Hroth

In a similar manner, for my maternal grandmother all model railway stations looked like Orrel Park station (L&Y in suburbs of Liverpool) which she must have occasionally used to get to the city centre. Mind you, the train would have terminated at Liverpool Exchange station which is ok for the business district but a bit of a hike for the shops!

In the manner of a child in the back of a car... Is it here ALREADY? I'll have to pop into a local retailer some time in the next week then!

Accident, my foot! The Farmer obviously decided that it was time said Son provided an heir.....

Half a Prairie, philosophically. Must ipso facto, half not be.... Perhaps you could put a "Thomas" face on the poor thing in place of the smokebox door?

If you think I'm going to stick my fingers in there, think again! (at least the Lancs didn't rely on bungee cord) Very clever! Now do a corkscrew.... Fiddle away! Why does a Toad get its info panels cleaned off, whilst the PBE can't be identified at all? Oh wait, someone got bored and started licking the toad.... Nice, but just another of Staniers imitation Castles. He really must have felt homesick! (Why isn't there a stop digging/shot myself in the foot emoticon?)

I've been looking high and low but I can't find it... There IS a picture, somewhere, of a DMU (a 101, I think) at West Kirby during some complete "Power Off" engineering work. It might even have only gone as far as Leasowe for transfer to rail replacement service buses.

One takes it that its not working purely by adhesion? (And imagine the fuss if the NRM gave City of Truro to Swindon Retail Park for such a stunt!)

Very Midland. Just keep attaching small locos to the end until it starts to move....

Not going to update my thread until some photos are available, but phase 3 bodging finally got under way this evening.....

The Air Smoother.... Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Of course "sludge" might well be defined as "an application of thin coats or deposits of fine particulate material". h,c&o.

Hence the phrase "Cookie Monster". Or was that something different? As a damnyankee might have said, "Gee, is that an Oboe"?

What I like is "Item location: wigan, United Kingdom", followed by "Free P&P United Kingdom Services from outside UK (FedEx International Economy)" Its a while since I've been to Wigan, but I never realised it was outside the UK!

They'd probably have a toboldlygo overall coating of thick sludge. The nearest you'd get to identification would be "Its a Duchess, I think...."

As damnyankees didn't fly Lancs, the probability of it suffering "Fiendly Fire" were much reduced, so its probably safe for the 42xx to poke its nose out of the tunnel! btw didn't the LNER call some brakevans "Toads" too?

If thats the shed foremans snag tagging postit block, then he's got big problems! Good stuff!

The "best" of 4 cartoons illustrating a "lighthearted" article (a Christmas Fantasy) about model railways on page 332 of the December 1965 RM. December 1970 brought another cheerful cartoon with one character being positioned under a signal and being told by another to wait for the arm to drop to get "the biggest Christmas surprise in your life"...

The guided busway was one of the more "credible" proposals for all those outdated railways. It all sounded rather convoluted and no different to running light rail services on an existent track. I think that the killer idea was that the bus would run from village to village on the busway, then take to the roads to get to the centre of a village instead of collecting passengers from an inhospitable station platform, finally returning to the busway to continue its journey... Despite some trials, the idea never gained traction.

Probably intended to be able to cope with grey-based triang track, still common when the kit was first introduced!

I share your concern about 50yo controllers, I wouldn't apply mains voltage to my ancient HD controllers for fear of internal insulation breakdowns, though in my experience buzzing is the least of the worries. As for skip retrieval specimens, I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, unless it was to see if the resistance mat was in better shape than something I was using. Live casings, fire and general blue smoke would be my major concerns. Buzzing would just be loose transformer laminations...

I'm just wondering how well that would work considering what the more selfish road user does when a set of traffic lights changes to red in front of them. Although I am amazed at how well roadworks traffic lights are observed. Perhaps its due to all those workmen/witnesses standing about?

Eeep! I wouldn't want anything safety critical like barrier gates to be visible on "The Internet of Things"! Imagine some plonker getting into the system and raising the barriers as a train approaches? The railway system is reduced to allowing software that is possibly inadequately/incorrectly specified and imperfectly implemented to control vital infrastructure without any guarantee that it can't be penetrated by malicious idiots. Its best to have a chap in a box, with a great big capstan wheel to control the gates. Then we'd know who to blame when things go wrong...

If the website is back up, then somethings afoot..... I just calculated that if you want to get the locos through Hachette, then you pay £240 for the pair, plus some extra cork sheet and wire. As the two from a reputable internet trader cost something like £177 inc delivery, it must be left to the potential "premium subscriber" to decide whether paying an additional £63 is worth it to spread the cost and get some extra cork sheet and a spool of wire in addition..... Of course, if you wanted to economise, you could get Hornby equivalents from the reputable internet trader for nearer half the price, of course it'd be LNER rather than LMS, but there should be no objection to calling it a "Yorkshire Mill Town".....

Well, I can substantiate tha fact that there is a problem with the new (general release) 14xx. The one I received just sat on the track and hummed. My retailer informed me that Hornby knew of the problem, that it affects approximately 50% of the models and that they were recalling them to be sent back to China. Mine went back to the retailer for a full refund. Its a pity as I wanted an inexpensive 14xx so I could retire my old Airfix one!

Yes, the "Unicycle Crest" bears a remarkable similarity to the device on a Lipton's commemorative tea caddy for the British Empire Exhibition, 1924. (Both images nicked off the internet as I couldn't find my own, they're on a backup disk somewhere...)

It seems a tad on the high side, but on the other hand, its got DCC Sound, includes a smoke unit, has working head and tail lights, a close coupling mechanism on the tender and the amount of separately applied detail in the form of all the external pipework alone would be expensive to fit. The only possible downside is that it has traction tyres... If the Hornby P2 wasn't "Design Clever", had external valvegear and was fitted with DCC, full fat sound, lights and smoke, then that too would be a pretty expensive proposition.