luckymucklebackit

A green coach far from home Change the colour to Yellow - anything that runs on rails. Jim

Football, two steam trains a day in summer* Fort William has everything *summer is limited to a few days of fleeting sunshine between the normal steady rain Jim

Come on, get that file out and profile the drivers windows to the original configuration, I know it will be an absolute pig to get the window to fit but it will be worth it Jim

Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) - Eurythmics

The couple of times that I visited Fort William there was no traffic going down to the pier and there were often road vehicles parked across the tracks so it was just treated as a normal platform. The NLS large scale map has now been published https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17&lat=56.8207&lon=-5.1070&layers=170&right=BingHyb showing that the goods facilities and run round loops were down by the locomotive shed, so freight would not normally be seen in the passenger station - with the exception of Fish Traffic which I have seen photographs in the station. The new yard which now forms th ehome depot for the Jacobite seems to have been a later addition as it does not appear on the older large scale map - a wartime addition? Jim

The Rain Song - Led Zeppelin

No - it is just 45407 running under that number to mark 150 years since the founding of the Glasgow Highlanders, should have mentioned that. Jim

The Great Gig In The Sky - Pink Floyd

How many Black fives were operating yesterday, 45212 and 45157 were working the Jacobites, 44871 was on the main line as described above, any more? Jim

A couple of thoughts went through my mind after reading this Alex, but as they are all controversial I will avoid printing them, after all your colleagues would all be good upstanding Presbyterians Jim

The liveries were remarkably similar, here is the two together at Shields Depot (apologies for quality, it was shot from the window of 305519 on the "Coast to Coast" Railtour) Jim

Meanwhile 44871 quietly marked the 50th Anniversary with a run from Fort William to Boness, complete with 1T51 home made headboard, some photos here (not mine) https://www.flickr.com/photos/126612220@N04/ Jim

Has anyone noticed that big Steff McGovern has disappeared from BBC Breakfast since her public spat over pay, deliberately sidelined or working on other projects?

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - Bachman-Turner Overdrive

correct it was most definitely a 303- The increasing availability of units and a general reduction in timetable frequency led to a surplus of units in the Glasgow area in the early 1980s. This permitted the reallocation of several Class 303s sets to the London Midland Region from 1981 onwards. This was initially to provide cover for class 310s which were experiencing braking problems then to replace elderly class 504 EMUs on the Manchester to Glossop and Hadfield services when these routes were converted to 25kV AC. Initially allocated to Crewe Electric Depot, then to Longsight from 1985, the units could be found on various routes including the Manchester to Crewe line where they were tested back in 1960/61. It was also not unknown for class 303s to work class 1 duties on the West Coast Main Line and both 303048 and 303066 are recorded as having worked Crewe - Carlisle relief services in 1984 and 1985. From December 1984 onwards these units were painted in Greater Manchester PTE orange and brown (very similar to the Strathclyde colours), but it wasn't long before the units became unreliable and most units had been withdrawn or stored by May 1990. 303066 and 303049 even had the the dubious distinction of visiting North Wales, being stored at Llandudno Junction Shed in 1990. Only three units returned north, the celebrity 303048 in July 1989 and 303060/082 following a period of storage in May 1992, neither of the latter two units return to service, and languished at Yoker and Shields Road depots. Jim

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!! Well so it says on the small print!! steam+diesel+good beer = jealous!!!!!!!!!! Jim

Hi All - managed to complete tracklaying and assembling the point mechanisms last night, the track took a bit of fiddling as the normal configuration didn't quite fit. I had to trim a couple of sleeper lengths off the "Y" point to make it fit, still the prototype of yard I am modelling never had nice smooth formation. I modified the method of assembling the spoke and wire actuator from the way I did it for the St Margarets project, as I had a couple of issues with the spoke getting bumped enough to pull the wire out of the hole in the point, and it is a devil of a job to get back in. I therefore bent a "tail" to rest on top of the point and dropped the wire through, this meant that I could not pre-form the loop for the spoke to pass through and as a result had to bend the wire around the spoke, which is a trickier job. I also had a couple of points where the spoke was too short to reach from the operating side so I had to use a short piece of copped tube as a sleeve soldered to two sections of spoke to make the length. Another issue was that the actuators for two of the points had to cross over each other due to the angle of the point, easily done by setting one actuator 5mm higher than the other. The electric feeds are also not in, just have to position the auto-uncouplers and that will be the underside of the plank finished, then I can get started on the scenic. Cheers Jim

Four Sticks - Led Zeppelin

Hedgehog, Chicken what difference does it make..... Maybe that's why the wife doesn't send me to Asda to buy the Sunday Dinner

He passed his Flat Mate while crossing....

I would appear that not just government facilities were excluded from these maps. The large ICI/Nobel explosives manufacturing site at Ardeer near Irvine was also excluded from the map as can be seen here https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=17&lat=55.6374&lon=-4.7260&layers=170&right=BingHyb roads and railways that just go off the end of the world Jim

Co-incidentally the three major Scottish Airports all have a main passenger route right on the end of the runway under the flightpath, Prestwick - Glasgow to Ayr Main Line Glasgow - Glasgow to Inverclyde Lines Edinburgh - Edinburgh to Fife Line Do think any of these have alerts, mind you Prestwick and Glasgow also have a main dual carraigeway/motorway as well. Jim

I suspect that I would be completing with several people around me to film it on their phone, as sadly now seems to be the norm in actual life or death situations

Old (ish) 314206 from 1979 and New (ish) 380008 from 2010 at Glasgow Central More EMUs

Wondered how long it would take for the Monty Python reference to appear - missed one with the Trojan Horse Rabbit though....