APOLLO

I had a quadruple by pass back in 2011. The cause of my blocked arteries was purely cholesterol build up caused by bad diet over the years (before i got married). In on Sunday, Op Monday, out of intensive care Thursday, home Sunday. I have nothing but praise for the NHS & Wythenshawe Hospital South Manchester - BUT

all main meals had to be chosen day before as they were cooked in South Wales & trucked up - the menu was not healthy - chips, pies, sponge pudding custard etc - the stuff my surgeon said had caused my problem in the first place !! - Then around twice a day came the cart selling crisps, chocolate and all the other shyte. Yes I remarked to the staff / surgeon and was told "This is what everybody wants" !!!. Unbelievable. I stuck with Hospital porridge for breakfast (and have kept with that ever since), soup and whatever for the meal. Actually the food was quite good - though "wrong".

I now subscribe to the "Harry Secombe" diet, and it's quite simple.

Rule 1 Eat whatever you want - BUT eat far less of it, and always leave yourself a little hungry at the end of every meal.

Rule 2 If you are not hungry - don't eat & wait till you are - but then always apply rule 1.

Simple, and it works (for me). Blo*dy difficult this time of year though !!!!.

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Bought from the Nevada State railroad museum in Carson City, well worth a visit if you are ever nearby. 

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Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

 

The Romans did have a way with words didn't they? - and 2000 years later we can still jump to the same conclusions!

Nuquam magna occidens mechanicus constanta perforatai rectum.

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Supping a bottle of Adnams Ghost Ship pale ale.. Bottle says "has a good assertive, pithy bitterness with a malty backbone and a lemon and lime aroma" who writes this stuff !!!

Anyway, A it's bit perfumey for me, but not too bad.a taste.  6 / 10. 

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One of my Christmas presents was Tony's book "Modelling the East Coast Main Line". Whilst barred out of the kitchen this afternoon whilst cooking was in progress (I can burn water !!) I sat down with a glass and had a quick read. What a lovely, well illustrated and informative book this is. A credit to Tony and his layout. Another book I got, a must for GN / Yorkshire fans is Great Northern Outpost Volume 2 - The Halifax, Thornton & Keighley Railway. All colour, the photos are mostly dated towards the end of these lines in the late 50's / mid 60's when they were in a bit of a sad state, one line only in use, heavily overgrown etc, none the less this is a book (like Tony's) that is hard to put down once you pick it up. There are some quite stunning photos in it.

Achievements this year are difficult to show. Mainly maintenance, clearing up, sorting boxes and boxes of stuff - discovering things I bought years ago that I had forgotten about etc. I revised some track work to make operations more realistic, added long awaited point motors to a couple of hard to reach points and a few other such jobs we all keep putting off. Now all that is done I have some stock building to do in 2018, mainly wagons & Kirk LNER coach kits - (A quad art & a twin). On the Loco front - that's about it - I have more than enough (but I have said that before !!), Oh, and detailing, loco lamps, some light weathering etc etc. Never ending isn't it !!

Anyway, thanks Tony and all others who make this thread (to me) a real source of inspiration in many matters railway. 

Have a Happy Christmas all.

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Wasn't like that back in Jan 1969 on the WCML at Springs Branch - The D400'ers thundered on !!

Happy Christmas all.

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Just about everything is weathered on Little Bytham.  

Did I spy a diesel ? - Don't forget the graffiti !!!

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Wigan Gas Works 1973. Newly electrified WCML & Wigan NW station top left, Library Street & Town Centre top right. The high level square boxes are the "Oxide Boxes"  which cleaned the town gas made here, passed through iron oxide they had to be regularily emptied & oxide changed - a very smelly & polluting job, just a couple of hundred yards from the town centre !!

Back then as an apprentice there we were fitting gas fires to replace coal fires domestically in huge numbers - I think a subsidy was available due to the newly amended clean air act. Wigan Gas Works was demolished soon after this photo was taken as we now had "Clean" North Sea Gas.

Yes we had pea soup fog back in the 50's & 60's - but they had mostly gone by the early 70's. I suppose getting rid of steam on the railways helped, but as the coal burning mills & factories closed / converted to burn gas, oil or electricity, most homes went over to gas, the towns air quality improved vastly.

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Happy Christmas and New year to One and All 

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Tax on fuel is a tax on people in rural areas who have to drive further, and who cannot use public transport because there isn't any.

True - but they COULD receive a "cash rebate" based on postcode, vehicle owned etc, subsidised by urban drivers.

As to Woodhead, as much as I would like to see it re-opened I doubt it. Isn't there is a report due (I think) soon on the HS3 Trans Pennine rail route proposals ?

