MarkSG

Take my money now!

Just a technical point, but you might want to pass this on to your webmaster... The URL you're giving for the show details in this thread doesn't actually exist - instead, it's redirecting to the shuttle bus timetable. Which may be useful for some people, but not all of us! The actual URL for the show information is here: https://www.staffordrailwaycircle.org.uk/exhibbition-2023/ That URL works fine, but observant eyes may spot a minor typo in there - someone appears to have reached the wrong answer to the classic question posted by Shakespeare: two 'b' or not two 'b'? 😀 I suspect that if you fix that, the short URL will then also redirect to the correct longer one, thus solving two problems in one. Not that this affects the quality of the show itself, of course, and I'm definitely planning to 'b' there in September. But I can't resist donning my pedant hat at times like this.

Well, my Hattons trunk has just acquired a diag D1379 in BR grey. But I won't be evacuting it yet as I have five more items waiting to enter it, and I'll leave it until it also contains at least a couple of the other the single wagons I've got on order (Dapol and Rapido) or the Titfield Thunderbolt train pack, whichever comes first. I'll also try to time the release for when I can be at home to take delivery while my wife is out 🙂

Looking back at previous topics, they typically release their quarterly announcements in the month before the season they relate to. So, for example, winter announcements in November, spring announcements in February, summer announcements in May, and so on. That makes perfect sense when you consider that the summer announcements, say, aren't announcements made in summer, they are the announcement of products which will be released in summer. So the announcement needs to be a few weeks ahead of the delivery schedule, and hence come towards the end of the preceding season.

Announced early, it would appear....

I think we should get one done for the forum. R. M. Webb Nutty Slack

It's flimsy enough that it will snap off if you handle it roughly. After one such accident I decided to leave it off rather than fix it, on the basis that many wouldn't have a canopy in real life anyway.

If you want a bit of nostalgia you can play Lemmings online at https://classicreload.com/lemmings.html

If you're going to paint the walls and ceiling, then white, definitely. Otherwise, a natural neutral colour (eg, leave wood unpainted). You don't want anything which will create a colour cast over the layout. Bear in mind that the sky looks blue when you look at it (well, some days, anyway), but it's not actually reflecting blue light on you! The sky is blue because of refraction, not reflection. A blue painted surface, though, will reflect blue light. Which isn't really what you want. if you really want something that's designed for a model railway, then a Pendon style lightbox ceiling is ideal. But that might be a bit beyond the resources of the average modeller in a shed 😀

One might agree with your suspicions. Consider also the following facts: That paragraph was added by an editor with the username "D8592", and the only other edits that username has made are to the main Viz article on Wikipedia. As well as being a Wikipedia username, D8592 was the running number of a Class 17 (Clayton Type 1). Chris Donald is a member of a Clayton Type 1 appreciation group on Facebook. Chris Donald mentions Clayton Type 1, number D8592, in the first paragraph of "Rude Boys" his semi-autobiographical account of the founding of Viz. It might, of course, all be coincidence. But, equally, it might not be. (And just in case anyone queries point 3, yes, it is that Chris Donald, even though it's not an uncommon name. His Facebook profile and public posts make that clear enough. Oddly enough, he's also a member of two groups that I'm a member of, although I don't recall ever seeing any posts by him there.)

