big jim

Northern/drs may have a local instruction to have one fitted

Couple from yesterday, after 3 days of driving 37s what's my train back to the caravan, a 37! http://youtu.be/Mz8ZAZNOl4U DBSO leading 37423 on the rear Got more pics in the proper camera but they will have to wait til I can upload them to the computer

Funnily enough I was looking at the 'likes' yesterday and thinking that because if included 37's Welsh steam and the Cambrian coast it's got more likes in a few hours than most of my other recent posts get in a couple of days!! Anyway, on the Cumbrian coast now!

some from today, sutton bridge to bescot snd light loco back to sutton bridge, didnt bother with my proper camera but wished i did in the end, these are just iPhone pics and into bescot, loco off the rear and into the column road to stable back to the other loco and away to shrewsbury where i left it on coleham for an A exam from there i decided to head off to my mums house on the cambrian coast for the night and head back in the morning for the next days work starting in shrewsbury stopped off at llanfair ceirnion en route also popped in to fairbourne for a nosy spot the 158! and looking back towards fairbourne and barmouth from friog panoramic view and now you see why i wished id packed my proper camera, this would have been a lovely shot with 50x optical zoom!

its obvious to me, its upside down

your gonna need a colas fiesta van too being as we run the 97s out of there now

this afternoon i decided to finally carry on with 37057, i have a zimo chip and custom lighting kit to fit to it, being as i was stuck in the house waiting for british gas to come i thought 'what better opportunity to get cracking' the lighting kit is from jason edmunds (stickswipe on ebay) and ive been dreading fitting it as i cant solder! end lighting unit, markers, headlight and tail lights, surface mount LED's pcb on the loco, an early Bachmann one with no lights at all to which i added the cables that the wiring kit will attach to all stripped down as i was going to be fitting a speaker at the same time so using a circle cutter compass i cut the hole for the speaker which i wasnt happy with as i felt the magnet was a bit too close to the motor so i cut a square hole in the other tank instead and before you ask why didnt i just make the existing hole square, erm yes, never thought of that til i just started uploading the pictures! added a plasticard 'wall' and a couple of ledges inside the speaker enclosure to make me a box speaker loosely in place and with a lid on wires connected, round hole refilled with a plasticard disc up through the lid weight cut in half and refitted speaker sealed in with bathroom sealer pcb refitted to the chassis speaker cables run through the chassis bogies back on zimo chip fitted and ready to roll so out to the shed i go, power up, zimo bursts into life, go to move off, nothing, sounds ramp up fine but no movement, hmmm, not good anyway stripped the loco back down while in the shed and narrowed the problem down to being the pcb, i couldnt get movement with the zimo, a gaugemaster chip or after putting a blanking plate in, however if i selected loco 0 on the dcc controller and touched the motor wires to the track it powered up, similarly touching those wires direct to the ones coming from the bogies (sat on the track) and you got power picked the whole lot up and back in the house where i simply discarded the pcb and wired the chip straight to the loco wiring, i think i may have caused the issue as i attempted to solder the 3 wiers to the underside of the pcb, see told you i couldn't solder motor and pickup wires are below the insulation tape and those above are for the lighting kit which im not going to continue with until ive tested the loco again tomorrow as its too late tonight and ive got work early in the morning

dolau was the one that sprung immediatly to mind for me but a quick google image search revealed it not to be, platform too long in the picture, no OOU platform, station buildings etc, similarly bucknell, not enough infrastructure for my liking i only learned as far as llandridnod (and never signed it in the end) so the stations south of there i cant help with, although sugarloaf is a definate no no as not even the loco would fit on the platform there! edit: quick google search of the list above and i'd say its ammanford, random flickr pic https://flic.kr/p/AEA9oL

thanks, i took a couple, this is the other one, prefer the first one though!

yeah thats the one, been looking at it on the web, looking very bad indeed, power expected to be switched off to 40000 homes due to the proximity of the pylons i must admit when i first saw the smoke on the way in to new st i thought it was futher back towards washwood heath but according to one news report they are also dealing with another "substantial fire" in that area too, a busy night for the firefighters that's for sure

couple of days worth of pics this time started in bescot where my loco was coming in DIT on 6M50 had to deal with an incident in bescot which meant it took a bit longer to get the loco released from the train before i could fuel it and head off to nottingham and away to nottingham, no pics as it was dark and by the time i got my camera out the other driver had opened up and was on the move! i then took his van upto grimsby to a hotel for the night and then this morning dropped it off in immingham 60002 on the transit quay and a taxi to barnetby for a train back to bescot for my van! 185 unit dropping in to take me to doncaster where i had 30 mins to wait cross country to birmingham new street from there, interestingly at water orton we took the up and down derby slow line (wrong line towards birmingham) which was unusual, however when we got to bromford bridge i noticed a freightliner stopped on the fast line, must have failed so we were making use of the bi-di line to get past it, one for the red pen brigade! (ive done it dozens of times though), also as we got closer to landor st jn i noticed a fair bit of smoke in the air behind the old saltley depot and spotted a few fire appliances en route to what looked like a small blaze into new st for the train back to bescot, by now whatever was on fire had taken hold and it was looking pretty fierce, you can see the freightliner cranes in the foreground in fact when i got to bescot the full extent of the fire was clear to see! bear in mind the fire is about 5-6 miles away! GBRf 66 on the VQ (Virtual quarry) so that was that, off i went home but diverted via norton bridge to have a look at the new track layout, by now it was absolutley lashing it down! new line looking north and south the voyager is coming from stone and heading south, the northbound headlight is a freight heading towards crewe and that was that, home to dry off, tomorrows job off the cambrian is cancelled so a day off for me (makes up for the 2 days ive just had in which should have been rest days)