Perhaps an extension connecting the two proposed arms of HS2 (Man Piccadilly to Sheffield) may be viable, with a new Woodhead tunnel. Fill the old ones with foam concrete and re-drill em as was done at Farnworth ?. I doubt that also, but Manchester to Leeds has 2 long tunnels to electrify Standedge (1 x double in use and 2 x single track not used) and Morley. There was an old route (The LNWR Leeds "New" line) via another longish tunnel at Gildersome - The route is probably now built over. But Leeds is quite a few miles north of Sheffield, and Manchester NEEDS a decent fast rail link to Sheffield, so in reality two electrified links are required (like a crossrail 1 & 2 !!!!!).

Oh how our useless politicians have grossly failed us in the past, and continue to do so today.

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Bring back the Westerns & heavy MK 1 & 2's- fantastic get aways from a standing start.No computers required - (not much electrical anything either !!!).

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  We don't know if anybody has previously actually tried to couple a loco to a Class 800 set and we don't know how it's done and what adaptors are needed and it can be a heck of a job to find out that things aren't quite right (or aren't at all right) when the first time you do it is for real.  

Surely this should have been practiced and personnel trained / necessary equipment readily available to couple a locomotive to a failed unit BEFORE the units entered passenger service. One was bound to fail & need loco assistance at some point in time.

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French Tickler ?

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But never forget that it's all your own work. That is priceless. 

 

Finally, is that a Trix bracket signal I see? I had one years ago. The centre of the post was (is) clear plastic and shining a light source from underneath the base (I used an old torch) illuminated the spectacles. 

Thanks and yes Tony, it is a Trix signal, I have a few of them. The original light in the base gave a weak (but probably realistic) light via the clear plastic insert in the metal signal posts. This was easily removed, the signal back being a thin metal plate, and very small clear bulbs fitted easily behind the spectacle. Run at 6 volts they are quite nice.

This was from an earlier layout based on Chesterfield in the spare room before birth of our twin girls booted me up into the loft back in 2001 !!

Brit15

May I pose a few further questions, please? The 'yous' are generic. 

 

If a location for a layout is made-up, how do you know whether or not it looks real? 

 

If a real location is modelling, but the selective compression is too much, how does that affect the realism? 

 

If (realistic) operation is what interests you the most, is that more important than the visual realism of your layout? Perhaps the Sherwood Section is an example of this.

 

Is the appearance of the layout in pictures more important than its running? I ask this, because at one show this autumn I saw a layout which looked quite pretty in its published pictures, yet in the flesh it was pretty dire. Overall, it didn't look like a 'real' railway, and the running was dreadful. 

 

Is making things yourself, so that they look realistic, more important to you than getting professionals to make things for you which, as they should be, are more realistic? 

 

Speaking personally, because I (as part of a group) have chosen to model an actual prototype, I can compare it with 'the real thing' to see if it's realistic. I'm also zealous over the running, so have chosen 'finescale' OO because of its more forgiving nature than 'dead scale', though I wish I'd have adopted EM all those years ago. Running realism then, to me, takes precedence over the correct gauge.  

If a location for a layout is made-up, how do you know whether or not it looks real? 

My main loft layout is very generic, based loosely on the North Notts area, GC, GN, MR (LNER & LMS), as I am a bit of a GC / GN fan. I have included "scenes" from far and wide, through terminal with 6 tracks into three tunnels (Kings Cross), Belle isle with high skew over bridge, Fir Tree House Junction (Springs Branch Wigan), a high level double track junction, water tower, standing mineral trains with Dub D's, 9F's & Black 8's. A representation of Laisterdyke (Bradford) station, etc. Only the gas works tunnel & Belle Isle are "somewhat" recognisable, but being a "behind the roof frames) loft layout it all works for me. 1960's urban grot is urban grot, anywhere in the UK !! Set period is 1966-8.

My small Wigan GC layout I have tried to make more recognisable. Here is the long, low bridge over the Leeds & Liverpool canal at Darlington Street Goods. Ex Tony's J10 doing the honours.

And the real thing back in 1967. The prototype bridge length was three and a half vans and half a black 5 long (only thing I had to go on) !!!.

The goods yard had to be selectively compressed width wise, the canal bridge being the focal point.

If (realistic) operation is what interests you the most, is that more important than the visual realism of your layout?

Operation is my main interest now my layouts are "complete". Slow running of long goods trains especially. I try to make train formations as realistic as I can, given its mostly RTR. I have no fiddle yards, all trains are "parked" when not in use in 2 goods sorting yards, 7 road carriage sidings or the terminal roads of the main stations etc. So everything is on full view and surrounded by urban grot scenery.

