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The class 90 ones were disconnected mid 90s. I think that was a retrograde step as like the 68 you can't lean out of the window to buffer up. The best situation on all loco's is opening side windows which allows you to do this

Where has its other light cluster gone? Take it that's stored

There are a few Norfolk layouts but not that many. Alas the building on Google no longer exists,that was thaxters timber merchants. There is very little if anything on the station site to indicate it's existence now.

1971 I didn't realise these lasted so long Wasn't there also a B unit of the Baldwin babyface family that was of similar configuration

Thanks Cliff excellent pictures,thaxters is still trading but from a different site, great company supplied all the wood for my layout. I'm not sure if that is their building in the photo or the other similar one that existed on the site. Thaxters building was sadly demolished last year and the site is supposedly becoming an aldi The factories are walthers kits namely a grain store and flour mill painted with a mix of paint and talcum powder then sprayed with clear Matt varnish

Thank you. Thats quite a rare picture of Holt station, it shows the signalbox which is now at Weybourne . Incidentally this is the second Holt station the first being destroyed by fire in the mid 1920s The NNR would like to put a line down the North side of the bypass to a new station in Holt,but I can't really see it happening

There were also those C&NW Crandall cabs that were E8Bs and E9Bs rebuilt with very home made looking cabs

No, slugs don't have engines. They get power for their traction motors from the mother unit

If you are making up a set of loco's it is handy if they can be moved on their own. FxB units had hostler controls so that the could be moved independently but I'm not sure about GPs and SDs apparently the DD35s didn't have them. Interestingly the APT-P power cars had a similar system where they could move independently

B units other than Fs were quite rare in Canada. DRS had plans in the late 90s for a 20B shame it never happened

UP had the most stunning of all B units the DD35 which was originally intended as being a cabless model only,ie two GP35s on one frame but flanked by a pair of GP35s. GM very soon after followed it up with the DD35A which led to the legendary DD40x

I stopped watching top gear many year ago when they destroyed a 2200 princess by filling the interior with water for no specific reason. But is there not an opening for a show about modern motoring which I know nothing about. The REAL top gear with William Woolard and Chris Goffey and others actually gave the viewer information about cars that were current at the time. When clarkson first started his reviews were quite funny but he built his whole reputation on repeating a lot of the good bad and ugly section then current in car magazine.

If it has a cab but the road has designated it as a B the cab is not equipped for road or as we would call it mainline use. A similar situation exists on the underground where intermediate cabs are not equipped with all the systems of end cabs so as a consequence can only be used on a depot

It's a cabless B unit. As a secondary question is there many B units still in service and what was the last new model by any manufacturer that offered a B unit in the range?

Arthur , your knowledge of the Teesside steel industry never fails to amaze me. Were the furnaces proposed to be built at Lackenby? When I started on the railway in 83 I was always told that all the detritus near steel halt were the second furnace for Redcar. It's quite probable that given that you state were only Japanese design , that the parts I saw were actually spares for the actual furnace rather than a separate one. When you are young you do tend to believe those older than you.

Is there any chance that this thread could be changed to Jocks legacy or something, I'm sure he wouldn't want it to be cancer ward. I think this thread is great and all credit to those that started it. Having spent quite a bit of time on a cancer ward as Jock probably did,its not somewhere you want reminding of, they are very depressing places even if the staff are excellent. I hope the healthy ones on the forum never experience those places

It only seems yesterday that you had to be totally clean to get in the cabs of the brand new class 60s,no dirty boots on the cab floor thank you!

Wow, that's very interesting. Were the plans for Japanese blast furnaces as built or were they planning on home built ones. Apparently two blast furnaces were actually bought,in the 80s there were a lot of huge parts stored near steel halt that were supposedly parts for the second furnace

I've never ever associated Chris with Mark Knopfler Telegraph road ' then came the trains and the trucks with their loads' " eer is there a a thausond on em?"

The source of mine is the book TR7 the untold story, and aronline.co.uk . A strange little twist to this was in the early 90s I fitted a 2.0 16v engine to an MG Maestro at the time of obtaining this engine it was assumed that this engine was a prototype rover 820 engine but it turns out was a prototype for the cars destined to be built on Teesside. It didn't last long before it melted a piston but it did run around the area it's offspring would have been built

I haven't heard of the plate mill on seal sands, was this before the likes of Phillips was built? I wonder if it it was to be fed with blooms from Lackenby or possibly Hartlepool back then. Makes you wonder what else was planned for Teesside but never built, another plant I've heard of was a BL plant at Eaglescliffe to build a saloon car that was TR7 based ,there was a whole range planned in the 70s but it was given up by BL in return for government funding for the Maestro/ Montego

One of the reasons for stockpiling coal was put in by Thacher before the miners strike. It was to guarantee supplies. With the world in its current state of instability surely the taxes on coal should be lifted to allow restocking of coal at power stations to safeguard power supplies. God that was hard agreeing with anything she had to do with coal!

I'm not sure that they are the same as 158 ones, altogether an adaptor plate has to be used an intermediate 158 one will couple to an end one to form a 3 car or to a 156 to form a hybrid,i don't recall seeing any locating lugs on 158 gangways

Thats correct Jamie, they don't have Pullman gangways,its a strange gangway with lugs like you say. Other then the end vehicle with no gangway they don't have stoppable couplers or buffers so theoretically they can be split and shunted they are fixed formations in the same way as an HST is

I would be nice to think the new coaches will be compatible with conventional stock but I can't really see that happening. Even mk4s aren't compatible with anything else