Anadin Dogwalker

I built one of the resin EM1s around 1988. By that time, assembled chassis in brass (and with spoked wheels) were provided but a year or two earlier in a Practical Model Railways article, the recommendation was to use the bogies off a Lima class 52 minus the middle axle. The motor bogie was to be attached to the roof by a popper stud.

I'm still waiting on Revolution to announce 313/314s in OO if only to smoke out the Other Manufacturer that Ben Ando keeps refusing to name/denies knowing.....grrr

While I enjoyed the Star Beast, I was more annoyed about the Children In Need sketch and an ambulatory Davros. It could have been pitched way before Genesis, and pre-injury but the whole point of Davros was that his life-support chair was the catalyst for designing the Daleks. It's not as though his chair vaguely resembled any sort of wheelchair in daily use. FWIW I can only think of three other characters in chairs: the resistance leader in Dalek Invasion of Earth, Henry Woolf in the Sunmakers, and Trigger as John Lumic in Age of Steel. As much as it was nice too see Julian Bleach maintain his ownership of the role, ditching the chair was a bad call. It would be like ditching the police box as a protest against the failings of numerous forces and the criminal activities of officers. Must'nt give 'em ideas...

How about Sefton, the most seriously injured survivor of the Hyde Park barracks bombing? There's a life-size statue of him at the Royal Veterinary College near Potters Bar.

Worrying about accidentally putting Voltarol on the toothbrush. Not yet but still...

Re Ventimiglia, it was wired at 1500v DC so could be used by dual voltage French stock and Italian at half power. I interrailed that line in 2002. I can't remember which leg was wired first south of Avignon (ie Montpelier to connect to the Midi, or the Marseille leg) but the completion of the PLM DC electrification was 1962 and the AC Cote d'Azur extension in 1969. The triangle north of Marseille was all wired up as the loco depot (St Charles?) was on the Nice leg of the triangle. East of the depot there was a dead section and the catenary style changes to AC all the way along the coast, then back to DC on the approach to Ventimiglia. I'd need to dredge up the photos as I cant remember what style of spans were present in the station; I suspect it was probably Italian. IIRC it was mostly TGVs, units or BB25500 on locals plus the odd Sybic or BB22200- all dual voltage types by necessity.

I had always assumed that the wires would go east to Retford and join up with a 1500v KX-Doncaster/Leeds electrification, hence the proposed 27 EM2s.This would have only lasted a year ( on paper) between the 55 Modernisation plan and the adoption of AC. The allocation of all 40 AL5s for construction at Doncaster (and more AL6s) was the last vestige of wiring the ECML before the 80s. For the 76s, I wonder if it was at all possible to transplant a fixed output (ie no tap changer) transformer and rectifier pack into the space occupied by the steam heat boiler and tanks (or ballast weight in the majority) but otherwise retain the original DC control gear- but I think the air compressor and reservoirs on the dual/air conversions used some if not all of the space available. The principal is sound as it's how the SNCF wired a lot of the early dual voltage locos that way. The major downside would be the loss of regenerative braking. The electric spine plan is one of the great missed opportunities of the last 20 years. I went through a phase of photting at Worting Jcn (west of Basingstoke) about 10 years ago. I was surprised by the volume of freight but annoyed as ever by diesel haulage under/over juice. Basingstoke-Reading and Didcot-Coventry under wire should be a no-brainer, but Oxford is still diesel I think? I stopped at Tebay yesterday between 3 and 4pm and bagged three 66s. a 70 vs one 88. Not a bad haul for an hour, but I'd prefer 90s or 86s anyday.

I'd forgotten about the loop aerial (good call) but the set itself was in daily use from 99 to 2005 without a hitch.

Guilty as charged. My Dads 1979 Duette provides the 16Vac output to stationary decoders to kick the point motors under my layout. My 2005 Sony Trinitron has outlasted the contemporary DVD player (which failed after 8yrs) and VCR which lasted a bit longer and I replaced both with the same models. Previous to that I used my Granddads '72 single channel manual-tune-dial Sanyo. Still got it and I bet it still works (and now you only need one channel if connected to a digibox). Inbuilt obsolescence was an alien concept back then.

The E5000 body shell was definitely derived from the Re4/4i, the bogies were copies licensed by SLM. IIRC. SBB designs that predated and might have influenced the design of the roarers were the Ae6/6 (1952) , Re4/4i (batch 2, 1950) the Ae4/6 (40) and the third Ae8/14 (38 ish). There's an evolving family look through these and the Landilok had particularly raked cabs, like a roarer mated with a GWR railcar.

Number 2 , I presume

Frank Zappa: "Jazz isn't dead- it just smells funny."

If scenes on trains are eligible, then The Spy Who Loved Me (all time fave) , Live and let Die and From Russia With Love. Oh and Daniel Craig getting "skewered" in Casino Royale.

