Jenny Emily

I notice a few junctions where the lane markings invite vehicles to collide. The roundabout above the M6 at junction 2 is particularly bad with conflicting lane destinations painted on the road which are plain wrong and direct one lane of traffic to attempt to cross an adjacent lane at one point on the roundabout which means two adjacent vehicles will collide if both follow the lane directions. The roundabouts at the junctions of the M62 J20 and J21 also try and direct traffic in conflicting lane changes. The worst place I've ever driven outside of the M25 ring was Leeds, as the poor roadsigns made it possible to leave the ring road without noticing. Bradford's ring road isn't much better. For a high adrenaline drive try Coventry's inner ring road in rush hour traffic.

Thanks for those suggestions. Tracklaying of the mainline has finally been completed today so I'll be investigating garden centres over the coming weeks for all your suggestions. The rest of the soil will be getting a covering of chipped bark to keep the weeds away. I found it worked really well around the previous garden railway. I have also acquired a few bits of railway detritus such as a variety of rail chairs and other ironwork so will be adding them to the rockery once they are cleaned up and painted with Hammerite. All of them were dug out of fields where railways had long since ceased to be; amazing what lingers long after the demolition crews have supposedly picked a line clean.

I really enjoyed Warley. Last year was my first ever year and I was impressed enough to come back! Footage that I filmed whilst there: Note that the audio was unusable due to excessive noise and because it contained conversation that participants might not have been aware was recorded. To avoid it being a silent video, I therefore added music. If you don’t like the music then YouTube has a mute button.

I'm in the process of redeveloping my garden railway into a large O gauge line. I want to plant low slow growing evergreen plants to complement the models and wonder what people might recomend for this? I want low maintenance and visually complimentary to the trains. So far I have some heather plants and quite a few low growing juniper type bushes. I wondered whether anyone might have some recommendations on other plants?

I picked mine up on Friday and gave it a review. Certainly in this livery it is one of the finest models Bachmann have done. I haven't run it yet as my shed layout is inaccessible because the shed is full of building materials and tools for my garden railway rebuilding.

I've been really pleased with these. For the price it is a good well made van of wide usefulness. I needed a brake for western region locos so it was certainly a better choice than the southern pillbox (though that's a lovely model too). I gave it the review treatment for Youtube:

It's like they know that I'm just about to start laying the track on an O gauge garden railway and have fancied a Jinty for quite some time to run on it. I'm just glad that I hadn't succumbed and bought one the other week as I can quite understand how anyone who had would be somewhat miffed now.

I certainly agree that a decent 06 or an 01/02 would be most welcome and I feel that Heljan are the manufacturer most likely to take the plunge. Hopefully the success of the 07 will encourage them to. I look forward to expanding my TOPS blue fleet.

It's possible for anyone to check insurance and MOT status of any UK registered vehicle through the DVLA website. I wonder if there is an equivalent webpage in other countries that can be used to find out if overseas cars are legit and appropriately insured? After all, an expat doing the same trick living in Poland could be easily rumbled by some-one there checking the DVLA site with their reg. My understanding was that if Police stop these vehicles then they are entitled to ask for proof of insurance etc, and if the driver does not have documents with them then they can impound the car until the driver can prove it is insured. I know that my insurance doesn't insure me to drive overseas on my Micra, and for only 30 days a year on my Volvo so unless they have a bells and whistles policy it isn't going to be insured by default. There's a Polish registered van down the street from here which is RHD, and the person who uses it is living in one of the houses. I have never seen the van disappear for long enough for it to make a trip to London, let alone Poland.

Ha! Yes. Conservatives refer to BBC standing for "B******s Broadcasting Communism" whilst the very senior Labour person I know is convinced that the BBC had and still have it in for Labour. I have yet to find out what the Lib Dems think of the BBC, but it probably is equally as paranoid.

It is a thought. I know that whilst there is a fault code for failed/failing o2 sensor, it does not guarantee that a failing part will generate the appropriate code if the ECU thinks its readings are not duff. The ABS modules, as an example, can be a nightmare for generating fault codes that indicate failed wheel sensors when in fact the module has failed. Thanks, I must do that. It's the last of the decent Volvos before they got a reputation for niggles and got too complex for fixing in a shed or on a drive. It just predates computer controlled electronics so is fairly fixable with a deep breath and a lot of head scratching and innovation. I did wonder if it might be duff readings from the o2 sensor. I do have a brand new spare in the shed, never used, so it would not harm to fit it. Access is a pain so I've changed the plugs and air filter element anyway, and already noticed a slightly smoother idle. It'll get a run out to Rochdale and back tomorrow so hopefully that will either generate a code which will mean I'll change the sensor, or not in which case I'll keep going.

