Pacific231G

I don't think you'll be alone in that. I'm slghtly confused though by your reference to a 7.5 crossing angle. That would be close to a #7.5 crossing (unless my maths is way out 7.5 is roughly where the the angle in degrees crosses the angle expressed as a ratio) but for straight turnouts the 83 Line range only includes #5. #6 & #8 which I make equivalent to crossing angles of 11.50, 90,& 70 respectively. Though people with plenty of space might prefer a shallower crossing angle, basing the whole system on it would probably exclude a lot of modellers with modestly sized layouts. Peco's 83 line #6 turnout is about half an inch longer than the 00/H0 medium length point but the #8 is almost two and a half inches longer than even the 00/H0 long point. Unlike its 83 Line range, which follows the established and prototypical N. American practice of using crossing numbers with correspondingly different divergence angles, Peco's 00/H0 Streamline geometry uses a common divergence angle quoted as 12o. That is somewhat (some would argue totally) artificial but for a lot of modellers the ability to create fairly complex pointwork, that in reality would be tailored to the location, from out of the box products has always been really useful. I don't think that requirement applies to anything like the same extent when modelling N. American railroads where most real track layouts seem to have been far more based on a series of separate turnouts.

Looking at your track plan you're only using about half the two foot width for it and that's about what I'd expect for a small shunting layout. I'd suggest cutting your 4x2 board down to 18inch width. My own experience is that, though it's about the maximum size for an easily transportable baseboard a 4x2 board is still a bit unwieldy for a complete layout. It's too wide to store on shelves and in most cupboads, a bit of a lump for one person to carry and the extra width adds little or nothing in terms of track or scenery. OTOH there have been any number of good shunting layout built on 4x1 baseboards. Because timber sheet has always and still is largely based on a 4ft x 8ft standard, layout sizes have always tended to be based on that in at least one dimension hence the prevalence of solid 6x4 layouts in Britain- about as portable as a double bed isn't- some years ago, 8ft by 4ft layouts still in North America and an awful lot of small layouts in Europe that are 1.2m long.

Hi Chris For future reference, on the Saturday there is a traditional but very clean caff (wih a hygiene rating of 5) in the parade of shops round the corner. I used it last year and found it far better than the onsite catering. This year I paid les than a fiver for a very well filled BLT baguette and a decent mug of coffee which I think was £1.40 . Unfortunately I don't think it's open on Sundays at least it wasn't last year. I agree about being slightly disappointed to find Minories now a through station though after exhibiting it for ten years I think Tom and co. are entitled to a change and it does let them run goods trains. I understand that in any case the configuration is optional so it can easily be set up in its original terminus form if wanted. I also liked Lighterman's Yard and found the use of a monochrome backscene very effective but what most impressed me was the reality of the streets of terraced housing and the period ordinaryness of them was really convincing without being in any way overstated. Somebody has really done their research. I don't think I'd seen Plumpton Green before and I was impressed as much by its prototypical operation, which visitors can watch in detail, as by the high quality of modelling. I hadn't seen that pattern of two position block instruments before so I was impressed by its authenticity. It alway seems a bit pointless to use proper block working at exhibitions and then hide it behid the scenes so that for the public it just ends up being noises-off My only comment would be that having gone to all the trouble of setting up authentic block instrument working it would be worth having an explanation of it on one of the panels. There is though a good explanation here http://www.lbscrmodels.co.uk/instruments1.html I did appreciate Barry Luck's idea that visitors should only hear the fairly quiet block bells in the actual signalbox and not in the two fiddle yards. A mercy for adjoining layout operators. I didn't notice how straight it is but to be fair that is also authentic. Google Earth is a very useful tool for studying railways. You can even count the sleepers at the real Plumpton Green and if you draw a dead straight line a kilometre long with the station at its centre and place each end half-way between the rails of either of the two tracks the line remains well within the four foot with a maximum deviation from centre of less than 600mm so in this case straight is true! In general, for purely exhibtion layouts I rather agree though about the dominance of the rectangular baseboard and very gentle curves should be possible without compromising transport and storage. .

