John M Upton

For some inexplicable reason, my seven year old wanted to do a circular tour of the London Overground network today!! Including Clapham Junction: ...and Crystal Palace:

Restoration project?!? A decent burial is all this heap is fit for. Rails really should know better.

Quite a few retailers do also sell through ebay but they do tend to price higher there in order to cover additional costs such as ebays extortionate fees. Go to their bricks and mortar shop or their website direct and it can be cheaper.

Thameslink has 700111 and Great Northern has 717011 (nearest they could get to a 111 number).

I can only assume the first CAD of a proposed Z gauge 442 had some sort of issue when the AI system misheard the term 'Plastic Pig' and translated it literally....

What the.....?!? https://www.hattons.co.uk/1375182/marklin_88642_po01_mini_club_good_luck_pig_locomotive_tin_boxed_pre_owned_missing_connecting/stockdetail?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_campaign=staticretargetingemaildatabase&hsa_acc=156860675186364&hsa_cam=23851147410200746&hsa_grp=23851216061040746&hsa_ad=23851216061030746&hsa_src=fb&hsa_net=facebook&hsa_ver=3&fbclid=IwAR23apMU-GtvoV2zYUTZen_dY1Hcy1JCBDKzGgp4r3SWlXZrM_V1xEdmrAE_aem_AR9ZsJ22SQticuiDiFttaG092VWadAaDwDoZEihOn2M_840FUpk6gxCmGUkQl7e0STsV9IwpL72RMDKSDEFR4APg

Well done! Hasn't changed all that much, they have been trying to demolish the whole of Southgate and rebuild it on and off for the last forty years and every plan has failed miserably. Bishop Otter College went upmarket a few years ago and became University of Chichester. My Mum went there in 1968...

I am convinced the dual electric 377/2's are seeing more of the Sussex Coast than they are of anywhere with overhead wires at the moment!

It doesn't help that ebay keep redesigning the listing pages, various sub categories, often hidden unless you click a down arrow to reveal them are filled in automatically based on what ebay thinks you are selling rather than what you actually are. Result is that an item is innocently listed correctly but then starts popping up in only distantly related or not related searches at all. Witness the amount of utter carp part work landfill that constantly fills model rail listings mainly because it is made by a company called Atlas who are nothing whatsoever to do with the model rail manufacturer companies of the same name in Europe and the US. Then there is the scrapping of the sub categories for different scales a while back, now everything is lumped together, again a PITA if your chosen search word manufacturer produces the same model in different scales (Dapol Class 73 for example).

Nomination for the National Collection (which is taken by the Armchair Enthusiasts as meaning it is going to the NRM and no amount of explaining to them will persuade them otherwise, especially on Social Media, their primary hunting ground) is pretty meaningless, see the 313 which the NRM never wanted and just in the last few days was sent by lorry to be stuffed and mounted in that well known location connected with the type, erm... Fife!! The NRM have been actively getting rid of more modern items in recent years, have managed to sidestep various items that were nominated that in reality they never wanted in the first place and 58050 was one of them, to be honest, it if doesn't have a connection to the Flying Moneypit, they don't want to know. If the NRM/National Collection were ever serious about 58050 being secured, there is no way it would ever have wound up in Spain, abandoned, vandalised and fit for nowt but scrap. Again, another Armchair Enthusiast at work, assuming that by posting something on Social Media, the magic money tree will suddenly appear and it will all happen without them actually lifting a finger or putting their hands in their pockets, no plan, not a clue about how much preservation really costs, nothing. Witness the 313 preservation debacle where the Pot Noodle enthusiasts who suddenly popped up when they were in their last few weeks made lots of noise about 313201 being preserved but then went suddenly very silent when those who knew better challenged them on the practicalities of their proposal, simple things like where the money was going to come from for a starter, they were asked to put their money where their mouths were (£2,500 a MONTH just to store it!!) and then silence.... Instead they went on to bid OTT prices on bits of 313 being sold off by Arlington and apparently a fair few, the winning bidders never paid up!!!

