Halvarras

Missed that, but it was only last week. At least that means Devonians had a chance to jet-wash the winter grime off their patio paving, which is more than I've been permitted to do. If it has to wait another year its fetching shade of beige will probably become permanently discoloured. I have a 'Spray & Leave' product which may help but......er......it requires decent rainfall to wash it off once it's done its thing.........well, it is what it is.

You'd be missing out on great beaches, the Eden Project, award-winning pasties and fish & chips (there doesn't seem to be any other kind 🤔), cream teas (with the cream on top where it belongs of course), Tribute/Korev/Doom Bar/Proper Job/Rattler, clotted cream and star-gazey pie (see above).........on second thoughts scrub the last one (I'm with @Steamport Southport on that 🤢!) And more pasties, can never have too many pasties..... We also have such fantastic weather that Cornwall appears to be the only part of the UK still under last August's drought order (hosepipe ban). Yes seriously!

Constant flexing along the border with Devon must mean two large bridges in the Saltash area are in imminent danger of collapsing into the Tamar then😮! Regarding opening up a proper gap, the boats would have an easier job if the top of the Tamar were excavated out to the north coast, creating a sort of Cornish version of Anglesey........

Anbrico AC Cars whitemetal railbus kit - just missed it, early 1980s IIRC. Never mind, got a Heljan now, happy days!

How'd you guess?! (4 years ago)

For Class 47, by my reckoning, 6 years - from 1649 around Feb 1969 until 1724 Feb 1975 (interesting case this last one, as according to my notebook for the period I saw it renumbered to 47133 then back to 1724 again before becoming 47549 in Feb 75!) Despite bodyside numbers and single central logo being the standard pre-TOPS blue livery for Class 47 during this period TTBOMK there has never been an RTR release in this condition in any scale - Lima did D1957 in original early blue (cabside logos/bodyside numbers), Bachmann have done D1547 and 1662 in later early blue (cabside numbers/bodyside logos) and Heljan likewise with 1932. By way of comparison the green TOPS period, represented by 20141, 25043, 47256 and now 40039 (only green TOPS '03', '08' '24' & '37' to go now then! 😉) also lasted 6 years, from Feb 74 until 20141 went blue in May 1980 with 08934 lasting slightly longer.

Mine would have to be HS4000 'Kestrel' - I was living in the far South West when it was active, too far away from its ER stamping ground and by the time I had the means to get there it had departed for Russia (I remember seeing it reported in the railway mags at the time and being disappointed at the news). I still sort of regret not buying the Heljan model when prices were reasonable, because it was such an impressive-looking beast, but I had no need for It then and I still don't (I don't need a 'Deltic' either but I've got a Bachmann model........but it only cost me sixty-eight quid and I've renumbered it to 55003 'Meld' which I photographed on its Paddington to Cardiff run in October 1975 - that just scraped within my self-imposed justification requirements, something 'Kestrel' was never going to achieve!)

Good to know. So, contrary to most of the comments on here regarding ordering from Ultrascale, orders can turn up within one month instead of eight! Perhaps all those thousands of Mainline Warships out there with gear trouble mean it's worth running off a batch of drive years from time to time and keeping these in stock. After all it's still an excellent model.............when it's standing still anyway 🤭!

But how long did it take to get hold of them?!😉

I assume you mean Swindon-built Class 42? For sure this fleet, which had the highest profile of the three Warship classes, is deserving of a modern upgrade to match the Class 43 and of course the chassis already exists although the gearing was not exactly optimal and, nice though the inclusion of engine detail visible through the engine room windows may be, the Maybachs probably looked a bit different..... In this day and age a new Class 42 Warship model would have to include the disc headcode variant, although these thirteen differed from the rest in several ways other than the ends (and D866-70 shared their train heating boiler vent arrangement) so I fear that, unlike the Class 43s which were all near-identical, the Class 42 tooling suite would be quite extensive and thus expensive. But who knows - it seems everything else is getting upgraded these days and a class of named Type 4s currently represented by an out-of-production basic tooling which can trace its origins back over four decades looks increasingly like an open goal. IMHO anyway 😊.

