John M Upton

Katie Price and other similarly vacuous 'celebrities' who have done sweet F.A. and are beloved of the red top tabloids and ITV2 who would sell their grandmother on Ebay if it meant another appearance in the media. Eastenders/Coronation Street/Emmerdale/Hollyoaks - depressing unrealistic tripe the lot of it. The corporate money monsters who ruined ITV, the rot seems to have set in when Carlton turned up and were allowed to buy up all the rest of it. Jar Jar Binks Chavmobiles - Usually uninsured clapped out old hatchbacks with no MOT, a huge exhaust and a five hundred quid body kit on it. Junk mail. Salesmen/cold callers, especially if they are trying to sell me Sky Television!! The 'new' Routemaster - the epitome of over engineered, over priced waste of money. Battersea Power Station - Actually I would be sad to see it go but this farce has gone on long enough and it is time it was finally put out of its long suffering misery. Class 142's Drunk morons Wasps

Rupert Murdoch This Government (will only be replaced with another of basically the same incompetence though...) Chavs, scallies, hoodies, idiots and morons Endless remakes of classic movies The 2012 Olympics or rather the associated blatant commercialisation and hype. ITV1 The G-Whizz

Ah but, is yours one of the extremely rare variations with the printing mistake on Page 30 which is on Ebay with a Buy it Now of sixty quid?!? :laugh: Where do we find these lunatics?!? :help:

Unfortunately the Chav readers of Hello and OK magazine will now be rushing to name their newly born offspring Harper and much like the clutch of Katies, Jordans, Kylies and Chantelle's we had a while back, numerous amusing and wrongly spelled variations will be forthcoming. Harpic anyone?

Manchester Metrolink lines?

It's half ten on Saturday evening and already there are people listing at vastly inflated prices 'rare' and 'collectors item' last ever editions of the News of The World!! I would have thought that the fact they are printing five million of them may depress the market just a tad...

Proper cars that you could fix yourself with a visit to the scrappy for a few parts for a couple of quid. My mum and dad's old Mk III Cortina, bit rusty but the replacement hand tuned gear box only cost us a tenner and it went like stink. Journalistic Integrity, when reporters reported the news not made it or gave you their opinions or unfounded speculation on it, just reported the facts. Junk shops. Proper Wimpy Bars (Yes I am aware a few still exist but the old 1980's styles ones were far better. Bender in a bun anyone?) The days when café's offered you a grand total of two types of coffee, white or black. All those characters in my village where I grew up, all of whom are now long gone. People who believed in an honest days work for an honest days pay, some still exist but we are now a very endangered species. High streets with character rather than the cloned chain store could be anywhere rubbish we seem to be dogged with now. The annual purchase from WHSmiths of the Ian Allan Combined Volume (back in the days when WHSmiths was worth bothering with) Tizer - No not what you can buy today but the old stuff that was packed with artificial colours, was a deep almost blood red colour and actually tasted of something. Rowntrees Chocolates - before Nestle took it over and wrecked it, Yorkie Bars of today are not a patch on what they used to be.

I recall one cheaper option I used long before the Heljan official replacement wheels appeared was to use Bachmann replacement coach wheels and simply transfer the central plastic cog from one axle to the other. It took a bit of fiddling about to get the gauge back right but seemed to work.

I miss: Cadbury's Secret Newspapers with 'news' in them The days when being famous or a 'celebrity' meant you had actually done something worthwhile often over the course of many years to eventually be granted that status. Decent television programs on a Saturday and Sunday night where the only celebrity you saw was the guest professional darts player on the charity game on Bullseye. You can't beat a bit of Bully... ITV regions, their idents and proper locally made broadcasting, about the only thing that survives on that corporate plastic monster ITV now is Fred Dineage! Windows 3.1 Common sense... Politicians who were not in it for the money they could trouser off the gravy train Buses that worked (Bristol VR's, Leyland National's, Atlanteans, anything bodied by ECW, well maybe not the B51 coach...) rather than the nasty over engineered plastic we have today that has to be replaced after just three years thanks to overbearing DDA and TfL requirements. Loco hauled cross country train services that could respond to demand just by adding more coaches, how simple!! Decent children's telly, Loony Tunes cartoons, Tom & Jerry, all now all but banned by political correctness!!!

