TT3

Does a metro bic draw its own train!

And does it run on ball point bearings!!

The books I've read on Aspergers, and the forums and web sites I've looked at, hardly have a mention of railways (model or real).

Interesting, a poster at my old work promoting  ASD Awareness provided examples of symptons, one of which was obsessive levels of interests and used he example of trains.

Thank You For the Music - ABBA

One re-make that did work well was The Sweeney. I was certain it could not possibly be any good without Thaw/Waterman, but I was wrong. The original film spin offs from the TV series were in contrast, pretty forgettable, but still useful for street scenes of the 70's.

And who could forget the Triumph 2500 through the plate glass window and the Blaggers Series 1 Jag

The Andromeda Strain was an earlier novel, and the one that first brought him widespread success, by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton. He had a medical/science background and many of his novels incorporated science based themes. Quite a few made it to the screen, some better than others.

 

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And back to bad movies - Timeline, probably the worst of the Crichton movies, and i am a fan of the books

Neither  did any TV spin off movie - unless Sid James was in it but certainly not if that over the top ( literally !) Barbara Windsor was  who relied on two things - innuendo's  and big boobs ( a danger to shipping if ever there was ) and, with a pair like that bouncing all over the film set,  who needs talent ! 

 

Allan

I don't know, the Porridge spin off movie holds up well with the series.

Back to Worst Movies - managed to half watch Batman and Robin, a deeply horrible experience, proving that a huge budget, big hollywood stars and a proven concept can be oh so terrible -  George Clooney still apologies to fans for it.

Good Vibrations - Beach Boys

Bad movies? We have missed the Kevin Costner section,

The Postman,

Waterworld,

that version he did of Robin Hood

but my vote for the worst movie that was not an intentional B Grader like Plan 9 or Attack of the 100 foot woman is the John Travolta classic:

Battlefield Earth

What a great idea. I think they should join a lot more of these trucks together in a long convey and use an automatic guidance system.

Something like two metal rails would work.

Better still, put a very big engine in the first one, then just have trailers with cargo behind

At this moment in time that's just under what my wife and myself have to live on per year, thanks to jobseekers. We are both signing on at the moment and only get £200 per fortnight between us and that has to pay for our utility bills, food and transport. We only get housing and council tax paid for us, if we got a job requiring a prepaid season ticket how on earth could we find that sort of money, and people wonder how the gap is getting wider between the rich and the poor.

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If the UK is anything like here, I bet the allowance rates have not been increased for years despite every thing else going up.

Also a jobseeker, but due to our system still not getting any money, round here you have to be almost destitute before they even think about giving you any and when you are over 45, live outside the city the number of difficulties soon add up

 

Last time I was there, they were doing CADs for a 4-4-0? based solely off pictures as a new build.

Very talented guys there at Strasbourg, with commercial ability to make things happen much faster.

Great railroad the Strasbourg, but can they make the eyes move?

OK I started a reply earlier and accidentally clicked cancel :-(

 

There is a list of Australian models here

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/

 

Type Australia in the search box near the top. There is more than you might expect.

 

Many models were rebranded Transcontinental range or British models. They were all to 4mm scale (at least!). The latter included the Class 08, Class 31, Dock Shunter (minus buffers) and HST. There was also a limited edition of Flying Scotsman, with the headboard carried while in Australia. Do you remember the article in 'Rail' magazine, where it claimed that FS had been converted to run on Broad Gauge (5'3")?

 

The Z van was nicely molded, but was huge, stretched to fit the BR brake chassis. There were articles on cutting them down to size.

 

 

ps Have you received correspondence from Croydon MRC regarding our exhibition in November?

The Z van does make a nice looking model, I am tempted to hunt some down to run with 00 stock.

Nothing yet re CMRC

When the River Runs Dry - Hunters and Collectors

Had a lovely day today meeting and making friends with a member then being able to obtain these items. 3 of these locos, Royal Scot, whitemetal BEC Brush 4 and WR King, I had not got so really pleased that now I think I only require an LNWR 4-6-0 to have a full set of kit locos from the "good old days" while Tri-ang TT was still alive and kicking.  The track is very nice but as it is slightly different to Peco with sleeper spacing I will be using it in the goods yard and fiddle yard.

 

Garry

That GEM flexitrack is an excellent find, it is comparable enough with PECO but has the advantage that it will accommodate the deeper flanges on some locos. Flange depth increased with the open spoke wheels particularly on the Brit,

On the first TT layout I had, it still had GEM track from 1970 which worked just fine. Also it gives a decent period look to the layout.

Weren't the last Hornby version of the B Class & blue coaches made in the UK? I can recall seeing huge piles of sets in a Melbourne department type store, associated with the ACTU (unions), in the late 70s/early 80s. This was long after production in Australia had been abandoned.

The VR sets were produced 1977-78, along with the pseudo B class there was the more slightly more accurate co-co S class, re branded UK wagons but a quite nice Z van in either maroon or orange. The S was also produced in red and silver Commonwealth railways colours with stainless coaches.

I had wondered about those triang wagons with peco under frames, and yes they are way to light but the cattle wagon does look the part.

OK, I thought I could get away without comment on this topic but no luck, had a dig around to illustrate some of the ads in the first post..

Utility vans, just a bit heavy being all white metal

GWR shunters truck

MR brake vans plastic kits

ESANEL MR white metal kit

Peco wagon kits, geat conversion fodder as the chassis is almost as good as the 00 version. I have a few Triang cattle wagons, 12T vans and 16T minerals with peco chassis. Strange thing is they are not all numbered/finished. Was this a way to use up unsold stocks of body shells?

BEC type 4, not the most accurate model, especially front on but easy to motorise with 2 bogies.

Accessories, the GEM signals for TT are excellent looking models

Wrenn accessories, uncoupling ramps, or a 2 inch piece of acetate and buffers

J2808 is very interesting, I had often wondered how far into the 70s did maroon coaching stock last, so the two vehicles in that rake are quite a surprise. Cant say I have seen any other maroon coaches in the pics that late.

Working Class Man - Jimmy Barnes

Now this is plain madness

http://www.ebay.com.au.....tem33c2fdff88

Needless to say the umpteen other listing for the same book at around $11 looked a little more tempting until I found one at 3 pounds.

Well I sort of have a lot of Triang TT......nuff said

Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) - ABBA

A couple more, this conversion process is really quite fun.

K3 on Hornby Ivatt chassis, makes a nice margate looking loco and was a very good fit.

Butler Henderson on an L1 chassis, nice fit but alot more involved cutting the body apart. Not helped by the brittle nature of the plastic moulding and inability to take any form of glue. At least the backhead fits behind the motor well enough.

A latecomer to this topic and the GBL series. I only discovered these from looking at RMWeb and somehow totally missed the partwork here. Looking at the efforts to motorise and given a nice scrap box of old triang 00 got me thinking. A quick browse of ebay and I found a good few of these including the C class, Director, T9, K3 and caley single all for around $10 each.

So a plan was hatched, given the good but crude nature of these models, a workplan is underway to convert as many to triang mechanisms. The plan is

T9/Director - triang L1

k3 - Hornby Ivatt

C Class - jinty

Caley 123 - triang

Not sure about the royal scot just yet, was going for a shortened princess but even that is too short.

First off the line tonight

C with jinty chassis in the triang midland 3f style

Motor in the cab.....

This conversion worked first time with no accidents apart from cutting the wrong end off the part under the boiler. Might have to do a proper conversion on the other one I got with a 20 pound Bachmann jinty chassis from ebay.

Radio Free Europe - R.E.M