HillsideDepot

OK, home county place names; how about Brazen Bottom? It even has a bus service, run with these, painted in Clive's favourite Pannier Tank livery, adorned with suitable lettering on the sides. The bus isn't actually at Brazen Bottom, which is just off the top right of the shot, but at Gore Cross Interchange, where, ever half an hour, you can catch a bus to New Zealand, Chitterne, The Lavingtons, Imber and Warminster among other places. But beware, Imberbus runs on only one day of the year, and happened on the 18th August in 2018. The rest of the time much of the route in across a military firing range!

There are a couple of photos of Bedwyn Siding on the Network Rail Western Twitter feed @networkrailwest which I spotted last night. Whilst the photos don't show much, there is a plan on the NR website - screen shot below Please note: all images are Network Rail's and their copyright

Nah, the models were branded Southend - Basildon - Romford - Kings Cross, so not Chelmesford's. As for the open toppers I drove one, if not both, at Bath; I quite often was asked to "run my bus in" by an open top driver wanting to do some overtime in the evening peak. I'd then need to let the Chippenham driver know what I was doing, and make haste to the depot while the Chippenham bus was loading and following. At that time of day the fueller, cleaner and shunter were all waiting for something to happen so I could usually dump the bus on the pump, and get to the stop opposite the depot to catch my bus home. But it was always worth letting the driver know as a few times I was still on the wrong side of the road when he pulled up!

After too long a gap things are slowly beginning to happen again at Mortimore's Yard. Firstly, thank you for your interest and concerns expressed in the last few posts; I value them. I've not completely stopped modelling as I have (almost) finished this little scene, and have a few others in various stages of construction. I'm not sure who made the original of this, but I have long had a saved picture from Fotopic on my hard drive of this little set up. The Airfix garage, Wills gents and Barn, are the main components. It is amazing how they fit together so well. The original wasn't for any particular business, but I decided a builders yard would work. The VW pick-up is just a temporary vehicle as I have a RTI resin truck nearly finished which will suit the scene better. All in all a simple, but fun, little project, with little or no purpose so far as any layout goes. Another fairly simple project has come about following the collapse of EFE and the subsequent sale of stock by Bachmann. EFE buses are not exactly detail models, but at the prices they have been offered recently they are good for a bit of redecorating. Although generally hated at the time, the National Bus Company had plain and widespread liveries, basically green or red with a white waistband. Standardisation might not appeal to the enthusiast, but it does make light work of adding vehicles to ones chosen fleet, especially when nail polish remover will take off the EFE printing! First up a pair of ex Western National FLFs, based on the two used on the last day of the Chippenham Town network 40 years ago. I'm still working on the best way to do registration plates and destinations, so those are still needed. It'll probably be print my own decals, in which case I'll wait until I have a batch to do. The 1978 period adverts will be harder to replicate, maybe I'll just have to imagine those. Apart from names/destinations all that was needed was to paint EFE's black wings.wheel arches green. For single decks the good old Bristol RELL was the local workhorse, the round front one here has just had the NBC logo back dated to the earlier white version and the advert removed. The flat screen one has new logo and fleet name, and new destination screens - unfortunately the EFE casting is neither tall screen or low screen so the "Tilling T" box doesn't really fit. The BATH Leyand National here was a simple rename job, while the later CITYBUS vehicle also needed the later, wider, white waist band adding, and silver bumpers changed to white. Still a quick and easy route to something remembered, but not produced by EFE. A batch of Eastern National route branded VRs didn't sell well, if the amount of remaindered stock is any gauge. But I remembered that Bristol had a pair of ex Southern Vectis convertible open tops which ran for a while in this livery. So out with the saw for one, while the other remains in "winter mode". They did one summer at Weston-super-Mare with Bristol names, and then got "local identity" Weston & Wells names during the winter, and a reallocation to Bath! I've not found any pictures of them open topped with Weston names, nor closed with Bath names; by the next summer they were in cream and green for the Bath tour (a full repaint job, but on my list for the future). The Bath open top tour proved very popular and additional buses, both VRs, were borrowed from Devon General and Southdown. But a bargain Corgi, and the assumption that the Bath open top tour started a few years earlier led to this: But enough of builders and buses, I hear you cry. OK, sorry for the digression. Back at Mortimore's Yard. I had been getting on quite well with the mini-extension. The extra piece was worked on off the layout, but the time came when it had to be attached. I really ought to take the main board down and attach the extension to work on it as its in-situ position is rather high to work on, and at the back of the layout. But doing it the lazy way I fitted the new piece on and eventually tried running something. Disaster! OK, OK, I should have known, but with all the diluted PVA I'd used to soak through the coal piles the Sundella board had sagged and the end of the headshunt was like a roller-coaster. Last night I removed the extension, made the "quick-win" of gluing down the two industrial buildings and generally surveyed the position. Yes the headshunt is a disaster, but that's only a very small part of the board the rest of which I'm more than happy with, given the stage of the work. As I work from home, my lunch break today provided the opportunity to gently lift the roller-coaster track so that I can pack the dip. I think that it will be OK like that and I can get on with the rest of the work. Mortimore's used a combination of old sleeper and breeze block walls for their coal stacks. the building beyond with the temporarily placed fence, is inspired by the Wiltshire Bacon Factory building which backed onto Mortimore's real coal yard. That was really of concrete block construction rather than brick, but the factory opposite uses block and sheet construction, so I opted for brick. As I said "inspired by..." The view from the gate The yard office/amenity block, with Downing, Rudman and Bents joinery factory behind The end of the line. The short extension of the headshunt was a war-time measure. I plan to make it rather wet, grimy, unpleasant area in desperate need of a visit from the local CCE drainage experts.

