jonhall

not ideal, but you can get station departures do a search for a journey from your departure station then choose any departure and expand the 'show details' then hit the train number (S8 in this case) and you get the stopping plan then choose the station you depart from and choose station information and you get a next hour departure board

What aspect is better? Jon

Of course this is slightly a chicken and egg situation, those who live in the Thames Valley will have chosen to do so, at least in part, because of the available transport links to the office they already worked in, and therefore any pre-opening survey, will reflect the existing customers travel axis. It will take years for those who work near the Lizzy Line to start to move out West, as they get new jobs, or decide to move house (of course this has all been thrown in the air post-Covid). The same was true for the commuters of the Kent coast when the Javelins started using HS2, its all very well getting to StPancras faster, but if your office is nearer London Bridge or Charring Cross, loosing those services was terrible! I have always perceived that the relatively poor connection from Paddington into 'the City' has rather restricted the GW suburban, and therefore the residents of Southall or Slough will tend to look to the airport as the employment draw, and that this traffic is well served by bus. Jon

True, but th majority of that route would find itself under the new 3rd runway if its ever built in the proposed location, so it wouldn't at least need moving later. (although I think the location of the proposed 3rd runway is daft - put it immediately to the north of the existing two) 6 paths an hour (two of which won't be used every hour) going to 10 (again potentially minus 1 or 2) doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me, although I'll concede to being less familiar with the GW mainline than the SW one, and recognising those are very different lines. It seems to me that the capacity required could be achieved, although it might well need re-signaling. Has the capacity of the line been increased because of the better acceleration of electric trains over 'Thames Turbos', or is that already built in? Its also not obvious to me if some of the existing passengers on the Reading>Elizabeth Line trains aren't changing trains at Hayes&Harlington and backtracking to the airport, or that a Reading>Airport>Central London service that misses Iver and West Drayton, and at an extended journey time, wouldn't be useful to more people than a quicker, but less useful to most direct service? I'm also not sure I agree with your implied assessment of who will be travelling to Heathrow from the West, its my opinion* that its quite likely that the majority of journeys would be from Reading and points West to join flights, rather than as employees commuting to the airport, and that a 'fast from Reading', or perhaps a limited stop at somewhere like Slough wouldn't give a more useful service to a greater number of people? Jon *which could be completely wrong!

I did see this analysis of Heathrow Express' future https://www.londonreconnections.com/2023/the-slow-death-of-heathrow-express/ Jon

Apparently now carrying one in six of all rail passenger journeys in Great Britain! https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-elizabeth-line-is-the-uks-busiest-railway-61344/ Jon

I have a few rolls of my Grandfathers solder (that should last me until the middle of next century) since some of it is already 50+ years old I've found the outer layer on the roll has oxidised and is therefore rather prone to 'slag' like deposits, so I clean that off before use, and have wrapped the remainder in cling film to try and reduce air contact, Jon

final photo

A colleague is clearing her parents house after bereavement and as the 'train enthusiast' I've been asked to help re-home various things, these photos have been discovered and are described as 'on wood' or 'on [card]board'. She dosn't *think* there is a family connection, although her Mother lived in Farnbrough/Aldershot area so its possible? Can anyone tell me about the prototype or the pictures themselves? Would anyone like them for the cost of the postage?

Could that be Dampf-Kleinbahn Mühlenstroth e.V., Postdamm, Gütersloh, Germany https://www.dkbm.de/ Jon

I wonder if KR felt that since a continental manufacturer had done a motorised one he had to do the same, however I wonder if anyone will ever see one rotate? I think the Oxford railgun at around £50 for a basic model that won't break the bank for an impulse buy* might have been a better bet Having just returned from a brakevan tour around Scunthorpe (not for the first time) the loading and unloading occur undercover, I haven't felt the need to order a set. Jon *yes - I bought one :)

Only from experience with 2 day shows, I would think the visitor split is somewhere between 65 and 75% of the visitors will come on Saturday, and 75% of the cash the trade takes will be on the Saturday. Jon

The original ERA's came from Germany , and were a way of skirting the run up to WW2. Era's in the UK only came into being with Hornby, and (IMO) was a way of them either being lazy with the research, or more likely deliberately vague in the hope that it would fool a few people who didn't know the details into being prepared to by stock that 'nearly' ran together. Jon (not a fan of Era's)

