Jenny Emily

What about an industrial liveried locomotive, sold out of BR service? With the interest in the Hornby Pecketts, are there any easy re liveries available to release in the Bachmann range to cash in on the industrial interest? I know many 08s and 03s made it to industrial use, but what about steamers outside of the three that I can think of that have already been done; two as BCC releases and one from Modelzone?

I'm still looking forward to these. My savings account has reached nearly £3500 due to setting up a direct debit of £50 per week. I cannot recommend this approach more highly, though other competing projects such as a new porch and getting a classic car back on the road are jockeying for a share of the funds.

The collectors' club version of 03179 in WAGN livery used the same tool, so probably not that exclusive. There was comment at the time that the same tooling was useable to represent the cut down 03s that ran in Wales on the Burry port (?)* line. Also good for 03079 too. The comments were that the roof profile wasn't exactly the same as the Isle of Wight examples, so may have been with the Welsh modified locos in mind. *Just got back from a trip to Erith overnight, so am customarily slightly drunk and therefore not google-fu compliant because I finished work at 10:00 but am still getting paid until 5:00pm. It's a tradition that I like to have some booze on company paid time when this happens.

Fitting with the NSE theme, a weathered 03179 in NSE livery, weathered so it is at least different from the old Modelzone release that sold out long ago? Did any 09s get NSE livery? Then there could be brake vans in NSE livery; certainly Queen Marys got this as well as possibly the southern four wheel vans.

One thing I never understand is now that successive governments plead poverty for the shrinking forces, how did we as a country afford to pay for stuff in the past? Is it really the nuclear deterrent that has taken all the budget, or were we once a much richer nation? Of course, all the new fangled toys and technology don't come cheap - I expect in real terms building a cruiser or battleship of the past was far cheaper than a frigate or destroyer of today.

All this talk of taking the wee-wee reminds me of working a late shift up to Falkirk. Driving through Camelon, I saw one guy urinating in a doorway before taking out his keys, unlocking the door he had relieved himself on and letting himself in. I concluded that Camelon was 'one of those sort of places'.

At Durham University there is fierce rivalry between the colleges; most notably between University College and Hatfield. There were always attempts to get one over on the other college, including the regular bar invasions. One night the Hatfield invasion happened with the oafs piling into the bar shouting "You should have gone to Hatfield!" to which one wag shouted back: "What, so I can have be!!ends like you in my bar _every_ night?" One time some wag found somewhere that could make bogrolls with designs printed on every sheet, so had a few dozen done with the Hatfield college crest on every sheet, then went around Hatfield college putting them in all the loos. That way Hatfield students could spend the night wiping themselves off on their own college crest.

Heavy revving when cold reminds me of my late Grandmother, who only passed her test on the fifth attempt because she was stuck for an hour in a traffic jam after turning out of the testing centre. Apparently even though she had driven nowhere and not been assessed on anything, they had to pass her as technically she had completed the allotted time without making any faults. She had a nasty habit of starting her car from cold then revving its guts out whilst trying to get it off the drive. She went through many clutches, and never mastered fifth gear, motorway driving or indeed using full lock on the steering. Her last car, a G reg Fiesta outlived her, and made it to 120,000 miles under the driving of my sister who inherited it before it was written off in London by a red light jumper.

I've noticed recently that the number of cars emitting blue oil burning smoke is on the rise. I can only assume that many people never change the oil on their vehicles for whatever reason, eventually resulting in engine failure. I got overhauled today by a number of vehicles between 09 and 13 plate all emitting blue when the drivers put their foot down. Also a lot of diesel cars belching thick black smoke on throttle application. Dirty injectors, again through no maintenance? I always thought excessive visible exhaust emissions was an immediate MOT fail. I've also seen lots of vehicle fires over the last few weeks. Again, poor maintenance to blame? The M62 westbound past the little house on the prairie has numerous scorch marks on the hard shoulder from recent vehicle fires.

Plain blue from what I remember. There could have been both, as I didn't check all the boxes; they had around seven.

Beales in Bolton is closing down. As a Hornby concession, the toy shop has quite a few class 423s in BR blue marked down to £120.

