big jim

I'm up there again for a week too so I'll see what I can try and get as well!

Just some iPhone pics from today, derby to carlisle with a test train transit move First up had to collect it from etches park after tyre turning, it was blocked in by 66846 which I moved out to the station yard Then it was away to Carlisle via uttoxeter, stoke, crewe etc, had a good run with it basically none stop from stoke to Carlisle (apart from 2 mins waiting for the single line between alsager and crewe) Very slack timing meant I left derby 3 1/2 hours late and got to Carlisle 45 mins early! Mission complete! Ertms course the rest of the week, next week could be an interesting one either going to be learning something on the southern region or teaching someone something in Inverness!!

latest addition to the fleet courtesy of mick newbryford are these lovely pair of Colas barrier coaches that i picked up from him at DEMU on saturday just need to add couplings to them and i can drag them straight into store without turning a wheel in anger just like the real thing mick can elaborate on what he did with them, what donor vehicles were used etc

yep more "falling with style" we both winced as we heard a clatter behind us and turned to see mr tilt's apt on the floor, hope its ok kit, there looked to be a piece left over on the table after you reassembled it

Sure are, I wasnt going to be cheeky and add the. to MY workbench thread! Ill add some pics to my layout thread later so show them off

Decalled up the DBSO earlier with railtec's dedicated sheet, I was hoping to do the sgt too but the smaller of my 2 children flattened the battery on both my iPad and iPhone so I couldn't get any refrence pics up! Then I added some s-kits etched disc brakes to it, not that noticeable but what the heck This is a normal wheel/bogie And with the inserts added Picked this up from the 2nd hand stall at demu on Saturday as well as a set of decals and plates to renumber and update it It then became this, DRS 37401 And finished with etched plates added, new style ohle flashes, yellow axle box covers, red bufferbeams, red springs, yellow headcode box, white lamp irons and for a nice finishing touch white rimmed wheels and of course ploughs, missing a few bits like an extra lamp iron above the headcode and drs multi socket but i'm more than happy with it I also swapped sound chips in my 70 to a Leggoman one but have discovered the speaker housing won't fit, began to fit up my Heljan 33 with a Dc kits custom fuel tank housing only to find out I've been supplied with a V4 speaker instead of a 3.5 one the to top it all off the sound chip I took out of the 70 is a 21 pin and the loco I wanted it to go into is an 8 pin so I'll have to find something else to fit it to now!

anyone fancying a trip to trident trains please note that richard is on holiday til the 14th june so its shut til then (as ive just found out after driving up there!)

she would have been better off showing them this... https://www.waterstones.com/book/black-country-dialect/brendan-hawthorne/9781902674513

so filling in some gaps,first up travelling down dovey Jn osprays in the nest blurry 158 then yesterday, catching the train to Macc and my train in macc ready to go and being as i wasnt driving i could get a couple of pics going across barmouth bridge into barmouth, had to wait for a unit coming from the harlech direction and eventually into pwllheli, end of the line! and that was it until derby this morning test trains everywhere and thats that

im not sure if phil had too much to drink in burton last night or had lost the will to live this morning but this is the sight that greeted me upon aproaching abbotswood jn just after the doors opened

glad you like them, as was down that way i didnt want to miss an opportunity to grab some pics for you, to he honest id have not gone down there had it not been for this thread!

some pics from earlier today which may be of interest

some from today before work between llywngwril and fairbourne testing the zoom from the same spot then drove down to penrhyn point in fairbourne then took my mum to tywyn via tonfanau plaque by the entrance to the old camp newly renovated station house then went into tywyn and drove back towards tonfanau as far as the footbridge and that was that for the day, back for a sleep now off to work starting in machynlleth going to derby (via pwllheli!)

Had to travel to the Cambrian today for tomorrow's job, bit of a disaster took me 10 hours to get here! Took the van to derby then planned to get a train to Birmingham and onward to Machynlleth (and ultimately llwyngwril) only to be thwarted by a fatality at Tamworth so knowing if missed the connection at brum I decided to go home but then realised I'd have to leave tomorrow at 14:00 to get to Machynlleth in time to prep my train which is no good as I'm working until the early hours of Saturday so I ended up biting the bullet and heading to the Cambrian! Being as I had so long to wait in various places I decided to stay on board to Aberystwyth rather than having an hour and a half in maccy! And back to Macc And onward to llwyngwril

950001 next then hopefully

Hmm, may have to join the collectors club for that 37

And if your anywhere near the railway look out for me passing through Barmouth at 21:30ish this Friday night with a pair of class 97s on a test train heading towards Pwllheli (and back a few hours later) My memory of that particular corner of the Cambrian was back in 1981 (when I was 6 years old) when my dad was the local Bobby and we had very heavy snow, a DMU got stranded in a snow drift on the headland between tonfanau and llwyngwril and a pair of 25s came to rescue it only for them both to fail as well, I think one actually derailed, if I remember right the passengers were airlifted off the train we lived in llwyngwril at the time and the village was cut off from the rest of the world for about 5 days because of the drifts on both the railway and the roads, in the end my dad and elder brothers walked the railway line towards fairbourne to bring in supplies

Well I quite enjoyed it, I do enjoy Chris Evans anyway both on the radio and tv, he's certainly got a good business head on him for someone so universally hated by many, I certainly wouldnt mind being a few quid behind him anyway!! I hope the chemistry between the presenters evolves throughout the series as Matt le blanc came across as quite a dry humoured guy, my 11 year old loved the bit where pointing at his mouth he said "see I'm smiling, look the corner of my lips go up here and here" revealing a 2 fingered salute to mr Evans! The biggest annoyance to me was the echo in the studio filmed sections and I didn't like the rallycross part of the "star in the car" track

I missed out in Carlisle on Friday evening, I was sat in the wapping sidings with 37116 and DBSO and 37402 came in from the coast with the loco hauled set, had I known I would have got a good pic of them side by side

not too bad, a few breaks en route and 2 hours early into derby, glad we got a run via lichfield with it

60026 on the Chirk logs in the Lune gorge by jim scott, on Flickr 60026 makes its way south with the chirk logs on 27/5/16 ive put an unedited version in my "down by the tracks" thread but this is tidied up a bit on flickr

i cheated, i climbed it in a van! anyway before i go to sleep for the morning here are the proper camera pics, again unedited but there are tidied up ones on flickr (link in my signature) i do like this one in particular! and this one and last nights job, carlisle to derby (30mph all the way from carlisle to weaver jn, managed to get it rerouted south of crewe so i got to derby 2 hours early gbrf 66 oxenholme lancaster preston crewe derby and that was that, back to carlisle later for the long weekend and to get my van back, the only issue being its a rail replacement bus from crewe all the way to carlisle with a change at preston!

thankfully the dbso is up front from carlisle on my way up to carlisle earlier i went off the beaten track and tried to find a place id been looking at for years to try and get some pictures of the lune gorge, and i found it, got a few ggod pics with the proper camera but these are a couple of stills from an iphone video i captured of the logs and here is the video, edited with splice on the iphone https://youtu.be/8n1il85EGZQ

couple of day worth of pics warrington to toton with 60096 which has failed with a compressed buffer toton 047 and 026 (we'll be seeing more of that later) warrington and then today, like flipping groundhog day i had to go to toton to pick up another 60 after 60047 failed in carlisle! over to toton for 026 and into warrington, this time dry though so better pics and that was that, tedious job tomorrow night UTU carlisle to crewe at 30 mph all the way! got 37116 on it but really hoping i get the DBSO end of the train! after that 5 days off to recharge my batteries

that sounds ominous!