MrWolf

Miss R has a hairdryer, but it's fitted with a whacking great diffuser, or it's possibly some kind of death ray, I'm not sure....

It's highly probable that you're wasting your your time old chap.

Next train's gone! Photo: Mubi.com

I've seen a few of those on railway property, even bolted to the end of platform, presumably for rope shunting where no horse was available?

I never had the pleasure of seeing them race in person, but I do remember driving up the M1 past Donington just as a race meeting was kicking out and a dozen or more sports bikes came flying past us. As the group passed under a bridge, all the brake lights came on as one after another threw out the anchor. When we passed under the bridge I saw two Norton Rotaries in police trim tucked behind the abutment. Norton had just trounced everything else on the track. Not long after of course there was the whole "If we can't beat them, let's ban them" debacle. It was as though the powers that be and vested interests refused to believe that a tiny manufacturer could take on the big boys and win, they obviously hadn't heard of David and Goliath, they must be cheating!!! It smelled strongly of the Zenith Gradua incident seventy years earlier. At that point I lost all interest in motorcycle racing, preferring to think of it as a 200mph queue. I watch the TT highlights, but haven't been to the island since either. Source: Wikimedia.org Speaking of Commanders, this was parked next to the F1.

For those of you who like your old bikes a little less old, a cafe stop on Saturday turned up this, the last ever Norton F1 off the line. Only the square headlight and (original) Yamaha indicators give away it's age.

Clearly you were a major crime figure and needed to be stopped! Meanwhile, the BMW 318 with a kilo of coke in the boot cruised by unnoticed....🥺

Have a look at; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124352286167?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=sliaTqQySGC&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=3qkTzGg7QRS&var=425823191928&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

That's a lovely model Rob, always reminds me of a real life overgrown terminus, that at Glasson, LNWR All it needs is a canopy! Image: Roger Farnworth via WordPress.com

Rear ended by an E type Jag?

I could well be wrong, (I'm sure that someone will point it out at great length) but I think that they date back to the old Mainline model from around forty years ago. I was tempted to buy one cheaply at a swapmeet earlier this year but managed to resist as it was filthy and there was evidence of damp storage.

Would they be the 1930s all steel opens as made by Cambrian? They look rather nice. You have my sympathies on the bearing situation, I'm having the same problems with coupling springs at present.

Roll forward forty years and the car is a Hyundai or Honda plus lots of motorhomes and twenty foot caravans towed by 4x4s that will inevitably clog up the country lanes. Around our neck of the woods it's much the same. Only yesterday did we get stuck on a back lane where a couple of campers had got into a bottleneck with a tractor towing a logging trailer. Fortunately, as old motorcycles get hot and bothered standing still, they're very easy to turn around and pick a new route.

That's a nice addition to the fleet Graham, I think that many of the older models are overlooked and have a lot of potential.

The base model Vauxhall H type was painted in a solid colour with black wings prior to WW2. The deluxe models were all one colour including some early "metallichrome" colours. What you have there is the upgraded model produced for 1947/48 that has the spare wheel moved to the outside of the boot lid. I've been trying to find out what the car in the picture actually is, but I no longer have the range of books I once had. It may be a special body of around 1936/37, I initially thought Riley 16, but that has a fully "Airline" rear end. I'll keep looking though, it's just the kind of thing that piques my OCD! 😆

Brilliant set of pictures and a good day out. Had I known about it I would have jumped on the bike and come to see it for myself. I often drop in at Hellifield when passing just to have a look round the old station. We're lucky to still have it, given how much has been swept away from the site. I notice that those old carriages are still rusting away further up the line and the workshop by the station is still empty. I've never been able to find out what all that is about.

I've never read those, the memsahib was mad on those books and films, but she was about eleven at the time. She maintains that they were great, for kids, literature hadn't fired children's imagination for years and here was a bit of escapism that did. Almost all of the films aimed at children since the success of Star Wars have been the spearhead of massive toy marketing campaigns, but few have come from something that really made children want to read. What they were reading at school wasn't making them want to read, unless it was in the hope of finding something more interesting. It was much the same for us, we were made to read Tolkien, pretty much at gunpoint, I just couldn't get into it, and of course, we had a number of thirteen year old literary snobs who thought anyone who didn't like it was a philistine. I was at a disadvantage, by the age of nine, I had an above adult average reading ability. If I had been left alone to read the classics, rather than wait as the class ploughed on, reading out a page at a time aloud, I might have paid a little more interest. I can recommend Bored of the rings. The 1969 parody by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, available for a couple of quid from you know where.

I expect so too. They, (the model railway press) are better placed to perform an unbiased and informed critique than we individuals on a forum I feel, I certainly wouldn't wish to even vaguely deter anyone from producing a new model or customers from buying it. I remember when things like wire handrails came in on mass produced locos, some people said that they were too thick or too shiny, but we had them at last, after decades of moulded on items that the press berated. The makers listened and upped their game and we eventually arrived where we are now, with better RTR than most of the kits from 1982.

It is a very nice model, but I have to agree with you that there's something possibly proportionally odd about it. I think that it was on this thread that I have said that it looks as though the taper of the boiler is too great, resulting in the rear end of the boiler cladding meeting up with the transition curve of the throat plate cladding too high up and resulting in a more hump backed appearance than the real thing. But like you say, the jury's out until a true side elevation picture is obtained and scale drawings checked against the model.

That is fair enough comment, but those photos, along with lots of others had been picked off the internet whilst hunting for information and ideas and stored away in my phone. They wouldn't have been posted at all had the relative position of the FPL cover and the board crossing not been questioned, so I hadn't made any note of where they came from as I'm not writing a dissertation or publishing a book, I just post up progress and answer questions in the few spare minutes I have in a working day and genuinely didn't know who had taken that photograph as I have previously stated, but now that I do, I apologise for not giving credit where it's due. Had you pointed out that the picture was one of yours a little more directly, rather than saying that someone was inside of your camera, which I took to be humour and that you had taken many such similar photos, I would have apologised and given you credit there and then, as it's quite remiss of me not to do so as a general rule. Given my upbringing, brought up by grandparents, some of whom were genuine Victorians, a good school, university and army, not to mention dealing with blue chip companies at boardroom level as part of my former career, I've seldom had my maturity or degree of politeness brought into question. So in future, if I can't credit the source of a picture, I won't post it, even if it illustrates a point, answers a question, proves a theory or helps someone to know they're doing the right thing. Everyone will be so much better off.

It's about time I set up a train on the layout, it's a good boost and helpful to remind yourself what the aim is. Plus a pannier never offends.

Not if he's a Vietnam veteran, he spelt it exactly the way he was taught. I'm reading the selected letters of T.E.Lawrence at the moment, some interesting thoughts that are still relevant ninety years later.

The anti force, because it's just Tolkien in space?

Likewise, especially as there are certain colours that I use in almost every painting.

I wish I could remember who it was that said "If you have to wash your hands before you go to the toilet, you're working class".