jonny777

That is excellent. It makes all the difference. I hope you can do the same with a few more and re-post them.

Marvellous photos again. Those two B12 pics are just superb. A sky coloured bed sheet draped over the bookshelves might stop the eyes from being distracted.

Sorry, but you have exposed my dreaded secret. I just cannot get over the trauma of those years, try as I might in the following years. I think the loss was compounded by my living in a rural area with little money, and certainly none to spend on subscriptions to railway magazines. Therefore the full scale of the slaughter did not hit me until it was well under way, and the big green engines that I had seen a couple of years earlier at the head of express services, were either non-existent or a filthy black with streaks of rust and wheezing along on a all stations stopping parcels train. And as for laughing stock, well it was in certain quarters. Comedians made endless BR jokes. When I was about to leave school the headmaster took a careers lesson in which we all had to describe our future plans. He had long conversations with everyone about university, or banking jobs, those who were going to work in the family business, etc. When I said I was intending to join BR, he emitted a loud guffaw (in the style of Brian Blessed) and boomed "how will they pay you, they are losing millions already?" and moved on.

I take the point about the aversion to change, but it was happening throughout the 20th century on the railways. Old locos and other stock were cut up and new ones built. Highly un-renumerative stations and lines were closed well before the Modernisation Plan and Beeching. However, it was the pace of the change between 1958 and 1968 that disturbed many people. Most went along with it because we were told that the space age was almost upon us, when colonies would be set up on the moon, everyone would fly around in jet cars and robots would do all the boring stuff like cooking and cleaning. It was not helped by the fact that certain diesel classes (that less than 10 years earlier had been described as the future) quickly went the same way as the almost new steam locomotives they had replaced. All this, and the ever increasing BR loss despite all the rationalisation, tended to make the railways a laughing stock in the late 60s. I think for these reasons, the people who do model that era are unlikely to be those who were adults when it happened.

But you have hit the point here, although unintentionally I fear. The locos may have looked long past their best, but many were in their prime. 9Fs looking unkempt and uncared for was not fascinating in 1966/7 as most had worked for less than 10 years (and there are many other classes which fared little better) but had cost quite a lot of money to build in the late 1950s. Imagine Virgin withdrawing the Pendolinos this year because some new replacement was being built. That is what it amounts to, and in fact many Pendos have probably worked for longer (in years) than certain standard class steam locos did.

I'll see your 48012, and raise you a 1634 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/netevo/6094350170/in/pool-1465646@N25/

That is a bit harsh. I dont see any sign of control freakery in this thread. The OP asked a very genuine question and I think we have attempted to answer it truthfully, and with a bit of nostalgia thrown in. My layout is deconstructed (sorry, watched too many cookery programmes) at the moment awaiting funds for a full scale loft conversion, but it is set in the steam/diesel transition era, although in the East of England this came rather sooner than 1967/8. By the time BR blue came along, steam had gone (although maybe the XP64 just scrapes in, with a bit of licence). I have a decent number of mainly pilot scheme diesels alongside steam locos, and I know quite a few others who have chosen this period. I couldn't really do the Rose Grove or Lostock Hall area justice because I don't know enough about the area.

I am sure that it has been repeated many times, but the horrors of that period were crystalised with the decision to bulldoze St Pancras because it was out of date. Thank goodness for John Betjeman. Having said that though, it certainly would be a fascinating era to model, although accuracy would be a nightmare as steam locos were being condemned on a daily basis, diesels were beginning to be repainted into blue, some with syp. Green diesels were getting fyp and some from Doncaster works were getting double arrows. A few locos and units had the double arrows initially added the wrong way round, and certain diesel and electric units had yellow ends taken right around over the drivers' doors on the cab side.

I agree with this, and on certain platform ends there was outright hostility to anyone who noted down diesel numbers, let alone photographed them. It was a very depressing time for steam enthusiasts, thousands of whom gave up trainspotting in August 1968 and concentrated on the eras when steam was thriving. It was a sentiment brought on not just because of the neglect of steam engines by the authorities, but by the sheer speed that relatively new classes had been consigned to the scrapheap, and the consequent waste of money. By the way, if anyone suggests that MGR wagons and steam locos were never seen together, direct them to the B&R Lancashire & Yorkshire videos. One of which shows a view of Low Moor (I think from memory) sidings, and a WD arrives with a whole train of merry go round hoppers.

Their's seems to be a complex case involving some form of tax irregularity. It appears that the club have put themselves into administration before the verdict of the tax case, presumably admitting they are going to be found guilty.

I love the photos, and am amazed how much detail and depth of field you get with what does not appear to be extra lighting. A little more dirt and grime on the ballast and I would have difficulty telling the photo of the Standard and K3 from a real photo by Keith Pirt.

Looks like McCarthy has been sacked as a knee-jerk reaction to that result. Why do clubs do this? I'm sure the manager didn't want that result to happen in a month of Sundays. Have the club really improved their chances of staying up by doing this?

It is getting annoying this season, when players boot the ball towards goal at 80 mph and a nearby defender gets hit on the arm purely because he only about 5 yards from the striker. All the crowd will scream handball, but that will put the ref under pressure because the tv will later replay the incident a hundred times and scrutinise whether there was any movement of an arm towards the ball even if it was only in a self defence reaction to prevent him being hit in the face. How many referees will react and give the foul, just because of the shouts from the crowd?

No, it is an irritating ploy to enable the item to appear on searches for "LNER", just as people add Hornby, Bachmann, Lima to an old Triang items' description.

