Downendian

According to my records BSYP class 22s : D6300, D6303, D6314, D6327. I'd be up for one in this livery too. D6312 and D6331 were GFYE which is of course the other livery variant. Nidge mentions the BSYPs earlier in the thread Thanks for the update DapolDave I was beginning to wonder........

Thanks - It now says on the Hattons website that no Bachmann decoders fit this loco. I have tried Bachmann, a Hornby sapphire and a Lenz gold of which are roughly the same size and shape but with no luck Hattons recommend a Hornby R8249, got a couple on order

An excellent thread As an academic, careful and meticulous referencing to previous work is critical, and huge databases of abstracts linked to journals and books are the mainstay of medical research. Take a look at large reference databases (e.g. Pubmed, web of knowledge, web of science) to get a feel for how the academic community operates. It has transformed our ability to do research in the past 20 years, and has accelerated our progress as a result. In terms of railway research it would be good if we adopted at least some of those principles. A good, electronically searchable database of Railway and model railway articles in journals (Model Rail, RM etc) would be very important - perhaps with even links to pdfs of the original articles with payment for access. Many academic journals make a tidy sum of collecting fees for each download of these pdfs. RMweb is of course very powerful in that it has google search engines to find topics that have been discussed over the years (most crucial pieces of information I've come across have been from RMweb users who are a huge resource!). I have hundreds of railway books- and I rely almost totally on memory to be able to find THAT picture of the diesel I'm converting. Not a particularly efficient method, and effective referencing would help considerably. Perhaps the big publication houses should think this one through. Another major aid for us modellers is the development of fotopic websites (Fotopic Flickr), and the careful and altruistic release of private photo collections (e.g. on here Brushveteran, owentherail and Robert Carroll) on the web and RMweb. These are not readily accessible by traditional search engines which is a shame (except RMweb), but searching of the Flickr and fotopic sites is for me routine. I shudder in horror of the lost negatives that I took in the 1970s, there must have been thousands if not millions of precious records of our railway heritage which have gone the same way. Perhaps its time in an electronic age that we as a community look at this.

I have two of these little beauties. Tried fitting a decoder to one last night - Bachmann 36553, fitted under the PCB, just, but the bonnet then wouldn't fit flush. Will have to have a go with a smaller decoder. What decoder has everyone else fitted? Have little memory of the prototype (except seeing them in Industrial service in the 1970s), but my grandfather used to cadge a lift occassionally with a "Teddy bear" home from work (Bath road) and was dropped off close to his home near Mangotsfield. I think they were common locos on the Midland branch to Bath in the 1960s

Saturday 7th December 1974 In 1974 the norm was to go spotting once a week on a Saturday morning, except in school holidays and the summer evenings. Today 35 years ago the novelty of the TOPS renumberings that had taken place over the past 12 months was beginning to wear off slightly, although our beloved hydraulics were never to receive this treatment thankfully. Today I noted the following at Bristol Parkway 25 052, 31 154, 37 290, 45 020, non-TOPS peaks 42 and 57, 46 012, 47 093/110/244/250/472/475/505/510/513, Westerns D1025 Western Guardsman, D1035 Western Yeoman and D1065 Western Consort. Some recalls from these numbers. 25 052, which was a Bath road engine at the time had been coupled to sister engine 25 220 during the summer of '74 and was engaged in a variety of duties but I do remember them shunting ballast at Stoke Gifford dump. The Westerns on Saturdays were still going strong despite the withdrawals of the past 18 months. D1035 was one of the last I copped of the working engines, and remember we had to turn back on departure to get her number as we could see the freight from South Wales approaching. Most wessies by this time were hauling freight, although some were on the Fishguard boat trains and sometimes on Swansea/Cardiff-Paddington runs. Bristol Parkway had a slightly different mix of motive power seen on a daily basis compared to say Temple Meads. We had the South Wales traffic and freight to Avonmouth which always brought a mix of LMR and ER based machines including split box 37s, foreign 25s and 31s and the occasional pair of class 20s.

What a great Blog My grandfather used to work at Barrow road from the war till he moved to Bath road in 1960. I have a few pics of the old place somewhere, really looking forward to seeing the model, although it was long gone when I was a kid.

well missed this one for a few days due to work commitments. Excellent news. This finally gives me the chance to ditch my "scratch built" 23 based on the Monty Wells 1983 RM which has been ongoing for nigh on 20 years. I will be definately getting two of the first batch D5909 and D5901 the Derby RCD machine that lasted till 1976.

Nice to see this thread make the quantum leap to the new RMweb. I'm very interested in the TOPS renumbering period 1973-1975, and note that the early 45/1s here were among the first to go due to the ETH fitting programme, it was rather bizarre that the 45s were also last to be renumbered some lasting until late 1975 Neil

Writing first post in this new version of RMweb. Lovely model, but my feel is that the headcode characters are too small - something in common with the class 27s and Claytons. No evidence in terms of dimensions, just an "eyeball" thing. Anyone looked at changing the headcodes?