big jim

Sorry I edited the post and added the extra photo which shows the strange formation that day with 2 powercars, seems to be 2 separate ‘halves’ of trains lashed together and it’s a lot longer than 7 cars

And we’re back with photobucket, here is the pic of the one off ‘bogie both end coach’ in a formation also 2 powercars in the formation too

yes, just seen some pics of that, I wish I had shares in the azuma nose cone production company!

Not sure about that but most fitters replies are NFF (no fault found) or ‘cannot recreate fault on depot’ which is normally when you have reported something like rainwater leaking into the cab when at speed my last failure was a complete lack of serviceable brake blocks on a loco, luckily we spotted it en route as something didn’t seem/sound right otherwise they were that bad that I recon Had I uncoupled to run round at my destination I’d have not stopped at the blocks!

Just 2 poor pics from last night Wellington station in darkness at 4am! we (marcus37 and myself) then headed off down the branch to collect a load of wagons from Donnington Railfreight terminal, Marcus came with me as I need to sign the branch off for working further trains out of there, a nice simple line, effectively a long siding and a surprisingly large terminal at the end! ready to depart, again in darkness, took it to shrewsbury and home trafford park tonight but thankfully only from crewe at 21:30

Yes the long ones are picture pride, as I say bought them as a bulk lot for the princely sum of £30 each, if you have bought picture pride then you will know the big ones cost 10 times that hence why I just bought all the seller had (20 in total), chose the ones I wanted to use and sold the rest on at a fraction of the price of new ones but more than enough to pay for the ones I kept (and put a few new locos in them too!) The only downside with the long picture pride cabinets is if I want some stock out of them is I have to lift the front off, the smaller cabinets with the locos in have hinged fronts so are much easier to access

The heaters are alright but noisy, however ergonomically they are useless as they are set for right hand drive so you have to lean forward from the seat over to the 2nd mans side to operate them a lot of our 66s have air con now which is great in the summer and surprisingly effective in other news my photobucket account has been restored so all the early pictures I uploaded to use in all my threads have now reappeared (the most recent pics have been uploaded via the forum uploaded which I’ll continue to use anyway)

I bought the cabinets As a bulk lot from eBay, I actually bought a load of them at a bargain price and was selling them on via the classifieds and eBay, made a nice little profit on them but surprisingly took a quite a while to sell

if You look closely to the right when heading south on the M6 toll where the line goes over you can see a few OHLE masts in the trees, strange thing is the line isn’t even electrified! You can just about make them out on google earth, 4 masts, 2 of which have wire strung above the tracks and the outer 2 as tensioners, over the upper line on the pic below Dropped pin Near Hammerwich https://goo.gl/maps/QAiVoqHcFaYjCHSs8

Made a removable section this evening, a nice simple set up cut the top to fit between the boards 2 batons along the bottom 2 locating pieces on the boards which means the removable section slides down into place between the guides Still got to add some extra strengtheners to it at some point also put some more cork down and laid track on the lower level, it’s pretty much all laid in the bits where the high level boards will be fitted above and cork over the bridge And back to the castle area, lines in front dropping down slightly toward the removable section tracks at the back on the level, front ones dropping down, 009 at the front the 009 line will start to climb on the removable section, and eventually cross over the mainline to the mill area, the board will be a lot bigger along the back wall as per the mock up pictures a from a few months back, the rear line can disappear into a tunnel for a short distance before it begins to climb up to the higher level again the next thing I need to do is clear all the boxes off the top of the final side of the layout so I can get that bit mocked up and track laid then start to think about getting top boards fitted

Wasn’t too bad, colder tonight but thankfully I’m not in work!