I don't think you need worry about this being just a batch to test the market. The November edition of Loco Revue has Peco's advert for "le double champignon, un nouveauté de Peco Streamline en H0 voie flexible et aiguillages (nouveau type Unifrog) à droite et à gauche." Interestingly they don't quote a size for the points. They were showing the bullhead plain track at TrainsMania in Lille at the end of April but this is the first reference I've seen to it as H0. Though France is an important market for Peco and about half the pre nationalisation railways used bullhead* it has to be a secondary market for it compared to Britain so it's not likely they'd advertise it there if they weren't fully committed to it. *Technically only double champigon asymetrique with a larger head than foot is bullhead; many railways had chaired track with symmetrical section rail but that's splitting hairs.

I'm really just playing with John Charman's plan for Charford to compare it with Minories and, with only room for medium radius points trying to ensure that passenger trains at least never meet a reverse curve without some straight track between the curves. . For a single track main line it's not a crossover and the kickback is more a place for the station pilot to lurk though it could be the connection with an off-stage loco depot . To make this into the terminus of a double track main line you'd have to extend the kickback to form the up line (assuming this isn't a London terminus when it would be the down line) and add a second crossover which would be trailing though that could be happening off-stage in the fiddle yard. If the terminus is the end of a purely single track main line then I do like Beet's plan which uses the basebord's width very efficiently and from the photo looks rather attractive with good operating potential . It doesn't though have quite the busy city terminus feel that Minories provides and is more like the other end of a secondary main line akin to a Fort William, Oban or Kingswear. The upper platform also does have a reverse curve which I'm trying to avoid.

Absolutely right. If you want a single track throat into a three platform terminus there are far more efficient track layouts available. In fact you can do it with just two points as did the West Highland Line for its terminus at Fort William (sadly replaced by a less interesting terminus in about 1970 to make way for a bypass) Granted the Fort originally had a releasing crossover but, despite some very busy making and breaking of trains and a lot of work for the station pilot the crossover saw little actual use and was eventually removed so my suggestion of building an Inglenook could be applied to a main line passenger terminus. Ft. William was a reversing junction and in summer, with relief trains, it could handle up to three trains at once. With restaurant cars or sleepers coming off or going on the trains to and from Glasgow and the observation car running on the shortened portions of the same trains between there and Mallaig it was, several times a day, the scene of frantic activity. It was the first place where I actually enjoyed seeing diesels at work. I think that Ft. William may have also inspired John Charman's classic Charford Branch as he was an RAF flying officer based near Edinburgh when he built it. This track plan was so good operationally that he incorporated his original terminus into much extended versions of the iayout for the next thirty years. With minor modification and lengthening it's also an excellent basis for a three platform main line terminus that could very easily, with the extral length of a crossover, be turned into a double track main line at a later date I'm actually very tempted by this plan as an alternative to Minories as it would allow for longer main line trains in the four metre length I have available with just as much operation. I also found a pre-war O gauge layout built by E.A.Beet that followed a very similar and also attractive design. It's possible that this may have been John Charman's inspiration as it was featured in magazines before and soon after the war. The main station board was just ten feet long in O gauge so I reckon that a European H0 or British OO version of it could handle five or six coach trains in a length of about eight feet which is very termpting.

I always liked the principle that “Fiction is life with the dull bits left out" (Clive James but probably based on a similar phrase by Alfred Hitchcock) If you'e ever walked along a greenway converted from an old railway line you'll realise fairly quickly why faithfully modelling every inch of a railway is likely to result in a very tedious model railway. The interesting bits are awfully spread out so selective compression isn't an unfortunate necessity but an essential part of our craft.

The purpose of givens and druthers is to help you point yourself in the right direction for you. That won't be the right direction for anyone else even for someone who's come up with the same list.

