big jim

Well my other ‘modern classic’ the Nissan Murano failed its MOT today, thankfully just needs an inner CV boot at £11, getting it fitted Friday with any luck not bad for a car that I bought 4 years ago for £2000 as ‘a toy’ that I was planning on keeping for about 6 months to a year, it’s now done 218k miles and touch wood we should get another 12 months out of it, Im regularly tempted to change it but my wife won’t let me as she loves it! Might actually get the air air con looked in on it as it has a leak somewhere!

The owner did say it was a respray, originally a white car, he mentioned a BL blue colour that he is going to respray it into but it wasn’t moonraker or azure, polar maybe, or that could have been the white

Just getting my other modern classic, the Nissan Murano MOTd (well I’ll see if I still call it a classic in about an hour after it’s MOT), the place I use has had these in his yard for years wasting away, although the maestro has migrated to the back of a transporter ready to be taken away for restoration, apparently it was originally white but it’s going to be restored into the same colour blue The metro is next years project apparently

Something a bit different again, went to Manchester for the evening, wife and eldest went to see ‘book of mormon’ While the youngest and myself went to see ‘men in Black international’ in the cinema, which happens to be in the old goods shed on deansgate and poking though between the buildings down a side street was the old manchester central station

I like a challenge!

Some pics from our local village fete, a few classic cars on show The gold one is a TR8, 3.5l Going by this last car I should have took the cooper along!

A few from last night, starting in bescot And away to Wembley to drop some ballast and back to bescot this morning weekend off now

One in the cabinet in the shop at the Dapol factory this morning full price £158 may or may not be for sale but it had a price tag next to it

Only one from tonight, got asked to do the same job so same loco at Leicester again!

sorry to go a bit off topic too, my 2 BMW minis, on the same motorway commute are very different MPG wise the hardtop 1.6 supercharged cooper (170 bhp approx) will do 33.5mpg. the soft top 1.6 convertible does 40.9 mpg when standard (90bhp), with the superchip bluefin activated it goes to 130bhp but averages 44.9 mpg, in improvement of 4mpg

Just a couple from tonight, last minute job covering sickness, hams hall to Leicester and drive back. the roads back were horrendous due to the rain, glad to get home Leicester nice short fuelling job this afternoon in bescot

Got a Colas 56 then that’s fine for your TPE MK5s! (ok a bit of a cheat as that’s one of the electric units behind but 56049 was used today to move the MK5s around in crewe LNWR) Coupling adapter on the 56

I didn’t even know we had galleries! Get the pics up here, I suspect like myself a lot of users just visit the forum page and don’t really look at the extras such as blogs and galleries (and are most likely missing out on some good extra content!)

Some from today Had to move this to Doncaster Taking a deltic back to barrow hill en route Ready to go Colas 56 Wichnor jn Into barrow hill Ready to leave for doncaster Masborough jn the obligatory arch shot! And into Roberts road Azuma Couple of new northern units

Too busy for pics today, just this one of 3 66s lined up for fuel at bescot

Some from today, should have been on the crewe tripper which was cancelled so I was stood down to do some training then due to an error I ended up working a train to Toton! Colas 37s passing by on a test train Then in the way home I called into crewe diesel depot where that had an open day today, I got there after it had closed to the public so managed to get some nice pics and that was that, bescot shunt again tomorrow before a nice little job Monday moving the class 50 and deltic from crewe to barrow hill and then the 50 onward to Doncaster

Yes I remember it as a 15” line with Katie, count Louis etc nice to see pics of it in its hayday in the ‘museum’ Just as I remember it, I would have only been between 4-7 years old when I lived down there while my dad was the local Bobby based in llwyngwril but it certainly sticks in my memory, similarly seeing just the single beach hut remaining as you turn the corner is sad as I remember a big long line of them back in the 80s

Well today was a disaster photography wise, so wet I couldn’t be bothered with pics got to kiddy to find Mine and Marcus37s train wasn’t put together for departure and someone had shoved a deltic in the consist! so off I went to collect the 66 from the carriage sidings of the SVR and was conducted onto the locos, nice selection of locos on the diesel depot And the train all consisted up for departure And then the 50 failed so we decided to take the 66 and wagons to bescot on their own while the fitter fixed the 50, as I type Marcus is heading back to kiddy to collect the 50 and deltic to take it to crewe on a VSTP ready for the open day tomorrow so wet today thats the only pics i managed to get!

