big jim

when they were introduced I was 18 months old!! 42 years down the line and I'm lucky enough to drive them (well ok 'it', as I only drive the NMT), I passed out on them in the week of their 40th anniversary of their introduction and was lucky enough to meet sir Kenneth grange in York on the day I passed out too who signed a picture of one for me As it happens I've got the NMT today Crewe to Holyhead and back (and have been roped into a couple of trips to Liverpool as well)

Thanks to a quick response from Gareth ,31105 bodyshell reserved ready to be paid for on Friday (payday, woo hoo!!) (Anyone after a DCR bodyshell?)

Loco leading to crewe with no planned turns

dont suppose you can photograph the NR class 31 bodies by any chance, may be interested in one of them?

im lazy, i just stuck west coast decals and OHLE flashes on mine! (and painted the roofs and cant rails on them,)

Aren't the hachette coaches great for converting into other things, clip apart, individual sides, easy to remove glazing and best of all dirt cheap! My rake of 10 that I use as a west coast rail train is slowly dwindling down as one gets picked out to become a UTU, another taken to become something else and so on

Some from last night, 73s again, this time from crewe diesel depot Where a 42XX was being delivered for repair, amazing to watch it practicaly offloaded in lass than 30 mins! Then off we went to northwich via sandbach, at Middlewich we had a spurious brake demand which halted us for about 40 mins, had to fault find the problem, as the 73s can be a bit let's say, temperamental, had jumper cables out, isolated bits and bobs, reinstated them, shut them down, restarted them to no avail, it was starting to look like game over when the OTT pointed at the pass comm butterfly valve on the outside of one of the coaches and noticed that it was in the 'pulled' position despite there only being 3 on board and that coach was locked out, we recon that as we passed some close trees a branch must have hit the butterfly valve and opened it! Anyway we got it shut and the brake came back, what was confusing us was there was no significant escape of air from that coach to indicate the pass comm had been pulled so we by default went to 'worst case scenario' mode and went to the loco to look for problems! With he likes of MK3's if a pass comm is pulled you put it in full service so when you walk back you can hear the coach with the pulled pass comm 'whistle' so you know where to look and it saves a lot of hunting around for the pulled chord Anyway after that delay and due to the slack timings we still arrived into northwich early and headed off to Chester, a good run as northern were on strike so I never got stuck behind anything' And away to warrington again Where I got off and went pass back to Chester to pick up a UTU to conduct it to Holyhead at 30mph where we went into the sidings Changed ends and back out to Bangor where we stabled for the day Back on it tonight to Chester where another driver takes over and takes it to Cardiff at 30mph all the way!

so proper camera pics... started off by going passenger to stockport where i had 20 mins to wait for my taxi so i hung around the platform knowing there was a cement train due 323 the plane, the plane!! cement train coming into view voyager 66610 another plane then over to northernden jn to wait for my train, it was running 90 late at one point and was 70 late getting to northenden jn DB 66 freightliner 66 and heading off to hazel grove 142 passing by the line towards stockport heading off in the distance, it becomes a single line just beyond the bridge 66 again and my train waiting at Mobberley for the section to plumley wrexham then a trip to bidston and back to wrexham central helsby and over to warrington then back to chester and that was that, same train again tonight then pick up a UTU to go to holyhead and bangor

Lots of proper camera pics today but here is a taster iPhone photo until I have a chance to upload them all Helsby Jn

Cheers, as I said it was a top of my head calculation' Still £200+ is fairly decent when you think that another kit manufacturer is offering the ex MTK 508 kit for £240 sans power unit and bogies etc (although i think it's on sale at the moment) Would a Bachmann class 150 drive and dummy chassis be suitable I wonder?

If we're still in Scotland one from my trip there last year with the PLP train, waiting at glenfinnan Spotter!!

That's a big old nameplate on that 26!