On the GC layout just small goods trains and two 4 coach local passenger trains - BR, Gresley & Thompson suburban stock. (set period is mid 50's)

The running of trains (especially slow running) is of more importance to me than fine detail etc. My O gauge stuff runs superbly as it should.

Is making things yourself, so that they look realistic, more important to you than getting professionals to make things for you which, as they should be, are more realistic? 

I last made loco kits in my TT days years ago, though I have reworked a few locos etc. I enjoyed making the bridge above, and have built most of the "civil engineering" bits of all my layouts, though I (being a lazy sod) have used quite a few "ready to plonk" buildings. 

One of my favourite tasks is constructing scenery, especially using large lumps of red sandstone, chicken wire, sackcloth and plaster - see my O gauge American Layout in my thread (below). However both my loft layouts have not one ounce of plaster / scenery as it would be difficult to "get to" behind the rafters and messy - so I simply build the (very) few green bits using hanging basket liner etc.

I must say that my main loft layout is just an advanced train set when compared to the likes of Tony's wonderful layout, I run all my old & new stuff together, along with many old bits of model railwayana (Crescent signals, Hornby Dubblo & Tri-ang buildings etc) - and that's quite simply it for me - running trains, six at once on the main layout. The Wigan GC is just nostalgia from when I was a snotty trainspotter and saw a plume of steam behind the L&Y line out of Wigan, wondered what it was, walked up the canal a bit and "Discovered" the Great Central - albeit in its last days of life.

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I don't really miss it, having had 11 years of fun out of it. 

 

I came to the conclusion that it was time to part company after I was waiting at some traffic lights in the TVR in Bourne and caught my reflection in a shop window. I was wearing my flat 'at, and just looked a total tw*t. OK if I'd have been in my 30s, but not in my 70s!

 

It was a Chimaera 500 - 340 BHP from a Rover 5 litre V8 in a plastic-bodied (and light) car. No traction control, no airbags, no ABS, no power-assistance, no roll bars - nothing; expect a huge engine guzzling fuel at an alarming rate!

 

Someone (on a dead straight road to be fair) 'took it on' in a VW Golf GT summat or 't'other. No contest! Through bends, a different story perhaps.

 

It must come as no surprise for folk to discover that I never grew up. Nor ever will. 

The story is the other way round for me. I bought my 1973 Rover P5B 3,5 Litre V8 back in 1982 for £800 when I was "just" 30 years old. A young man in an old farts car !!!!. It's a lovely, civilised and comfortable car to drive, that's why I bought her as a classic second car when my daily driver back then was a new Ford Capri (cue Bodie & Doyle !!). I still have the Rover, and now aged 65 I reckon I "look the part" when viewing reflections in shop windows !!! (no flat 'at though !!). Not been a bad investment as she is now worth around £6 - 7000.

TVR Chimera, whohh - wish I had one of those !!! - I bet secretly Tony, you do miss her !!!

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Breaking news - Amtrak 501 has derailed on it's inaugural run on a new section of line in washington State, south of Seattle. Injuries and possible casualties reported. From photos it has carriages that have fallen off a bridge over Interstate 5. Looks like a Talgo type train ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/amtrak-train-derails-near-seattle-onto-the-i-5-freeway.html

https://twitter.com/search?q=AMTRAK+501&ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch

Info about the new line train derailed on

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/20790BB4-7A4E-44AF-8791-F3A77186A764/0/PtDefiance_March2010.pdf

Not good news - thoughts are with those affected.

MODS - I didn't see dibber25's post - please put my post in his thread

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I googled SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea) and found this interesting document on RO RO safety

http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Safety/Regulations/Documents/RORO.pdf

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I've never used the tunnel, and probably never will as I have no reason to visit France (nothing against them mind !!). I have Family in Thailand that are half German and visit them occasionally when they are "home" - just outside Frankfurt. Living in Lancashire it's far easier and far less stressful for us to fly to Frankfurt & hire a car (brother in law gets me a cheap company rate !!). I just don't fancy the long drive down to Dover, faffing about on the M25 etc, then the long drive across France etc. I wouldn't mind the Chunnel trip, but it's just not worth the hassle. It's far different  if you live in the SE of England though.

I also have used the Hull - Rotterdam ferry years ago, and enjoyed that also, though it was a long hard drive to Berlin - just after the wall had come down, mind I was a lot younger back then, went with my mate in his Cavalier SRi - just the job on the Autobahns !!

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Anyway - what about this for a novel idea ?.

https://www.railengineer.uk/2017/11/27/trams-without-rails/

Seems to have some merit.

Brit15