It was fine, a dual carriageway straight across, with a wider central reservation to get round the guy on his horse. It was a bus lane and a traffic lane in each direction and flowed wonderfully. Apart from the buses, Queen Square wasn't really on the way to anywhere except very local destinations, so never that busy. Indeed bus driver could keep their speed by straying out of their lane by the statue and keeping the vehicle in a straight line. Then they closed the road through the middle and buses went round the edge, now buses have to go the other side of the buildings on a stop-start tortuous route with tight right angle corners. Hardly and improvement, taking greater time and covering a longer distance; more fuel used, and more pumped out the other end. Progress?

I've heard Freightliner Intermodal drivers referred to as "box jockeys", although I've sensed (perhaps incorrectly) that it wasn't, shall we say, a compliment.

But 87006 carried large logo grey livery (not my photo) https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonf45sphotos/11224843746/

It is. I'm showing my age, but clearly remember writing and posting letters in response to shop adverts in Railway Modeller, back in the day to order things. And for the first few I had to get my father to write a cheque to convert my saved up pocket money! And that was before waiting for the Royal Mail to do its thing - there and back. There's been a similar discussion on the Hornby class 87 thread; it seems that Hornby managed to get space in a container heading south, so the Australian shops received their stocks before UK ration arrived in Kent. "How dare they!" was the view. And that was only a day after several posters had had a meltdown over the model having a plastic pantograph, and therefore wasn't worth buying. No wonder I don't get any modelling done, there is too much entertainment here watching toys fly from prams....

Something rarely found west of Royal Oak UndergrounD Station

On a grey and drizzly morning 802007 and 006 enter passenger service by working 1C04 Paddington to Penzance via the traditional "Great Way Round" route (my compact camera really didn't like a dark train with very bright lights approaching out of the gloom, so no "arriving" photo I'm afraid). Destination: Penzance! It wasn't just the routing via Bristol which was traditional, the six minutes late running it manged today is also long standing tradition on this service. I used to watch its equivalent from the tutor room window as we waited for registration at school back in the early 1980s and it hardly ever achieved an on time departure... Ready for the off And that was that.

I ordered volumes 1, 2 & 3 direct from Kelsey at lunchtime on Tuesday and they arrived late morning today. Just under two days; can't complain at that.

Ideas for the workshop units could come from the availability of suitable vehicles for the traders to use. A builder might use an arch as a store, with a suitable pick-up outside. A carpenter or plumber, would probably have a van, but timber might arrive on a flatbed truck, and the plumber's van would likely have a pipe tube on the roof. Thinking through the types of vehicles Oxford Diecast make, not a workshop, but an ice cream vendor's depot? Or, albeit partly in the garage line, a taxi workshop in one bay and the office/ waiting room in the adjacent arch? Or perhaps an Arthur Daley style "lock-up" with Jag and battered Transit outside, and probably an unmarked Police car keeping watch from a strategic distance!

Apart from a Saturday trip to Paignton (two weeks with a 9-car and last week with a 5-car) they aren't in service yet "down Devon". Suggestions on other fora are saying Monday 20th for the higher powered 802s to start earning their living with two 2 x 5-car diagrams.

I hope so. It would be interesting to know what they've spent against what is needed to finish the job. Hopefully the pieces already in place will be able to make their contribution to the cause before too long.

