bigd

I have not spotted any hippos yet.

The dished wheels, the face of the engine, and the cab windows look good to me, but I hope that the square of plastic round the plumbing, under the cab, will not be present on the production model. If so I will be dremmeling this on Hurricane as soon as it arrives! Edited to remove ipad autocorrections.

Does anybody do wheels for Caledonian 123? Wikiperdia says the driver is 7ft. The only wheels I can see that size are for 4-4-0s, and have holes for connecting rods.

I would vote for a Harry. I presume we just need to find another 198 people wanting one!

Hattons drawing of hurricane, has the dome, lower firebox, and tank step in black, when they were actually green. http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/uploads/monthly_05_2012/post-6977-0-75763800-1336904110.jpg

Hurricane ordered. I may even get round to building a model of Bickershaw Colliery. Can we now have Rodney, Spitfire, Gwyneth, Respite, Warrior, and No 8, to keep it company?

Do you think he will get 'ORA-12725: unmatched parentheses in regular expression' when he tries to run the engine?

Simon Kohlers blog is up talking about the APT. He also shows how close we came to having a rerun of the Hornby APT-P! http://www.Hornby.com/news/simonsays/a-very-apt-occasion/

If it is leaked any more widely, I will need to avoid internet and shops for a few days. I hope its not like the Likely Lads, avoiding knowing the score of the England Match before it was shown on television.

87201 at Crewe Works open day. How long before they do the white undercoat livery?

Here are a couple of photos from a holiday in Scotland. 24107 on shed at Inverness. 24132 double heading a 26, at Brora, on a train to Inverness.

But there are two Deltic cabs owned by the DPS. If you splice in the middle of a class 50, you are there!

I just got an email from 'somewhere in Lliverpool' giving a new forecast of October.

A photo on post no 265 shows the portakabin and the S&T cabinet together. I suspect the photos were taken from different points on the bridge.

I am following your improvements, as I have several that need work for my colliery layout. I think the handrail issues start with the windows. The heavy moulding results in a window that is too small, and a bit higher than the prototype. If the handrails have been placed, based upon their relationship with the windows, then they will be too high. The handrail is 2.5 mm away from the tank. That is a scale 7.5 inches! As the tank is sloping, this results in the rail being too high. The front rail has been set to match the side rail, resulting in it being a couple of mm too high. I plan to open out the windows, replace the rails, with shorter fittings, and lower the front rail.

I remember a class 40 bringing a rake of 16 ton wagons to Parkside Colliery in the 1970s. The train arrived from the Manchester direction, and stopped clear of the trailing connection to the colliery. Once the points were set, it reversed a few yards, and then stopped quickly. The couplings between each wagon then snapped tight, one by one, with increasing violence, until, the guards van launched into a siding. After resettting the points the wagons were then propelled into the exchange siding. I am not sure that this was an officially authorised procedure!

Although I have been out of the hobby from the mid 1970's until recently, I remember a model shop opposite the courts. It was inside a motor factors. I remember a counter full of warships and westerns.

I have a stalled project to build a 15". If I have somewhere to run it, then it should inspire me to finish it.

The model is to be based upon Bickershaw Colliery in the 1970s. This appears to be an attempt by me, to recapture my youth, riding the austerity tanks between the colliery and the exchange sidings. The layout is to contain: a canal, roads, screens, locomotive shed, conveyors. This is to fit in a six foot by two foot area. I want to gravity shunt wagons into, and out of the screens. . I have a little helper. The track laid. Starting from the bottom, the first line will be hidden behind a scenic break. The next line will be in front of the break. They slope to allow gravity to do its stuff. There is a cross over, so empty wagons can appear to go into the screens and full ones to come out. Then there are connections to the main line to allow shunting of the wagons. Then we have a run round loop. Finally there is a link to the loco shed.

Bring back the Whelley lines. If HS2 was to link to them, then they could bypass Wigan!

The route through Lowton is rather close to my house! Still trying to work out how I feel about it!