Nimbus

The Coronation was I set I'd expressed a wish for a few years ago, probably in anticipation of a significant anniversary of the train's introduction, so that's really welcome. I hope that the vehicles' post-war careers have been considered, but even if tooling wasn't amended, I'd be up for a set in BR Maroon - to run The Talisman as BR ought to have done! Mind you, the recent TV series left me less than impressed by the knowledge of Hornby's researchers in railway and aero engineering in general. Perhaps the stuff that would reassure me was considered just too boring for the cameras? The Nim.

Yet I read recently that a number of teams are already suffering from staff turnover, and retention incentives are being considered. The whole F1 machine could break down in due course because of over-stress. The Nim.

Doesn't look as neat as typical Brush detail design, and looks prone to collecting rainwater. I wonder if it was a customer-applied mod? The Nim.

These were very neat little locos, and applying a vernier caliper in conjunction with the works GA reveals that Hornby got the major dimensions near spot-on. A shame the lanky chassis spoiled the model's proportions. It would be nice to see Hornby revise this one's tooling for a correct wheelbase modern chassis. The Nim.

Is that square recess with a central pip 'A Thing', or is it the tooling's moulding gate? The Nim.

I'd been wondering what my feelings about this reminded me of. It came to me tonight, triggered by music in a TV ad break. Jayne Torvill & Christopher Dean, Winter Olympics 1994. The Nim.

Further developments! The Nim.

Further to my earlier query about when are the drivers allowed to put the power back on after the safety car comes in, after a bit of Googling I found this link, from Mercedes (in 2018) as it happens: Insight: Understanding F1 Safety Cars It may actually be that my question never needed asking before, because all cars would normally be up to race speed over the mandated wind-up lap after the safety car came in. The cited article acknowledges that the safety car throws up tactical headaches of its own, so when the rules changed on the fly on Sunday it becomes a nightmare, but there's a deal of technical background about tyre behaviour under safety car conditions in that article. Not only are worn tyres intuitively disadvantageous, they also take longer to recover to operating temperature and hence the feel to the driver. Presumably the wind-up lap also concedes that this ought to be accommodated to a reasonable degree by the rules. But there's an implicit safety question that an immediate resumption of racing as on Sunday demands driving at the limit, when the drivers have not been given any opportunity to feel where their tyres 'new' limits are. Masi increased the risks of further mishap, therefore. The Nim.

One thing I haven't been able to clarify: What counts as an overtake during a safety car restart? If it is the act of being a nose ahead of the leader, then I don't see what prevents the second place anticipating reaching the safety car line alongside the leader, by getting the power on earlier and closing the gap with, by definition, a speed advantage at the point the leader is permitted to get his power on. Doesn't this make the leader a sitting duck, regardless of tyre condition? The Nim.

Getting a legal verdict to confirm a moral victory to the Mercedes team might be sufficient for them, and Lewis, without a reversal of the record, if they and he feel that accepting a win off the track is second best. That leaves them wearing a halo for whatever they choose to do subsequently. The Nim. PS. I've found this dispiriting episode has drained my motivation for my railway projects over the last couple of days. Silly of me really!

It would be useful if they were similarly enough matched that they were able to make a habit of grabbing the first two grid positions. That would reduce the leader's chance of being run off the track on the first lap by MV! The Nim.

That could make for a yawn of a season, with no-one to match MV's pace. Own goal for Liberty if they had any input to the Masi dithering. Mercedes must have sunk a lot of resource into next year's car - they said they were prioritising that over this year's around the time they had that flat spot - so they might go for one more season. They might need to rebuild Lewis's belief that he could gain his eighth title with that new package. The Nim.

But then Masi wouldn't have buckled under pressure to reverse his decision not to allow the lapped cars to unwind... The Nim.

I'm certain that Lewis doesn't want to bow out without the one more championship he needs in order for his entry in the history books to be truly emphatic. If you compare the performance of his car to that of his team-mate, he's demonstrably the magic ingredient. Hopefully George will bed in quickly and prove more helpful to the team tacticians. The Nim.

Or a _very_ expensive reality TV elimination competition. That artificial manipulation of the end of the race, as has been observed elsewhere, was like Team MB being 12-up with 5 minutes to go in a football final, when injury stoppage occurred. Whereupon on restart the referee said "Right, next goal scored wins!" Just as many rock bands wouldn't dream of entering X-Factor, could MB decide that participation/ acquiescence with the current direction of F1 no longer reflects their wider brand image of engineering excellence, and decide to walk away? It was a possibility floated by Damon Hill in post-race discussion. I expect it would be painful to throw away the resources they must have sunk into next season's car, so perhaps an announcement that next season will be their last? Maybe prior to going public with this step they would have escalated through the FIA appeals process and a demand for Massi's scalp? Which opens up the discussion point: "Who else would have a seat to do Lewis justice?" The Nim.

At the very least, RB have well and truly got into his head. The Nim.

Yes. It wasn't an A4! The Nim.

The Hornby-Dublo 8F body was a mazak casting was it not? In its forward boiler section was fixed, with a countersunk screw, a yellow-painted ballast block. In raised lettering was cast the word "LEAD". Plenty of those locos survive today! The Nim.

Guilty! - circa spring 1971. I basically cut vertical slots right through the bodysides either side of the doors, then back-filled with plasticard. Two strips of this were chamfered along the edge before cementing back to back. This gave a shallow 'gutter' which could be refined into an arc section with files and abrasive paper before the units were inserted in the body slots. I had on a previous occasion relocated the bogie pivots a bit further inboard, and raised in the bodyshell, to a more scale location. A correction I couldn't envisage succeeding with was the depth of the bodyside below the waist stripes, which Tri-ang made too shallow to achieve their standard buffer height. Despite this limitation, the model in this thread looks more convincing than the modern super-detail one from Hornby, which is way too slab-sided. The Tri-ang model, with its body open from the top, was able to be moulded with the gentle curve under of the bodyside without getting the walls too thick to mould reliably. The Nim.

Hmm. Non-Gill Sans 'R' in the "RESTAURANT CAR" branding on the Maunsell model. Otherwise a good-looking model. I wonder what reference was used for that? The Nim.

Would be interested to see details of your conversion. These Roland machines are becoming affordable secondhand, I presume because 3D printers have become commonplace. The Nim.

Do they curl up the other way round south of the Equator? The Nim.

May I offer Hatfield, Herts on the ECML for discussion? That had three boxes up until the whole area went MAS in the early 70's. One on the up side at the south end, and one each side of the throat at the north end. In busier days, in addition to through traffic there were three branches to handle from the north, and terminating outer suburbans from the south. A 60ft-plus shed might accommodate a 4mm model, with approaches. I spent too long dreaming though... The Nim.

I hadn't paid much attention to these, but I have to say I'm impressed by the finesse of the A4 body casting, once the image is blown up. The nose area looks far more refined than the latest W1samples shown in another thread, in both detail and form. The Nim.

I wonder why the Bissel truck wasn't discarded when the loco was rebuilt, and the rear frames trimmed a bit. The fireman's hike would have been reduced, as would the controversy here! The NIm.