Can the curve be modelled practically at a scale of 4mm to the foot? How deep is that ledge going to be? 1mm in OO and 0.5 in N? And heaven knows how narrow the gap between the top of the window frames and the start of the front 'hood' would be on a model.

All our holly berries have gone now, since about 10 redwings descended on the tree for a day. In a mild winter, the numbers of birds visiting garden feeders will be far lower than in a harsh one. Also, the number of people putting quality food out for birds has increased enormously in the last ten years (as can be seen in the amounts on sale in garden centres and pet shops - if it did not sell they would not stock it). I would not worry too much about the lack of birds at feeders every now and again. What is important is the continuity of supply of available food. I know this may seem a little wasteful if peanuts/fat balls/etc slowly deteriorate in a feeder during a damp week (remember to throw them away if they start to discolour), but the important times will come (a) if we get a spell of prolonged frosty weather, and ( b ) during the nesting season when adult birds will remember where there was always food available, and visit your feeders in between feeding babies. If you are fortunate, and have few or no cats in the area, you may find that when the babies fledge - the adults will bring their brood to your garden, install them in adjacent trees and bushes and fetch food that you provide, to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the juveniles. This will mean that your garden and the surrounding area will be imprinted early in the brains of the young birds, and is likely to mean they will come to rely on your feeders/bird table too. It requires a little patience and an eye for when to increase food and when to cut back. I find that on windy days (irrespective of temperature) the number of bird visits increases. I put this down to the wind chill effect on their metabolism, as even though they have insulating feathers - they are not so efficient in a gale as in calm conditions. My only surprise here in Somerset, is that I have not seen a blackcap in the garden this winter, for the first time in about 15 years.

There is a photo of D8208 for sale on Ebay at the moment, which shows an interesting variation in the yellow warning panel at the front. See... http://www.ebay.co.u...c5#ht_500wt_905

http://www.ebay.co.u...=item336fc81b64 Aaah, that is quite cute. Lilliput Lane comes to 7mm scale.

They are more than on their way. I have recently bought an 00 CovHop kit from Bill Bedford and it has etched brass underframes plus a moulded body. I have not begun assembling it yet, but it certainly looks the business.

At the very beginning of The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness is a sequence filmed at Liverpool Street in the late 1950s. I often wonder if somewhere in the vaults of the film company are out-takes, or unused footage of arrivals and departures at that time which would be priceless now. There is another film where a rural Scottish chap joins the Army and ends up coming back a hero. I have no idea what it is called, but as he journeys south in the early part of the film there is a wonderful glimpse of a big goods yard just as they were in the 1950s. Sorry, my memory is going.

I fear that you must drive through the city at very unfortunate times, or you are just very unlucky. The traffic outside rush hour is anything but horrendous. In fact for much of the day, it is remarkably free flowing. Compare this with the situation 25 or more years ago, when the queue to get into the city centre was often backed up Cheltenham Road almost as far as Montpelier station even during the middle of the day. In fact, I used to be able to walk from Bishopston to near the Hippodrome almost as fast as it took in the car. Of course, those folk that all cram into the Cabot Circus car parks like lemmings, and then decide to leave at exactly the same time later in the day might take an hour to get out of the multistorey, but that is their fault for not using the buses, or the various park and rides. I shudder to think of why a bus driver who had been in Canons Marsh would be going round in such a circle that he would find himself on the old Victoria Street/Temple Gate flyover, but maybe the least said about driving capabilities the better.

I prefer the darker lower photo, not just because of the depth of field but also because the slightly darker colours seem to be more representative of how the scene was in the smoky 1950s/early 60s. I would have thought that, given the non availability of a B17, March would probably send a K3 to take over from the Jubilee (assuming the K3 does not exceed the RA restriction for the route).

I have had a few purporting to be from Ebay, saying that the item that I purchased has not been paid for and if I dont respond they will take legal action and suspend my account. It all looks very genuine with a long Ebay-like item number, and initially made me quite worried that I had accidentally forgotten to pay for a purchase, but a quick visit to the genuine Ebay site showed me all items won and whether paid or not. Even after the multitude of warnings, there must be folk who do still respond to phishing such as this, otherwise it would not be worth doing it.

I'm afraid that I dont understand all this. He is able to make a massive loss seemingly without any checks on how much he is investing (or spread betting, or short selling) and where. As soon as he makes that loss he is known as a rogue trader and his activities are deemed fraudulent by the media. Presumably, though, he wasn't deliberately trying to lose money, and if he had made £1bn profit would that have been seen as rogue trader fraud as well?

In my part of Lincolnshire we did not get bags of broken biscuits, but we did get bags of broken crisps. There was a Smiths crisp factory in Lincoln and I presume they originated there. They cost 1d a bag in the early 1960s and were a bargain for us kids, as long as you didnt mind a bag full of tiny bits of crisp with no salt. The salt in the normal crisps were still in those little blue twisted paper packets. On the subject of multi flavoured chocolate bars, Frys used to make one very similar to their Chocolate Cream, but with coloured fuit flavoured cream filling. I dont know whether they were poor sellers and were quickly discontinued, but I remember getting one in a selection box at Christmas and loving it. My Dad always listened to Round the Horne after Sunday lunch, but as I also didnt get the jokes at my primary school age I used to wait for Jimmy Clitheroe whose show was on afterwards (I think). I remember the disappointment when I saw him on telly and realised he was an adult pretending to be a kid.