F-UnitMad

Cheers Eddie! I'm sure it must've come over better on TMS with them all sniggering & chortling in the back of the commentary box... There was once a program on Radio 2 asking for suggestions for new "Yorkshire" words and their definitions... I sent in the word "Boy-cott"; meaning "To talk twaddle about Crickeet"... they didn't read it out...

..Which is...?? I missed that - mindyou I always struggle to catch TMS at 'home', being on nights ... catch them a lot more when the Tests are Down Under.

Fortunately I took my lad into Birmingham last week to visit Modelzone etc... We won't be going back for a while, I think. Currently parked up in an Town's Industrial Estate just north of the M25 (the north of London part!)... quiet here, but you just never know....

Very nice!! The Station looks like a mirror image of Cinderford, except for the approach, which was the same right-hand curve, IIRC? Fourth picture down (the first "white shop"), looks like the Post Office at Whitecroft, at a guess?

:laugh: :laugh: Re thinking distance... of course thinking distance has reduced as well... many drivers these days don't think at all....... :laugh:

I'm sure I remember a 'Car Program' on TV some years back (might've been Top Gear, but possibly another) where they compared the Stopping Distances quoted in the Highway Code with what cars today can actually achieve, and the Highway Code figures were found to be seriously out of date, especially with ABS and so on. Another bit in the Highway Code people forget is the different speed limits for different vehicles on the same road - and not just motorways. The worst one is on single carraigeway roads where the HGV limit is 40mph whereas for cars it's 60. On a long straight road like parts of the A1 or A5 just try it!!! You'll get abuse off plenty of other trucks, too, never mind cars, who wonder why on earth you're "dawdling" along just holding everybody else up for no good reason... When that limit was set (in the 1960s IIRC?) 40mph was about as fast as an HGV could safely go anyway- it also applied to dual carraigeways at first; since then things like disc brakes, ABS (which has been law on trucks for a long time) and power steering have meant that on many single carraigeway Trunk roads (as opposed to country lanes!!), such a low speed is positively dangerous, as well as being simply frustrating, which is why many HGVs will go faster than 40 very often. There is lobbying going on by the RHA to look at the issue of HGV speed limits, but while the Press feeds the public image of "Killer Juggernauts", and some (especially Foreign) drivers continue to damage the image of us all with their stupidity, such issues will never be dealt with reasonably.

As a fellow HGV Driver, I'd say don't go looking for too much sympathy here on a Railway Forum - speaking from experience... ... and a green light is, inevitably, going to change to amber then red at some point...

What is the strange power they wield over us to make this happen..??!!?? What a nice layout and stock you had, and quite an early period to model too! I recognise The George pub AFAIK it's now a private house and has been extended. The P.O. wagon liveries are nice too; at one time I collected 4mm P.O. wagons with Forest - related company liveries, plus of course the Bachmann Berry Wiggins tankers, which despite the London address on them, were a staple traffic from the Bitumen plant at Whimsey, near Coleford, until the end of Steam. I sold the collection to help fund my O Scale adventures.

Got to utterly & totally disagree with you there... that cover made the Tears For Fears Original sound incredibly cheerful and upbeat..!!! In fact Janice Long was supposed to play the Gary Jules version on Radio 2 one night, and swapped it for the original - she couldn't stand the cover either!! My own vote for "Better than the Original" is Roxy Music's version of Jealous Guy...

As parts of the Coleford Branch were 1 in 31, that would make a good recording!!!

I enjoyed his previous Series - will have to look out for that episode especially!! I have to say I much prefer Mr Portillo as a Railway Enthusiast than as a Politician..!!

Yes, when I started the Class 22 build Thread it confused a lot of people... "That'll look strange in White & Red" was the gist of some comments...

How about a thread for our models and/or layouts that relate to the Forest of dean? I'll start it off with a few pics of my locos. Steve Beattie O Scale Class 22 kit, finished as regular Forest loco D6320, which was based at Gloucester Horton Road in the late '60s. The model build was mostly covered on the 'old' RMweb. The headcodes are typical of the trains from Marsh Sidings, Parkend, according to photographs. Here's a pic of it hard at work on my O scale Shunty-plank called "Withyn Reach"; there's a thread about it buried somewhere here on RMweb, too. My lad likes O scale as it's easier to see and rail vehicles than in OO, and he likes doing the couplings too! His taste in road vehicles is sightly inaccurate for 1960's Britain, though!! My Class 14 is "work in progress" at the moment, but this is the state of play so far... Those are my locos. I have a Heljan Hymek, but AFAIK they never went to the Forest; I'd also like an 8750 Class Pannier Tank, and a Class 37 (37 270; the last loco to pull a BR train out of Marsh Sidings, 7th May 1976) but O Scale is rather beyond my finances at the moment, so they will have to remain 'pipe dreams' for now... Anyone else got models of stock from the Forest?

