John M Upton

The only '313' you will find on the Coastway West now... 2S18 11:55 Littlehampton to Portsmouth & Southsea at Southbourne this lunchtime.

I believe quite a lot of second hand sent to Hattons et-al are often from people clearing out deceased relatives belongings and many have not a clue what should and shouldn't be in a box. Just gather it all up, chuck it in a box and get rid of it. Quick cash is often the aim, the actual state of the "grandads silly old toy trains" is immaterial.

With Hattons, certain items seem to attract a madness where the content condition is irrelevant, it could be bent, crushed and burnt out but if it has a good box, that will be another fifty quid please...

I was more thinking that one day Hornby suddenly entered the N scale market and Lazarus like, these old dinosaur era toolings suddenly resurfaced at eye watering prices!!!

The CCT van was decent enough, have a few which make decent grounded van bodies. Always wondered what happened to the toolings for the old N scale stuff. Is it still lurking in a dusty forgotten corner of the Hornby empire somewhere?

I just discovered my collection of old Southdown bus tickets from the late 1980's into the early 1990's. Must be a couple of hundred! I think I had this grand plan when I was about twelve that these would be worth a lot of money one day. Would I be right in thinking I might as well chuck them in the bin?

Cheeky junk dealer flogging off Athearn Blue Box EMPTY boxes (themselves pretty much worthless) whilst selling the former contents separately at prices that at a stretch can only really be justified if they were still safely packed in the aforementioned boxes!!! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325799009481

Best way forward with AVG is to immediately uninstall it and invest in a decent antivirus suite, McAffee or Norton, expensive yes but worth it.,

Thanks all, in which case I will start measuring up and get ready to place an order.

One Day Travelcards still available (despite the despicable Mayor trying to get rid of them) but you can use a contactless card (I wouldn't bother buying an Oyster card with contactless being available, too much hassle) and it caps at a maximum amount. LT Museum definitely and Covent Garden is there even though it is all a bit poshed up and poncey for my liking now. Hamleys? Forget it, even if they still do any model rail stuff (pretty sure they don't) it will be well over RRP and then some, that place is rip off central, much like most of London really. Model shops are practically non existent in London now, possibly one in Tooting if that one is still going but that is about it.

I think just Bognor Regis and Littlehampton are left still with semaphores (certainly on my patch anyway) and possibly Rye area. Littlehampton was supposed to be losing them this year but there seems to have been no movement lately so that may be delayed, meanwhile the planning applications have just gone in to get rid of the Bognor ones.

From what I have gathered, the old Black Beetle motor bogies are now long since out of production. Does a modern equivalent exist, the same sort of self contained motor bogie format please?

That ramp has featured in numerous film and television productions over the decades as a exit/entrance ramp to/from some subterranean bunker or MI5 car park!!

Presumably before the tunnel was either raised or lowered (not sure if they lifted the roof or lowered the floor) to accommodate double deck trams at some point. Apparently there was a link corridor from the Holborn Tram Stop direct into the adjacent Underground Station but in all the times I passed through the Underground Station over the years, I could never work out where it came in.

Seems to be an awful lot of what I describe as rapid estate clearance coming up. Dead elderly relative leaves house full of stuff (more often than not with only vague or non existent disposal instructions) who has a matter of days to clear out, but hopes to make as much cash as possible. Then they find a box of bits and the "It's old therefore must be worth a lot" goggles go on.

Hornby's marketing department thought so at one point, that was a dismal failure apparently.

Ah, the Amstrad PCW 8256! Did most of my college work on one of those and their short lived NC100 portable machine too (Still got that!) The PCW came with the slowest dot matrix printer known to mankind, I set it late one night to print my final assignment, went and watched Prisoner Cell Block H (so it must have been a Tuesday night after News at Ten) and it was still printing some five hours later.... Oldest still regularly used bit of old tech I still possess now is a 2000 vintage HP Jornada 720 PDA, revolutionary at the time with its intergral proper keyboard although it does require me to still use semi obsolete Compact Flash (CF) memory cards and I have a Really Useful Box full of broken ones (including the basically identical 710 and 728 versions) to keep me supplied with spare parts. It has never been bettered in my opinion.

I just looked up that trashed Bachmann 37: https://www.hattons.co.uk/1403483/bachmann_branchline_32_377ds_po10_class_37_0_37034_in_br_blue_weathered_dcc_sound_fitted_pre_owned_body_of_32_/stockdetail They want £196 for it!!! Doesn't even have a good box...

Rapido in the US just announced a gorgeous looking SP C-40-3 Caboose in HO. Will this be available through the UK based site please?

I presume Facebook randomly selects a photo from the appropriate website to advertise it, this was a poor choice!

It's doing Barnham/Three Bridges shuttles today with 377208:

The "Unexploded Wartime Bomb" turned out to be a hand grenade apparently, and a old dummy army training one at that. Meanwhile, I was one of three Southern 377's that wound up being stranded in Portsmouth & Southsea Lower Level: 301 was on the blocks having just been stopped from leaving on the all sheds to Littlehampton, I was supposed to be going back up to Horsham with 435 then 442 (note the missing First Class yellow stripe from its three car 377342 days) turned up, turned back off a Southampton to Brighton at Havant. Two more were parked in the middle platform at Fareham.

I have an interest in lighthouses due to my late Grandfather, he worked for Chance Brothers Glass in Birmingham and his Department made the specialised lenses and the rotating mechanisms for lighthouses all around the world as well as specialist glass for other applications, especially during the war such as large searchlight lantern glass and even lenses for railway signals.

Littlehampton's twice daily visit from the red ones...

I find it interesting that when the latest shiny new model finally starts arriving at people's front doors, the next thing is a fair few posts across social media promptly offering them up for sale again, often with a 'accidentally ordered two by mistake' or 'have changed era/gauge/setting' excuse 'honestly' attached... Two explanations - 1, they have just realised they have run out of readies or 2, they are buying purely to resell at a profit.