plarailfan

This one is local to me and it is right next to a quiet country lane, so is easily accessible for a close-up pic. The owner has cut the corrugated rear end panel in half to make it into doors, as a tree, rather inconsiderately, decide to grow next to the, original, sliding door

There's this one at Dawlish and looking through Flickr, I even found one on a, cross country passenger train, under the wires and apparently heading for Plymouth

Off the top of my head, I remember one of the Lima catalogues, from around 1980/1 having a photo of a "Peak" Diesel locomotive, with a note saying they were planned in OO gauge, but, I guess, they decided not to bother in the end, as the Mainline Palitoy version was considered to be quite a decent model at that time.

In the customer cafe at my workplace, you have to write down your name and 'phone number when ordering food, so if someone subsequently falls ill with the virus, other customers who visited the cafe on that day, can be notified (track and trace method) Perhaps the Christmas market may be considered to be an an essential part of life, as it provides food and drink and being an outdoor event, perhaps they won't need to be involved with the track and trace system ? I should imagine the Christmas market organisers, will ask the visitors, to keep to social distancing guidelines, using markings on the ground and a one way system could / would / should ? be in operation. I bet scientists and the government are having many an interesting conversation these days about what they would like to do and what options they have to keep us all safe in the long term !

I work in a supermarket and through all the frustration, frayed tempers and angry customers, all I can say is, we are now, looking at the possibility of having the festive season during December 2020, being muted, along the lines of Easter and Mother's day, where people, will not be being encouraged to travel around visiting family and relatives. The virus is likely to become more aggressive during the winter months, when people are already suffering from colds and flu, which could escalate into being a huge burden in hospitals and on the NHS. The vaccine has to be tested, which will take some time, so it looks likely that we will be well into 2021 before we can get our lives back on track. Local lockdowns in various areas of the UK, may well be a feature of the coming months ! There are different strains of the virus and no one knows if people who have had it, can get it again, or how long the immunity (from getting it again) might last when they have had it and made a recovery. I've never washed my hands, or had so many showers in my life as I am at present. I don't think life will be back to normal for ages. Certainly we will be lucky if any hobby shows and toy fairs, etc will be up and running before spring next year at the earliest. I Just hope everyone here will be ok and stay safe in the meantime.

The Calder valley book, by Martin Bairstow is an interesting read https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/The-Manchester-and-Leeds-Railway-The-Calder-Valley-Line-by-Martin-Bairstow-Pap/143563018405?epid=88878289&hash=item216d05d0a5:g:5UYAAOSwc15eeOOQ

I work in a supermarket. Until around ten days ago / mid March 2020, deliveries more or less kept pace with customers wants and needs. The first thing to run out was sanitiser, swiftly followed by the dispenser bottles of hand wash and bars of soap. The whole thing leaves me completely bewildered. Yesterday morning there must have been over 500 people at the store door when it opened at 6am. There have been so many customers during the night, that they ended up closing the store so the shelf stackers could get on with their work. One angry customer swore at a colleague for the store being closed. I could only get part way round the store with the floor scrubbing machine, as no customers were willing to let me proceed along aisles, while they were shopping and the poor till cleaning colleague only managed to clean about five of the tills and by lunch time, most of the bread had gone, only a few bits of store baked bread items were on the shelf, no loo rolls, no kitchen rolls, no nappies or dog food. We have four double deck trailers of stock coming in every day, plus bread deliveries, so there's no need for anyone to panic buy. It's been even worse today. It was pensioners hour , with the younger customers saying "well we always come at this time on a Friday so we should be allowed in" along with chavs shouting off at security. The baby milk had all gone by 10am, along with most of the fuit and veg. Finally, the customer cafe has closed indefinitely and cleared of food (it all went to the canteen to provide workers with breakfast and lunch, as a thankyou gesture for all the struggle we've had this week) still everyone panic buying when there's no need, as the deliveries are still coming through at the present time. I just hope the factories can get hold of the raw material and ingredients for everything they produce because the supply chain is not endless somewhere food has to be planted and grown to produce tinned and plastic packed long life items.