It depends a lot on the quality of the transfer. You can get a lot out of fairly poor prints provided the information is still in there The main thing is to get rid of the noise (especially scratches) and to stabilise the image from frame to frame so the software has something to bite on. The catch is that it's an expensive process. You can get rid of most scratches by using something called a "wet gate" telecine machine but I don't even know if any of these still exist. If you find a copy of Georges Méliès 1896 Arrivée d'un train (Gare de Vincennes) then it's probably worth going to town on it as it's been presumed lost for decades. OTOH the economics of railway DVDs (does anyone still even buy DVDs?) woudn't allow for much more than a very basic unmonitored transfer at the sort of place that specialises in transferring old wedding videos and "Family memories". I used to have a trick with material only available on VHS of transferring it to DV and editing that. It looked much better and though the transfer couldn't,by the laws of physics, contain any more information than the VHS, the DV compression algorithms somehow tidied it all up and dumped some of the "noise" to give an acceptable result.

I said it was the most authentic not that it was perfectly authentic. As I recall there was one short night cutaway sequence where they used two shots clearly taken in Britain but reversed the colours to make the coaches green not maroon, which just made them look like Southern Region. I'd guess that the editor needed a night time cutaway and found nothing suitable from what had been shot in Turkey. However, the train that departed from the real Sirkeci station was pretty typical of the Orient Express around that time when it had long since stopped being an all Wagons Lits service and so far more authentic than anything in movies like Murder on the Orient Express. Apart from the spurious cutaways, all the railway scenes seem to have been shot in Turkey. mostly around Istanbul, though I don't know if Sirkeci, which is rather ornate, stood in for Belgrade and Zagreb stations as some sources claim or whether they used other local stations for that. The boat chase sequence were supposed to be shot in Turkey but ended up being filmed in Scotland.

Dozens of them, so many and so specific that theyre unlikely to be of much help to you unless you're interested in region 3/4 of the SNCF in epoch III b . If you ask people for ideas they'll tell you what they'd like not what you'd like- that's something only you can determine. to help with that may I suggest a process that was developed many years ago by the leading American layout designer John Armstrong known as "Givens and Druthers" Givens are the constraints you are working under such as room size, door positions, whether the layout is to be portable or fixed and those you've imposed on yourself or which are imposed by your current level of skill which may include gauge, era, prototype, ready to lay or handbuilt track, possibly minimum radius that's acceptable to you (I now use nothing smaller than nominal three foot radius points in H0 but others are quite happy with Setrack) even the type of couplers - if you're know going to use three link couplings with a "shunting pole" then you won't want to be shunting a siding that's a two foot reach. Write the givens down in a list. Then come the Druthers - "The things I'd ruther have" (well John Armstrong was American). That's also a list, probably quite a long one, I'd quite like to run thirty wagon coal trains but there are other things that are far more important. I'd like a five platform main line terminus handling eight coach trains but if I have to I could settle with three platforms and six coaches. I love building buildings so I must have room for a townscape or I'm not interestedin anything beyond the railway fence. I must have a motive power depot to show off my locomotives- Nahh, the MPD can be off-stage I much prefer trains I want a large goods yard but a cramped one with three sidings will do. I definitely do want a continuous run to just watch the trains go by and I can sacrifice some shunting to have one. Shunting train at a terminus is what I really enjoy doing so I don't need a contnuous run. I really want a two track main line into my terminus even though that will cut the length of trains I can handle. I can live with a single track "main line" if that lets me run longer trains (Those are two druthers I'm faced with myself right now) There's a good, albeit American, explanation of the process here http://macrodyn.com/ldsig/wiki/index.php?title=Using_Givens_and_Druthers_to_guide_the_process Finally, if you wait until you've designed your perfect layout then you'll be waiting forever. While you're figuring out the layout you really want to build I'd seriously suggest getting your hands dirty by building a 4ft x 1ft baseboard, buying a couple of Peco medium radius Streamline points (or C&L kits for handbuilt points if that's where you think you're heading), two metres or so of flex track and building an Inglenook sidings in your chosen era and prototype. With that you can practice scenery, buildings, ballasting (ughh!). wiring, point operation (and finding out whether you prefer hand on or remote control) what type of couplers you want to use and above all what aspects of modelling you really enjoy. Whatever you go on to build It'll never be wasted as at the very least it'll always be available as a test track. .

If you think film makers get it wrong try this for authenticity. Note that this is a UK and not a US version of the book. The irony is that the train that appeared in the film of From Russia with Love was probably the most authentic version of the real unglamourised Orient Express, as it was at that time, in any movie.

