big jim

I’ve ended up buying just the catalog for £10 from smiths as I remembered that Hornby mag is on The Readly app anyway tomorrow it’s off to trident trains with a list of R numbers for stuff I want to order!

Don’t bother with the crewe branch either, all gone from there too

Damn you apple pay! i have a look on the website on my mobile phone, 3 DRS sets left in stock, right below a big black button labelled “pay with Apple Pay” one finger print check later and now 2 Left in stock Same thing happened the other week with 97301

I think I did, your name rings a bell, you can be rest assured it’s gone to a good home and is pride of place with my other GBRF 66s in the display cabinet but it will also be run and enjoyed once I get the new layout operational

Yes there is only one 66 in that livery as for paying respray prices if your lucky like I was before Christmas I saved over £100 on the original respray cost of the pink ‘ONE’ (just checked and I paid £136) similarly I got a cairns road works Cemex livery 66780 Bachmann respray for £114, there are a couple up on eBay at the minute for £230 BIN, which when you consider you can soon get the hattons one for £150 and the Hornby railroad one for £80 is a bit optimistic to my eyes if like me you see nothing wrong with the Bachmann 66 now is the time to pick up some real bargains on line and in model shops 2nd hand cupboards as people trade up to the hattons one, I even picked up the rails LTD ED freightliner ’poppy’ from topp trains in Stafford on NYE For £85!

sorry, I genuinely thought you were in on the joke, sorry if I’ve offended you at all! I’ll know in future to handle the pink one with care! (ok i’ll stop now) jokes aside though I should imagine that particular livery will be a good seller, it’s certainly very distinctive and something different to have and I bet it will look good pulling a rake of the recently announced Hornby pink ONE containers! of the 30 or so Bachmann 66s I have I’d say 2/3 of those are some sort of special livery or have livery adornments (mainly GBRF) as I like to have something different but there are a few standard livery locos to return some monotony to the trains

And one from the last night of it, got off in crewe earlier as my relief didn’t want to drive the hire car to Manchester, suited me fine!

I was in basford hall the other night and the big pink one was sat next to one of the orange ones, quite a colourful combination! ive got a ‘rainbow respray’ Bachmann 66 in pink, picked it up off a bay for £120 which was an absolute bargain Probably thanks to Hattons (and Hornby) announcing it in the main range thus reducing its worth also note the GBRf 60 which I’m glad Hornby never announced this week!

And again, signal stop in crewe, platform 1 last night last night if it tonight and only working it Landor st to crewe which is nice, the downside being the reason I’m finishing early is to be in tomorrow afternoon on a possession turn! then a few days off and 3 more days of it next week!

first thing I thought of was stan’s grandad in South Park who is always asking him to kill him off coz he’s so old

Something not quite right with the cooper S, had it rolling roaded today after fitting a bigger intercooler, k&n induction kit and streetcam and the result was a loss of 1bhp! we are going to have a look at what the possible issue is but it may be the superchip may have reset itself while the ecu and battery were disconnected and reverted to standard factory settings, it’s unlikely but a possibility as the car looks to be hitting the Rev limiter earlier than the last time it was dyno’d other than that it may be a case of the chip being a one size fits all product cannot handle the addition of the street cam as the stage 2 I have is designed for cars with bigger intercooler and smaller pulley but the cam may not be helping matters if the current map doesn’t have settings to allow for one, I may have to get the car properly tuned by a specialist to take into account the cam im hoping it’s just the fact the ecu has reset as that’s a free solution to reprogram it via the bluefin handset

you and your pink one, first you want it to come early, now your worried it’s not gonna come quick enough as it’s in the hands of some seamen!