I was a shunter in the past, and looking at the above photo, I would say the valve is in quite a vulnerable position for an important piece of kit ! In the past, those kind of things were out of harms way, somewhere under the middle of the carriage

The Huddersfield to Kirkburton branch line did have this "Ferodo" bridge across Leeds Road, not far from, the present day station at Deighton. Sadly the bridge was in a poor condition underneath and went soon after I took the pic around 1979

I've got mixed feelings about all this. It's nice to enjoy steam locomotives, Deltics and vintage buses in preservation and in their limited sphere of operation, the amount of environmental damage is probably / hopefully, negligible. However, in other ways, I think the danger, is that we are not going to realise that we have gone past the "point of no return" until it is, way too far, past any chance of recovery. When I was a child in the 1960's, it was a wonder to be able to look up in the sky and see, just one aeroplane, whereas today, I can casually look up and see as many as three of them, all heading in different directions ! These days, we don't throw out the amount of heavy pollution, that we were putting into the atmosphere back in the 1960's (Just look at all the home coal fires, power stations, steelworks and industry that have disappeared) Rivers were often badly contaminated. I guess what pollution there is, these days, is in finer particles and no-one, will probably, up to now, have been able, to identify potential health problems for birds and insects, caused by the contaminants, that are present in the air and in their food chain. Increasing population will lead to food and water shortages, which will probably end up leading to unrest and I do, very much, fear for the future generations.

Yes, the EMD facility at Longport is doing the work https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/class-56-moves-from-leicester-depot.166150/ Seems like 56 128 had a lucky escape from Booths scrapyard after being in there for a year.

Any number of things might be wrong with secondhand locomotives. I have bought a lot at toyfairs and off ebay. most, but not all of them have been ok. Sometimes they work correctly, but develop a problem later on. I've sold all the dodgy ones on ebay with an accurate description of the faults, mostly split gears on the old models made by "Mainline" and faulty Airfix loco's. These were produced around three decades ago and so, you can expect them to be a bit tired these days. For the price I've paid, I have always been happy buying secondhand, as the savings on new can be phenomenal, especially if the era you are modelling is currently "out of fashion" at the time you buy. Trends come and go with model railways and sometimes prices can be lower and overall, even including the pups I've bought and then sold at a loss, with an accurate description. I have saved a fortune on buying new.

The 4-6-0 steam locomotive, is a vintage black 5, made by Graham Farish. The blue livery 13005 Diesel shunter, has a Triang body, but I'm not sure if the chassis is the original item. It crossed my mind that might be Farish as well.

The class 88's were supposed to replace 68's on the loco hauled TPEx services once the electrification work was completed. The way things are going, I suspect the 68's and Mk5 / Nova 3 stock, will, at some stage, be banished to Scotrail or somewhere and the bi-mode units will take their place, with the trans-Pennine franchise being financially adjusted and restructured to take into account the cuts and NR's change of plans.

I think television has a lot to answer for ! I mean, people look at a £100 item on "Bargain hunt" and then see the seller let it go to the team, for £70 or something and viewers, watching the programme, then suppose, that there's obviously a hefty profit margin and therefore, if they ask, they might be able to get a good discount on their next car, or DCC sound locomotive, etc. The television viewer, doesn't have the opportunity to find out that the seller may have originally paid £80 for the item and then, had it sat on the shelf for two or three years and decided to let it go at a loss, merely to circulate some cash flow and free up the shelf space for something (hopefully) more saleable ! I think these TV shows can sometimes convey a different slant on the facts, leading the viewer away from what really happened, into making, a simple presumption that a good deal was made, leaving the seller and buyer, both happy.

Some of the Hornby wagons have been produced in liveries that never existed on the real thing. As an example, here's one I posted on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/41294071@N02/5532677565/in/photolist-F9jzyF-9gRc2z-837fBa-dLX7a7-7pQkKp-9qXm2w-bvsyEg-bvszQ2-bvsxn8-brW3Fi-brW24Z-akaNMb-9qUqA2-9qUqhv-wMRkbt-wMdkjT-qss9x9-9qXpQY-ng47bW-r5McjE-r5Li3d-ANM7vG-Q6AMzX-pXWarM-24xLMnb-PWHsAQ-QYwgjT-9r64rF-9r8ZGj-83BL2Z

This subject takes me back to my youth at my local model club. (late 1970's) I was sixteen and hoped to run my blue livery Diesels on the, steam era, club layout at the exhibition. I was only allowed to run them during the final hour (so called silly hour) then the next year, I was allowed free reign in the goods yard for the whole weekend. The year after, more young members had joined the club and blue Diesels were running next along with the steam loco's on a 50/50 mix as it was a club layout and it had to appeal to everyone who was a member ! I expect that in years to come, there will be some sort of "Modern image" themed layout at Pendon in the same way that my local club had to evolve thirty odd years ago.