Bass for me too. I've a 70s jazz bass I gigged at uni and a bunch of Rickenbackers that dont often see daylight, never mind electricity. Q: How do you know when the stage is level? A: The drool comes out both sides of the drummers mouth

May I ask what are your tree building techniques/source materials please? I had stockpiled a lot of Woodland Scenics fine leaf foliage but I'm having second thoughts and am looking at Noch or Heki foliage instead to go on seafoam stems.

Now if only they'd salvage and restore the wreck of the Caspian Sea Monster ekranoplan....

I asked Ben Ando (Revolution Trains) at Model Rail Scotland as to whyt they weren't doing an OO Pep unit. He said another firm had it in R+D but didn't know or wouldn't say whom. I wish RT would make an announcement and smoke out the other firm.

Yes, yes, yes! Like in Chris Leigh's review, I too had a childhood punctuated by being dragged from Waterloo to the west end for parental shopping trips. We'd occasionally skip the odd 59 or 72 stock train to see if a 38 showed up, especially when a clutch of them re-entered service. The sound of the compressor was different and you could make a dash from the escalator if if it kicked in on time. The lush green partitions and wooden interiors and springy seats were a classy throwback to a less austere era.

What's not been mentioned here yet is whether the traction motors are fully suspended (HST,81-5, 86/1, 87,90) nose mounted (86 except /1, most diesels ) or body mounted (APT-P, 91 and 370). if they forked out for fully suspended, then the design would be good to 100 at least. If bog-standard nose suspended, then the unsprung mass would be prohibitive much above 75mph. What was the arrangement in the 89 and 92s?

The CC6500s date from 1969 and I think the CC72000 diesels were a year or two before that. I liked the monocabines- I made an effort to track down the last of the Luxembourg fleet interrailing twenty years ago. They reliably showed up around the southern steelworks in the early evening; unexpectedly I had haulage behind one on the local up to Troisvierges. It was the school run and all the kids were giggling about Herr Flick of the Gestapo and doing impressions of the rest of the Allo'Allo' cast. Not what you'd expect deep in the Ardennes.

Any idea what happened to 47711 Greyfriars Bobby? Neill Horton

The NYCs Boston & Albany subsidiary did have tank engines (2 classes IIRC) for use in the Boston suburbs on the main line out to Framingham and Worcester and the inner loop that's now mostly the light rail Green Line out to Letchmere. (Boston+Albany vol 1 Robert W Jones, Pine Tree Press). They lasted right up to dieselisation with ALCO RS2s in the late 40s. Neill Horton

No there were 2nd class orange Eurofimas (I remember them in the Roco catalogue) but not necessarily all nationalities- ie 1st class was more common. The orange stock was still much in evidence on my first trip in 1991 but many more had adopted national liveries. My Dad and I rode in one from Lausanne to Brig on a very hot August afternoon in a first class compartment with dodgy air con, further "enhanced" with a dud can of Feldschlossen that was more aluminium than beer. The next trips were 1994 and 2000 and the only orange cars I remember were the UIC diners (as per Lilliput HO model), usually spliced between 2-tone grey Eurofimas. They were quite common on the Gotthard: the morning Basel-Milan EC we rode from Luzern was Panorama, 1st, restaurant, grey seconds then a block of EWiv that were detached at Chiasso. We walked the Dazio Grande the following day and caught another consist at Faido with 3 panoramawagons, an orange diner then 2nd class eurofimas, followed by a scratch set subbing for the hastily withdrawn RABe sets (an axle had sheared in half IIRC), Eurofima first, orange diner and 2 x 2nds. This was also the make up of the Zurich-Munich EC consists which we caught less than an hour apart at St Margarethen, headed by Re4/4iis with the wider OBB/DB-spec pantograph heads for working to Lindau. FWIW, the only red EWi diner we shot was on its way to Chur at Ziegelbrucke, the rest were in Buffet Suisse purple and gray except for the few Cheese Express cars. We saw one of those northbound at Rodi-Fiesso and another parked at Brig with its pantograph up (the only time I've ever seen a diner drawing power) . All the EWiii diners wore BS livery and were separated from the rest of the EWiii sets, which were still in 70s Swiss Express paint at the time. The EWiv s were red and gray as delivered but we did catch the Migros and McDonalds repaints at Olten and without exception were in consist with other green and gray EWivs on the east-west internal services. I don't remember seeing any on the Gotthard or Lotchberg routes. Got to get the prints digitised some day...

Yes, these exactly. I think they look a lot more handsome than the Ae4/7s thanks to the equal sized windscreens and lack of corner quarterlights. The symmetrical chassis arrangement looks better too. Ive seen the one in the Mulhouse museum and there's supposed to be a mainline certified one, but no idea on its status.

At 11,000hp, the third Ae8/14, the "Landilok", was more like three Ae4/7s. The Ae4/6 were the direct descendants technically , albeit a more upright bowed cab front, but weren't that successful either due to design flaws or wartime corner-cutting; aluminium wiring that was prone to overheating and dodgy transformers IIRC. I believe they were all gone by the mid seventies, while the Ae4/7s, in spite of being 15 years older, lasted another 20. I remember shooting them at Olten in 94 and a handful might have been around the next time I visited in 2000.