MrWolf

It's a funny thing, collecting, it doesn't matter what you are interested in. There is always that one thing that is the key item and often wipes out the saving you might have made on the rest of a set. A friend was selling a whole raft of vintage model railway locos and stock from Bassett Lowke, Exley, Marklin etc to more prosaic items like Trix and Triang. The thing that got all the attention was a Triang American diesel set. He was constantly asked to sell just the centre car, the whole thing was mint and boxed. The loco and dummy are apparently common as muck, but the centre car jacks up the value considerably. I bet if he had split the set it would have been on eBay the same night. We recently renovated and sold a bedroom set made for Harrods in the late 50s. Individually, the items are worth a few hundred pounds each. But if you find the dressing table, which was the most fragile part, that was least practical (and for a time unfashionable) then the price (I don't like the word value too much!) more than quadruples.

I knew I hadn't dreamt it! There was an under bridge, partially flooded, that led out to the main line, beneath which and beyond saving was a Ford Consul Mk1 and a Morris Oxford MO, removing the hard to find bits from these distracted me a while from stripping bits off the 1956 Vauxhall Cresta that I had actually been after. The rest of the place was full of the usual Marinas, Granadas and rusted out Toyotas etc. I took no notice of anything post 1980 as usual, of which there must have been a couple of hundred. The place was so rammed with junk it was hard to tell what it had been, now I know at last. I did find some pictures once, taken in the 60's, I need a time machine!

Last time I went to Radstock was about 20 years ago, on a detour coming back from Westland at Yeovil. Didn't find much in the way of railway remains but there was an interesting scrapyard in a railway yard with brick retaining walls. It had obviously been there for donkeys years, judging by some of the relics I bought. I bet that has something less interesting built on it now too.

He could get a set of etched plates for it and rename it Sir Ralph Wedgewood - It's not been dropped, that's scale blitz damage guv'nor!

That sir, is the Dobermans' cojones. Well worth the effort.

Or he could be one of the smart / lucky ones. Get a job as a trainee fireman, knowing that you will be called up for military service in a couple of years. Instead of waiting for the letter, volunteer for the right regiment and get sent to Germany. Decide to stay on a few years to get your papers for driver/instructor on steam, diesel and electric traction. Demobbed and back in the UK, return to British Railways and skip half a lifetime of shovelling ash and saying Yessir! My late father's older cousin did exactly that.

Cleaner / lighter up: "Two engines a day they told me when I started. I'm b###ered if I'm raking ash out of that lot!"

My actual point was that RTR is better than it has ever been. I don't see too many locos at £70 though, they seem to be £110-150 average. Going DCC doesn't seem to justify the price hike over analogue for the components involved tbh. We ARE well served with rtr and kits, for post 1923, with the exception of GWR wagons, hence the prices online. As I said, I also buy rtr and improve it , particularly because it is so good. Naturally things come full circle, our motor industry rested upon its laurels and the Japanese offered a better product and a better deal. Because their people no longer want to work in a factory for peanuts, their industry has been farmed out to places like Taiwan and Brazil. But of course people there want to afford a decent lifestyle and the goods that they produce, so it goes on. I could cite the example of a British owned factory in China making key components for the aircraft industry which was suffering from some serious quality control issues. I was tasked with finding out what the cause was. I came back with the simple answer: You have your workers on piece work. The first batch is perfect and passes inspection by your customer. But, because you have cut your prices and timing to the bone per item, the only way that the workers can make a living wage is to rush or cut corners. Not something that you want to be doing with a safety critical engine part. The only way forward was to pay the Chinese better wages and take less of a profit to remain competitive. No amount of on the job training was going to change that. I do happen to live in the real world, I spent about 20 years working all over the place and people, regardless of where they come from have basically the same desires.

Very true, you'll need to motorise the rest of the locos for towing failed Warships / Westerns and their trains

I think that most people on here muddle along, every day is a school day so to speak, there is always something new to learn. We all do the best we can with what we have. My own interests lie mostly in pre grouping railways. Mostly L&NWR, L&SWR and the GWR, as well as oddballs like the M&SWJR, even a leap up north to the Highland. But what I actually do is model the GWR between the wars, specifically minor lines (I have never been interested in Kings and Castles etc, nor any of the other company's big mainline locomotives, reminds me of train sets I think) What this actually means is that I can use rule 1 to run some oddities and antiquated stock that I can obtain as cheaper kits or rtr. I came to the conclusion long ago that if I wanted a "proper model railway" that was the way to go because to do anything else would mean etched kits etc for locomotives and stock. That would mean I couldn't afford it at all. I buy older, pre DCC locos which are sufficiently accurate to be further detailed, as the price of such things has quadruped in less than 20 years, no doubt discouraging many potential modellers. I hear all the reasons for putting a microchip in a model loco, which are fine, as well as appreciating the extra detail and accuracy currently offered, but as a former engineer, I look at these things and conclude that we are being ripped off for what when all is said and done, a toy made in the third world. If we are not careful, the hobby will go full circle, back to the day when it was the preserve of a wealthy few who could afford to commission a bespoke model. The manufacturers may be shooting themselves in the foot.