Only managed 2 from today, working at Huyton, taking the train back to crewe Sat in the worksite ready to head off to St. Helens jn at a leisurely 5mph all the way Discovered something new on the class 70 tonight which was great fun, I've known about it for a while but never got it to work until today, it's called 'plug mode' which is part of the slow speed controls, basically with it engaged the loco will stay at whatever speed you put into the computer while going down hill I set off from Huyton to rainhill which is up hill all the way so had the slow speed set to 5mph (max speed within the worksite) but once past there the line drops all the way to sankey viaduct so I had a go at 'plug mode' as far as the worksite marker boards basically you toggle it and the slow speed on using the computer, inputting your chosen speed then the bit that doesn't feel right is you put the throttle to 0 and put the direction handle in reverse while moving forwards then take power again but this time instead of the loco powering up the higher the throttle number you choose the more the dynamic brake operates to hold you back to whatever speed you have already chosen! I had just short of 1200 ton behind me at 5mph and notch 2 on the throttle (i.e. Brake) held me at 5mph all the way, the slow speed control then kept me at 5mph in the flat bits without me having to touch anything! I must admit I am very very impressed with the function and can see me using it a lot now I know how, I also discovered it can be set from a standing start too, so if it can be set while setting back then backing into chirk at 3mph will be a breeze Only one more pic while I was walking back to my van of a DRS 68 Back to yellow trains later, 73s around the north west again

Just had a look on eBay and I'm very tempted by the 507/508 bits, works out about £140 for a full 3 car set by my maths which is not too bad when you compare it to 'other' kits available that don't look anywhere near as detailed Hope you do well with them

some from last night, did a job to liverpool, thought i was working at huyton but turned out it was down the branch to the docks near anfield basford hall, firing up mine and another drivers locos shunted round and into site, not fantastic pics as i didnt have a tripod after dropping ballast on one side it was all the way back towards edge hill to cross over and do the other side then once complete wait for the paperwork and away to exit the possession at mosseley hill, exiting my worksite at bootle branch jn with its interesting (previously discussed) bridge hole through picop land and into the next worksite changed ends at edge hill and away to the possession exit and into basford hall, shunted and locos parked up, no pics as it was a long day and i wanted to get the train away and home to bed!

Thanks, I've not really gone into 'big detail' before but I am enjoying doing the yellow stuff, I can't think of much more rolling stock wise I want to model so I think I'm going to concentrate on detailing up some of the stuff I've already done I've got the NMT to Holyhead on Thursday so I'm gonna grab some interior shots and draw up some plans to do all those coaches

The coupling bar between the SGT coaches didn't work, not quite enough swing left to right so I think I'll probably revert to small tension locks instead Anyway had a look at the laser barrel again, V3 this time, mounted on a backing plate But this time with 8 individual strands of .7mm fibre optics treading though holes in the barrel Heat shrink over it (still to be shrunk) Then experimented with a red led armband I bought for £1 and stripped down And voila And placed loosely on the coach So it works and looks good, just need to get it to work properly fitted up, I've ordered a function only decoder off eBay (cheap laisdcc one) so will use one function to light the LED and another to light up the coach interior with a spare Hornby light bar I have, (so that means I've now got to model the interior of this coach) Thankfully it's a lot simpler layout than Mentor!

Looking at the scale map I have the space between the 2 sets of points is just over a mile so I assume it's so things can be looped on the up slow and let back out on the faster cross over at the end of the loop, the points futher down towards the station look to be a slower speed set

Which connection do you see as unnecessary?

I'd say the obscured signal is a distant, same as the opposite side it looks to me like a 3 way splitting distant with a section stop signal (possibly for the box in the pic) all 3 distants are for the next 3 boxes on various routes, the homes would be located beyond the junction for each route, i should imagine they would be able to be pulled off once the section in the pic has been pulled off (as I'm sure you can't have the distant off and section on, something to do with the interlocking) I suppose it's also down to drivers route knowledge to know where (and what) the next signal would be depending on which distant they get off

You will notice how I've not taken pics of the side directly on though!

I've just been sent the final signalling diagrams for the new set up, there are a few different things to the above plans, there now appears to be 2 roads into chaddesden, only one lead in from the main line but splitting to arrivals/departure 1 and 2 roads

And the other end, slightly different to the one I'd already done A work colleague pointed out there are cameras in the snowploughs at that end so I added them with a small square of plastistruct And painted up The black band on the lower end is also different on the 2nd end Both cab ends practically finished, unit wise just need to refit the windows on the 2nd coach, then i can add it to the decal pile

the other think im led to believe is the sinfin branch will become one long siding as such, the 3 electrically operated ground frames down there are going to become hand points (which from experience of how often they used to fail can only be a good thing!) i can happily say i have done all of derby's current track work, sidings, loops etc before they rip it up (apart from the line into litchurch lane)

Changed the bar between the SGT coaches, made it and the laser barrel shorter And back to the TRU to paint the front cameras etc, refitted the glazing, sharpie'd the door rubbers, white handrails etc