coachmann

The diesel weathering is spot on. Besides, I'm feeling nostalgic towards 25's after watching a video to Blodwell Quarries.

Could have been worse. It could have been "Weathered in Wales" .... Aye up..... https://railsofsheffield.com/products/34322/oxford-rail-or76ar005w-oo-gauge-adams-radial-steam-loco-east-kent-railway-weathered

Maybe people forget the reality of motoring in the 1950's, 1960's and 70's. Engines were hardly frugal and so 2 litre cars tended to go cheap s/h and were snapped up by boy racers. Even a 1.6 engine was greedy by todays standards. hence the popularity of the Fiesta type cars with 1.1 engines. The diesel common rail engine opened my eyes to power + economy around 2004 and I have only owned one petrol engine since then.

A car I would be proud to drive around in is the postwar Wolseley as used by the police in the early 1950's.

Bingo, I was going to mention looking at model magazines from the late 1950's or early 60's becasue I built one in 1963 from a scale drawing.

One day I forgot to screw in the 'free'wheel' before hitting the steep Rhuallt Hill near St.Asaph, and had to accelerate downgrade in order to screw it back. A scary moment because the brakes were no great shakes. My Rover 60 had a conventional handbrake, but the other models had the vertical stand up and beg handbrake to the right of the driver! If it slipped off the quadrant easily, it was an MOT fail.

While you guys were chasing anything that chuffed, the Transport Act 1968 was being passed to merge municipal owned passenger transport system into four passenger transport executives. Or as it looked to us bus enthusiasts, nationalization! So we were making the most of the bus undertakings as we had always known them. The new broom, armed withe treasury money, would soon be sweeping clean and the old familiar would soon be a thing of the past. When we drove over the Pennines to Yorkshire, there was something comforting about seeing the orange, cream and green Halifax bus at Triangle, or the red buses of Huddersfield. We didn't need road signs to tell us where we were .......... The colour of the buses did that!

I think I spotted the 'free-wheel'. My dads early Rover 75 had it and so did my Rover 60, but our Rover 105 had overdrive (and flashers).

I wonder how many hundreds of metal framed buses Leyland sold with this body before the war. Leyland later rounded the rear dome and removed the flare from the rear splashers. I rode of one from school as they were fascinatingly different from other Oldham buses in having the offset rear Stop & indicator oval, off-set route indicator and offside route indicator over the window. Interior-wise, they looked rather spartan compared with the Roe bodies. It formed the basis for the postwar body found on PD1's and PD2's. Interestingly, the front bulkhead was moved back slightly leading the the short window on the lower deck being at the front rather than at the rear. I have been searching YouTube for film of restored prewar Leylands to little avail, so it looks like they are probably too old now for taking out on the road. I just want to hear the sound of a TD4 or 5 again.

My son was with us getting messages from his wife caught up in the railway mess at Crewe. She got to Rhyl at 8pm after being stuck for some 6 hours I believe. A shame the RM isn't at Glydyfrdwy this weekend.

This telephoto shot to compress the curve through the station was a test. It is Peco code 100 laid on top of Peco bullhead to a revised formation. The Code 100 rail is far more apparent because of its unpainted flat bottom section. Two-thirds of my layout uses Code 100 with some of it outside in the garden.....

Memory lapse. The 3-gears were in an Cortina automatic. Dinna worry..... the Sierra had four forward gears. It was still a thirsty beggar though.

The Mk.II Granada was such a smashing design that it would still stand out today against most modern car designs. 'The Sweeney' series finished too early to net the jelly-mold designs that followed the classic Cortina/Granada. Lerky-lerky me bagged this, one of the very first Sierra's, from a merchant seaman. We took it to Portmerion and people were all over it, so new was this model. But was I lerky (lucky?). Well, no. After owning two Cortinas, this was the base model with only three forward gears and it drank petrol like there was no tomorrow. About 27mpg..... the good 'ol days....not.

