Oldddudders

Useful thread, thanks, but your model seems to have had a promotion - it started as an O1, and has already progressed to an O2, apparently. I recommend you stop the progression there, as if you start calling it an O4, there will be all sorts of folk up in arms!

And excellent practice for those still getting used to weathering with an airbrush!

Not stupid at all. ISTR that the US Southern actually came to England to study Herbert Walker's version, in terms of its style and presentation, and cheerfully adopted some of its style values - despite the enormous differences in the nature and scope of operations. Frankland is a most promising model which evokes all the right Southern images for me. That it is being done in N is even more meritorious. First rate.

I can't fault your logic on most items here, Neil, actually, but perhaps have a different perspective, that's all. My first visit to Aberglaslyn was in 1966, within days of leaving school. It was a place I'd heard of, but not much more, and wandering through the tunnels and across the old bridge etc was quite magic - I am not immune to the nostalgia stuff, either. It's just that I love railways, and a new railway - especially one using steam - is a fine thing to me. I haven't been to the WHR since 2001, when it ran as far as Waunfawr. I took in the quality of the p way and works etc - having a civil engineer with me helped, and he and I had connived in selling off BR's engineers, including Andy Savage, after all! - and it was clear that this was serious stuff. So part of my pleasure in all this is that people have succeeded in an enterprise that even 20 years ago would have seemed implausible. As I said earlier, I am not confident that the WHHR would ever have made the leap of scope that this exercise called for, and I'm afraid the sort of train Russell could be expected to haul would never have washed its face financially. If I want to see old trackbed and buildings with new uses, I can wander across a couple of fields behind my house and see the steam tramway that died in 1947 thanks to Hitler and the diesel bus. I wish it hadn't. I do understand how underwhelming some slick preservation operators can seem - their railways have just the same level of minimalist operating facilities as the national network, and it all lacks drama. But I'll carry on putting a few coins in their tin if I'm passing, because to me any railway is better than no railway.

Having looked through that interesting thread, Miss Prism suggests that the goodly number of parcels etc vans owned by SR and successor should have ensured that other railways'/Regions' vehicles were simply not needed. Plate 12 of "Branch Line to Bude" (Middleton Press) shows the 09.56 Okehampton - Bude/Padstow leaving Oke with an LMS 6-wheel van behind T9 30717. As the FP of this train went on to Padstow, clearly this vehicle must have reached the River Camel. Wasn't there talk of a similar vehicle being modelled in RTR?

Any train through Aberglaslyn is better than no trains through Aberglaslyn - period. The nostalgia-led preservationists among us seldom achieve the same level of success that the pragmatic, business-like chaps do, however regrettable their choice of motive power and coaches might be to some. As has been pointed out, there are simply not enough dedicated gricers to keep even a modest stuffed-railway operation in decent cash-flow - these lines have to go for volume, and that means quality, comfortable products with a broad appeal to tourists, families and other groups. Had the FR not come along, would Russell and co be steaming through the pass in your or my lifetime? I think not.

Looks a dead ringer for the Redhill-Reigate shuttles I saw as a very young child in the early '50s. Smashing.

Really glad to see the coach is properly equipped with a tail lamp! This is gonna be the 8th wonder of the model railway world, surely!

There isn't a hard-and-fast rule about this. One has seen plenty of signalling diagrams where the legend states "FPLs stand normally out" but a few where the opposite is true. It isn't an issue - the signalman on duty will have had training in that box and been passed out as competent, so will know how the arrangements are. It's no different from upper and lower quadrant signals - both work and are equally effective.

I think in many ways "old ironwork" became a victim of change. It could be relied upon when men were cheap and inspection & fettling were daily. Once mechanised maintenance and budgets became the necessary vogue, then standards were harder to - er - maintain. I recall being involved with the early days of planning Tonbridge remodelling - a station where the steam-era layout had been simply resignalled with colour lights in the preparation for Kent Coast Electrification, and there was still a very long ladder right across at the London end. The layout took years to be agreed and funded - but Peter Coster was my boss in the mid-80s while I was involved!

Great excuse for a lot more new photos then, Robert! Just do it!

I think Hattons services include a rather useful feature, enabling you to receive an email when the item comes into stock - but with no obligation to buy. Might be worth setting this up for your Pullman, perhaps.

Looks like you made a very smart move - see the last few items in this thread! http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php/topic/16236-new-Hornby-products/page__st__100

Wot? No Hardham Junction - the last of the LBSCR high signalboxes? A T-scale M7 and pull-push set could be very fetching, you know!

Not sure it's been mentioned, but under failure conditions, clamplocks are "pumped" by hand, rather than "wound" as would be the case with conventional electric motorised points. It's a bit like using a trolley jack under your car, with a lever that is placed in a tube in the pump housing - you just pump back and forth and it all happens. What I can't remember is whether the pump handle itself is detected - i.e. on removal of the pump handle from its storage cabinet the electric power to the pump is disconnected, as I think is often the case with electric points.

