edcayton

The video just worked OK for me. I'd like to see them riding UP the hill! Ed

In your position I'd go for the Virgin box. I don't know about the new Tivo box though. If you go for the Virgin+ box you can probably haggle a deal with them especially if you use their phone/internet. If you want to archive stuff then AFAIK you can use DVD/VCR or whatever. My argument is that this technology is changing so quickly that anything you buy will soon be obsolete and you may have difficulty finding discs etc in future. Look for Video8, or minidisc nowadays. If you do go for the Virgin option you don't have to shell out a big lump of dosh, just a monthly subscription and should only be tied a one year contract. Ed

We built bangers into the cheap Airfix plane kits, staged crashes and set light to them, They gave out a fabulous thick black smelly smoke before the BANG! And Jetex propelled cars/boats/planes. Ed

In some cases, although "car-derived" vans may not be. Before my VW van was converted to a motor caravan it had lower speed limits, but once DVLA had been notified and the V5 altered it was allowed to go faster! This area of transport legislation is a nightmare. Ed

I'm still using my 50? year old Duette with no problems and was shocked when Dapol Dave told me not to use it with any of their models. I don't have any Dapol loco's at present but fancy a class 22. My most recent loco is my Heljan class 15 and that is my best runner. Ed

Has anyone else got any favourite ends of records that usually either don't get played or get talked over? Three of mine to start: Mark Knopfler's guitar work at the end of Sultans of Swing The mandolin at the end of Rod Stewart's Maggie May The organ (Bily Preston?) at the end of the Stones' Jumpin Jack Flash Any others? Ed

How come they get a Harrier? Ed

"I'll only be a minute"............doncha just love'm. Ed

I am a big VW fan (Caravelle, Golf cabrio and Polo) but I don't think that the genuine VW parts are cheap at all. Difference is that you can get pattern parts from specialist suppliers. BUT you will obviously invalidate any warranty if you are looking at new/nearly new. When we bought the Golf we ended up buying from VW dealer Caffyns in Goring as we wanted the best available (and Wifey liked the colour!). It was a VW approved used car, and we had some problems with it, including needing a new roof because some of the HRW elements didn't work. Every time they had the car back they sent a driver up to collect it, at the same time bringing a loan car. Excellent service. My only problem is that VW have just brought a new Golf Cabrio out and it starts at 21K. When the scrappage schene was on we seriously thought about trading the Polo for a tiddly Korean. I was particularly impressed by the Hyundai i10. We have a long standing Kia dealer in Stevenage and the people I meet with Kia's are pleased with the cars and the garage. Ed

I'm told that she does that to relax after a particularly trying session of railway modelling. Ed

There was a concern with the Eunos roadster, which was a Mazda MX-5, because it was said not to have such good anti-rust treatment as the genuine import. I still see quite a few and they don't seem too bad to me after ? years. Ed

Yes, it is an S-Cargo (I'm not certain about the spelling). ome years ago a friend and I went to look at recumbent cycles at a place near Ely and the guy had one. It had an automatic gearbox and the owner said that he thought they all did. I think that the coupe you are thinking of is the Figaro, a retro-style little thing wit a large sun roof. Ed

