5944

"I went to Poole on holiday" "In Dorset?" "Yes I can thoroughly recommend it"

Tut tut! 😂

https://westcoastrailways.co.uk/careers?fbclid=IwAR0f7_pb1-OnSWf0UvarxiV4Qm-rpVJ6qz28d3mdv9lvmMf1hlccOthTPwk

Sadly unlikely to happen in this country, unless you have £25k to become a shareholder (plus £300 a month towards running costs). $700 for a 50 minute flight in one at Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum though.

Talking of which... I think he got the hang of it after the seventh or eighth bounce!

Yes, 32 year old aircraft so probably not worth the cost of repairs. It's been reported that it was a new co-pilot apparently and weather wasn't a factor.

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/hard-landing-buckles-767-fuselage/ Whoops! Other reports say interior panels were dislodged and daylight was actually visible through the top of the aircraft! 😳

They do, and they have enough volunteer stewards to man the doors. They don't on the Jacobite, as the only staff are the guard and a handful of catering staff (unless things have changed since I last went up there).

That was 45212 and support coach, they worked the Northern Belle on Saturday. Well, as far as Hellifield, where the Black 5 was failed with a hot tender axlebox. There's a real dearth of air braked locos available to WCRC at present, and as the 5s are sitting around at Fort William doing nothing, they used one down south. 34067 is the usual Northern Belle loco but that's out of action. 6201 won't see the light of day unless the owning group are willing to accept help. 6233 is out of action for most of this year, as is 35028. 60103 unavailable. Everything else air braked is part of the Locomotive Services group.

Eurotunnel has the advantage of a lot of space to park up a lot of vehicles, plus they're all going to one destination so it's easy to just fill up one train after another. Eurostar doesn't have that luxury at St Pancras, and passport control can only cope with 1500 passengers per hour rather than 2200 per hour before Brexit. Hence why they're down to two trains an hour rather than three, and missing out intermediate stations and reduced number of destinations. Another operator isn't going to be able to use St Pancras, so unless they pay a lot of money for Border Force at Stratford or Ebbsfleet then I can't see it happening.

It's due to the fact you now have to be a registered, logged in user of Twitter to be able to read tweets. Feeds will no longer show on websites. There isn't a workaround sadly. The sooner the chairman takes a one way trip in one of his rockets the better.

Hornby, well Rivarossi, do make an Italian 740 class 2-8-0. Quite why one would be in Greater Manchester is another matter though!

With the original oil lamps, they're appropriate up until the mid 30s at the latest. Later on they were fitted with electric lights of roughly the same size, but without the triangle on the front. In the 60s smaller, brass electric lights became the norm. They'll be ok with the two-tone brown (castano and Isabella) coaches and wagons labelled FS Italia. 851s were designed for local passenger work, so one of them with a couple of coaches and a van is appropriate. Later they became more used for shunting and station pilot work, but a few were still used for local passenger services until 1969. The last few were withdrawn in the early 70s. The 835s were purely shunting locos, used in yards and as station pilots. The last one (835.166) was still in use, as a depot pet at Falconara, until January 1984! Being solely shunting locos, Rivarossi's decision, both on the late 90s version and this modern one released a few years ago, not to include or even give provision for a front coupling is very bizarre!

https://www.duegieditricestore.it/libri-ferroviari/2450-anni-50-e-60-locomotive-in-primo-piano.html This is a good book and is still available from the publishers, but postage can be excessive. Tecnomodel in Livorno appear to be able to post it for €12 though, so not too bad. https://www.duegieditricestore.it/libri-ferroviari/1503-viaggio-nelle-ferrovie-italiane-anni-50-e-60.html https://www.duegieditricestore.it/libri-ferroviari/1810-viaggio-nelle-ferrovie-italiane-secondarie-e-concesse-anni-70.html These two are superb, but have been sold out for a while so pretty difficult to track down sadly.

It's just the use of the Belmond British Pullman to get passengers to Folkestone that's affected. The usual programme of lunchtime, evening and full day trips is still booming. Orient Express passengers will simply have to get Eurostar to Paris from now on and join there, rather than at Calais.

For those who live locally, Old Warden airfield now has an online arrivals board! https://oldwardenaerodrome.co.uk/arrivals-board The arrival slots are for half an hour, so the aircraft can turn up in that period. Quite handy if I've got a day off, I can have a quick look in the morning to see if anything unusual is due in. A couple of weeks ago a pair of Bücker Jungmanns were due, and the wife just so happened to want a lift to the beauty salon nearby. I had a couple of hours wandering round and saw this pair come in to land.

Seen on Facebook the other day...

The heating comes directly from the engine. Cold weather - engine doesn't get particularly warm, so saloon doesn't get warm. Warm weather - engine gets nice and toasty so has to dump its excess heat into the already hot saloon! I really do not understand why Jeremy Hosking has spent any money on these, other than for nostalgic purposes of seeing them in old liveries. His tours are all marketed as being about quality and you high end, and priced accordingly, so having these heaps as feeder services isn't really an option. Railtours in their own right? Ok, I remain to be convinced.

Online, Facebook is probably the best source, but there's so many groups that it's difficult to keep track. Flickr is another place in to look. http://www.photorail.it/forum/index.php?action=gallery http://www.stagniweb.it/ https://www.ilportaledeitreni.it/ Three more good links. For printed media, you can't go wrong with Duegi Editrice. https://www.duegieditricestore.it/44-libri-ferroviari/

It's not really to do with the dangers, it's to do with the fact they got inspected a few weeks ago and ORR brought up a list of improvements that were required. WCRC said they would comply. A month later, another inspection, improvements not complied with. Their other railtours aren't affected, either ones run by themselves or by third parties (Railway Touring Company). They have sufficient stewards to operate the door locks. The Jacobite runs with minimal on board staff - guard, a few catering crew, and that's about it. Certainly not enough to lock and unlock the doors at every station. I feel sympathy for the passengers and the traders in Fort William and Mallaig - the latter will be dead without 600 people turning up every day. But absolute none for WCRC. They've once again brought this on themselves by blatant disregard of the rules. They've had years to for CDL to the stock and haven't. It's not like they couldn't afford it, they've scrapped a lot of locos and stock in the last few months, plus bought most of Riviera's Mk1s. It's just sheer bloody-mindedness.

Gifted by the Standard 4 Group (along with 80136) to the NYMR. The boiler is currently being overhauled in Manchester.

Never had that problem with the ones that were properly maintained at Hornsey, must've been a Brighton issue ;-) Do you know what type were fitted? Hornsey changed all theirs out to fully sealed, maintenance-free batteries many years ago, very similar to car batteries. The original ones used to give no end of problems and you'd be checking the water levels on every other exam.

Four (58012, 58016, 58023 and 58048), and two (16 and 23) are nominally runners except for apparently having knackered wheel bearings that require very expensive replacement. It seems there was a plan for some of the French bogies to be imported, but the message didn't get through to the scrappy.