I’ve actually got a few smaller width Bachmann low relief terrace shop front buildings to go up the hill which should require smaller steps and less building up than the long ones I’ve put down to try out it will still be quite a step but if I can pull it off it should look ok

Cut the board for the station and town to sit on and roughly placed the boards down with buildings atop, again no particular order A road can run round the front of the buildings and off scene, the mill will be where the castle/folly will sit with a small park as an entrance with steps up The station can have steps down rather than a roadway (as represented by the pencil) The blue line represents the roadway and similarly the tunnel entrance, I may try and do something with the right hand side to avoid the “Hornby tunnel” look, disguise the entrance behind a building or something Moving further round I can see the higher track opening out into the countryside and over a bridge, the heritage line can exit a tunnel on the bottom level and cross below the mainline, the 2 tracks at the front could be the heritage depot/carriage siding/museum etc It can then run into a short cutting at the back before curving 90 degree out of sight back to the front edge of the layout along the side wall, (I’ll probably ditch the link between the mainline and heritage line that i planned for that side), the main line will then run through the centre of a small up and down yard (think bescot) the opposite corner to the town I’m planning on having a representation of a bit of a quarry with a conveyor running to a loading siding within the yard the bit I’ve not even looked at yet will have a couple of sidings off the yard to an oil terminal as I have the Hornby unloading gantry and a couple of oil tanks in stock overall view of what I’ve placed down so far

Ertms: it’s the future! how do you think I feel, it’s such a weird system, there are a couple of interesting and ‘heated’ threads elsewhere on RMweb dealing with it if you fancy a read up and save cluttering this thread

There are no marker boards or dets for an ERTMS T3 you come to a stop at the relevant protecting movement authority board, speak to the signaller, fill out the paperwork and the possession is placed around you, isolate the ERTMS on the loco and go to work to exit the possession once authorised you reinstate the ERTMS on the loco and the signaller will tell you to proceed to the next movement authority however as the system doesn’t know your exact location within a section it will only put you in ‘staff responsible’ mode where you are in ‘visual control’ of the train and cannot travel over 25kph, there is no computer intervention other than if you go above 25kph, once you pass over a belize in the track then the system will know your exact location and step you up to ‘on sight’ mode (normally in approach to a section marker) meaning you can pass one movement authority marker (effectively exiting the T3 section) and once over the axle counters beyond the marker it will then know you are complete and step you up to full supervision mode (I can assure you his will get edited later as it’s been 18 months since I did an ERTMS possession and I’ve deffo got bits wrong and I’ve asked a former colleague to “proof read” my post for me!)

actually looking again I’ve just realised mine was the saloon version but it had a similar spoiler (it was a 120 too)

I had an 02 ZS too, identical to yours, (an unusual spoiler to have fitted to a standard ZS iirc) running on lpg, good little motor to get be back and too between Aylesbury and crewe when I worked for chiltern, the only downside was the lpg tank could hold 150 mile of fuel and it was a 158 mile journey so it would always run out of fuel at pretty much the same spot every time (waddeston heading to Aylesbury, M6 j15 coming home!

Something different today, having a couple of days away in mid wales at my step dads house with the youngest lad had a ride on the fairbourne railway got the ferry over to barmouth then got the mainline train back to fairbourne after having a go in the arcade and dodgems! back in on Friday doing a shift with Marcus37 moving the class 50s from Kidderminster to crewe for the LSL open day