Does that mean we could have had a diesel version of the EM2 electric?........(note to self: shut up H, yer making yerself look stoopid🤪!)

& all with 'flowerpot' exhausts this time. For once. Please!

43155/70 used on the Newquay branch yesterday following the failure of 150221. Link here and scroll down a bit for pics: http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc

By pure coincidence, photo posted on the Cornwall Railway Society website last Wednesday - scroll down to 19th April.....even taken at Reading (and exactly 20 years to the day after D1661 and D1662 were named at Paddington and Bristol respectively too)..... http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/latest-input--news--old-pictures-etc

Thanks for the tip Darius - I didn't think for a moment that you'd glued it together with Devon Custard.......😜!

Had the vehicles concerned (W51137/50 initially, followed by W50819/62/72/915) had gangways fitted they would have been retained in passenger service - in parcels service the gangways would have been redundant as the two GUVS (W86174/572) were never so equipped - here's W86174 back in normal (loco-hauled) parcels service at Bristol Temple Meads c. October 1984 shortly after becoming TOPS-compliant W93174 - I wasn't in the habit of photographing GUVs but, having often seen the '128+GUV+116' combos at Reading in the 1970s, recognized the number and significance of this one (is that the former MU bracket below the buffer?): I had hankered after doing one of those Reading sets as they were an interesting mix of vehicles, although not really relevant to my favoured modelling location so I resisted........until one day Hattons offered a mint pre-owned Heljan Class 128 in the correct livery/configuration for an inexplicable £46 "with loose detailing" (didn't they all come like that anyway?!) and my resistance crumbled.....so still in my long paint queue is this Lima Class 117-to-116 DMBS conversion clearly with no seats - oval buffers identify it as W50862 - and 'wired' Lima GUV on Bachmann B1 bogies, which will be W86174 (the body is on the lean as it's not clipped to the chassis pending a repaint - these things are difficult to take apart without damage, I broke off one of the lower corner stanchions so I only wanted to do it once!) I was lucky enough to order a '128' parts sprue from Howes not long before they stopped being the UK Heljan agents which included both bufferbeams and all four bogie sideframes, so these - glued to a pair of old MTK plastic coach bogie stretchers - were used to upgrade the Lima underframe, together with Hornby 12.6mm disc wheels and Lima Class 101 bogie steps: Hopefully this summer I'll figure out where I can permanently set up my airbrush gear without having to pack it all away every time, as I have had to in the past, so I can begin chewing through that paint queue at last.........

An interesting vehicle, with an interesting bogie at one end. I see that etched headcode panels are supplied but note that the cab ends are the passenger version with destination panel, n/a on the Class 129s - I assume that the instructions point this out? (I wouldn't expect the kit manufacturer to tool up a new end for a class of only three units - I found the same issue with a 'kit' for one of these which I reckoned was an MTK 'bodyline' product - two cast (passenger-style) ends and both sides stamped out of a single piece of aluminium, all stuck to a sheet of plain black card, and that was it; it put in regular appearances on the club stand at our local show, nobody wanted it so in the end I took pity on it and assembled it around a Hornby Class 110 power car and painted it in green syp livery - it looked quite good but I had no need for it so moved it on - must have been about 15 years ago now). I have a DC Kits Class 205 '2H' kit to build at some point 🙄 - can I ask what kind of adhesive you find works well with this plastic? I usually use EMA 'Plastic Weld' but, although I haven't tested it yet, I have a feeling something more powerful is called for......

I have one Clayton, blue D8507, which runs OK - its buffers, springs and sleeves are in a zip bag waiting for me to getting around to looking into filing the small recesses you refer to - but one has to wonder whether Heljan overlooked providing these recesses to clear the buffers in the first place, this poor design condemning owners to carpet searches with a torch and magnifying glass........thanks a bunch Heljan!