I think the John Grey kits aren't as old as you think - I understand they were drawn for N gauge, and subsequently 'blown up' for 4mm - possibly sold by/through A1 models. I've built a 'Dolphin' bogie rail&sleeper wagon and its very basic. Jon

Wheras I think 9mm ply is too THICK! 6mm would be my prefered, so 9 should be fine (albeit rather heavy). Jon

For our club show we use the CMRA steel barriers that have to be collected and returned from lockups in either Crawley or Welyn Garden City, the 6ft barriers are each estimated at around 9kg each, and the feet 2 or 3 kg each, which made our 'order' 1.9 tons or thereabouts. This weight needs more than a common or garden transit van, and 4 people prepared to take Friday off work to collect it, and then having done a full weekend at the show, to drag them all back. The unload and reload at the venue can probably rely on about twice that number of people, but none are getting any younger and we have been lucky in having help from 'friends and family' to make up the numbers of able bodies, without those people we would have to make the difficult choice to either drop the barriers, or indeed give the show up as beyond the abilities of those available. Jon

It looks like I have several sheets of 40thou middle spacers but no 20thou outer skins - since the middles are just plastic waste without the outers I'd be prepared to dust off the cutter and run off a sheet or two so that the middles go to someone who can use them, but it might be a few days. PM if interested (and if anyone else might want to jump on whilst I get the cutter out). Thanks jon

1000mm - standard for the continent Jon

Or to put it another way you start a thread criticising volunteer exhibition organisers for not doing their job the way you think it should be done, and then tell them that even if they do, you might well use that information to their disadvantage (unless they happen to be a mind reader and know what you want and that sufficient others have the same interests as you) , so they might be wasting their time and costing their club a significant amount of money. That doesn't seem to be the most promising way of getting them on side either? Jon

But the '24 show might have a dozen different things to interest you - but only if it happens, and whilst your £5-10 on the door wont individually make the decider, 100 people like you leave a £500-1000 hole in the budget might well stop a club from holding the next one. If you (and others) take the selfish view and only attend shows that interest you, then there is some likelyhood that there will be fewer shows, those shows that survive may be further away than the ones that fail, and therefore your costs to travel to the survivors goes up, they put the entrance fee up to cover the costs with fewer visitors, and in turn you attend fewer because the cost/reward ratio goes down. There are lots of reasons that clubs are giving up shows, but a big one is the risk/reward ratio is terrible. As a (not very good) analogy, do you pay your taxes because you know will need an Ambulance this year? or because you want an Ambulance to be available when you do need one* Jon *who has already required both a fire engine and an ambulance on separate occasions in 2023, and who's 84 year old dad with a suspected stroke would have had to wait 2 hours if I hadn't been able to take him to A&E myself.

I think the other side to this is that actually a lot of Exhibitions are precarious at the moment, and need your support. If you want to have a choice in future years, then they need your support this year - if a hypothetical 2024 show is cancelled because insufficient people come to the 2023 show, then the likelihood of the '24 show having something to interest you enough to leave the house, becomes a bit of a moot point. Jon

I'm treating myself and a few friends to a tour next month, for my 50th Birthday. jon

We had 3 sumups for our show in November, and found around half the door tickets went on a card (I don't have the absolute numbers) we found it sensible that until the queue on the door was cleared to have one desk cash and the other card, as the throughput on card was slower. I've heard from elsewhere about being caught out by transaction limits on unregistered readers, so worth checking if you will exceed them - also consider where you will charge them - one of the items discussed in our wrap-up meeting was buying an extension lead for the USB because it couldn't be left plugged in (having at least one more than you need is operationally sensible). Our previous exhibition manager was very anti-cards (and no doubt still pays his bills with a cheque) and tried using the logic that we wouldn't have cash to pay exhibitors expenses, but this is backwards logic, in reality we paid exhibitors in cash as a way of reducing the amount of cash we had to bank on Monday, we still had plenty, but it would have made the books easier to reconcile if we had paid them by bank transfer. Certainly reducing the cash on hand in the box office and after made security a great deal easier. Jon

because the name changed depending on which imagined organisation as being used to front the show. Jon