They weren't exclusively big cities, but they were more common in major urban areas. They weren't all the same design, though, and the typical Metropolitan Police box designed by Gilbert Mackenzie Trench (which is what the Tardis is based on) was mainly found in London., with a slightly modified version being used in Glasgow. Otherwise, individual forces all had their own preferred designs, and in many cases they were often more like a small, blue-painted shed than anything with any particularly consistent design. All those which remain are now listed buildings. And the vast majority of those which have survived are not Mackenzie Trench boxes. If the Mackenzie Trench boxes had lasted a decade or so longer in use, then they probably would, like K6 Telephone Boxes, have been recognised as worth preserving before they were mostly scrapped and hence we'd have more of them. But, as it is, the majority of those which do remain are those which either carried on being used longer than was normal, or which simply escaped being scrapped because nobody could be bothered to remove them and, instead, simply fell into disrepair. Edinburgh, oddly enough, now has the largest number of remaining police boxes, which may partly be more to do with the fact that they got listed there earlier than elsewhere in the country. But, also they're typically larger than elsewhere (mostly built to a design by Ebenezer James MacRae), so a fair number of them were repurposed into street vending kiosks, which obviously helped them to survive beyond their police functionality. Here's a Mackenzie Trench box in Glasgow: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/200399858-police-box-cathedral-sqaure-glasgow And an original Met Police Mackenzie Trench box, now far from home: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101109166-metropolitan-police-box-at-national-tramway-museum-crich Here's a MacRae box in Edinburgh: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/200395663-police-call-box-west-princes-street-gardens-edinburgh-edinburgh And a completely different design in Sheffield: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101405185-police-box-adjacent-to-town-hall-surrey-street-sheffield-city-ward And, for completeness, a modified Mackenzie Trench design in Wales: https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300021458-former-police-telephone-box-alway Someone at Cadw (the Welsh heritage body) appears to have had a bit of fun writing that listing.

According to Wikipedia: During the latter years of his tenure as the editor of Viz, Donald opened a hugely unsuccessful restaurant at a former railway station at Ilderton in Northumberland. It opened in 1994 and closed three years later than it should have done, in 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Donald

It appears to be Bachmann's Garden Scale coupling. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Garden-Scale-Thomas-Engine-moving/dp/B001RG9QHO https://www.Bachmann.co.uk/category/model-railway/thomas_and_friends/large-scale

Bo and Luke appear to have had a rather unexpected change of allegiance, too. Although you could, of course, justify all this by means of a fictional backstory that the Hazzard County Railroad is now a preserved tourist line, and you're modelling one of the "Days out with Thomas" events which are regular occurances on such attractions.

All of the emails (order confirmation and dispatch) related to my previous Hornby orders came from Hornby. No mention of CCL anywhere in the emails, even in the headers. So maybe this is an area where Hornby have learned their lesson and realised this isn't something they can reliably handle in house.

Any chance you could identify which wagons you think are wrong, and cite your sources?

I refer the honourable gentleman to a comment I made last year...

Happens in real life...

Yes, a lot of our model railways are essentially fiction, even if they're based on a real location. But there's plausible fiction and implausible fiction.

That's not really a tunnel, it's just a long bridge 🙂

So this is basically an announcement to announce a forthcoming announcement. To make things easier in future, maybe they should do an announcement to announce their future announcement schedule, so that we never have an unexpected announcement.

Point of order, but North Worcestershire is generally considered to be the three districts of Wyre Forest, Bromsgrove and Redditch (as opposed to South Worcestershire which is Wychavon, Malvern Hills and Worcester City). Bromsgrove is, by a tad, the largest of the three in terms of area covered, but it certainly isn't most of North Worcestershire. And Wyre Forest is the most populous of the three.

That looks... interesting. A bit of an unusual challenge for planning an exhibition. I hope you manage to get it all sorted out satisfactorily, though. I'm sure it will be just as enjoyable as a visitor.

Well, not in public, anyway....

I've exprimented with Kadees, but I've come to the conclusion that they just look too wrong for a steam-era layout. And yes, I know that tension locks are equally wrong. But it's a different kind of wrong. The problem with Kadees, for me, is that they're designed to look like a prototype knuckle coupler with steam pipes. Which, on a diesel or electric loco, is fine. But on a rake of steam-hauled wagons, that, in real life, would have been loose or screw coupled, they look anachronistic. Tension locks, on the other hand, don't try to mimic a prototypical coupling at all, and modern versions do their best to be discreet. So it's actually easier to get away with the "willing suspension of disbelief" (which is essential in any model) with tension locks than it is with Kadees.