Don't bet on it. As someone who has spent hours in Windmill Road, Ealing (where the BBC film archive used to be) looking for archive material to illustrate some of my programmes, the problem was that, even if some of the out takes had been kept for "stock shots", which they generally weren't, it would show say a train coming towards you at some distance then cut to it disappearing into the distance as the bit in the middle would have been used. Aircraft were even more frustrating as the "stock shot" would generally show the plane approaching and then cut to it taxying off the runway. It was generally more fruitful to look at cut stories and completed programmes (which are what is available on iPlayer) simply because the picture editor would naturally enough have chosen the best of the rushes. More often than not though the shot in the final cut story would be far too short for a more considered piece than a news report. If there were other takes they often looked promising on paper but there'd normally be a camera wobble or loss of focus just where you'd want to use it. When filming a story, you wouldn't usually waste expensive film doing endless retakes. Filming is also always under real time pressure so, once you've got a good shot, you usually move on to the next sequence. Unused rushes have always normally been junked unless someone flagged it as having real archive value. In that case it has to be logged, classified and stored all of which means time spent by an archivist plus storage costs which means spending licence payers money. Even when that happens it's difficult from the log to tell if an archived shot is really what you're looking for. I once spent an interesting afternoon at the Imperial War Museum going through a copy of all their uncut film from D-Day for some remembrance programmes I was producing and, guess what, all the good shots were the ones we've all seen many times in endless documentaries. There they all were from the paratroopers stepping on a picture of Hitler while boarding a Dakota to the troops giving thumbs up to the camera in front of the 60cm track of the last surviving line of the Chemins de Fer du Calvados for which D-Day was its last day. Those were the shots I ordered up just like every producer before me.

What period was the fatalities per billion passenger miles for? Simply because fatal rail crashes are so unusual these figures will, unless they're over a very long period, be distorted by a couple of bad accidents. It looks like he's only used the 2013 figures which include the Santiago de Compostela derailment in Spain which killed 79 people. He's also badly misinterpreted the EU data by quoting the overall deaths and serious injuries figures as "fatalities".Fatality rates for passengers are far lower than these. The subsidy figures are also taken from a range of different sources so I'd be very suspicious of their statistical validity if indeed they have any validity at all. I did look at comparative fatality statistics mainly for the EU countries a few years ago and cars were about ten to fifteen times as dangerous for their passengers per billion passenger kilometres as rail. I think that for the UK which has relatively fewer road fatalities than most outher countries cars were about ten times as dangerous as rail. Scheduled air travel had slightly fewer fatalities than rail per billion passenger kilometres but was about as dangerous as road per billion passenger hours. Because the vast majority of fatal air accidents happen on take-off, approach, landing, and on the ground with a far lower risk in the cruise, long haul flights lower the overall risk so flying over the sort of distances also typical of railway journeys is therefore probably riskier both in fatalities per distance and fatalities per hour than rail. An EU report in 2003 calculated that rail was safer than scheduled air for journeys of less than 600km but air travel was safer than rail for journeys of over 800km. If you're interested in transport safety it makes for interesting reading http://etsc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2003_transport_safety_stats_eu_overview.pdf though fatality levels for most forms of transport will have improved somewhat since then.

Thanks Martin A very sensible and thoughtful view IMHO. The thing that I can't quite get my head round in the discussion about prototype accuracy in trackwork is that length is the dimension where we compromise the most. Even if we use a dead scale model of a real turnout with a crossing angle of 1:6 we're probably, unless we have vast space at our disposal, going to use it to represent a main line point not confine it to low speed sidings. There is a question of perception here so even if we had enough space would it look right to model the length of the railway in full? I won't name it but I well remember seeing a P4 layout that modelled a very small terminus exactly to scale and with no compromise on anything; figuratively, every blade of grass was modelled. To my eyes at least it just looked wrong and I don't think this was just from being used to looking at models of railways rather than the real thing. My question is, given the compromise on length that most of us are forced to make and maybe should make, is it better to represent a typical main line turnout with a scale model of a far shorter design or to design a model that looks like the main line version? I don't have an answer to this but maybe Peco do.