Oops wrong thread....

Why, Is driving with no rear bumper normal where you live? Must be a trick of the light old chum.

Ah, the villains Jaguar! It always makes me laugh. 'Cars supplied by Ford' meant that any Jaguar was for crashing into cardboard boxes and exploding.

Maybe some of us have had a taste of 'reality' in our long lives, which is why we talk as we do. Have you ever purchased and restored anything? I have, a 1952 double deck bus. Now that is small fry compared with a 30 ton railway carriage. Those Llangollen Toplights might already be past it........... I don't know as it is 20 years sine I last looked at them. The first job would be to lift the wooden framed body so thta the chassis could be examined. If it is considered to still have some life in it, cleaning down would start and dismantling. The bogies would require work on them in thier own right and this might ential going to a specialist. The body would probably have broken up during lifting, so it owuld be used solely as a master from which to copy the framework and later on the raised wooden paneling. Interiors might have to be built and this would be extremely expensive whne one considers sliding doors, wall panelling and seating. Corridor connections? Where does one obtain those? Restoration is no picnic and I am certainly glad I do not have a double deck bus around my neck at this stage of life. Anyone young and interested should make themselves known to one of the carriage groups. It is not all about money; it is just as much about willing hands, skills and a lot of heavy dirty work.

But where are you going to get all there original pre-grouping coaches.....? The SVR was snapping up 'Big Four' Stanier and Collett coaches and storing them even before they got hold of much of their present line, as I think BR had decided to clear all pre-1948 designs off its roster in 1972. Pre-grouping coaches were as rare as hens teeth by then of course as most had left passenger use by 1959 and so were departmental's stripped of much of their interiors and windows. LNWR corridor coaches were still extant as Camping Coaches until 1972. I helped scrap and burn a few. Llangollen has some GWR pre-1923 corridor Toplight coaches on Fishbelly bogies, but they would soak up the £££'s if restoration commenced.

A big Sweeney fan, and still am, I just had to have a Mk.I Granada. I don't know how the actors threw it around the streets of London........Mine only wanted to go in a straight line! Few idiots ventured out onto the snow-covered A55 Abergele Byepass that morning in fact I didn't even need park it in the lay-bye to get this shot! Winter of 1981/2 if I remember at Llandullas....

Good looking cars in their day, I bought this Morris off Merfyn of this parrish because I wanted to keep my similar bodied Wolseley going. This old bus ended up with the Wolseley engine and some of its doors before i hand painted it in SELNEC PTE orange & white. Photographed in Shaw (Oldham) winter 1970 when a friend and I were doing a photographic tour of the newly formed Selnec area.....

I love that Birmingham variation of the Met-Camm body which is basically pre-war design. Only 26' long too I wouldn't wonder. Drop it on a Daimler with AEC or Gardner engine and you have gearbox heaven! Oldham Corporation got some of these buses for scrap and re-used the Daimler engines. They were better than anything else Daimler in the North West.

I bought a Ratio 548 covered footbridge some years ago and never built it. The corrugated roof has come in useful. The buildings sides are Wills corrugated plastic sheet.

Update showing the reinstalled cattle pens. A corrugated lamp room was knocked up this afternoon so the fencing could be finished off. The vinyl grass covers a gap in the platform. It is useful like this and all sorts of ground cover can be glued on top....

Peco Code 100's wide rail base ensures that rail-joiners really do hold the rail ends in line and recently, this made it easy to lay a 36" radius curve with no flats at joins on the outdoor garden loops. So I must come clean here and say I decided to cut and fishplate Code 100 track & points for my layouts scenic section as well to see how it looked. It is currently lying on top on of the existing bullhead track waiting for me to bite the bullet.

I think most people are just grateful to be able to see some of our old steam locos in action. The K4 certainly had a good run. I would dearly love to see the MR Compound in action on heritage lines, and in BR lined black too, but we can't have everything haha...