Inevitably the clarity of one's memories is in direct proportion to the "wow" factor of the experience. I have therefore to conclude that the Thames-Clyde express didn't quite hit the heights for me. Definitely did the trip throughout, having lunch on the way, about 40 years ago. Long periods of pw slack in Yorkshire - allegedly subsidence in mining areas - hardly improved the experience. Do distinctly recall Clement Freud joined at Wakefield, also looking to dine. He obviously didn't actually eat Chunky Meat! We ran via Kilmarnock - not something I think I've done since. A service of this sort was never going to compete once the Electric Scots got into business in the '70s. Returned overnight via WCML - and kicked someone's coffee over on arrival at Euston! Now that is a vividly embarrassing memory!

When new, there were lots of stories about the speeds obtained by REP drivers, many of whom must have been recently re-trained from steam, where urging on your steed was a rather more skilled activity! ISTR a figure of 123 mph being quoted by a colleague who'd heard from close to the (management) source.

Kadee sell trip-pin pliers, which I have found useful over the last 20 years - but they aren't exactly cheap. Long-nosed pliers, gently squeezed, will get the pin bending a little, but do it in the middle of the curve, so there isn't too much strain on the pin-head joint. It's the end of the pin that needs to be lifted, to avoid baulking on checkrails etc. The rest of the curved part of the pin will usually glide over obstacles even if it is still a bit low, and the plastic NEM shank should obviate risks of shorting.

Sadly for you, all four of the Kadee NEM-fitting couplings - #s17-20 - are the same height, suggesting that the coupling box is wrong. If you want to use Kadees, you may be faced with altering the mounting, and using a US-standard model. Check their website for heights and over- or under-shank types.

Do we get the overall roof AND the columns? Please?

It seems unlikely from the murky image that his day job is as a photographer, either!

Crikey! Someone likes real music! Have that album somehwere, but at this precise moment I have something by MD with Billy Cobham playing. Recently been using Deb's car to visit her in hospital (gallstones) and had elderly compilation CD playing. Fave "oh, yeah!" recall tracks on it - Don Ellis's Turkish Bath (from Electric Bath album, 1969), and a remix of Lola's Wax The Van (circa 1987). Unknown to an entire RMWeb readership, I'm sure. Playboy Magazine, which in the days when I saw it was actually a very upmarket publication, full of good stuff, very classy advertising and only a v small % of T&B, used to publish an annual awards section for music, films etc. They got votes from readers and industry peers - e.g. an All-Star guitarist voted for by other top guitarists etc. In the Spring 1970 awards, the Electric Bath album came second out of a very long list - behind Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, the most influential jazz and crossover album of the age, and indeed perhaps starting crossover as a category. I seem to have Bitches Brew in all three formats - vinyl, cassette, CD.

The 4TCs were an essential component of Southern Region's abolition of steam on the remaining route from Waterloo-Weymouth in July 1967. Not exactly new units, being endowed with previous-generation underframes I think, the TCs were intended to run as the leading units from Waterloo, with power provided by the 3,200 hp 4REP pushing. On arrival at Bournemouth, a push-pull fitted BRCW Type 3 - aka Crompton (or Class 33 to modern folk) - would be attached to the leading TC, and off they would go over the non-electrifed route to Weymouth. On the return journey, the Crompton would push the TC onto the rear of the 4REP, uncouple, and back to Waterloo they'd go. Often 2x 4TCs would be used, although only in peak times would they both go to Weymouth. In service, it was quickly found that pushing 8TC produced some discomfort in the leading vehicles, and so the REP was then typically marshalled in the middle of a 12-car train. Southern Region train planners being a clever lot, and the engineering having been designed to be as compatible as possible with other vehicles, the TCs found themselves being used on other routes, including as you say Cardiff, and Waterloo -Salisbury, as well as the Kenny Belle from Clapham Junction. Extension of the third rail to Weymouth in the late 80s, together with the arrival of the 5-WES (Class 442 if you must) spelt the end of the TC's natural environment. Before the TCs were used, the usual maximum number of passenger vehicles propelled in regular service in the UK was just 2, while the TCs were intended to - and did - operate as 8 cars being propelled. Southern innovation!

I think this item is apeing colour light signals, where the red is always placed lowest to be closest to the driver's eyeline. So 'tis said, anyway. The fact that this is two signals on the same post is obviously a concept too far for the vendor.

While, compared to the Captain, I am very out-of-date in terms of those who run the industry, I do see a dramatic difference in the management style of the two "adversaries" in this most unfortunate confrontation. The WHHR, who could be seen by their connection with Russell to have "got on site" first by quite some years - 1964? - seems to me to be an organisation composed of decent, hard-working, genuine enthusiasts. Sadly for them the FR people are hard-nosed businessmen, the sort of folk who bankers and others representing European Union interests prefer to deal with. As a result, the FR got the nod and the cash, and I do not think that the WHHR would have made the same success, even if the field had been clear - as it was in 1964 when the Russell people began their then-lonely quest. We are, as they say, where we are, and everyone concerned needs to look forward and forget the injustices or otherwise of the past.