Hi John I can't quite tell from your photos if the coupler head is at the same height as a prototypical buckeye coupler fitted to UK coaching stock but I assume it is. There seem to be two ways of using Kadee couplers in a UK context. Either to regard them as a purely model coupler like any other model automatic couplers or to use them to represent, more or less to scale or at least in the right place, the AAR couplers quite widely used on Britain's railways. The latter seems to be what you've done with your coaching stock . There are obviously pros and cons to each approach. Because "Buckeye" AARs were very little used, except on coaching stock, they're not prototypical beyond that (though they are now used, generally within sets and without buffers, on some modern freight stock) and having the coupler heads at buffer beam height would make them more obtrusive than tucked beneath it. The rest of Western Europe didn't really use AAR couplers (though there was an attempt by the UIC to standardise on the Willison coupler which is used in Russia and elsewhere and was used on some suburban services in Paris ) so for modellers the second option didn't apply. The NEM pocket was designed for a range of non-prototypical automatic couplers (there is a separate NEM for prototypical drawhook mountings in the buffer beam) These are always below the buffer beam which puts them at a lower height than the NMRA gear box. For that reason the Kadee NEM couplers are overset to bring the head to the same NMRA standard height.that enables the same trip pin and uncoupling magnets to be used. I have seen it argued that, because 4mm/ft scale has a higher buffer beam than European H0, the NEM standard coupler pocket should also be higher. I think that is a red herring as the NEM standard doesn't just apply to H0; it also applies to S scale so is fine for OO or EM where its relatively lower position against the buffer beam and the slightly larger scale makes it somewhat less obtrusive. I've used them for years wih European H0 stock and far prefer them to any other coupler on offer especially for shunting. They are a bit sensitive to height so unwanted uncoupling across less than perfect baseboard joints does happen and the somewhat vaguer tracking of four wheel wagons made to coarser standards than RP25 etc. can also be a problem.

Not having to put up all those masts and overhead knitting seems a very good reason for modellers to stick with the GWR. One day we'll have very small fusion reactors which will have to be put inside locomotives- I wouldn't fancy sitting above an underbody thermonuclear device- and they'll probably have to be steam locos to transfer the heat generated to the wheels. When that happens the Wharncliffe viaduct can be restored to its original appearance (to be fair the OHE on the viaduct was carefully designed to be particularly discrete) .

After months of speculation the proof of the pudding. I finally got to see some of the new Peco bullhead track on a complete layout at Wycrail today. This was on Chris Nevard's new Fountain Colliery & Brew St layouts and I was well impressed. It actually took me a long time to realise that it was Peco rather than handbuilt track .The points he used are still Code 75 Streamline so I look forward to seeing medium radius BH points in the range. Obviously Chris is a superb modeller which helps (he deservedly won the best layout cup today) but this track looked better than a lot of handbuilt EM that I've seen.

I'm sorry Kevin but the answer is staring us in the face. The MOROP system of epochs is weak on the period before 1926 lumping it all together as a single period but of course because railways were developed in this country we need more subtlety. The main epochs of the railway after it emerged from waggonways, tramroads, plateways and similar general northernness, were- 1. Early individual railways. Liverpool and Manchester, London and Birmingham, London and Greenwich, Great Western etc. 2. The consolidation into major railways. London and North Western, London Brighton and South Coast, Great Eastern, Great Western, Caledonian etc. 3. The grouping into Southern, LMS, LNER, Great Western 4. British Railways era. Nationalisation into regions based on the big four except that the LMS and LNER were stripped of Scotland meaning that only the Great Western and Southern survived masquerading as the WR and SR. All model railways were based on the GWR/WR or the SR/SR. I know this from the letters pages of model railway magazines of the time 5. British Rail but everyone knows that from diesel hydraulics to the first High Speed Trains the Great Western spirit was still lurking. During the whole of this period almost all model railways were based on Great Western branch lines.I know this from the letters pages of model railway magazines of the time 6. Early Privatisation. Various odd new names appear such as Virgin and EWS but the Great Western is reborn as First Great Western serving most of the places that the GWR went to before it set out to civilise Birmingham and Birkenhead. 7. Later privatisation. The Great Western Railway takes its proper name again and aknowledges IK Brunel as its founder. I didn't actually know that IKB had set up a bus company and always thought he was the GWR's engineer rather than its founder but it says so on all the currrent GWR publicity so it must be true. The Southern Railway name also reappears but as it doesn't include the LSWR half of the 1923 Southern Railway and for other reasons it's not really the same. From all this it should be obvious that the one thread running through the whole of world railway history is the Great Western Railway. That means that it's only necessary to relate any model of any railway anywhere in the world to what was happening on the GWR at that time. So to take the Pacifics as an example, Gresley's A1 was built in the Churchward era while the A4 was of the Collett era while Bulleid's Pacfiics were from the Hawksworth era. You can apply it more widely so for example the Union Pacific's "Big Boy" was also a Hawksworth era locomotive. This seems simple and obvious to me and I'm sure our European and American friends will adopt the new GWR based system of eras enthusiastically.

