Regularity

Then it wouldn’t be modelling, just collecting and making a nice setting.

I believe your wife has a different opinion on the matter...

Although in England, we do also have our own eccentric alternatives: Emily Fazakerly

Provides a nice modelling challenge for you, to bring the level and finesse of detail up to the same standard. Finescale is all about raising the bar, my friend.

Wisley. Very nice, too.

Apparently, when recording the “conversations” the Clangers’ “cast” punctuated the “dialogue” with swearing, in terms of the rhythm. If you listen again to it, it does come through - the narration may have a line like, “Mother Clanger has come to see what all the noise is about,” but the swannee whistle is clearly saying, “What the @@@@ is going on?”

Will you be correcting the typo in the flyer whilst you do that?(It’s a question of getting the fine details right, you see.)

LMAO.Had to explain guffaws: rest of family didn’t get it at all. I suspect that’s pretty much all you can do with a degree in F. Arts...(And what about Sisley?)

I think that’s a “when”, Damian, and not an “If”...

Are they for sale?

It is quite possibly Allen’s straight link motion.

Revisiting, I looked at the numbering of the levers and also on the diagram, and thought, “Surely that’s the wrong way round?” Then I looked more closely at the diagram, and realised that it is not the numbering which is the “wrong way round”: it is correct, if the frame faced the other way. For those who are confused, there is a bar drawn in the signal cabin, which represents not only the frame, but where it is placed. The lever frame in this case would be at the front of the cabin, and the signalman standing behind it, looking out across the station. As such, signals for departing trains would be numbered upwards from 1 in the direction of travel, whereas (presumably down) arriving trains would pass first the distant signal (20) and other signals numbered downwards in the direction of travel. Were the frame at the rear of the cabin, then the distant signal would be number 1, the home signal 2, etc. On the layout, the control panel is to the front of the station, and the frame is facing the “wrong way”, so the numbering at first sight appears wrong. Given the direction the operator is facing, then the numbering technically is wrong, but the frame numbering is actually as it would appear to the signalman in the cabin. Neat.

3D: the media’s way to make everyone look like a complete knobstick

I believe the town planners had desires and designs on and for Coventry before the war.

Different thing.Entirely. I would assume they meant an engine in the number range 4500-4574. If it was a large tank variant, that would be a 4575, even if numbered in the 55xx series. I get the impression that once they started using numbers to help define classes, the GWR simply put two zeros after the main number, unless there were some strange starting point for a class (4073, 2251, 8750, etc) and that the XX is a modeller’s/enthusiast’s thing. As has been said, to most enginemen, it would be the first two digits that were used, so a “45”, and if the later versions were around, maybe a “large tank 45” or similar. During the brief period I went spotting, I never heard of a “gronk”, “rat”, “duff” or “chopper”: 08, 25, 47, 20. That was the class number, and that was it. 40xx class?

Thanks, Gary. I love the phrase “just the right level of pedantry”!

I should own up here and admit that after A levels in maths, physics and chemistry, I was going to read (civil) engineering, until I found out how much work was involved (I have since met a guy who did his first degree in civil engineering and followed it up with a PhD in nuclear reactor physics, which he said was not as difficult, mathematically, as his first degree!) so ended up doing a science, yes, but psychology. That wasn’t down to anything other than laziness, and the way that engineering was being run down so much in the early 80s. Also, I wanted to work on the railways, but less than 100% colour vision put the kybosh on that. But I did go to some evening classes and learned how to use a lathe and a mill.

Even people who don’t would rather go into law, medicine or accountancy, as you don’t get your hands dirty. (Just elbow deep in gore, if you are a surgeon!)

I love ambiguity, provided it’s in the form of puns and that special subclass, double entendres. But I don’t like it when it causes confusion, and a particular bête noir is using “hundreds” in place of “century”. Here’s an example, from BBC Radio 4 of all places! Last week I heard the wonderfully sonorous Mariella Frostrup talking about the “Great American Novel”*, and how it had come into being during the “Eighteen hundreds”. This confused me. Surely it was much later than that, I thought - closer to the time of the American Civil War? Yep. The next voice on the radio confirmed it was 1868, by John William De Forest. So, nineteenth century, then. Maybe I am being pedantic, but to me, “eighteen hundreds” is either a count of a number of subdivisions of counties of England, or the decade from 1800-1809? (I am aware that since we date years without a zero point, using ordinal numbers, it should be 1801-1810, but I’ll let that one lie for now.) Am I just being overly pedantic, having too rigid a view, or am I correct in preferring a clear meaning to the phrase “1800s”? * This was an important point in the development of American (as in national to the USA, and not state-specific) cultural consciousness. We don’t have an equivalent need in the U.K. - or didn’t until recent decades - as our political unity was established long before the arts began to develop.

Two questions:Do you mean early 19th century, rather than (say) 1800-1804? (I think I am in a dwindling majority of people who think 1800s defines a decade, and not a decade of decades...) What makes you think that this perspective isn’t still prevalent in some parts of middle class society - more people get degrees than ever, but the engineering degrees and other technical qualifications are still woefully undersubscribed...?

Can’t help you with the spare parts, but there’s plenty of punctuation available should you wish to use it.

They have a profile which is hard to capture. Heljan certainly didn’t!

That’s a terrific job Sean did on the 25, too. Really looks the part: takes me back to my younger days, when it was a 25, an 08 or AC electrics of the 81-87 series and 310 emus and not a lot else!

They look good. Presumably you have copies if Stan Robert’s articles from Railway Modeller, 74-75?

Didn’t take us long to go off topic again, did it?