Barry Ten

I think I might have owned that book at some point, although I doubt I still have it. My dad had some Goon Show tapes which we'd listen to on car journeys.

If you dig down a bit into the timeline, it says: "A reinvigorated Lionel started off the 1990s with the reissue of the legendary No. 700E locomotive. In 1992 Richard Kughn and rock musician Neil Young, an avid model railroader, created Liontech, chartered to develop exclusive new model train control and sound systems. Liontech's RailSounds II™ debuted in 1994 on the Santa Fe Mikado. This all-new digital system captured a real-life Mikado's actual sounds, and propelled Lionel to the forefront of model train technology." https://www.lionel.com/articles/timeline Ol' Neil talks a lot about his trains and Lionel in his autobiography Shakey, including the big barn where it was all housed, but that was just before the end of his then marriage so I don't know how much of it still exists.

Agreed, the Rupert Davies Maigret is very good. Every now and again I'm tempted by the 1/8th scale Traction Avant from Heller, then sanity prevails! The 1/24th Parisian bus was enough of a struggle.

Not even Mr 'Erriot could save that horse.

Having said I wouldn't start a new kit until I'd finished with the big Tomcat, I decided it wouldn't hurt to sneak another Mustang onto the desk. This is the 1/48th Meng kit. What's interesting is that it's basically snap-together, so in theory no glue is needed. I managed to get this far tonight: I did use a tiny bit of solvent here and there, but most of the parts are just held in place by ingenious tabs. It's perhaps not as detailed as the equivalent Tamiya or Airfix ones but will still make a nice model, I feel, and certainly goes together quickly. The different sprue colours remind me of the Matchbox kits from the 70s.

Depending on what you make of Sam's Trains' Youtube channel, there's a piece by him where he looks at the wagons and attempts to assess their accuracy based on engravings of typical trains of the period. From what I remember, the horse and cattle wagons are much too long/tall, being stretched to fit on the existing carriage chassis, and the open wagons are just the existing Rocket tender and also unrepresentative. I don't always agree with Sam's reviews but in this case I think he made pretty persuasive points, finding the models to be unrealistic, expensive and poorly-provided with animals.

And then there were Somerset & Dorset lamp codes, which were their own thing entirely, right through to BR days.

Depends how many left-facing ones are left on the transfer sheet.

I enjoyed it as well. I must admit when I saw it in the mags, I thought Jools Holland's layout was a bit of a dog's dinner, but seeing it moving, with his explanation of how it all relates to his personal experiences, the UK and European influences, made me warm to it immensely.

I saw one in an episode of the 1960s-set TV detective series George Gently a few days ago. It was the one about a murder at a Butlins-style summer camp. They'd mocked up a sign at the entrance to the fictitious camp, but there was a clear errant apostrophe in it. Shocking!!! Even more shocking, for fans of the series, I discovered that the original books aren't set in Northumberland!

Lie Dream of a Casino Soul - The Fall

Over the last couple of months I've been mostly modelling in N, adding an extension to the peninsula board on my American layout The new stuff starts more or less where the road in the foreground goes from grey to unpainted card, which is where the original fascia board went. Similarly, this service road along the yard tracks used to run along the edge of the board, but there's now room for a bit of water to poke into the scene. I feel that the additions have given the scene a bit more room to breathe, setting the trains back into the landscape. Cheers, Al

Unfortunately there will always be idiots who give a bad name to any hobby. I had to take the CAA online competency test for drone and and r/c planes, which includes all the rules about where you can and can't fly, then the BMFA "A Certificate" for basic flying competence, before my club would allow me to fly "solo". Of course I could still go out and do something stupid or antisocial on my own but at least I've had an awareness of the rules.

Here's a link to the website for the Mauch Chunk model, if anyone's interested: http://homauchchunk2.co.uk/modelling/ As I said above, I was really impressed with it at Warley. It hit that sweet spot for me, with a nice balance between beautiful scenery, well-laid track and interesting CNJ stock.