I'm not so sure that the bird nesting thing is quite so "black and white"; or at least if it is Western Route have a different interpretation. I travelled the mainline through Devon quite a lot last month on a Rover and there were many examples of cleared line side vegetation with odd trees, or small clusters of trees left standing. On one of the slower climbs of the banks it was possible to see the isolated trees had tape around them and no-entry: birds nesting signs affixed. Now, I have no idea if that course of action is good practice, or whether it is bending the interpretation beyond what was intended, nor do I claim that cutting the majority and coming back for the rest is a cost effective way of doing the work, but it has been done that way in Devon. I should be back down that way next month, it will be interesting to see if there is any sign of further work.

What a wonderful photo that is, Alan! All sots of details to study, and one day replicate on model form.

Indeed, there is much more to the railway than the means of power, as vital to the operation of the railway as that is. To come back to the HST, I feel that that was a big change given the amount of engineering work which was done ahead of its introduction to make the 125mph railway. Much more so than the change from steam to diesel. As a 6 year old I could see where the track had been slewed and the foot bridge raised at my local station, where the Down yard had been, and the local level crossing too. That, to a small boy, was a big change. But go to Cornwall, even now, and while the HSTs run there the infrastructure has more the feel of the steam age than the high speed age. Of course, whatever the top management might decree, change on the railways takes a long time, making dates rather meaningless. Yes, 50 years from the last day of the last steam locos, but there were hundreds of "last days", depending on where you were in the country. We're in another period of change now, at least on my local line. The HSTs are finally coming to an end. Sadly the next step won't be electrification, although the trains are capable of working "on the juice". The first two IET diagrams began on 16th October 2017, now, lass than a year later, it is already unusual to see the latest London arrival an the next London departure at Temple Meads are both in the hands of HSTs. The final day of HST operation is still some way off however, as short sets will continue in Scotland and the West Country, but their days of 125mph running are closing. Is this changeover less significant than the last gasps of steam? Most would say so, but for the passenger the change from (usually) blue "old" InterCity 125 to sleek, shiny, new, green InterCity Express Train is more noticeable than a Mk1 hauled by a Castle one day and the very same Mk1 hauled by a Western the next. Rather like another thread debating the "correct" (whatever that means) ratio of locos to rolling stock that we should have on our layouts, it is the loco which gets our attention. I nearly typed "motive power" in the previous sentence, but then realised that to many people motive power, when "disguised" as a DMU is of about as much relevance as rusty 16t mineral wagon; you gotta have 'em, but they're of no real interest. Each to their own, of course. Mark the end of steam, be that with sadness for its passing, or celebration for its replacements, but the date for any one change is largely irrelevant among the hundreds of dates which record the development of our railway system. Things change. The new replaces the old. Some changes get noticed, and even remembered years later, some are ignored and forgotten. For some the important date was 50 years ago (plus a few days now), for me I'm approaching the 40th anniversary (towards the end of the month) of an transport alteration which is important to me. Not that I expect anyone else to remember the passing of our 296, 297 and 299 town bus routes.

And this is what it looks like once let loose in the wild... http://www.hondawanderer.com/66413_Wolvercote_2018.htm

At Eastleigh SWR have this poster displayed... Specifically

Because buying it is the easy part, I suspect. As half owner of a pair of single deck buses I know that the two years of letter writing and persuading of the operator to sell said buses when they were surplus was the easy bit. Once we bought them we had to find storage. Initially that was outside, and whilst we were grateful for the yard space we have had to undo some of the deterioration they suffered outside when we found a barn and could move them inside. Now they cost us rent and insurance just sitting there. We have spent hundreds of pounds on moquette for the seats, and trim for the side walls, not to mention the acquisition of mechanical parts, some of which are on the basis that they are easily obtainable now, but won't be for ever. An initial MoT on one of the pair, whilst a pass, led to the discovery of an issue which will need removal of engine and gearbox, and I'm sure she throw up plenty more surprises problems as we work on her! The other one just sits patiently, bursting into life once a month when they are both run for a while. Sadly there is only so much that can be saved. Maybe some people are over ambitious, maybe circumstances change, maybe the task proves larger than originally thought. As for my part owned buses, on the day we picked them up and first had them side by side we agreed that whilst both would be restored and preserved for as long as possible we recognised that the time will probably eventually come when one will sacrificed to keep the other going. Its just being realistic.

I too understood that the site of the IECC had once been a railway laundry, having been told that by a former fireman/secondman while I was a student at Newcastle Poly. My memory suggests that there might even have still been remains of the building there when I began my course, although the IECC was pretty much operational when I finished.

Argh, missed it!

...very nearly...

What a strange comment. Still, each to their own.

I remember visiting Westbury Panel signal box before it opened (father worked for Westinghouse) and being shown round a room full of batteries. If I recall correctly these were the last resort, if the mains and the generator had failed. That would have been 1984 (I think).