fiftyfour fiftyfour

That wasn't operated by BR on 31/03/97, it was operated by Virgin Trains since 3rd March. You'd need to identify which train operating unit that operated push-pull formations was the last to be privatised so it may have been the last Eus-Wvh on 02/03/97 as Gatwick Express, Anglia and East Coast Mainline had already left BR ownership. The Kenny Belle is highly unlikely as it was weekdays only and privatisation switches were early hours of Sunday morning.

and it's only not Devon because of its lack of railways! And I'm counting the five between Dawlish and Teignmouth as five because they all have separate names...

This was resolved, confusingly due to a site outage at the time I started this thread twice and the settings don't allow for deletion of your own messages or topics for some inexplicable reason. In case someone else is seeking help on the same topic and ends up on this one!

My concern with some of the replies in this thread is that some obviously come from VERY long retired members of staff giving long since replaced info. For example- Bristol area early 2000's- all fine to run non-corridors (eg 142, 143, 150/1) in multiple with each other with only one guard, and not necessarily in the back set, except through the Severn Tunnel where there had to be one in each unconnected portion or the offending bit locked out of use. The Severn Tunnel bit got removed soon after so it was OK to run a pair involving no corridors through there with passengers "alone" in one bit. When the Voyagers came in their union reps were not as hot, so double sets with a single guard was allowed (so I assume the "we were all squashed into one set" report was actually due to other reason, eg short platform or set on an ECS transfer). On the other hand the FGW Class 180's always HAD to have a guard (by then called Train Manager) in each bit, and if there was a crew shortage the back set had to be locked out of use regardless of passenger demand, a situation which was replicated on 2x 5 car 800's when first introduced but eased by some additional training given to catering staff allowing just one Train Manager in the rear set.

That very much depends on where you are going - the regional airports are very much in a different market to Heathrow. I once flew Heathrow to Dublin (using up a free reward flight accrued from a major carrier) and the journey time from the terminal to the end of the runway at Heathrow was longer (by one minute) than the journey time from the end of the runway at Heathrow to the start of the runway at Dublin. Given that is the norm it would be quicker, for example, for me to invest an extra 60 mins of travel time to an airport that isn't Heathrow for a quicker overall journey time.

Anyone else read "Welsh national airline" and reminded of this... Or was it just me? O

You wouldn't even need very high power for take-offs- we happen to know the runway is long enough to accept Concorde!! If any coherent planning was to occur anywhere in the Bristol region it would confuse the natives and arouse deep suspicion.

It never dropped to "parliamentary" frequency, the timetable current/previous was roughly every 45 mins except Sundays when it was hourly. It got dropped like a hot potato in mid March and nothing has traversed the branch since, it's already quite badly overgrown in places. The line was relatively well used with peak trains being well over half full (four car 319) but two consecutive franchisees have done their level best to suppress demand through terrible reliability over the last few years. There has been an ad-hoc replacement bus since then and a possible re-open date of later this month has already been kicked down the road by a fleet issue. The question is how infrequent can you run trains to have closed a line by default?!

There is at least one previously regular line that hasn't run since mid March and maybe never will again- Watford Junction to St Albans Abbey. It seems suspect to me that they used to have to go through the faff of running at least one train a week on lines previously termed "parliamentary" but have used the crisis to bring about closures that the franchises would love to bring in without any undue fuss. Talking of long periods without a service, Reedham to Yarmouth went for around two years with no trains as Network Rail and Abellio Greater Anglia illegally colluded to close the line by default and leave one station with no service (bus replacement not possible). Don't know what happened to force the change back to running trains but it appears they have reinstated a handful since May 2020.

and also needing a layout long enough to take a 10-vehicle HST, which is (I figured!) the reason for the apparent short-former on the sublime layout pictured! Chasing your tail on the absolute bang up to date schemes is a rich mans hobby and a fools errand- I'm looking forward to people fizzing about the Avanti Pendolino when it comes out later this year even though its livery has already been superseded on the real trains. From a HST perspective, and mostly because of my geographic area, top of my wish list is First Great Western "Barbie" 2002-2008 style, a livery which has NEVER been released other than on the 1976 Hornby toy moulding but is a livery that was worn by nearly half the entire HST fleet over a long period than pretty much any ECML operator has survived for!