With two or three already in preservation, I really cannot see how this will happen. It requires a ton of money just to move whatever is left of it, money better spent on better condition surviving examples in the UK. There are simply too many enthusiast led pipe dreams being banded about with no realistic consideration or plan whatsoever as to where the enormous amount of cash required will come from, this is another. Time to let it go.

Network Rail 313121 has moved, apparently to be stuffed and mounted in deepest darkest Scotland of all places.

The last train from Littlehampton through to Bognor Regis tonight:

Hang on a minute, two different ebay accounts, both zero feedback but both the same buyer? Major red flags here.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a good one (Walther Matthau original, not the dire remake though - gesundheit!) with some good subway scenes in it. If you can find it, there was a TV Movie, seemingly long forgotten from the 1970's called Runaway, basically a thinly disguised Rio-Grande ski train comes running down off the mountain with no brakes whilst the passengers, straight from central casting go through the motions of running through every character cliché in the Airport disaster movies series handbook. It's on YouTube apparently with some deleted scenes spliced back in. The DRGW GP30 that led the train is now preserved. Runaway Train already mentioned, the four locos of the title were all Alaskan Railroad ones suitably painted ominous matt black although very occasionally their Alaska markings can just be made out beneath the paint. The F unit is apparently still around, the two high nose Geeps at the back were in fact ex US Army GP7's that had been chop nosed but then the film insisted on fitting them with fake high short hoods, did a pretty good job of it though. One of the GP7's went onto an illustrious film career with its low nose restored, appearing as one of the locos in Under Siege 2, and also was responsible for smashing a double crossing henchmen's car into oblivion in a Lethal Weapon movie.

If it is a model that was first released under the pre Walthers ownership Proto 2000 brand, they had a really irritating habit of adding another body securing screw somewhere obscure (the SD45 has one hidden under the truck) and not mentioning it on the official exploded diagram. Take a carefull look with torch and magnifying glass, you may find a tiny rogue screw somewhere.

For me, most items I sell will fit in the postbox that conveniently is right outside my door. I don't use ebays postage buying system as I don't trust it so use good old fashioned postage stamps and clear printed address labels instead. For me, I mark as dispatched when it goes in the postbox, of course when it gets collected from there is another matter entirely outside of my control. Post Office opening hours in the area area are reducing rapidly now. The whole (idiotic) idea of taking proper purpose built post offices and shoving them in completely unsuitable retail locations only had the one benefit of longer opening hours including Sunday's. All gone now, all of them around here are closed most of Saturday and all day Sunday now.

The RFO (essentially a Open First with red stripe and an earlier design omitting centre door limiting it to a very small batch) were very poor sellers when they were released, they hung around for years after all the other blue/grey Mk1's had been released and were being sold off for as little as a tenner sometimes. I bought three if I remember rightly for parts donors and bashing into other types.

Alternatively, learn from days of old, if you haven't got it, don't spend it. There is a reason why credit and other related systems were known as 'The Never Never'...

One of the last old tooling Class 37's was an Intercity Mainline one (37431?) so I reckon that would be quite far down the list. Need more Large Logo 37's though (not the modern DRS ones) as 37407 sold out very quickly and still gets snapped up for silly prices even now. An unrefurbished centre head code Large Logo would be preferred and a tooling is desperately needed for cut buffer beams split box with doors still in place, an odd omission from the tooling suite.

There is a blue one as well, also described as red. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/374824545081 Chinese seller so a slow boat from China and 50/50 chance that Evri will lose it once it makes UK landfall (based on recent experience!) Does look useable for some sort of Neverwazza though but no indication of scale.

You can either cancel his bid if he makes one or add his username to your banned bidders list which will stop him from bidding anyway.

Member of the coat hanger on the roof subclass 377205 parked up for the night down Littlehampton late last night:

I suspect someone nabbed the Gresley bogies for preservation and that they are still around somewhere whilst March simply shoved whatever was lying around underneath it to keep it in a rolable state.

But then with second hand, you need to watch out for old Poole tooling items being sold in new tooling boxes, Mk1 coaches in particular are good for this (usually accidental) issue.