Regularity

The standard mikado was sublime, but this... Has very obvious links to the Princess Coronation class, particularly the cab.That’s not necessarily a criticism. Please excuse me for a few minutes: I need to go somewhere private with a box of tissues.

Never have I seen a better argument for on-board battery power!

Red oxide car primer. But, different roads seemed to have different interpretations of box-car red, so essentially “box-car red” is about as common as a tin of rainbow paint.

Here’s the difference between education, training and schooling... If your 14 year old daughter comes home from school and says she is doing sex education, you are happy. If she came home saying was doing sex training, you would be extremely worried. If she said she was being schooled in the arts of sex, you’d call the police...

I agree, but my thought about the grammar schools was that they were ok, but the secondary moderns weren’t so good, and rather than fix the 80% which wasn’t working, we threw out the 20% which was. Typically English! The following is a paraphrase of a comment made to me many years ago by a well-known Modeller who was once a teacher, and active in the profession during the period of change from grammar schools to comprehensives. The only group of people who really pushed for the abolition of grammar schools was not the parents, not the politicians (a large number of whom had come through the grammar school system), nor the kids who went to grammar schools. It was the teaching unions, 80% of whose members felt that secondary modern schools were not valued and that they were therefore viewed as second class teachers. I think it just reflects that we don’t value practical intelligence as much as we do book intelligence. I have too many phenomenally clever friends who fared badly at school because they frankly never got the point of algebra, etc. I also don’t think that formal academically based education is the answer to everything. Getting a degree at 21 in most subjects simply meant one had basic qualifications for an academic career (if you got a first), an aptitude for more specialised training (if you got an upper second) or an office job (everyone else). Compare that with a 21 year old who had just finished an apprenticeship: basic training in technical skills, which would involve thinking and doing with an emphasis on the latter. Other than one route led to a minority going into research, they basically only differed in whether people ended up on the factory floor or the office upstairs. All are equally important.

Given such thorough thoughtfulness, I could not see you ever regretting the decision! But mostly I wanted to say how much I like your avatar. Getting hard to find mild nowadays!

Always an issue, but the spatial relationship between items is more important than precise measurements. Entirely personal decision: Geoff (EM) thought so, Tom (00) didn’t. I think if the Model is being converted to EM or P4 - particularly the latter - then it is worth doing, but because of the issues you mention above, it is a 50:50 thing for 00. Tasks 1 to 6 in the OP are certainly more important to creating the correct impression, at least initially.

It is probably worth defining a rough era, basic location and purpose of your short line before you buy too things (especially freight cars) that you later wish you hadn’t bought. Although you do have a great deal of freedom, especially with fairly recent modern short lines, you could end up with the equivalent running grain hoppers in North Wales, hauled by a class 73 in late 70s blue. May I take the opportunity to suggest you take a look at Jack Hill’s inspirational but sadly dormant website on the New Castle Industrial Railroad (http://oscalewcor.blogspot.co.uk)? Lots of useful tips and examples.

I have heard (but no personal experience of) that BTS kits require a bit of hard work and attention to things like the surface finish.

Also, the Bachman 64xx has splashers of a size to suit a 54xx. Do you intend to provide new ones? Geoff Forster showed how: his blog has gone, but due to the RSS feed, some can still be read - scroll down slightly. http://llangunllo1.rssing.com/chan-51234596/all_p3.html?q=74xx&site=rssing.com

Points 12 and 13 would be worked by hand, and you therefore don’t need discs 16,17 and 18, but one of the latter would be used to signal exits from the loop to the main, placed close to the loop end of crossover no 6. Or that could be a ringed arm, which on my understanding would be used for departures from the loop, absent no 1, the advance started - but I am not a GWR modeller (and gave always tried to do right and be good do that I won’t become one*). I am not sure about the order of lever numbering. Also, you have a dot in the signal cabin to correctly denote it being worked by one signalman, but you haven’t drawn a bar to represent which side of the cabin is the frame. I will leave all the questions to Mike! * I quote Mark Twain, although he was referring to newspaper editors. Edit: cross-posted with Mike, but he made much the same points.

That’s simply a case of pure good taste, nothing more.

If they are canny enough to label it as such, and people are daft enough to drink it... then we’ll done them! How do you know what it, and meths, taste like? According to my wife, one of the worst smells in the world is the breath of a meths drinker. Also, most alcoholics she has met avoid cheap whisky as it makes them violent. I should add that these encounters were experienced during her professional training. But it would have been fun not to have mentioned it! I very nearly added that my approach to whisky was the same as my approach to model railways, and indeed to writing:Distinctly finescale!

I thought the problem was that Penzance was standard gauge, but there was a bit between Truro and Plymouth which wasn’t?

Which immediately put me in mind of Preston Fishergate.

That’s the LMS (ex-CR) version. The LNER (ex-NB) had an identical idea:

Cheap whisky?No such thing. There is whisky, made from malted barley, and then there’s the horrible imitation stuff, made using cheap grain. But I wouldn’t call that whisky. What I would call it wouldn’t get past the censor...

I don’t think it was very subliminal, Alex!But as for sparking up a discussion, in this part of the forum distractions are normal, tolerated and even encouraged! Please do: we might enjoy the diversion.

I’m sure I’ve seen a photo with Adrian Vaughan posed just like that.

A description more appropriate for the narrow gauge coaches pulled by Skarloey and Rheneas, I think - the former even called them “dears”.I always felt that Annie and Clarabel were a bit more schoolgirlish, and main line coaches in their twenties. Possibly popular. But not I think in the sense of good.

Are those the before and after photos of rolling around in the snow?

I think, perhaps, for the avoidance of doubt and confusion, popular here is used in the context of “frequently done”, rather than “things people liked doing”…

Must admit, I thought the spelling was “Hoover”, with two “o”’s. Presumably EM and P4 modellers can spell better, and call them class 50s? Hover might be 0 gauge, I suppose.

Since I can tell the difference, what does that say about my levels of nerdishness?