Willie Whizz

The terminology is commonly used and indeed widely advertised in the wider model railway world where most of us will presumably have started, using fixed rather than flexible trackwork, so I must confess I’m slightly surprised by finding it apparently so unknown on here. It may have originally been a Hornby-ism, but it is certainly used in the Peco world. Their current catalogue defines their Code 100 Setrack Unit trackage system as: No. 1 radius curves : 371mm No. 2 radius curves: 428mm No. 3 radius curves: 505mm No. 4 radius curves: 571.5mm And, as I say, I believe the usual trackage supplied with a current train set is No. 2 or Second Radius, so there is an “expectation” in the Trade that even model express locomotives should be able to negotiate such curves (though they may look odd doing so). If a model R-T-R design can’t do that (by whatever compromises it necessitates), then it won’t get made, or if it could do that but the compromises destroy the general realism of the model, it will be critically panned and will therefore lose the makers money.

Hi Michael. According to the Peco Website regarding their Second Radius setrack curves: Technical Specification: Arc Angle: 45 Degrees Pieces Per Circle: 8 Radius: 438mm I understand this is considered by mainstream manufacturers to be the absolute minimum requirement for a modern ready-to-run locomotive to be able to negotiate, simply because it is the standard radius supplied with current train sets. If customers would complain that a locomotive won’t take these curves so it isn’t ‘fit for purpose’. then either their product will be manufactured to do it (however ungainly it may look in the process) or it won’t get produced. So if you can’t get a B16 around such a curve - somehow - then those who would like to buy one are wishing in vain, it seems to me.

Thank you Tony - your point is entirely taken; the issue arose, though, from earlier comments regarding B16s featuring on “wish lists” for future R-T-R production, given that the “usual expectation” for a R-T-R locomotive is that it should be able to get around Second Radius track curves (even if looking ungainly in the process). The B16 seems to be regarded as particularly challenging in that respect and I was trying to establish whether such a thing had ever been attempted - or even just seen - by readers of WW. If nobody on here (given the experience and expertise available) has ever tried it, or even seen it done, then I’m pretty convinced now that however much people would like a R-T-R B16 to happen, it won’t. Mind you, I do recall similar things being said about Thompson Pacific’s due to their unusual wheelbase and cylinder arrangements, and yet R-T-R versions have recently appeared, so never say never!

Thank you Tony - your point is entirely taken; the issue arose, though, from earlier comments regarding B16s featuring on “wish lists” for future R-T-R production, given that the “usual expectation” for a R-T-R locomotive is that it should be able to get around Second Radius track curves (even if looking ungainly in the process). The B16 seems to be regarded as particularly challenging in that respect and I was trying to establish whether such a thing had ever been attempted - or even just seen - by readers of WW. If nobody on here (given the experience and expertise available) has ever tried it, or even seen it done, then I’m pretty convinced now that however much people would like a R-T-R B16 to happen, it won’t. Mind you, I do recall similar things being said about Thompson Pacific’s due to their unusual wheelbase and cylinder arrangements, and yet R-T-R versions have recently appeared, so never say never!

I take it from the lack of response to my post that with all our collective experience no-one on here has made - or presumably has ever even seen - a model B16 that could get around 'second radius' train set curves and still look tolerably realistic in doing so. On that basis, I suggest that however much many of us might like one, the prospects of seeing a R-T-R model in 00 must be pretty slim ...

So THAT’S how they found the funding for their new aircraft carrier!

I’ve heard this said before - but what I’ve never heard is whether any modeller has actually made a B16 that is capable of coping with those curves without so much compromise as to be unacceptable in realism terms. This is surely the forum that would know!

The gentle comedy of Dad’s Army benefits from our hindsight of course. Those men were never called upon, but would indeed have been the ‘first line of defence’ had there been an invasion; and for a parallel look at Germany in 1945. Their equivalent, the Volksturm, included a lot of WWI veterans too, and killed a lot of Allied soldiers and helped delay their advance even though poorly equipped and of … shall we say … variable morale and motivation. And Captain Mainwaring, although mostly a buffoon, is shown in a handful of episodes as not lacking in personal courage when he thinks the chips are down. Fortunately we never had to find out how they would have performed, but sometimes people will do remarkable things in direct defence of their homes. One of the writers had served in the Home Guard as a young man - effectively the “real” Private Pike - and he knew of what he wrote.

There’s also the point that, whilst I fully understand and appreciate Tony’s own preference for sheer haulage power, how many of us have a layout large enough for that to be an issue, let alone a serious issue? I strongly suspect it’s a minority; but how small a minority is very hard to say. Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think there’s any significant publicly available “market research” on the size and characteristics of people’s layouts, as opposed to their preferences for new models.

Back in the 60s and 70s it was often the case that it wasn’t just “the best actor for the job”, but that X was “the only actor for [that sort of] job”. You want an oily-looking, smarmy-sounding gent of vaguely Levantine appearance? You need Steve Plytas! You want an Eastern European, rather sinister looking, Putin before Putin type? You want Vladek Sheybal! A cynical, coldly calculating Nazi? Anton Diffring is your man! A look at the cast lists of many of the series dramas of the day will see these guys appearing time after time.

My apologies; it’s some years since I saw either. And I hope I may be forgiven for the confusion - not only are there some similarities of plot, but both films were made in the same main location so they even look alike!

In the immortal words of Her Late Majesty, “Recollections may vary”. There are comparatively few comedy programmes made in the last 10-15 years that, to me, bear watching beyond the first episode to see if they’re any good - 80%+ aren’t, and when I get to the Old Folks Home I certainly shan’t want to see them again on Talking Pictures. I don’t deny there was some dross among the old stuff from the last century, but quite a bit does remain worth another look a few decades later.

