big jim

thought you might

Had to pop back to crewe last night so rather than use my car and have to drive both ways I found a late job on the vacancy list and offered to work it so I could get the train down! Royal Scot arriving into Carlisle 66765 on the Stone train that I worked from crewe to bescot, then went home to do what I needed to do and back to Carlisle first thing Next job is on Friday which I’m really looking forward to, Carlisle to Clitheroe cement via the S+C both ways, got a days route refresh beforehand too

I wouldn’t like to have tried it in a normal bike despite it feeling like it was struggling a couple of times had we not stopped in Costa and plugged the batteries in for a boost for about an hour and a half they certainly wouldn’t have lasted for the round trip, the problem with Doms bike is it has lights to say how much battery is left but at the moment as we’ve not ran it from full charge to flat we’ve no idea how much power each light represents, it will vary dependent on motor exertion obviously but we need to find out how many miles it will do on a full charge on an average run, the book says it will do 35-40 miles like mine but I’ve yet to get more than 30 out of it I’m thinking of getting a power inverter for the car and hard wiring it with decent cables to the battery so I can give the bike battery an extra boost while travelling by car, I want to avoid plugging into the cigarette lighter socket as the wires are a bit small on those and will overheat, looking on line I think a minimum of an 800w inverter is required, the mains charger is rated at 2.5A at 220-240v and I will need 8 or 10 gauge wire, any advice will be welcome!

It did feel like it was assisting a bit but it certainly wasn’t powering me up that hill like a rocket, I think it was at its limit, it’s a strange one but I think with the highest (biggest cog) gear if you drop below 10mph on a climb like that it struggles but once you get a bit of speed up maybe where the climb eases a bit it seems to kick back in and give you a nice push and enable you to drop a different gear that climb in ‘turbo’ mode and high gear at the start really hit the battery charge quite quickly taking it from 70% to about 45% in the 2.5 mile but the rest of the run being downhill or fairly levelish meant it only dropped down to about 30% by the time we got to cockermouth

I’d certainly buy a model of 66769 in its new ‘prostate cancer uk’ livery if that became available

solway holiday village in silloth

I’d love to see it back up and running, I don’t think it would take too much work to do but I notice a couple of the curves have gone out of gauge due to broken sleepers

Something a bit different, the holiday park we have the caravan at has a 7 1/4 railway that hasn’t run for a good 3 years now and the track is slowly disappearing into the grass, hopefully they will do something with it rather than rip it up, I keep meaning to ask the owners what the plans are for it The loco is quite a substantial petrol powered 0-4-0 shunter, locked away in a container at the moment (I hope)

The ride back was fun, a solid 2.5 mile 950ft climb a few miles in then mainly downhill back to Cockermouth via the whinlatter pass, the first climb near killed me though, had to get off twice to walk the bike up for a couple of hundred meters but rode the rest at a steady pace in low gear!

a driver I know has one in yellow, he had it 20 years ago when I started on the railway and it only comes out every so often so very low miles! he also has a Fiat X-19

Broke the 600 mile mark on the bike today, still got another 12-15 mile to go today to get back to cockermouth rather a sharp drop after 5 miles!

yeah, i definitely overdid it last week but also realised the last couple of days id eaten quite poorly due to the shifts i was on not being good for eating at decent times despite staying in my weight watchers points balance i’d had plenty of protein but practically no vitamins and more than my usual amount of carbs, which ive avoided in large quantities for 6 months, then getting the chill on the ride hit me for six, i slept for a good 12 hours last night but i felt much better by the afternoon after some food so went for a walk again, by this evening i felt like a ride so did a steady 3 mile round trip to the shop in town for supplies i am planning on doing a ride from cockermouth to keswick if the weather is good the end of the week, 11 mile each way so not too bad (but quite a climb in places)

Nice fiat coupe 20v turbo parked up in silloth

Weigh in day today, and the great news made it below my 18 Stone goal….. I started at 22.9 Stone on 17/2 and today have got to 17.13 Stone so a total loss of 4st 8lb (30 kg) in about 6 months I’m not feeling very well today though, been rough for a couple of days now, had a bit of a stomach ache for a few days and got soaking wet on the ride home from basford hall on Monday and caught a chill so I’ve not really felt like exercising much, managed a couple of miles walking so far, a slow 5 mile trundle on the bike and a swim this morning but I’m giving breaking any goals a miss this week and just relaxing in the caravan, (I think I may have overdone it a bit last week!) However next weight goal is going to be 17 Stone and see how I feel (and look) when I reach that to maybe try for a bit more as long as I do t start to look ill!

