Hesperus

If somebody kept the S&MLR going into the 60s they may have been tempted to buy the ex Cambrian line to Oswestry and Gobowen in order to keep it as a through line and serve somewhere bigger than a village.

It is in many ways but also has a far higher capacity and initial cost. Two minibuses back to back would have similar capacity to the great mans originals and would cope with the available passengers on a 1990s version of the Shropshire & Montgomery. I imagine one 17 seater and a van for parcels would be fine for a 90s Bishops Castle Railway.

Is that the cowboy construction sector?

My layout (Leintwardine) isn't exactly finescale as I use a few older items of stock such as Leeds and BL but stick to fairly fine standards with code 100 rail. I've got a ruling radius of 36" which does need slightly extended links on the couplings through the reverse curves in Y points. I'm planning to run a track around the walls in my dining room which will require a slightly tighter radius in some places but should be OK as I've done some tests with my stock. Biggest loco is a Lima 4F along with a BL based Jinty and a Dapol Terrier.

They've made quite a lot of fuss about evicting them considering that they were going to fence it off anyway so could just have stopped food supplies getting in and waited till they got hungry. I'm not convinced that the 90's road protests got nowhere, I think they made a difference to public opinion which in turn led to the government spending less on new roads. I was against those roads at the time but am quite glad of the infamous Newbury bypass when I have to drive vans down that way now. Although if we had better public transport and more frieght going by rail then they might not be needed. I signed up for XR and have donated money to them in the past but campaining against a piece of infastructure that should enable a shift to greener journeys seems unwise at best. Campaigning against camper vans would seem better environmentally speaking but probably wouldn't the support.

Yes, I remember the end doors on the coach, the body of which survived longest as a grounded body on my first layout. The main suprise is that it was British made, I'd alway just assumed it was Chinese. I've got a Playcraft 21/29 (electrically powered) in the stash upstairs after a vague game of trying to collect all the diesel classes.

Sorry I haven't, it was molded in bright blue and yellow plastic and was about 6" long. The mechanism was quite similar to the Hornby one but had a white plastic brake lever. The coach was again about 6" long, 4 wheeled and made of very thin plastic. The side profile was similar to a mk1 but it had windows in roughly the right shape for a mk3 and the grooves on the (seperate, white plastic) roof.

Mine was a clockwork HST with a short coach and a circle of plastic track, it was really rather rubbish and I don't actually remember it arriving or ever playing with it before my little brother got a clockwork Thomas set. The Thomas set was quite good and was soon stuck down onto a sheet of hardboard with a few extra bits of track to give an oval with a siding. The HST ran on the oval too although alone now as its coach had fallen apart. I found another clockwork Thomas at a jumble sale for 10p ,sanded the face off, painted it black and lettered it NCB and was soon addicted to modelling.

They look ace, you don't happen to know if those cheap PS models chassis' are 2wd or 4wd do you? edit, a photo in the galley shows one from underneath and its 2wd

Looking fantastic Graham Have a great Christmas.

Speaking of HSTs and Prometheus there was a working on the ECML around 1998 with 43-mk3-mk1 lab-Prometheus-mk3-43 which came thundering through Durham Station just as I was packing my camera away ready to leave. ISTR it had a mixture of Virgin, GNER and Intercity swallow liveries on the HST stock.

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/teesside-could-become-global-leader-19018326?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB Shows an artists impression of whatever they are calling an ex 321 EDIT no, its a 319, thanks Melmerby

I can see it as a potentially useful way to decarbonise a quiet line that has no chance of being electrified but as the fueling will be complicated and expensive to set up it would need to be somewhere with several of these lines heading out like Inverness. I'm somewhat sceptical about the benefits of hydrogen though as it's always the magic bullet that's 5 years away and has been for the last 40 years. It's also got a lot of the oil industry backing it which the sceptic in me sees as a way of preventing investment in electrical power.

It did remind me of the complaints about the press refering to carriages in the thread about the recent oil train derailment in South Wales.

Village newsletter came today.

I wondered about that but most of the services I've seen around Ludlow with 153's have been 2 or 3 153's rather than a mixture of units. I've not seen one lately though, we seem to be back to mostly 175s with the occasional 150 or 158. It's a shame that the post privatisation stock couldn't multi with Sprinters (or anything else).

Anyone after a rusty Dodge crewbus? https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1116669485191534/

I don't think the 80s clockwork Thomas has anything to do with the other 0-4-0's apart from the really nasty US style one that shared a mechanism. The one in the link had a brief career as an electric 0-4-0 Thomas. Might be an interesting one to put on an alternative chassis as being a bit rarer it's origin will be less obvious but will need a fair bit of work.

Might be helpful

Good news https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/31/chris-packham-loses-appeal-against-hs2-rail-project I wonder how a Pro HS2 counter protest would go down? I very rarely agree with the government but just for once I could go out with a placard supporting them. I imagine taking my chainsaw too wouldn't go down well

I find the flat files sold for sharpening chainsaws perfect for modelling and quite cheap, a small vice was another thing I did without for years and now wonder why. Thick superglue like THIS has proved very useful too.

I liked the clean design of the Talgo and had another look to work out why I liked it which is when I noticed that the artists impression doesn't show a windscreen wiper where the 3 below it have chuffing great ones tacked on and looking very much like an afterthought. I'd have thought it would be worthwhile to have designed these high speed trains with somewhere the wipers could be tucked away when not in use like they are on most modern cars which don't go anything like as fast. I would mention the Hitachi design but for some reason the image link isn't working on my PC

Thats really looking good Neil.

That looks like an interesting trip out for a fix of industrial heritage while everythings shut. You couldn't post a pic of the remaining quarter of the leaflet could you?

158+153+153 on the service that stopped me at the level crossing today. Are most of the 175s in a yard somewhere?