Just a couple from last night, trafford park again 66777 in crewe and freshly painted orange class 90, looks quite smart MOD to Wellington on Monday then a week of Trafford park again (with a new loco)

7APT7: the photo your thinking of is one of mine on Flickr, it’s in the accurascale 97301 thread It’s not a particularly regular loco on the coast, to be honest it’s not used much on IM trains compared to others, it doesn’t go down the Cambrian either as it has an uncertified ERTMS system (Hitachi), I think it may be On the brink of being repainted/refurbished at the moment

Ooh that’s nice! they were ten a penny back in the 90s on the modding scene but are a real rarety now, you only tend to see them as show cars rather than daily drives same as the MK1 punto GT and sporting (I had a GT) you just don’t see any of them about any more as most were thrashed and crashed or rusted away! looking at my cooper again yesterday I finally got round to painting my bonnet scoop black and refitting the missing headlight ring, I also changed the vinyl wrap on the rings from carbon fibre look to a Matt black finish

It’s a bit location specific but if anyone is after a nice big display case in the Cheshire area then St Luke’s Hospice charity warehouse in Winsford industrial estate has this...... it’s about 4FT fall by 2FT wide, 7 adjustable shelves (looks like it may need the little clips that hold them in place though) £25

Just one from tonight, fenny Compton to crewe with some wagons heading north for maintainance 66758 “The Pavior” leading Return working tomorrow night

A bit of woodwork today, filled the gap in for the valley, going to have it quite deep with steep sides mock up time again, i was thinking of having a stone bridge with legs into the valley but looking at the mock up with a steel bridge with parapets either end I think it would look good and not obscure the valley the lower bridge behind can be a stone looking from the side, the 009 can run at the front on a wooden tressle bridge I then mocked up the castle using cardboard and loo rolls, again I think it should look good once I do things properly

Bescot to rugby tonight with a rake of autoballasters 66783 in biffa livery leading, 66747 in NWT livery was on the rear fenny Compton to crewe tomorrow

I’ve just remembered something else about when I used to work on the maintainance of these at seaforth, if we ever had to knock a wagon out of the rake we would uncouple it from the rest of the train, get the driver to put a couple of ft either side of the wagon then put straps round the buffers and get the driver of the container unloading machine to lift the wagon clear of the train with the straps round his lifting frame! couldnt get away with that now

trafford park with 66777 after repair parked up in the holding sidings in crewe with a class 92 into the station, to get to the Manchester line from the siding involves a double shunt as you can’t access the Manchester line direct, so it was into platform 8 and Back out south into the down relief sidings before heading back north on the fast and across to the Manchester line and into trafford park and attached to the train, and that was it, relief driver in to take over and taxi home bescot to rugby tomorrow

GBRF have to hire the loco from the other company for a fee or maybe they will borrow it to them if they can borrow something else later in the week! as long as I sign the loco type I can drive it, I even asked if freightliner had a 70 knocking about I could have used but they didn’t as for last night it was a ballast drop on the Cheshire lines with top and tail 66s 66788 locomotion 15 into Chester to change ends 66744 Crossrail at the other end job finished and out of the possession at 7am at Mobberley in thick fog and -2 and a slow drive home in the freezing fog! quick hop over to trafford park tonight with 66777

It was just mainline chord from basford hall (independent line) into gresty green neck with the knackered loco blocking itself into the neck, we had to put it there as the train is 2000ft long and there aren’t many places we can put it and it needed moving, had they not been able to hire a loco we were going to have to leave the train there overnight when I went for the DRS 66 it was Off gresty via the siding and onto the train via the mainline, slightly different taking it back on shed, along the independents into arrivals 1, back to the electric road (toward the station), back into the hold, back up the western siding and into gresty! the loco is all fixed now and I’ve just been collared to take it back to trafford park tomorrow night and put the train back together for someone else to take south

Not Norfolk (but you never know if my have to come to gresty bridge at some point) you have Niphos in crewe http://niphos.co.uk

in the meantime people are complaining that bits of plastic have come off and the letters are slightly the wrong shape on a toy train

But if excitement last night, worked the Trafford park job from Birmingham but got to crewe and had a loco failure so had to swap for a DRS loco for the last leg to Manchester 66777 which failed, we had to move the train from basford hall to Gresty green to get it out of the way I then picked up 66432 from Gresty bridge which I dropped in the rear of the train, detached 66777 and carried on to Manchester had to do a few big shunts to move the train out of the way as it’s had to stay there all weekend before I set off light engine back to crewe and into gresty bridge and home I went, possession tonight between mickle trafford and Northwich