Poggy1165

I always think Skelton Junction would be an interesting prototype, but you wouldn't half need a big room! As it would give me GC, LNWR and MR locos in my era, and lots of wagons, it would make me very happy. Hmm, I believe the next Euro lottery is over £100 million so I'd better get a ticket. Thinking about it, in 7mm scale one would need the arms of a gibbon to work the sidings, so it ain't really practical anyway.

I was actually on that tour with Clan Line, part of the reason being that I wanted to 'do' the Tiviot Dale line again. If it was not the last passenger train to go through it was certainly one of the last. Memory is a bit hazy but I seem to recall we went via Guide Bridge and somehow ended up at Northwich where we we waited for hours while the tender was filled through a drinking straw. (Or so it seemed). There then followed a very fast run through Chester and Wrexham to Shrewsbury. I had lost my connection there and so rode on the Wolverhampton where I managed to catch a train back to Mancland without much trouble. A grand day out as they say, and recall having a good laugh and joke with two or three fellow passengers - sadly I never got their names, let alone their addresses, but they were grand lads. I know some people don't like the Bulleid Pacifics, but I've always had a soft spot for them since that day.

When I was a boy I fell in love with Stockport Tiviot Dale. It was a marvellous station, best described as semi-disused with an alleged train service, to my mind the railway equivalent of an enchanted castle*. I never saw such a clear case of 'the glory hath departed.' * Not a GW one - one of those medieval jobbies with towers and things... Heaton Mersey Shed was a bit special too. It was the only one of my acquaintance where, if you asked the gentleman politely, he would freely give you permission to wander around. Given that we were snotty-nosed kids aged 9-11 I find that quite amazing in retrospect. Usually one had to sneak round sheds, and if you were very lucky no one would shout at you. His hospitality was never, ever abused. All we wanted to do was look at the engines and take the numbers. Happy days, I wish I could go back. No modern boy would be given the opportunity to do something like that, and, in my opinion, the country is worse for it, though I quite understand the reasons why. And we used to travel there on Stockport Corporation Crossley buses (or sometimes Leylands). T'was joy to be alive, and yet it was all taken for granted.

There used to be absolutely cracking L&Y mechanical ones at Manchester Victoria, one on every platform. Sadly they have all long ago vanished. They were functional, but I suppose not modern enough, plus they needed a guy on the platform to push a lever or two.

I suppose the point of the exercise with the standards was to try to make them acceptable to everyone. Imagine how the WR people would have reacted to being presented with a fleet of Jubilees, for example. They were hostile enough to the Britannias. (And yes, I know the Jubilee was only a glorified castle, but imagine telling them that!)

Oooh, this is the ultimate in subjective opinion. My answer would be a J11, or basically anything designed by J G Robinson. With the Midland engines designed by Johnson as my unbiased neutral choice. But I think Edwardian engines in general were incredibly handsome. To my mind the more modern engines tend to be impressive (at best) rather than beautiful. I think it has something to do with the relative size of the boiler and the consequent reduced ability to fit seemly boiler mountings. But as I said, it's a deeply subjective thing...

Heck of an impressive engine! And a fine model.

Interesting, an LNWR signal in the top photo, and the blue and grey already looks like it's fading. Also note how neat and tidy the track and surrounding are compared to 2012. Would be quite something to model this convincingly.

I am sick of poor refereeing. Some people believe there's corruption in the system, and I suppose there may be, but I think a lot more is down to simple human error. I suppose the difference now is that everything is recorded and can be played back from half a dozen different angles. Years ago, watching at a ground, you might have thought a ref. made a bad call, and your mate might have agreed with you, but there was no way of analysing the decision. Now such analysis is simple and everyone does it. Maybe the refs. are actually no worse than they were, it just seems so. Given that there are errors, we also have a real problem with consistency. In particular you get some players picked on and punished retrospectively, while others get away scot free for similar or worse offences. This is very hard to explain if one believes the authorities are trying to do an honest job. My admittedly subjective impression is that England internationals seem to get away with almost anything, and also that if the press/media make a meal of an incident the offender is more likely to get retrospective suspension. I'm happy for any rule/interpretation to be introduced about tackling, for example, but then it needs to be applied across the piece, no matter who is doing the fouling.

Incredibly impressive!