Some from yesterday, bescot to East Midlands gateway bescot loco for the day East mids gateway Went for a walk again (4 miles) this is the other side of those hill and the steps in that side, it’s actually got 2 sets like this heading off in different directions From the top it goes about 1/3 of the way down before splitting View from the top We ran early and ended up sitting at alrewas until Lichfield accepted us so I went for a walk to the signal box and had a chat with the signaller before heading back to the loco ,sat there for 2 hours! alrewas box And back to the train, pleased with this picture! Passed the railvac in Lichfield with a pair of 20s top and tail that’s me done for a couple of weeks now, at the caravan now and having a well earned break (unless an uncovered job from Carlisle pops up!)

A good result last week in the end, over 100 additional miles in the bike and broke the running distance total too had a look through apple health and compared July 2020 to July 2021 activity, certainly moving a lot more this year than last away to the caravan later today for a week or two so hopefully get a few bike miles in but certainly going to get a few miles walking in

I was in the same hotel as them the other month when I was working a ballast at Hampstead, one of them a former fastline collegue (Wayne W)

bit of a local one this but they may post if you call them maybe? Cash generator in carlisle has some N gauge wagons in Dapol MJA twin box wagons, gbrf livery x5 sets £25 each pair Revolution Trains Quad STVA quad car carrier (covered i think) one set £45 Revolution trains sturgeon (not sure of livery) £25 all look to be unused and still have C+M models original price stickers on

Some from last night, bescot to tamworth via Stoke on Trent bescot After uncoupling at Stoke I had to run to kidsgrove to change ends and run back, stopped under the new footbridge that’s being built which also has lifts Back into Stoke to change ends again to return to the train And in site, 3 self propelled cranes gettting into position to lift cut down track panels onto salmon wagons back tonight for a rail drop rhen east mids gateway on Monday and off until the 25th (and not available!)

Being as it was raining this morning g I actually did something to the layout! the MOD sidings along the back wall were a bit limited space wise so I had been having a think about how to get a bit more room in there, originally the branch line and sidings had 2 bridges planned and the branch climbed up on risers to what will be a high level station, I’ve decided to do away with the bridges and raise the whole lot up about an inch as well as widening the board original idea new board underneath ready to be marked and cut with the original board as a template for the track edge part raised the whole lot on a baton (very temporary!) and the board cut down and placed in its rough position I also removed the points and double track at the bottom of the incline and made it a single line which will have probably have points off toward the siding, not decided on the final track layout yet really forgot to take pics of the other end but the siding runs into a nice longish headhunt to set wagons back into the fan of sidings and the separate adjacent station line runs off at an angle from it, again the wood needs to be cut but it should give me a nice bit of room around the station for some scenics

One from my trip to chester, the old tram tracks heading towards what was the old depot opposite the station which later on became the bus depot, we used to use the canteen when I worked in Chester railway station, wish I’d have got some pics of the inside of the place now liking back, proper old school place, cigarette tar stained walls, card schools going on, no Investment since the 1960s! it’s long gone now, replaced by flats with the rails remaining as a feature

Absolutely smashed it on the bike this week, still got Sunday to go (bike has been left in Bescot for tomorrow!) but so far I’ve covered 120 miles since Monday walking has been pretty good too, 8 miles just need to get another 1.9 miles running in and I’ll have done my quota for the week with that, hopefully get it done Sunday afternoon rode from wolves to bescot earlier on as well as a 16 mile leisure ride around Nantwich and crewe outskirts

the carousel was my great ‘grandma Barmouth’s’ cafe of choice during the 70s and 80s, she used to go every day with her sister and best friend and sit in the window seats and watch the world go by over a pot or two of tea, she was barmouth born and bred (not a brummie!) i seem to remember it used to be a ‘National milk bar’ back in the 80s? also remember ‘The angry cheese’ and ‘silly shilling’ being 2 places in town back then too if you look on google street view you can see the sign wombatofludham mentioned above Dropped pin https://goo.gl/maps/jeDHmrTXtkd1NoQA6

This really made me chuckle in Viz

Just one from last night in Stafford and a video from crewe