettes, which were in effect reclining chairs in a huge barn of a room. While the chairs weren't too bad the boom, boom, boom of kids running up and down the deck all night lost its charm around 2am! After that we booked a cabin, and slept tolerably well. Doing effectively an extra 24 hrs should be OK if you are a good sailor. The above reference to the Bay of Biscay is pertinent. We gave it up once the chunnel opened as it is so fast and even with a drive at the other side not an issue for us. (We tend to holiday in Northern France.)

It seems like the basic problem is an unrealistic expectation of profit/cost profiles in the Virgin bid is the issue this time around. Sad to say I gave up using the service several years ago. The cost of two pre-booked returns to King's Cross from Durham was eye-watering. We were heading for Paris and it made sound economic sense for us to drive to Ashford, park in the secure Carpark and drive back rather than use the ECML. In fact the petrol and parking charges came to just under half the cost of one return ticket to KX.

My main layout is BR North Eastern based and I have stock to run it in Blood and Custard and BR Maroon. I also have the stock so I can run it as LNER, Green diesel, Blue diesel, and Sectorised British railways. For fun I can do German or Japanese outline too! I've been N gauge modelling since 1974/5 and over the years built up a lot of stock!

You just knew someone would do it.

A certain Driver Hoole was reputed to have got a train of 10' vans up to 80mph on the ECML. Unsurprisingly this came to an abrupt end when a fire in an axle box was spotted!

I managed to see the museum and the car museum while on holiday some 15 or so years ago.

+1 for this. Gaugemaster have brilliant customer service. I needed to call them a couple of years ago and they were first class!

Looking at the N gauge price! Wow! Well beyond my wallet. I built a fair sized permanent home layout for that kind of money.

It was a fairly common practice for 'Return to' labels to be painted onto rolling stock. For example, Middlesbrough had a lot of coaches labeled for use on the Whitby run, only!

Oh, dear! While British Railways, in its many corporate guises, got regularly panned for poor service, poor investment and truly eccentric 'planning', the beggars muddle that replaced it has not been without its problems. The question we need to ask is why other countries seem to have superior service and in many cases, lower fares. I well remember, before the opening of the Channel Tunnel, driving towards Paris with a brand new High Speed line running alongside. It was the French link to Le Chunnel, finished and in service before the Tunnel was finished. Whereas our version took ruddy ages to build, well after the opening. A relative often works abroad and very often is in Holland where he catches a train from the airport which is considerably cheaper per mile/kilometer than similar services in the UK.

Long live the Peoples front of Judea!

My beef, and I'm a frequent user of Hattons, (To the point where I've spent £thousands over the last few years.) is that sometimes I order and the items haven't been picked 4 working days later, and yet my previous and the next order was picked the same, or next day from my placing the order. I appreciate how difficult this must be for Hattons, and many other sellers, but several sellers will post the item(s) the same day as the order if I place the order before a certain time. I've seen my Hattons orders sit 3, 4 or even more days before they are 'picked' and there seems no rhyme nor reason as to why this happens. To be clear I'm not talking about the 'present difficulties', but the situation over the last year. I've lost count of the emails I've sent to ask 'where's my stuff?'.

I agree with the sentiments expressed by the Johnster, but beg to point out that, while HSTs have lasted well, several steam locomotives lasted far longer in service!

Having only heard sound at Shows, I think it's best for diesels and rather poor on steam locos. Both work best on a small layout where loco speeds are low, and locos spend a deal of time stationary. However, on steam locos, the only ones I've heard seem set to simulate setting away and pulling hard at low speed. The few I've seen passing at speed sound completely wrong, in that they are chuffing hard where they would be on a small cutoff relying on expansion of the steam to do a high proportion of the work. I hope I've described this in a way people will understand. On diesels they seem to have idling sorted out and when the loco sets away the revs can be heard to rise before slowly dropping off as the loco moves into cruising speed.

To jump back in, I hope this is OK, I have a large number of Union Mills locos. Details are more 1970s than 2010s, but they are very reliable, will pull more than a prototypical maximum load and the range covers a good many models available nowhere else. Value for money is excellent IMHO but you have to order by telephone as he seems to have little (Or possibly zero) online presence.