That is of course very true. In 1974 or 75 I enjoyed an excellent holiday with a one week Austrian rail pass. The OBB main lines were mostly electric with modern equipment and coaches in shiny new liveries and the unelectrified routes were almost universally dieselised.However, while staying in Vienna I spent a splendid day exploring some of the local railways between the capital and the Czech border around Mistelbach. I knew there was still some steam up there, it was why I went, but I didn't expect to get to travel on a scheduled steam hauled mixed train that stopped at every station and shunted a couple of wagons at several of them. It was well into Ep. IV but the farmers were stil using horse drawn carts and most of the local roads were unmetalled.

Perhaps because it makes them sell better. I remember seeing e-bay adverts at the same time for two Jouef 140C's (a large class of SNCF consolidations mostly built in Glasgow by NBL during WW1). So far as you could tell from the listings they were in the same condition and I saw nothing that would have made either listing appear in more searches. One advert gave all the information needed by a bidder including photos of the model but the other gave all that plus a well written and interesting paragraph about the prototype and its history including at least one photo of the real thing in service. The second model attracted far more bids and sold for 60-80% than the first. Had you already decided that you needed a 140C you would have been sensible to bid on the first. A couple of people did just and one of them got it for a good price. I'm guessing that the second attracted several bidders who were engaged by the advert and decided after reading it that they wanted the loco.

There always have been a proportion of modellers who choose more distant historic periods though it's slightly disconcerting to realise that in about 1950 when Peter Denny settled on the Edwardian Great Central Railway of 1907 he was choosing a prototype closer in time then- though separated by two World Wars- than the end of BR steam is now. That Edwardian/Belle Epoque period is an attractive one when "modern" railway operating methods were established but coaches were shorter and hauled by some particularly attractive locomotives and I do like layouts such as "Clarendon". Even so, unless you go back into the nineteenth century where you start to find far fewer photographs available for reference, you have a situaton where what people still insist on calling "Modern Image" i.e the mid sixties onwards is almost half of the total time period modelled by the overwhelming majority in years if not in proportion of layouts. I was really only quoting the Epoch system to make the point that "Modern Image" as used by many exhibition organisers includes three of the six epochs so is far too broad a brush. The epoch system does have a number of anomalies especially as the key marker events tended to be different in each European country. In terms of railway history the big ones in Europe were the end of the Second World War which was more of a break-point for most European railways than it was in Britain and the effective end of steam at the end of the 1960s which mark the beginning of Epoch three and four respectively. The boundaries between the other epochs seem far more arbitrary and Epoch 1 is definitely far too long including everything from the start of the railway age to 1926. I'm fairly comfortable with modelling Epoch 3 France which more or less corresponds to the "traditional railway" era of BR that I grew up with and is mainly steam with some diesel, local "pick-up" goods services so plenty of shunting in even small stations and a fair number of rather old carriages still in use. I understand though that in most other European countries Epoch four (1971-1990) is the most popular with modellers as there is still plenty of scope for shunting wagonload goods trains with a variety of wagons and passenger trains were still made up or broken down into sections for different destinations at junctions. You'd also still find a reasonable number of branch lines, mixed goods wagons on quaysides, and even goods trains on narrow gauge lines. You could come up with a reasonable system of eras for Britain but rather than numbers I'd suggest for headline/exhibition guide classification, Early railways (up to about the turn of the 19th Century, end of Broad Gauge), pre-grouping, (1900-1923) grouping or Big Four) era (1923-1947) British Railways traditional era 1948-1968 British Rail modern or blue era (post-Beeching diesel and electric, )1969-1990) possibly Late British Rail era to cover sectorisaton, virtually no wagon load goods, Privatisation era.