I had the Western diesel in this form too - I mail-ordered one (as they weren't widely available, unlike you-know-who) but can't recall where from now, just after Christmas 1971 and I found it waiting for me when I got home from a trip to Penzance on New Year's Eve, which was memorable for seeing D6336 in the down sidings at Truro, one of the last four survivors all withdrawn the following day, goodbye Class 22. Being extremely familiar with Westerns I couldn't live with the very visible extra bogie sideframe reinforcements so cut them away, leaving the rest of the sideframe detail precariously attached only by the brake linkages! I had to therefore be very careful with it and managed to keep it intact; I also didn't fit the holed plastic wheel inserts, and the bogies looked far better as a result. It was later renamed D1010 Western Campaigner using etched plates and the Trix plastic D1004 Western Crusader plates sat around until late 1986 when I had the 'inspiration' to create 52004 in Inter-City livery using a Hornby model (which I restored a couple of years or so ago and posted pics to the 'Fictitious Liveries' thread, so the plates live on). As for the Trix model, it was joined by a couple of Liliput-produced versions in the mid-late 1970s but before I got to do anything with them the Hornby and Lima models were announced and although as you say these ran very well the dimensional issues saw them replaced. Around 1970 I also bought a couple of Tri-ang CKD kits, a pair of maroon Mark 1 CKs (numbered 15917/8 using sticky labels from memory), and a blue Hymek. I also picked up an assembled second-hand green EM2 (sticky labels for 27002 'Aurora' and bolted-on trailing bogie being the clues) shortly after and back then had no problem running this alongside my Tri-ang AL1 under my Super-4 'click-fit' catenary!

Lovely photo.........and a serious pair of buffers 😮!!

Which in turn reminded me of my wife and daughter exiting the cinema having just watched the first 'Lord of the Rings' movie and hearing the person in front of them say to her friend, "Well that was a rotten ending" - clearly oblivious to the concept of a trilogy. (It certainly ended rotten for Sean Bean but he's used to it......he must have been gobsmacked to have survived the carnage of 'Troy'!)

A 75-ton breakdown crane with matching bogie crew coach and loco parked on a siding only accessible by a headshunt into which the loco by itself would just about fit (saw this epic layout planning fail at a show in Bristol decades ago - as you can see it stuck with me!)

Where are the white stripes, light grey roof and red bufferbeam? This loco has not been painted correctly 🤪!! (And that headcode is a mess - time for a domino upgrade!)

Me too, and it's scarily imminent 😬!! But generally speaking I'm doing OK for seven decades' wear and tear.......where's some real wood when you need to touch it 🤪!? Winding the clock back to March 2000, I was 46 and had just finished setting up my layout at a show in Greenford, West London. As usual, being a 'one man band' last job before doors open was to make sure I was empty.......unfortunately the 'gents' had a row of horizontal windows just above head height below which was a row of mirrors - and on this particularly lovely March morning the bright sunlight beamed down through the window neatly illuminating the top of my head as I stood there..... er..... emptying, and in the unavoidable mirror in front of me I suddenly realised just how grey my hair had become! My bathroom mirror at home, with indirect natural and artificial light sources, had flattered to deceive - it was a sobering moment!!

A little surprised to see data panels on D7661 so, unlike D7666, not strictly 'as built' - it would have spent its first two years without them, and so not in such pristine condition by the time they were applied. At a guess D7552 spent much of 1968 in Gfye livery before receiving data panels early the following year....... Data panels first appeared around September 1968 (the first I saw were on D838 'Rapid' in ex-works maroon 🤨 at Plymouth North Road on the 11th of that month) - this was around the same time that D prefixes were dropped following the end of steam so theoretically all works output from that autumn should have combined both features; however d/p uptake appeared to be quite slow - for example ex-works Class 33 6585 at Exeter St Davids on 2nd January 1969 didn't have them. They seemed to become widely available during early 1969 for depot application - even green-liveried Penzance pilot D4013 was displaying them by April. Data panels are so easy for modellers to apply if required that on RTR models which bridge this period they would be better left off. Railtec supply blue-backed data panels suitable for green (and maroon) locos, which avoids having to paint a 3x2mm blue patch in preparation. Done that a few times.....🙂