Wrong colour bog roll in the toilet EVERYBODY OUT!!! For me, H&S writ mad was at Arundel Station the other day when I arrived with my London bound train to see a group of about thirty six to seven year olds in a school party all in railway style orange hi-vis vests. I was almost tempted to ask them to see their PTS licences, either that or Network Rail are recruiting track workers awfully young these days... Thing is when I was at Primary School way back in the early 1980's I would have loved to have had a hi-vis vest as part of my uniform but would have insisted to my headmaster that he have a BR double arrow printed on the back, he probably would have agreed too!!

Similar numpties are also paying well over the odds for ModelZone/SignalBox NSE liveried limited editions. The NSE 47 (47573) is still available brand new mint boxed from ModelZone and/or The Signal Box for £89.99 yet on Ebay is currently fetching well over a hundred notes whilst the still available NSE GUV and BG vans are going for up to £25, again still available brand new and now knocked down to about £15!!

I was watching a Hornby 'Limby' Class 101 in blue/grey that was advertised as a non runner yet bizarrely it went for about the same you could get a new mint boxed working one for. Does NO ONE read descriptions any more?!?

'We are all working together to find out what happened' - 'We are in a room having a bun fight, throwing our toys out of the pram and trying to blame each other for the balls up' 'Government will take action' - 'Public inquiry that is quietly buried when the Minister thinks the press and public have forgotten about it' In the words of Jim Hacker on Yes Minister 'I don't want a public inquiry, I want to find out what happened!'

Quantum Leap is something that even today still works and could have been easily revived. A film version would be a good idea if properly developed, indeed they should have made that instead of the film version of The A-Team which was dire in just about every way imaginable.

I hate free listing weekends, the listings get flooded with over priced tat, dustbin fodder, badly described rubbish and chancers whilst the decent items I want to find are buried beneath all this and take four times as long to find.

Looks like the blue/grey Mk 2 TSO lunacy is now extending to the Hornby air con versions: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180674926693&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT The fact that many of these are going for about the same price makes me think there is one mug buyer with an entire carriage works to populate. Glad I got mine cheap, just don't tell the collectors I just renumbered it and put some NSE fleet names on it, they would have heart pulputations!!

Would that be a Bachmann Mk2 TSO in blue and grey by any chance? I bought one very late last night at a very reasonable price, I would much rather my money went to someone genuinely selling an item rather than deliberately profiteering, they have an honest sale, I have the item I want at a sensible price. Besides there is no way I or indeed anyone should if they had any sense should be paying more than 5% on original shop selling price on many items, of course EBay now seems to be a quagmire of those with more money than sense...

Very... The location of the cab access steps is a bit of a give away for a starter....

I have now finally decided I will reinstate at least some of my online photographic collection and so have gone down the Flickr road. Not much railway related up yet, I have been concentrating on my Southdown area bus collections mostly so far, however the small collection of British Railways wagons of various types can be found here: Hope they are of some use to someone, some of those patched and bodged OAA/OBA/OCA's are just itching to be modelled!! EDIT - I have no idea whatsoever why some stupid in vision slide show has appeared on this post. I will see if I can find someway to disable it and just leave the link.

So if I understand this correctly, and correct me if I am wrong here, this guy is selling a very crummy (being generous) photograph/negative of a D10xx Western which he thinks is actually a secret 'strategic reserve' type conspiracy as it contains parts of D0260? Whatever this guy is on, it sure as hell ain't this planet...

If they can get it working, all that would be needed to create a great looking full train would be a rake of Mk 3 trailers repainted in the reverse blue/grey and the same on a spare production power car to go on the back. Genuinely looking forward to seeing this, don't know how long it will take but it would be worth the wait I am sure. Now how about getting some working innards into the Prototype Deltic whilst they are about it?!?

Just seen this flash up on Facebook courtesy of Model Rail: http://www.projectmiller.org.uk/ There are plans afoot to try and get 41001, the NRM's prototype Intercity 125 power car back on the rails again under her own power. Pity the other one was scrapped some time back. I wish them luck with this, this could be interesting...