Old car, new problem. My old Volvo has decided that I've had enough fault free motoring for the time being and has elected to start throwing random engine fault codes. The first was code 122 which is the IAT sensor. Code 231 was also stored, but I thought that the IAT might have triggered that. Luckily I had a spare IAT so swapped it in, forced a reset and all was good for about 100 miles. Then the check engine light is back on though with no loss of performance. I pulled the code and this time it was just 231 which is fuel trim too rich. Looking online there are differing opinions as to what might cause this. I reset the light after checking for vacuum leaks and found none. All well for another 100 miles then light is back on with the same 231 code. I've dismantled all the air and vacuum lines that I could, checking for splits and leaks and have found none. I reasembled carefully, smearing a little oil at every join before tightening everything back up hoping that this will solve any minor leaks. I took it for a test drive giving it some beans and all is well. I cant shake the feeling that it is only a matter of time before 231 comes back Diagnosis of what these codes really mean is tough. I eventually tracked 231 translated into real world speak being a mismatch between what the exhaust O2 sensor is reading and what the ECU is expecting based on the MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure) and IAT (Inlet Air Temperature) sensors. This is often apparently caused by a vacuum leak, which I can find no trace of. However, sometimes other things can cause it, but it was unclear as to exactly what. Does anyone have any experience of these codes? Every time they were tripped I was doing 70* on the motorway. (*yes officer, bang on 70 and not an mph over though if you tell me I was doing faster I'll need to have the speedo recalibrated at the soonest opportunity, thank you for bringing it to my attention). I cannot replicate them just by running the engine. Would driving a vehicle hard show up a minor vacuum leak that might not be present during gentler running? I shall try driving slower at a steady 60 for now and see whether it comes back. I am also picking up a new air filter because it has been very dusty these last few months and I wonder if dust and pollen has clogged it though it looks in reasonable condition. I'm also changing the plugs because whilst they look fine and show nothing unusual they have been on the car for around 60,000 miles. Seeing the check engine light come on is very annoying, as I checked and the engine was definitely still there so what more does it want? Any knowledge passed on would be gratefully received.

My filmed review of the locomotive. I'm very pleased with it.

Tim at Arcadia was price matching with Rails which (IIRC) was around £84.99 or so. He had a number which were not already allocated to advance orders.

Picked mine up on Friday. Filmed it yesterday and today so will appear in video on Monday. Very pleased with this livery. Despite being basic compared to the previous three offerings it actually highlights far better just how fine this model is as it is easier to see the detail without a busy colour scheme.

The class 05 are actually te best running locomotive of all that I own. Insulfrog points are no problem and the mechanism on mine is really smooth. I now use the 05 as the benchmark against which I compare all other locomotives.

Reviewed mine yesterday. It is a lovely model, with just a few niggles, though all the niggles are a straightforward fix. I too found after filming this whilst running it extensively that the lubricator linkage dismantled itself. It appeared that the joint on the crank was seized but carefully easing it freed it up and I was able to get it back together and it seems okay now.

Any idea what the story is behind that? 78 miles is nothing - I do that with two trips to work and back. I wonder why it was bought then effectively left in a garage for over 40 years?

I have been having an issue with my Volvo since it went back on the road. The symptoms were that the idle speed would waver between 900rpm and 1100rpm when it should sit rigidly at around 850rpm. The engine would also run ever so slightly rough on idle. A blip on the throttle would tend to fix it, but it would soon return to its old tricks after driving. It was also clear that the idle speed would tend to remain around 1100rpm when coasting in gear on the overrun resulting in the car feeling like it was not slowing as it should. The idling exhaust also smelt a little petrolly. I dismantled the air inlet manifold and filter box back to the throttle body to check what might be the cause. All pipes seemed sound and seated with no cracks. The butterfly valve was moving freely and was fully shutting without issue. There was no débris to block it ajar. The PCV system is working fine and is not introducing crud into the throttle body. With no obvious issues I reassembled everything, lubricating the butterfly valve as well as throttle linkage and return wheel just to be on the safe side. Upon reassembling it the thought did occur to me that the jubilee clips on the flexible hose between the air filter box and throttle hadn't been as tight as perhaps they could. So on reinstalling I made doubly sure that they were properly seated and really tightened up good. I also ran a bead of engine oil around the rim just to make sure that there were no minute gaps that air could enter through. On restarting it appears the issue might be fixed. A short drive showed that all the symptoms had disappeared. I'm not exactly sure what I did, but I suspect it was, after all, a vacuum leak past the jubilee clips on the flexible hoses. This would have introduced a small amount of unmetered air that had not been detected by the MAF sensor and was therefore causing strange symptoms with the idle speed control valve. Do the symptoms sound like they fit with the fix and educated guess as to what was causing it? Or am I in for the annoyance of a disappear-reappear fault that will be all but impossible to track down?

These have sold out at Hornby, and it seems that more were ordered than were made. This has meant that some shops have had their orders either curtailed or not filled at all. However, some orders have been allocated to shops but not yet shipped to them so some of the smaller model shops may not have stock currently but will get stock soon as their allocation is shipped.

My experience in 2013:

Who needs to jump out of aeroplanes to get an adrenaline buzz when you have an old car and a garage that forgot to tighten the all important nut that holds the hub to the driveshaft? I found out the hard way just how much the Haynes manual isn't kidding about how tight that nut is supposed to be. At a steady 60mph last night I became aware of a metallic scraping noise getting very loud and angry very quickly. I dived for the hard shoulder and discovered a front left wheel that wasn't very happy. The AA recovered me and took a long hard look at the offending wheel and hub behind. The damage is quite substantial given how quickly it failed once the nut started unscrewing itself at speed. On jacking the car up the wheel was free to flop in all directions with an inch or more of play in any direction. The brake disc was badly scored and it was clear that it was the callipers that had held the wheel via the disc from coming any further off the driveshaft. In the process the wheel bearing has also shredded itself, presumably at the point that the wheel drifted out of position. I was informed that it was as well I pulled over immediately and the car has been relocated, courtesy of the AA, to my drive. Three days ago I had a new ABS ring fitted on that drive shaft. The AA mechanic could turn the nut by hand that is supposed to be well torqued on, and it was his opinion that the garage had failed to torque that nut properly causing the failure as it came loose. He has given me a copy of his report so I can go back to the garage with it to demand that they put right the car fixing the damage they have caused. So, not the greatest of commutes back from work. A 20 minute trip took 4.5 hours and rendered the car a little sorry for itself. It also shows just how valuable recovery membership is. Without it, who knows how expensive getting removed from the motorway would have been. First time I've had cause to call them in over a decade.