Yes, went for a ride on it yesterday. All I can say is that if this state-of-the-art system is the best public transport can offer then we had better make more provision for cars! Good points: well: it's clean, the carpark at St Ives is free and it does take you to the middle of Cambridge which is not the easiest of places to drive to, and parking is dear. End of good points! Minimum return fare is £5.40, although this gets you unlimited rides on Stagecoach buses around the city. We were last on so we sat downstairs at the front. Cramped and uncomfortable seats. I really wanted a seat belt as we were a few inches from a glass screen. The ride was fairly smooth in terms of up and down movement, but was alarming in its side-to-side hunting. To be fair this was no worse than a train on the Newquay line. Particularly bad was when there were small gaps in the guide"rails" to allow bridleways etc to cross. There was a loud crash and a jerk as the bus was pulled back in line. No wonder the drivers are told NOT to hold the wheel when on the guideway, they would break thumbs or something. We pulled up at a stop on the outskirts of Cambridge and a guy in a wheelchair was waiting. The driver (pleasant eastern European with limited English) told him there was no room and to wait for the next bus. My travelling companion heard him say that he had already been waiting an hour! We got off in the centre of town as we wanted to get a drink and have a look around. We then found it extremely hard to find the guided (but by now not guided) bus to the rail station. We decided to walk there (it seems to be further than it used to be!) because I wanted to see the new island platform being built. Then came the most frustrating part. We had hoped to take the guided bus out to the other side of town to Addenbrookes hospital and Trumpington park and ride. There was no mention at all of the guideway on the bus stops outside the station! We waited for half an hour without seeing a guided bus, There were loads going to Cherry Hinton and a few going back to the city centre. Decide to abandon the plan to see the southern part of the guideway and went back in to the center. Waked back to where we had got off the guided bus earlier and waited about 10 minutes until one arrived. We were first in the queue for this, so hoped we could get upstairs at the front. when all the pasengers had got off we went to gt on. The driver told us to get on another one which had parked in the next bay, as his was "broken". By the time we got to it it was nearly full. The ride back to St Ives was OK, although this bus did seem as though it was going up hill all the way. My biggest concern is that one of the little guide rollers, or its stub axle, will break when the bus crashes across the gaps in the guide rail. The bus goes at a steady 90 km/hr, which I'm sure is more than it could do on the A 14, but I STILL can't see the advantage of the guideway over a dedicated bus road (once in Cambridge there ar some stretches of this, followed by some "buses only" road with raising bollards). If you arrive at Cambridge by train and want to get to St Ives on the busway you will struggle to find it. They have produced a LUL style map for the system whuch would be a lot more useful if A) it was displayed on the interior of the bus and B) the one at the bus station was the same way up as the one in the brochure-this puts Cambridge at the top and St Ives etc at the bottom ie "South"!!!! The only other thing to say was that it was very busy yesterday with lots of locals riding for the novelty value, but it took quite a long time to board as the driver answered questions. My friend suggested that it would be good if the buses got priority at traffic lights, as we seemed to spend a lot of time waiting at red lights. Ed

Brilliant! Ed

Water cannons-if we've got enough (no point having one or two because all the yobs will do is to text each other to go to a new location), hopefully they'll b****r their Blackberries! What about baton rounds (rubber bullets) as used in Northern Ireland? I have some idea of what the residents are going through. In our previous house we had the car torched which then set fire to the tree right next to the house; on another occasion they kicked our front garden wall to bits and then went up the road using the bricks to smash windows and mirrors on the cars parked in the street. The Home Secretary was banging on about "bringing the perpetrators to justice". That's no bloody good because IT'S TOO LATE. Get the Police, Army or whatever on the streets NOW to stop it, otherwise I can see vigilante groups starting and then God knows where it will end. As others have said-I am frightened. Best wishe to all who are caught up in this. Ed

Falcon, Lion, Kestrel, City of Truro, Deltic........ Ed

I'm sure that I have missed this, but how many are they proposing to make? Ed

It was put there for Gordon Sheddon (aka Flash) to remove his flapping front wing after he was flagged to stop. He said it was deliberate, I guess he comes from the Michael Schumacher driving school! Ed

....and the one repainted into BR lined green, named "Duchess of Cambridge" and used on the Cambridge Buffet Express until 1964...... Well, if you want silly... Ed

I've just decided to spend a lazy day watching this and looking at RMWeb today. Sad, but for me it don't get much better! Ed

Surely the raison d'etre for any articulated loco is to get round tighter curves than rigid loco's? Ed

Ten years old? I wish! My van is 16 years old, and the MG will be 40 this year although there ain't many bits on it what were on it when it was built! Ed PS-sorry for going OT

The manufacturers go to a great deal of trouble to select the optimum braking materials for normal road use. Most "up-grading" of brakes is about using fade-resistant materials for competition use. For road use these may well be WORSE than the standard ones because they don't get hot enough to work properly. Too many people fiddle about with cars (lowered suspension, blacked-out lights, etc) without knowing what they are doing. Why do you think that insurance companies insist on knowing about ALL modifications, and charge correspondingly higher premiums? Ed

B..... students! Always fighting and marching. Put'em in the Army, that'll stop 'em fighting and marching! Ed

On parenting, I think the fact that my kids have turned out OK is probably more luck than judgement on my part. BTW I also tend to have more sympathy for the parents of the, for example Norway madman or the Bulger killers than for the victims. The victims have the "luxury" of having someone to blame, the criminal's parents also lose a child and will spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves. Ed