I'm not sure if you can talk about a "correct" usage for a term that's always been vague but I've generally seen "Modern Image", rather like "Art Nouveau" as referring to a particular era; BR's Blue era when it broke away from the steam era and Big Four design styles. Cyril Freezer's article "The Modern Image" in the May 1964 RM did though appear a few months before the blue period liveries first appeared with the XP64 train described, under the "Moderrn Image" strapline, in the August edition.The problem with the term is that though we know when it started nobody has ever agreed on when it ended because there wasn't another overall change that followed it. I was still travelling in blue and grey intercity carriages hauled by bue locos into the 1990s but it certainly wasn't the same era as the 1970s. Given that relatively few modellers look before the 1923 grouping for their inspiration and the vast majority of layouts are set in the past seventy years it seems as absurd to lump together the whole of the past fifty three years as a single era called "Modern Image" as it would to label every layout set before then as "Steam Era" Whatever you think of the system of "epochs" used by many European modellers it's worth noting for perspective that the end of steam corresponds roughly to the end of epoch 3 (1946-1970) and we've now reached epoch 6. (2005- )

The metre was originally defined as 1/10M of that distance but the calculation was always somewhat out so it came to be simply the length between two marks on a metal rod, latterly the standard metre kept at The International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevre Paris. Nowadays it's the distance light travels, in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 seconds as measured by a particular atomic clock which means that it can be recreated anywhere.The kilogramme was orignaly defined as the mass of a cubic decimetre of water but that was soon replaced by a lump of metal and it's still based on the weight of the "Grande K" a lump of platinum-iridium kept in the Inernational Bureau. This is an unsatisfactory situation for science as that mass has changed very slightly over time as atoms have been lost (about the mass of a speck of dust in 100 years) It looks like the Grande K may be finally retired next year to be replaced by a reproducible definition derived from Planck's constant. The Roman mile was based on a mille a thousand marched double (i.e. left right) paces but the imperial statute mile is rather longer than that. The acre is 1/640 of a square mile, originally a furlong long and a chain wide and supposedly based nominally on the area of land that could be ploughed by oxen in a day and the furlong was the length of a furrow that an ox could plough before resting. That must have been a pretty vague definition as it would depend on the nature of the soil so in England statutory definitions were introduced from Edward 1st onwards. Imperial measures are now of course based entirely on S.I. units so an inch is 2.54cms by definition not aproximation.For modelling purposes that's the one conversion factor that along with some of the scale ratios (e.g. 1:87) I don't have to look up. For rough and ready aproximations imperial measures do often seem more convenient and I still tend to use a foot grid for layout planning though nowadays often based on a "metric foot" (30cms) I have found though that for portable baseboards 4ft long is a bit unwieldy and a bit long to fit in many cars while 3ft is slightly too short for trackwork so I'm tending towards metre long baseboards. .

Does anyone else remember a BBC TV drama series called King of the River from 1966-67. Bernard Lee (who was playing M at the time) was Joss King the widower skipper of one of the last working Thames sailing barges. I can only remember scenes of the barge and that he had two daughters, the older Ruth (Meg Wynn Owen) a rather straightlaced teacher in the local grammar school and the younger Susannah (Geraldine Sherman who later appeared in Get Carter) defintely not straightlaced. The series was never exploited commercially and, according to Wikipaedia, no episodes are known to exist but that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't. Apart from "M" in the James Bond movies I best remember Bernard Lee for his portrayal of the Merchant Navy Captain in Battle of the River Plate