60002 Immingham transit quay by jim scott, on Flickr

I'll be honest I wondered the same too when I saw it!

shed day today, family away so time to crack on with stuff, as it happened i just ended up playing trains! a new addition to the fleet, 08417, this is my "pet engine" as its the 08 that i drive in derby and did all my training on, so glad to have finally got it and of course my pet engine would be complete without a mini me runs beautifully, got richard at trident trains to fit a Hornby chip to it while i was in the shop also while in there i collected 4 more Dapol MIA wagons to go witht he 4 i got from mike at C+M earlier in the week i can probaly get away with another 2 or 3 in my longest siding in the yard also added the buffet to the WAG express and swapped the schenker 67 for the arriva one, an impressive looking train, had to swap the thin coupling on the 67 for a wider one as it didnt like the downhill grade as when the coaches started shoving the couplings rode over each other and caused a derailment but swapping the couplings pretty much sorted it painted the cant rail stripe on the test train (tidied it up above the door since), still need to refit the glazing to the other coach though and added the model rail genny van and 37057 to it back in the house i have added wire handrails to my TTS sound 97302 and was about to begin sound chipping and fitting lights to 37057 but decided against it until tomorrow not a fantastic job with the rails but more than passable, it wasnt a loco i was going to detail anyway as its one i got cheap from a car boot ($40) but low and behold i now drive the real thing day in day out so i thought i would tidy it up, going to lightly weather it at some point as for 37057, too many wires to be messing about with while tired so that can wait (there is also a separate custom wiring set up to add!

some from yesterday, caught the train from wigton to crewe, rolled in and it was 37402 it may look like "noise" in the picture but its actually rain! into carlisle where "roundhouse" also got off the train having had a trip round the cumbrian coast 9704 leading back to workington and off it went, heck of a hump under the 2nd coach 57311 that was it, for that bit of the day, my job was to conduct a tamper between shrewsbury and gobowen, just one pic from this morning should have been day off tomorrow but doing a loco move bescot to nottingham and onward in a van to immingham

this F16 sound, its not the sound of a cheese butty getting squashed in a door is it?

some from carlisle today, couldnt be bothered with pics again! 60095 in need of a wash snaking out of the yard ready for the off and into carlisle and that was that for the day picture wise

i knew there was something missing ive just realised that with the addition of these hoppers to my stock that my wagon fleet is now mainly Dapol stuff, something i would have never imagined 5 years ago

dammit my previous post makes me look like a nutjob now you've edited the post above double dammit, look like more of a crazy person now this is the first post on a new page wibble!

the freightliner came off at the north end of the loop taking out the points, the area where the track is missing has always been plain rail. i believe the piece missing in the pics is something to do with the refurbishment work thats been going on on the bridge, if you look closely you can see the removed track panels sat on top of the laid track at the north end of the loop, i think its due to be put back in at some point

ooh, a rake of white ones in the snow, nice

edit: post looked totally out of context on a new page so deleted!!

just picked up 4 from mike at C+M, cracking looking wagon, ordered 4 more from trident trains to collect on payday this friday, no doubt get a couple more at some point too

i do indeed toot and wave

i failed on the aproach to that crossing (marsh lane) with a class 70, i had to get my trainee to fire up the rear loco (top and tail) and shove me all the way to aylesbury loop, by the time he'd done that the crossing had timed out so i had to get down and push the manual operation plunger then quickly get back up and get moving! everything has to slow to 10mph before that crossing anyway and only proceed when safe to do so, accelerating once on the crossing so the bin liners can take a while to pass over it, the longest train ive taken over it was 20 auto hoppers, a kirow crane and a sleeper delivery train with a 70 both ends, funnily enough that failed too in brill tunnel, that was a sod to have to run round, left the train in risborough and had to go to wycombe to cross over as it was too long for the track circuits its been quite funny on the cambrian over the last few months to see people try and race you to buttington crossing to get there before you, ok im only doing 40mph max so they may think they'll get there first but i will hit the treadles before they get anywhere near the crossing, i always win, then to add insult to injury i have to go slow aproaching and over the crossing and only proceed when i'm sure its safe to do so