Many thanks - I wasn't familiar with Jim Thorpe but looking at some pics just now, I can see where the similarity comes in. It looks like a lovely spot to spend some time in! Edit - reading a bit further, I see that it's the basis for that Mauch Chunk layout which I very much enjoyed at Warley a while back.

Many thanks, Benjy - I've been catching up on your fab UP layout with much enjoyment.

Pushing on with the reworking of the peninsula, I've done a bit more on the drop-down water feature. Sounds a bit posher than what it is, just a few square inches of lowered scenery to hint at the edge of a river or harbour. Once I'd sealed and painted the base, I poured a couple of layers of water product over two evenings. The stone retaining walls were recycled from elsewhere on the layout, hence the scruffy look. Ideally, one should cut off one of the columns of stone on one side of each casting, but I don't bother with that as it reduces the overall length of walling you get in one pack. I feel that, once weathered and blended, they look OK and I hate throwing good modelling stuff away! A different angle on the peninsula. I'm pretty happy with the way these changes are falling into place. With the baseboard edge further away from the track, I think it all has a bit more room to breathe. It's not so long ago that I was considering removing the peninsula in its entirety (feeling it was taking up too much space in the room) but for now I'm rather happy not to have proceeded with that change. Once again I have done a reshuffle of the buildings, trying to find a configuration which looks right and works with their varying depths. I think I'm nearly there. This is another view which unavoidably brings the fascia and associated under-layout clutter into view. Funny how the eye doesn't really register this stuff when we're just looking directly at the model; we seem to be able to tune-out all the non-railway stuff quite happily, but the camera is much less forgiving. This FT set has been running without its leading horns forever. I must get around to finding some spares as it just looks wrong without them. Cheers and thanks for reading.

The director of Southern Railway visited the UK between the wars and went back with the directive to paint SR's passenger locos in lined Virginia green. He would have seen our Southern locos in olive, and possibly LNER locos in Darlington and Doncaster green. I found that SR malachite was a pretty good match for Virginia green when I came to repaint a pacific.

I bought and used quite a lot of the Digikeijs DCC controlled carriage lighting units, which are undertstandably now very hard to come by. Yamorc don't seem to offer a similar product, so can anyone advise on an equivalent? The Viessmann ones also seem to be hard to track down. I know there are lots of DIY lighting kits out there using LED strips, but the nice thing with the Digikeijs ones was that they came with pickups and were easy to install in European models.

I've resumed work on the Tamiya Tomcat I started last year... I needed a break from it as it's just too big to fit on my workbench (or nearly anywhere else) making it awkward to work on. However I felt I'd better get this one done before starting another kit.

The quartering looks to be a little off.

That happened with (another) rc Mustang that a friend and I tried to fly. In our ignorance, we hadn't put any side-thrust on the electric engine we'd put in the plane, so as soon as it was off the ground it yawed hard to left. It went into the road/verge so not as bad as the wall but still a fair bit of damage to put right. It does give you a renewed appreciation for model trains. Imaging building a DJH pacific then throwing it up into the air to see if it "works".

That makes perfect sense, as the test loco that I was using while unable to get the frog juicers to work was an HO 0-6-0 tank, so very short wheelbase.

Several Lancasters and Short Stirlings for me when I was younger, but none survived into adulthood. The ones I've built most of since then are the aforementioned P51s/Mustangs in various scales, including a 1/8th wooden kit for a radio control one which I've still yet to fly, not yet having the confidence to take it up. The new-ish Airfix 1/48 Mustang is very good, but the other brands are all decent. The first railway kits I built were the Airfix brake van and the BR 2-6-0, which I naively hoped would be able to function as a push-along loco on my train set, if I stuffed enough plasticene into the boiler. The first plastic kit I attempted after returning to modelmaking in my thirties was a Parkside CCT, which went together well. I didn't have any intention of returning to aviation modelling until a friend wanted to visit the huge "Wings" model shop that used to be near Schiphol airport. Almost to keep him company I came out with a 1/24 Hurricane and never looked back. It turned out to be a nice modelling project that tided me over between layouts when moving back to the UK.

This P51 was made from flat pieces of laser-cut wood that you had to laminate together and then sand to profile. Great fun!