That's handy to know for when my lottery numbers come out ! A pair of 37's from Leeds to Stockport with an "88" for the run to Euston with some fantastic on board catering included, would be a great day trip out for family, rail enthusiast mates and my (ex) work colleagues

I've bought some reasonably priced books from the worldofbooks people and I wondered how they came by all their stock and so, it's nice to discover, that I've helped a charity in a roundabout kind of way. 50p a kilo isn't much, but I guess by the time they have sorted some transport to gather the books into their warehouse and then having workers to post them out to internet buyers, is probably realistic and fair. It just goes to show how far and wide, some of our charity shop donations actually end up !

Most of the charity shops in my area, are run as a business and they have a lot of "rubbish" donated so, out of necessity, they have to deal with traders who can clear a van full of unsold stock, such as the free DVD films that come with newspapers and a mountain of clothes, books and lego style parts, along with bits of other multi part toys, such as garages and airports. It might not seem quite fair to a customer who can only view the items on display, but traders play a valuable part in the process, at worst, a lot of charity shops would go out of business simply paying for skips to clear the items of little value. You can easily track down this stuff in the rows and rows of boxes of 20p stuff at car boot sales.

There's more on this fascinating subject here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/22541-fouling-point-marking/

Sadly, I'm not optimistic that this will have a happy ending. The economy is not particularly buoyant and working in retailing myself, I don't manage to go to many exhibitions, but some (admittedly, not all) of the ones I have visited recently have been poorly attended compared to previous years. Traders were complaining bitterly about the poor turnout at one recent show ! Petrol keeps nudging up, the suggested tax increase to help out the NHS will impact the disposable income for many people, while many modellers are running out of patience with the expense of the hobby and probably, by and large, are happy to make do with the layout and model collection, that they already have. While new releases of models are still selling, they are often special editions and sadly, the days of churning out thousands of MK1's every year and selling them quickly, at more or less the rate of production, are long gone.... While waiting for the loco to along so I could take this photo, a group of adults and young children came along and I volunteered to them "there's a steam train coming in a minute" thinking the kids, at least, would be pleased, but, sadly, none of them were bothered for hanging around and after a few seconds they moved on and missed it. https://www.flickr.com/photos/41294071@N02/28375792118/in/dateposted-public/ I think Hornby probably need to shrink the range, down to a core, budget priced, selection of mass produced, popular models for the railroad range and a few "premium" specials for collectors and modellers with a more generous disposable income. Maybe they could re-hash some of the older and smaller models and package them in budget price sets for sale at preservation centres and heritage lines. Even mixing small continental locomotives with British outline carriages and advertising ("Kit Kat" style) wagons could be an option, for a bit of humour.

Asda struck some kind of deal with Netto a few years back and turned those stores into Asda local / convenience type stores. This latest news apparently, is a merger, with Walmart having 48% and Sainsburys having a 52% share in Asda, so, no doubt a colossal amount of Asda customers money will be heading across the pond to fund luxury yachts, $3 / 30 / 300 million (delete as appropriate) dollar homes and lavish lifestyles to boot, while UK farmers struggle to earn a living from their cows milk and shelf stackers queue up at the local food bank while till operators are merely consigned to the dole, replaced by self scan terminals ! The staff canteens were all closed a while ago and store working / workers hours are cut back quite regularly to keep costs down, plus, around 300 managers being made redundant at Asda house in Leeds recently ! Maybe it's just me, but I am wondering if something is going horribly wrong with the distribution of wealth, as some working people have to move home regularly to keep their housing costs as low as possible, while, at the top end of the scale, managers at the same employer, can potentially reward themselves with enough money, to go on flights in space if they are so inclined. (if they spend their wealth on buying up worn out class 37's, 47's and 56's and doing them up, then that redresses the balance somewhat, as we all know locomotives can be a bit expensive at times)

In the Museum of science and industry (MOSI) in manchester, apart from all those beautiful locomotives, there's an amazing array of other exhibits including a geiger counter, which, placed over the coffee beans on the exhibit / display, produces the clicking noise to signify radiation and at the time, I did wonder if there might be a small risk of cancer, but I guess there would be a big hoo-ha, like there has been with the smoking "thing" in recent years, which there hasn't... up to now at least, anyway.....

It looks as though Peco were planning to make them about forty years ago. I'm guessing this is a pre-production model that never made it into the shops ? I put the photo on Flickr some time ago and surprisingly, no one has commented up to now, but if the tooling still exists today, perhaps it could be looked at once again ? https://www.flickr.com/photos/41294071@N02/39037109161/in/photolist-22tzowe