I missed that Carry On when it first came out, though I remember the fuss. On seeing it some years later I regret to say I was disappointed. Barbara Windsor was a good actress and comedienne - better than she’s often given credit for - but I think the furore can only have been the “shock value” in a mainstream comedy film, because even with her shoulders back and chest firmly stuck out, the phrase “two fried eggs” came to mind. Elke Sommer in the same film made a much better impression on me without the need for a fishing line and hook …

Certain newspapers fulminate from time to time about a shadowy organisation called “Common Purpose”, which provides “leadership training” to (among others) current and prospective high ranking officials in the civil service, public services such as the Police, the BBC and the Judiciary among others, and is described as a sort of left-leaning version of that old chestnut bunch of bad guys the Freemasons. The allegation is that it is this group and its philosophies which has resulted in al the “wetness” issues alluded to earlier; and the extraordinary difficulty of the Government - any Government - to get their policies implemented unless the so- called ‘Blob’ approves. Of course, it may just be another Conspiracy Theory. Or it may not. Honestly, I have no idea and am generally no fan of fantasies as a mask for incompetence: I just find it interesting that the discussion of the organisation and the theory, even to debunk it, seems to be determinedly avoided by anyone who might be associated with supporting it.

Did try it from a can a few months back. It wasn’t bad - but it didn’t taste much like “proper” Guinness either, even the canned version.

So long ago now I can’t remember most of the good Shippo’s pubs by name to be honest. One I do recall was the Ferry Boat Inn at Stoke Bardolph, where you could sit by the Trent on a summer’s evening and really enjoy the taste and smell of a beautiful pint o’ Shippo’s … as long as the wind was in the right direction and you weren’t getting the pong from the Sewage Works! Hardys & Hanson was actually my favourite if I could get it, though it was more common on the Notts/Derbys. border. Home Ales was reliable if unspectacular. Mansfield - well you may remember those adverts featuring Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev: ”He may be the Leader of the Free World/ the Life and Soul of the Party … but HE’S never had a pint of Mansfield!” Happy days …

No. Just … no. Though I will concede your point on the “inconsistency” of some draft beers back in the 70s when I was an early CAMRA member. One of the four (yes, four!) medium-sized local breweries in Nottinghamshire was Shipstones - still sometimes delivered to City pubs by drays drawn by lovely white shire horses. Kept well, it was a beautiful pint. Kept poorly, or even indifferently, it could soon become sour and acidic. And by that point it was becoming harder to find landlords with the time and patience. Compared to that, I suppose you could concede that the keg beers of the day were no worse, and were at least consistently dire, so you knew what you were getting and couldn’t complain. No wonder so many people turned to what passed in the UK in those days for ‘lager’, which was somewhat more readily drinkable because the keg chilling process killed-off any actual flavour, good or bad …

I had similar reservations, but for once I was pretty well satisfied with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which seemed well-visualised and told to me, even to the extent that much of what they left out was pretty weak or irrelevant stuff in the books anyway (Tom Bombadil et al); the only serious omission being most of the “Scouring of the Shire”. I can’t say the same for The Hobbit, which stretched and padded what would barely have justified two films into three. My biggest disappointment in this line in recent years was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which would have been a passable (but no more) film in its own right - but although telling broadly the same story was emphatically not the ”film of the book”.

Yes, I’ve seen the stage adaptation of War of the Worlds twice, once with the Burton narration and once with Neeson. They were both seriously good. I had wondered what the tangle of “scaffolding” above the stage was all about, thinking it must be part of a very elaborate lighting and special effects rig. When it started to pour out smoke, slowly descend and transform into the Martian Fighting Machine, the whole arena crowd, several thousand strong, gave an audible collective gasp …

What baffles us with our Samsung TV with Sky dish is that when watching “ordinary” programmes in real-time the sound volume is fine if set around 20. But watching a recorded programme needs turning-up to about 28-30 to be satisfactory, and using our connected DVD player means having to go right up to a volume setting of 40. Weird. I suppose I might be able to find a rationale and a remedy in the Instruction Manual - except that these days all you seem to get is a Quick Start guide …

Although I didn’t actually buy it, it was seeing the then-new Mainline 4MT in a shop window next-door to Lady Whizz’s place of employment that first re-ignited my childhood interest in model railways. There was just such a vast difference in appearance and realism to anything I’d ever seen from Hornby etc.

Well, since nobody else has said anything - I went, and I enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, by the mid-1960s, in both defence and transport too many over-ambitious and poorly-focused hi-tech projects were chasing too little remaining money to fulfil them properly.

There is a price to pay for that relatively high income Dentists enjoy though, it seems. Apparently a study in 2011 found that 7.18% of dentists commit suicide compare to the general population of 0.42%, making it over 17 times more likely that a dentists will commit suicide. I'm not perhaps the World's biggest fan of the medical profession in general, it's true, but statistics like that do give you pause for thought ...

The “reluctance to pay” is in good measure, I think, precisely because the original promise was that it would indeed be “free”, and that promise was soon broken, and the resentment has passed down the generations even though we no longer quite recall why. And of course because it never was “free” in the first place - only “free at point of use”. Every taxpayer pays for the NHS, including the missing elements over and above the dentists’ fees, not just for themselves but for those who cannot pay. So we feel, consciously or subconsciously, that we have “paid” already. And if you go private, there is no tax rebate despite you saving the NHS the cost of pretty much everything except A&E services.