Thanks very much for the advice, Ken. I have to say I can't blame my wife for lack of progress, it's sheer laziness on my part mixed with a scattergun approach to my various interests. I left self-discipline behind in the office when I left for the last time, and I fear it shows in what I achieve. Brian

Ken, I love your comment back there, you only build two a month! I'm delighted if I manage to build two wagon kits in a month - in fact I then vote myself a holiday for exceptional productivity. If I may ask, how far do you go to prepare models for professional painting? Is it a matter of putting on a coat of primer, or do you paint the frames and so on? Reason for asking, I may actually try building a loco for myself if a certain kit emerges in 2013, but it's going to be pro-painted, as I shall never be able to do a pre-group lined livery while have a hole in a certain place.

Towards the end of the film Billy Liar is a very evocative late-night scene at a terminal station. Whenever I see it I think - ah, that's just how it used to be. Hard to explain to anyone who wasn't there, but big stations had a special atmosphere at night in steam days, something that just doesn't exist any more. Any road, I googled the film and found the location used was Marylebone. Which surprised me, as I would have put money on Bradford (Exchange) - that is, the old version, not the modern interchange.

1. Because the best articles in there generally whack the best articles in any other magazine of my acquaintance. IMHO. There may be exceptions, of course. 2. I suppose it could be a coach, a wagon, or even a building. I said 'loco' after seeing a 00 commercial model of an ex LNWR 0-8-0, which made me think 'If I could build something as good as that from scratch, or even from a kit, I'd be very pleased with myself.' I'd suggest a loco is (maybe) the biggest test as you have to get the thing to pull other vehicles in a realistic manner - with rolling stock (however beautiful) you just have to be sure the wheels turn freely and that the thing runs along the track as it should. No disrespect intended to any craftsman who produces non-locos - I'm principally a wagon man myself after all. (And I am confident of exceeding the quality of current RTR O Gauge wagons, with the possible exception of Lionheart.) 3. My subjective opinion is that some (few) have reached this stage, while others think they have. I can't see into other people's heads, but this criterion would be a personal one for the individual concerned.

I have three suggestions: 1. When you have a substantial article published in MRJ, and it's not just describing the layout you paid others £££££££ to build. 2. When you can build a loco to the same or better standards than current day 00 RTR. 3. When you personally are genuinely satisfied with your modelling and feel you have reached the point where you cannot improve any further. BTW, I don't qualify under any one of these headings.

There was an element of truth in perceived attitude of the railway officials. I remember a journey in the front compartment of a DMU down the Central Wales Line not that long after steam finished, when I was joined by a railway officer not much older than myself. He made a point of asking me whether I had been told to travel that way to Swansea (I had a Railrover ticket and could go where I pleased) and spent much of the journey telling me how uneconomic the CWL was, how it would be cheaper to buy every passenger their own car, and so on and so forth. His negative and damn-near anti-railway attitude made me glad I had not joined BR as a career, as I had at one time thought of doing.

My kind of railway - quite steeply graded in parts isn't it? IIRC it was on this line a GCR double-framed engine lost control of its coal train on a descent and the whole lot landed in a big pile somewhere near Stairfoot. (Mind you, in those days with feeble brakes on small engines and only one brake on many of the wagons, it's a wonder there weren't more runaways. Those drivers really knew their job.)

Yes the Fallowfield Loop was sadly neglected. Photos of Hyde Road Station in particular are as rare as hen's teeth. And I'd love to see more of the GC line from Barnsley to Sheffield - the photos of the stations I have seen suggest it was a delight. Maybe I should amend my comment to say that railways away from 'glamorous' main lines, holiday lines (see GWR branches in Devon/Cornwall) and quirky light railways seem generally to have been neglected by photographers. This is a pity, because the lines I am most interested in tend to fall into this neglected category. It is a bit surprising though as you would think that railways in and around major cities would have got photographed more, given the sheer number of enthusiasts living locally. But they didn't. Probably at the key time (1950s/60s) most modellers were still focused on producing versions of Ashburton.

If it's the LNWR line I'm thinking of, photos of it and its stations are really rare. There's some info about Hooley Hill Station and an indifferent photo of the platform here. I have never seen any photo of Dukinfield and Ashton Station. Some more limited info here. The odd thing is it's not that long ago that the line closed. But it seems that unfashionable bits of railway in the Greater Manchester area were rarely photographed, and even more rarely has anyone published anything about them. (If only one could go back in time equipped with a digital camera (sigh).)