You should see the Bachmann 4 car underground set he is also selling, 9 bids to £490.00 with 6 days 18 hours to go. Sorry folks, I'm all out of witticisms.

Me too and I just don't get it! Nice bacon slicer wheels BTW

I had just assumed that it was someone being a bit too clever with one of those minimum space layout contests?

Don't buy any clerestory coaches is all I can say!

Probably not, I think we are all expecting the worst due to all the scammers out there. Some people are just not very good at dealing with what the rest of us regard as simple transactions and come across as just plain sketchy.

My pet hate is Hermes. If any seller is sending by "other courier" I message them to say Do not send by Hermes. Two times in a year they have dumped something on the doorstep, two times it has been stolen. The latest was a £300 motorcycle gearbox. (They also dumped a parcel in the neighbours bin, but that was retrieved, wet through, no lid on bin) Even before the lockdown, you couldn't speak to anyone in person. All you get is an automated message saying it was signed for by a member of the household. The signature can be viewed on our website. No it can't, it was never signed for and there is no record of a signature on the website. There is NO email address, NO complaints procedure and the insurance isn't worth a light. They are unprofessional and seemingly unaccountable. Other companies now take a photograph of the package in the open door of the property it is delivered to, which protects everyone. Particularly because it is well known that thieves follow the vans and dash up as a driver is about to leave with a parcel, pretending to be or know the recipient. The drivers in the main are self employed man with a van. As long as they can tag the drop off location on their computer, they don't give a toss. I would likely get more results taking a 2lb hammer to the local smack rats to find out where my parcels went than trying to talk to the clowns at Hermes.

He's following only one seller, malcrosby7, who judging by the number of items that he has for sale is a dealer. It would be interesting to know if he has had any problems with trainbay?

It's a hell of a job on a simple kit, it's good to start with, but the work you have put in has lifted it to exceptional. I can see that I am going to have to pull my finger out and sort my buildings. Might have to put a light in the ticket office and the signal box. I like the idea of a greenish glow for gas lighting, but I don't think that the area I am modelling was ever connected to town gas. Might have to go with a yellowish glow for oil lamps. You're giving me a lot to think about!

More accurate would be "weathered to look like it was at ground zero, Hiroshima"...

I thought it was just me that did daft things like that! Years ago I sold an old belt drive lathe to a chap in Leicestershire, took it up there in an ancient Bedford CA van which had a pair of builders roof bars on it. The new owner lived at an old forge, access to the workshop was through an archway under the main house. We unloaded the dismantled half ton lathe, put it together in his workshop, got paid and left. All was well until we went under the arch. There was a sort of clang and the roof bars that were clamped to van's roof gutters landed in the yard behind us. No damage done and the lathe buyer was falling about laughing. I never thought about the van rising back up about four inches or so on its cart springs when empty. The roof bars went straight on his scrap pile. Naff things anyway!

Damned if I'm going to try and blow that house in. Been there. Done that. Didn't end well.

In reality: Tack-one-edge-and-batter-the-metal-until-it-fits Liberally apply red oxide primer to hide gaps, blow holes, poor penetration and slag inclusions. (See also MOT standard welded repairs to motor vehicles, except that step 2 is daub on underseal / seam sealer to hide faults and / or the bits you couldn't get to without removing fuel tanks / suspension components)

Maybe Heljan were referring to the official British Rail table of torque settings? 1. Tighten nut/bolt/screw until it squeaks. 2. Add half a turn for luck. 3. Burr over any protruding thread with a 2lb hammer as a locking measure. The same method was used extensively by British Steel and the National Coal Board.

I don't know about you chaps, but I have a distinct sense of deja vu here. Gopher is right - we're going to need a bigger signal box! If someone now posts a picture of one of their friends doing her Marleine Dietrich impression we're all stuck in a lockdown time loop. Perhaps an outside tap would be more suitable?

I like that. Clearly you are getting as bored a we did the other night. Coming up with ridiculous album titles for different types of music. Laura Ashley Dalek was the winner. It's no sillier than Atom heart mother.