My interest in the FoD railways started through my job as a Truck Driver, at one particular firm. I'm Midlands-based but regularly did runs to Gloucestershire, including the Rank Xerox factory at Mitcheldean, and other Forest places... I actually came across the DFR "backwards" so to speak, as it was the then-derelict Parkend Station I first came across in 1994, whilst heading to Lydney from Mitcheldean. Only later did I find Norchard; 'new' Lydney Town didn't yet exist, and Lydney Junction was still being built at the time. Later I regularly had breaks at Norchard - a nice big lorry-friendly Car Park to park up in and have a wander around the place during the week. I also got Ben Ashworth's books, and found out much about the history of the railways of the area; I was also able to link the pictures to some of the places I was going to for deliveries, and where the old mines all used to be. I even found the famous Flour Mill Works at Bream, now a steam restoration works - and well hidden!!! I'm no longer at that firm, but we still go for days out at the Forest as often as possible. SWMBO and I had a short B&B break in the Forest one year, and the family thought I was local (accent excepted!) as I spoke of places there using their local, unofficial names, such as "Traveller's Rest" north of Parkend. Modelling-wise, I don't have, or plan, an actual FoD layout, but in O scale I do have a Steve Beattie Class 22 finished as regular Forest engine D6320 (unofficially named 'Lister') and am working on a PRMRP Class 14, which I will do as D9555 one side (regular Forest Engine in the late '60s, and DFR resident now) and D9535 the other (the very first Class 14 to work into the Forest, 03/01/66, I believe - and it promptly broke down!!). If money was no object I'd also love to have an 8750-class Pannier Tank; unfortunately money IS an object so the question of whether I'd finish it as pristine DFR resident 9681, or another utterly clapped-out Pannier circa December 1965, is a bit academic, at the moment.... Looking forward to adding a bit more to this group, hopefully!!

Gloucester is similar; they went for Northgate, Southgate, Eastgate, and... wait for it.... Westgate

Yes, almost every City & Town will have a "High Street", it is the UK equivalent to Main Street. Small Villages may not, being built along a main road to somewhere else, but they are also most likely to have unusual names for the small streets and alleys off the main road. Then again, similar names can be found in Cities... such as "Back Passage" in the City of London... :laugh: Sorry, schoolboy humour there ... hope it translates across the Pond...

That reminds me of a delivery I did once to a large Factory in Stafford; the Goods In was at the end of a long road down the side of the building, along which the workers also parked their cars, so it was a bit tight. While I was being unloaded, another truck came down, and to 'save time' he went up along the pavement on the opposite side to the cars... and crashed through the slabs, dropping the front axle to the ground. A trench had been dug under the pavement to access Utility pipes, and instead of back-filling, the workmen had just laid the slabs back over the gap! A paving slab alone cannot support a 17ton truck... There was another way out so I didn't get stuck and didn't see how they eventually got the truck out (crane I presume!), but I couldn't help thinking "There but for the grace of god go I...", as the access had been tight, and I'd been tempted to go up on the pavement myself.... I have always avoided doing anything like that since, as well!!!

In general (which seems to fit the OP!!) the "normal" surface for pavements was usually stone or concrete paving slabs, usually about 3ft x 2ft, cut to fit where neccesary, with kerbstones at the roadside edge. Nowadays block paving is popular in big cities, but we don't have vast areas of poured concrete really; even our road surfaces aren't concrete very often - although it was tried years ago, especially for the then-new Motorways (late 50s/early 60s - think 'Interstate') it has never been seen as a satisfactory surface in this Country - for one thing it produces a lot of 'road noise' under tyres; I've read somewhere that one stretch of concrete road was so bad for this that signs were put up to tell motorists what the cause was - that it wasn't something wrong with their car... A cheap repair/covering for pavements in suburban areas these days is a thin layer of tarmac over the old slabs, that has gravel chippings spread over it while still wet. Of course for a while, that means lots of loose chippings lying around... we were all less than thrilled when that happened in our street, I can tell you... I couldn't guess at quantitive percentages, but if American concrete sidewalks stand out to us UK-resident, US-outline modellers, then that tells you something about the difference between here and there....

I've just had some excellent service (via his Ebay Shop) from this supplier :- Bob Bowditch aka Bob the Train Guy of Ohio; who has twice supplied Digitrax products to me very quickly, and despite Ebay's best efforts to thwart adding extra items to orders!!! I also made quite a saving on UK prices - besides which the items I wanted have been listed for ages as "Out of Stock Awaiting Delivery" by the major UK DCC specialists I looked at. Being able to shop like this really does make me wonder just how on earth we managed to model US-outline in the UK before the Interweb..!!

Yeah, but they don't mention the fact that if Hornby trains were full size, they'd be under-gauge....

For much of my O scale supplies I've used P&D Hobby Shop of Michigan - very quick response to email enquiries too. I've also dealt directly with Atlas at times - their spares supply is very good. My own local shop (Tennants Trains) has a smattering of US O scale 2-rail, but is an official Lionel Agent so has a lot of 3-rail - can't see the attraction myself!!