Few more of 66777! raining tonight 2 more nights of it

Ive got a photo my dad took in the 80s of it in a formation at crewe ive got a pic of it on photobucket But it’s down at the mo, when it comes back I’ll upload it or if I can find the original print I’ll use the forum upload feature

Just has a look on google maps, that’s a new road for me, didn’t know it was there but looking at it doesn’t it only go to the power station/ recycle plant? When I used to drive there I went through gendon Underwood and edgecott if coming from Bicester and I can’t see any better way for wagons to get there as the roads stand as they are now

While I was down at my stepdads house over Christmas he gave me some more photo albums my mum put together before she died one of which included some pics of her old rav-4 (it was brand new to the uk when she bought it in 1995) and also some pics of my Lada Niva Cossack, Hated it after a couple of years ownership but really wish I still had it now! Also in the pics is my sisters many times stolen Astra! these off roading pics were taken at a closed sand/silica quarry near Mold not far from where we used to live, it certainly handled the ground easily and you can see the axle travel in a few of the pics

i can only assume its got to move way beforehand to allow the land to be given over for the construction of the depot access lines as looking at the maps the whole area incuding the farm yard you currently have to access to get to it is under the new curve to be honest id heard that the line from quaindon northward is going to affectively become a long siding between there and claydon soon with no access to the current curve north of the old station, which looking at the map for the area makes sense as the area will change beyond recognition once work starts, i should imagine trains will still pick up a token of sorts from the new box (if its even that or nothing more than a token hut) and run to the tip but there is no need for them to be locked in clear of the mainline as there will be no mainline for a while it always used to be un-nerving to come up to calvert on a train heading to claydon to see 2 other trains ‘in section’ even though they were locked away and token returned at the calvert cabinet, i always slowed for the points ‘just in case’ i suppose once east/west is complete and joined to the aylesbury branch the area will come under a ROC or certainly marylebone box for now, im assuming (i do a lot of that) that a lot of the work in this area for HS2 will be relyant on east west being completed and connected at bletchley to get construction materials, ballast, rails etc in and out of the site as knowing the roads in the area calvert is a nightmare to get to in a fiesta van yet alone an artic!

£18.75 for the set! i can barely remember when a ‘smoky joe’ cost that on its own, absolute bargain

there are a number of PLP trains so they NORMALLY run in different rakes however if a vehicle is needed for brake force in a train one could be added to the rake (but be unmanned) a nice train to model using Hornby coaches would be Genny van-plp coach-radio survey coach-brake end support coach with a pair of 37s top and tail The SGT support coach is a bit of an oddity as Mick points out unless they release the windowless coach which is actually the support coach, the one they are releasing is permanently coupled to it so it’s never going to be seen in a train on its own without its sister, normally the SGT runs within a UTU train such as this, one I worked to Marylebone a few years back 37025-Runner-SGT Runner-SGT-UTU-DBSO anyway if your feeling flush you can always have a go at this Train I had to work one day, changed ends half a dozen times too..... DBSO-UTU-SGT-SGT runner-Mk2 brake-UTU-Brake force runner-PLP and 37099

Let’s hope he doesn’t try and take Dec on at demolition derby or wreckfest, he’s the champ at that!

Couple from last night, on this all week now so don’t expect many more pics this week as there are only so many shots of 66777 you can get! signal check at crewe nuneaton

Didn’t like the boot build I did on Sunday so I took it out and rebuilt it to make the speaker fit better sideways and swapped the amp for a better one to cut round! Just need a strip of carpet to cover the blue metal at the front of the boot and if I can be bothered I may fit the reversing camera I’ve had sitting round for a while In other ‘modern classics’ news one of the coil packs in my wife’s Murano has gone so it’s running like a nail, phoned Nissan who want £125 a piece for them, the car is a V6 So 6 required, managed to get them from a specialist Nissan breaker for £60 for the whole set delivered so that’s the next big job as it’s an inlet manifold job off, going to take the opportunity to change the plugs too as they haven’t been done in the 6 years I’ve owned the car ita like the car that juts won’t die, I keep telling my wife we should swap for something newer but she’s happy in her battle scarred ‘tank’ to keep it running until it won’t run no more

Crikey, thought that was a picture of the real things!

how long have I been waiting for someone to produce a class 175 unit? 20 years since they were introduced and a far wider reaching operational sphere and livery variations but still nothing

The 2 GBRF 50s will do me might even go for some more NR coaches, take the custom interiors out of my modified ones as I cannot get the finish anywhere near a factory one!