fiftyfour fiftyfour

I shall investigate! Putting them together on the top of a sheet was the way of getting six or seven lots out of one sheet, I can always guarantee something will need a re-do for some reason!

Does anyone know what colour the interior soft trim was on the Skippers?

Maybe because I'm a semi-luddite, but I draw up what I need nice and big on MS Paint, then cut and paste it into MS Word, and shrink the image down- this seems to me to be the best way of retaining a good quality level of image at the desired size. I usually print a few sizes onto a sheet of paper to see which is the right size and check for any adjustments before actually feeding the £3 a sheet waterslide paper into the printer and hitting "high" on the print quality menu. If the logo I need can be found online that helps enormously, otherwise I'm limited to the most simple/lettering based versions. My main woe is where white lettering is used, the only work-around I can see is to print on white transfer paper with a block of colour around the logo and hope for the best/blend it in a bit with a brush. Sometimes it shows, sometimes you get away with it. A good example of this attached. Registrations- download Charles Wright font (I found it easily on google) and I use 4pt text for registrations.

I stand corrected over the 501's, which were in all fairness withdrawn before I was born!! There are significant sections, practically the whole way from Watford Junction to Carpenders Park where there is no 4th rail at all, there are some very rusty old lumps of it left principally Hatch End to Harrow and these are bonded in places to the running rail adjacent to the conductor rail, but never to another bit of old 4th rail even where a short gap appears in the 4th rail. Its all on the deck, none of it on pots, no insulation and not aligned to the centre at any point except where it happens to cross the centre whilst laying diagonally. The Class 313's certainly didn't use it. 4th rail still in place Kilburn High Road up platform and everywhere north thereof as its needed for Bakerloo turn back.

Four rail to Watford dates back to when the Bakerloo went through to Watford, every bit of stock operated by LUL needs a 4th rail for traction current return purposes, no stock ever operated by BR (except the tube stock on the drain and the Island Line) sends return current through a running rail. Any redundant 4th rail still in place north of Harrow is only there because nobody bothered to lift it, it's broken/misaligned and not connected to anything.

Follow up from original question; London Buses logos from Mabex, adverts, destinations and small detail from LBRT. Still seeking a suitable T shaped advert for the offside as it looks a bit naked without anything, I wish people would occasionally take square-on side shots of buses so I can cut and paste the advert off a photo!

I always got the impression that it was a bit tongue in cheek as they are still over 40 years old under all that paintwork! If they do it as pictured above you'll all need a scratch rake of "dynamic lights" slam door carriages to run it with

Suppose the advantage on XC and Scotrail is they don't have a named one to gravitate towards thus causing all sorts of problems for anyone renumbering the released power car!

What was wrong with 285 that is right with 357?

Almost but not quite- the Scotrail 406xx First/catering car is converted from a TF. Before anyone hacks about or spends money there is still a chance that the fifth coach won't happen, or if it does happen it will be in the form of a TGS (rather than a 4th TS) thus giving six extra bike spaces and halving the amount of sliding doors needed.

Err, yeah- I said that in the message two before the one you quoted!! What was new to me (but made total sense thinking about it) was that in a test formation formed Class 91- scratch rake of SLE/SLEP- HST power car on rear you still needed the power car alive to run the TDM system, clearly on that rake its not making any contribution to tractive effort (nor was it wanted to, the Class 91 was what they wanted to test) and as it wasn't being driven from no auxiliaries were needed so whilst on the back of that rake its just a very heavy tail lamp. Running all the auxiliaries off the battery on a HST power car also had the advantage of clean-ish constant 110v current rather than the variable 415v output, I say clean-ish as it turned out to be anything but when electronic engine governors came for the Mirrlees MB190 trials and a burglar alarm battery had to be installed to feed the governor on those, a work-around later adapted for the Automatic Train Protection equipment electronics.

Oh yeah, forgot that- also the ends of the grey band are different, on a HST they wrap around the whole door width and then just end when they reach the hinge edge of the door, whereas on the loco hauled variants they are 'finished' with curved corners and the narrow white band just after the droplight window so the last part of the door is all blue.

Don't buy the Oxford if you want to model an HST, the roof vents at the coach ends are only correct for loco hauled. Simply removing the buffers from the Hornby ones and filling in the hole is a good start. You can add the air pipes and fancy pants couplings if so inclined.