You need three rakes and three pairs of power cars to replicate the current scene; EMR Intercity (old EMT rebranded) later version of above (only on ex Grand Cancel vehicles) EMR "Red" sets (old LNER rebranded) You can run your "red" ex LNER power cars on the sets in the old EMT livery provided you have chosen to model the correct sets!!

Some of these design houses are plain lazy when it comes to design approach. In the bus industry there is one dominant design company which they all use, and pretty much got the same result each time so late 1980's wedges with pin stripes gave way to curved swoops of colour in the 1990's and became wavy lines in this millenium. Effectively once you'd seen one you could design your own and save yourself a six figure sum, although few operators cottoned onto this.

They used two "traditional" EMR (rebranded EMT) livery sets last Saturday although, p*ss-poor reliability not withstanding, there is no reason why they cannot use a "red" (rebranded ex LNER) set on those services.

Very short lived livery! And the coach livery for the three ex Grand Cancel sets is different to the core EMT livery so you'd be after another set of coaches to go with them...

Oh, ah- OK!! It looked like they were all default standard rail alphabet so I dismissed them- you may have lost other custom through others making that wrong assumption! I need to work out what loco I want now, which could require some thinking time/etched plate procurement...

Having asked about, you cannot use standard rail alphabet numbers on RES locos, they used Frutiger 75 Black font for their numerals and lettering. Does anyone print these in smaller quantities for just just doing one spoon rather than a full fleet?!

Ye olde thread revival. Does anyone know the font used by RES for their loco numbers please? I was hopeful that Railtec might do a custom numbering set but it seems not for Rail Express Systems, and their RES loco numbering pack is also out of stock so it's going to have to be a print at home job.

for many years there was an Aberdeen out and back HST diagram, so that's over 1050 miles. In the 1980's and probably right up until the end of the decade a set worked 0800 Kgx-Abd/1600 Abd-Kgx and when the services were reworked post electrification with the minimal number of HSTs remaining one set did 0755 Abd-Kgx/1600 Kgx-Abd every weekday, this lasted well into GNER era if not later. But... even better than that; for many years post electrification a set worked 0710 Lds-Abd, 1455 Abd-Kgx, 2310/2325/2330 Kgx-Lds taking it to over 1080 miles on a tank although if time allowed they fuelled it at Aberdeen as an insurance in case of power car breakdown later in the day. This diagram continued until the IEP take-over and was supplemented by a similar diagram which worked Leeds-London, 1000 Kgx-Abd, 1815ish Abd-Lds.

Think they only had one livery under Great Western as they had the green and gold derived from "fag pack" when they came out but had gone before the "barbie" livery derived from the bus schemes came into effect. So three liveries to do and a wider operating area with the new uses, but still only 8 vehicles- not enough to justify an RTR but we can dream!

Yes, NR yellow was the second livery. Although they ran for a short spell shifting cars in/out of Long Marston under Fragonset/Victa Westlink but I don't recall that lasting too long.

Yes, 4mm. With only two liveries and a narrow-ish operating sphere I don't suppose anyone will revive the etchings, let alone produce an RTR model!

Additional question- did anyone ever make a kit of any kind to make the NVA Motorail vans used by First Great Western c2000? The numbers appear to be 96602-96609 range, those are the lowest and highest for which I can find pictures for online.

Oh, I got one VERY close to the limit! If the fuel tank gauge between the bogies was showing anything less than full then you were running low, and if that tank was showing 1/4 full you might get another 100 miles max, depending on what was hanging off the hook.

That's probably the best solution if modelling a wider period than one week in May '19- 43198 was an early repaint and the Oxfordshire 2007 plates are available.