MrWolf

Peppermint Twist - Joey Dee & The Starliters

If it helps, you've inspired a bridge and landscaping bodge-a-thon in another far flung Great Western outpost.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I have seen the cap stones of wing wall end pillars virtually at ground level before now. It's all quite prototypical and that road bridge over the canal could pre date the railway architecture by almost a century. 

I think that a good boost to the plausibility of the scene (and your sanity) and a well earned break from carpentry would be to get a bit of realism painted onto that arch.

Hey Hey Hey Hey - Little Richard

I enjoy studying the details in these photos, even though it is a fictitious place, I think of it as being as close as you can get to having a time machine.

That's pretty rough, I have often been called cynical for cursing accountants for giving the job to the lowest bidder. But putting things right has earned me a good living in the past. On a similar note I have seen the pipe flanges either side of a slam shut safety valve on petrochemical lines where the weld prep or alignment was bad and lengths of 12mm threaded rod tacked in and welded over. It says something about the thoroughness of subsequent NDT work that such things still happen, especially in the more remote parts of the world.

That wouldn't surprise me one bit @Gibbo675 The rear spring shackle mounts on Leyland National buses had a similar affliction in the 1990s. Possibly not as dangerous, but equally slack maintenance. I remember being warned in a number of jobs - beware of "welder's paint".

Ford did the same thing with the welded on hinges on the Anglia and the Escort. If you take a door hinge off a Vauxhall E series (1952-7) you can still see the marks where they took the hinge off, hammered it over the back of a vice, before refitting and painting to get the door gaps spot on. 

An Australian I worked with had done his apprenticeship building Valiants, his job was to open the bonnets as necessary and give the panel a twist to ensure that it closed level. This happens in factories worldwide. If you think that nobody puts in a row of bolts loose and pulls panels to shape, whilst someone else gets them tightened up quickly, then don't ever get on an aeroplane! 

Too much monkey business - Chuck Berry

Little Lil - Mel Dorsey

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Agreed, but I very much doubt that the Japanese will allow their quality to sink to the depths British motorcycle manufacturing reached by the later 1960s. It just isn’t the Japanese way. 

Absolutely not, having seen the meticulous way that the Japanese engineers went about something as mundane as joining together new water mains after the earthquake in Kobe, I would say they would sooner stop making motorcycles as of midnight tonight. However, that may be their very undoing. A large number of the population are only interested in the best price option. There is little marque loyalty amongst non enthusiasts and the ride to work, learner and delivery bike market falls to China. That leaves the niche market fifty plus tourers and weekend racers, who will eventually become like the seventy something's now who remember when buying a bike that wasn't British, German or Italian was unheard of.

Sixteen Candles - The Crests

Evil Devil Woman Blues - Joe McCoy

Don't Stop, Don't Stop - Ralph Robbins

I suspect that as the British did in the 1950s world market, the big four Japanese brands still don't have any serious competition. But we all know the price of resting on our laurels.

That is as good as any professionally weathered wagon I have seen.

Alone In This World - The 5 Trojans

On The Road Again - Canned Heat

Rules Of The Road - The Turbines

I think that you had hit the nail on the head at "Often the very particular motorcycles that no-one else wanted or could afford". Quite why nobody has had a sideways look at the competition and built a range of motorcycles 50-1000cc that people could afford and then stick with, which was a lesson that should have been learnt by 1968 I will never know.

Of course it doesn't help that the British government is anti motorcycle, anti motorcycling and anti motorcyclist and has been for a good half century.

People in cars pay out more and are easier to control. That suits the folks in charge, regardless of their political stance.

I Found Heaven - The Del Chords

Time Is On My Side - The Rolling Stones

Remember Then - The Earls

Johnny Valentine - Andy Anderson

Or you could travel a bit further and knock together a historical model. Not much at El Alamein but the railway and sand, plus inevitable sheep and goats.

The buildings are available... 

Keep ruminating on designs and keep it Upwool!