That got reduced to 60 mins across the board in latter years, it prevented Class 313's from doing a planned Watford to Gatwick service some time ago which had to be put on hold until some 319's could be found.

Nobody is ever anxious to get to Birmingham! I would imagine its a pathing/set availability issue rather than a commercial decision not to provide a train. The old 1630 Euston-Glasgow which called Preston only fell down a similar hole, when the 1633 Eus-Preston was converted to a five car Voyager to Blackpool the Wigan and Warrington stops were thrown back into the old "Caledonian" and after that three more stops north of Preston were chucked in shifting Glasgow back to 4hr 28min from London.

Or populate the carriage seating areas, or put curtains in first class, or some more detail on the interiors such as seats and seat backs in prototypical colours rather than one plain moulding in whatever colour comes to hand?!

I'd go along with that, except the door handle on the TGS guards door is identical to the passenger door handle so the CAD work on a Mk3 slam door with handle ought to already be done. Someone will come along and say they want a sensor that automatically illuminates the CDL light on the platform side only when it detects its stood in a platform (to go with their opening door presumably) but the fact that the XC sets contain a mix of ex loco hauled and HST proper coaches means they have indeed done the donkey work.

In a word, yes. The old 121/122 were really only ever intended for short branch lines whereas the 153's can run some pretty long distances. I recall Class 117/118 had the toilet in the centre car, all fine until they took the centre cars out- and didn't the Tysley four cars have no toliet at all?

The down trains are normally booked to DEPART Coventry 59 mins after leaving Euston, so all normally do one stop (xx03 Eus, Rug, Cov, xx23 Eus. Wfj, Cov and xx43 Eus, Mkc, Cov) and they frequently have to hang around for a couple of mins waiting time. Generally a public time Euston to New Street on the down of 82 mins and with a bit of swift running and no TSRs they could knock that down to 77/78 mins but with zero performance margin...

Instead of gimmicks I'd never use I'd rather see retooling that corrects the error on the roof of the slam-door TGS coach, adds a proper TRSB/TRFB coach into the range and has another go at the TRUB/TRBF but without the inaccurate CDL/passenger door at the counter end. Update these and do replacement interiors to reflect the later seating layouts and colours, more detailed ends and coach connections and I'd be in the market for some, provided they went through some of the InterCity/early privatisation liveries.

Late to the party on this one but be VERY careful with any "fact" printed in that Colin Marsden HST book, the guy really has no idea what he is talking about! Pretty much all Mk2's and loco hauled Mk3's had drop head buckeyes making them suitable for use as barriers between Alliance buckeyes on HST vehicles and draw hook fitted locos but as others have said only the specially modified HST generator car or an HST power car can put power through the coaches for heat/light/air con. Elsewhere in the same book it stated that the TGS vehicles modified with drop-head buckeyes and buffers for the 'hybrid' Class 91 operation were subsequently used as barriers (and still used as barriers until at least 2002 when the book was published), that nugget of fiction was among many similar items of complete fabrication in that book.

They would change even on surprisingly short runs, I recall them swapping locos at Ipswich before the wires had reached Norwich in the mid 1980's.

Mabex came good, and delivered quite quickly. How long they will remain an option I don't know as they only accept cheques so will soon have no ability to collect income, got two sets in case I ever find another of the Tryst Models half L-Class Olympian that needs an EFE donor vehicle to complete.

If you are modelling Stafford you can almost get away with any HST power car from July '91; nominally the ICCS sector (which would have passed through there on the Cornish Scot, Wessex Scot and other workings to/from Manchester included the likes of 43068/100 (all the buffer fitted ones were ICCS, along with c20 others) but until Spring '92 they let anything go anywhere so those trains would have been formed of any NL or EC based power cars. Conversely the Devon Scot, and from September '91 the Euston-Holyhead services, would have been formed of any LA or PM based power car, although nominal business sectors were observed from 1992 onwards. Planned set formations for the XC workings were TGS-4x TS- TRSB-TF and for the Holyhead workings TGS-4x TS-TRFB-2x TF.

Generally the HSTs came onto those WCML long distance trains from the (later than usual) Summer 1991 timetable change which began in July, so the "Cornish Scot", "Devon Scot", "Wessex Scot" and some balancing Poole/Bournemouth to Manchester workings would have switched to HSTs at that time. I think, without looking it up, that the HSTs started on Euston-Holyhead from the Autumn '91 timetable change as crew training was needed before these could be improved.