I picked one up from 53A models in Hull and am very pleased with it. Belatedly I've done a video of it:

My sister worked on Time Team for over a decade, and I met Tony Robinson a few times. I have to admit that he was always a nice bloke, and my sister always spoke highly of him. I think what does wind him up is mention of Baldrick, and my sister tells me that some-one calling him 'Baldrick' was enough to make him blow his top. I guess he has had years of the Baldrick jokes and the novelty wore thin long ago. It wasn't unheard of when I was still living at home for a Time Team Landrover to turn up and a bunch of people would pile in for tea as they knew my Mother put on a good feed. I even drove the Time Team Discovery once when I had to move it off my parents' drive because it was blocking me in.

That trackwork looks pretty unique. Looks to be a three way with an interlaced facing point on the left hand road. Never seen that before.

I would generally agree with never meeting heroes as they might not live up to expectations, though in a former working life I did meet some people who turned out to be really nice, and some who weren't. Craig Charles (Lister) was a rude up his own orifice type, as were the band Space. Gordon Burns was really nice, as was - perhaps surprisingly - Fred Talbot who I taught to drive a 4" scale Garrett traction engine for a piece filmed for Granada Tonight. I also used to occasionally drink with Nat Lofthouse in his local (which was my local) and he was really nice. I had no idea who he was until told much later, as I have zero interest in football. He did say that talking with me was nice, because we just talked about normal stuff and he was a little sick of people expecting him to talk nothing but football. Sam Allardyce is a neighbour of my parents, and my sister went to school with his daughter so consequently I saw him a bit and he was a lovely chap.

The Bachmann liveried blue wagon is numbered 37-078 on the box. I have posted a link to the video I did of mine some time ago: https://youtu.be/tUd0ls7Uw6c?t=1m9s I do not know how it was originally supplied, as mine was sourced secondhand.

A quick video of the North British one that I bought last week. I'm pretty happy with it; I'm pretty happy to get any pre-grouping wagons RTR.

I finally got around to videoing my LNER one last night.

My understanding of the law is that as long as the driver of the vehicle has passed over the line before the red aspect applies, then the vehicle may continue if safe and clear to do so. As for poorly marked out road junctions, I can think of many where the muppets who painted the lane markings out manage to effectively indicate very conflicting moves. At Junction 2 of the M6, the markings on the roundabout have the correct lane for taking the B road exit swap from the lane shared with traffic heading for the M69 to the lane shared with traffic heading for the M6, oblivious that they are directing two lanes of traffic to drive into each other as just one poorly implemented example.

I've only been to the magic roundabout once and that was enough. One innovation with it though was that it was possible to quite legally go anti-clockwise around the big roundabout thanks to the mini roundabouts within. The look of fear in the eyes of other drivers was something to behold though.

I see a lot of caravans so front heavy that the rear wheels of the towing vehicle must be hard on the bump stops. They can't be fun to drive, and must kill the rear suspension and tyres. Some people seem to have no common sense. I saw one person have his caravan unhitch on a speed bump because the jockey wheel hit the ground so hard it wrenched the hitch off. Luckily he was only going at walking pace or it could have turned pretty grim for him. Luckily since 1997, a separate licence is needed to tow a trailer over a certain weight, such as a caravan. I suspect a lot of new drivers are completely ignorant of this fact though, as born out by the number of people towing badly loaded caravans, and people using the final lane on a motorway to overtake whilst towing.

I succumbed and bought an LNER one from Arcadia. Tim was doing them for the same price as Hattons, and had just taken delivery of the late crest version. A lovely model, and runs straight out of the box but won't pull as many wagons as Bachmann's G2A 0-8-0 locomotive. I had to remove 15 or so from the rake to get it to stop slipping. Still very pleased with this model. Hornby have really upped their game of late. The last half a dozen locomotives I've bought have all been Hornby. A far cry from a few years ago when I was buying almost exclusively Bachmann offerings.

Belated review of the LSWR example I bought. Very pleased with this model; the Hornby one will have to be something really special to trump it, and even then the price differential will take the slack for any of the more minor errors, assuming that the Hornby one doesn't have errors of its own: