big jim

had a run to cholsley and back behind "northern gas works No1" a pleasant little trundle and the little loco worked quite hard on the final little climb into cholsley station the loco and coaches were decorated for the haloween weekend with some passengers dressed up too, i opted for the "casual clothes monster" look! interesting looking alco? in the yard at wallingford i did get more pics on the proper camera but im not home for a week now so they will have to wait, after i had a ride on the train i headed out and got a couple of pics of the train out on the line near cholsley i also set up the lens camera on the tripod for some pics but the battery went on it after i'd got the ones above enjoyed the look round pendon, only spent about 45mins there but loved what i saw (again) the bonus this time being madder valley was on display, last time i went in feb 2011 the area was being developed/refurbished so i never got to see it, they loop a dvd giving an overview of the layout which is a good idea as it walks you through the layout end to end, the commentary being by bob symes whos voice just grabs you from the first word, the model railway world's very own bernard cribbins!!

Having a well deserved day off today but i've ended up doing railway things!! So far i've been to pendon and im just about to have a ride on the cholsley and wallingford railway! There is a steam loco on the front but this is shunting the stock out to release it from the station, more pics later

oh boy that was a great nights sleep! premier inn wont be getting any complaints from me about their good nights sleep guarantee, after 2 weeks of sleeping in the cab of a 66 virtually every night i'm enjoying a proper comfy bed in didcot, and ive got it for a whole week too, bliss!! just deciding what to do after breakfast, i think a trip to pendon might be in order, possibly then a trundle over to steam in swindon? went into the west end last night and saw nevilles island starring ade edmondson, neil morrisey, robert webb and miles jupp, absolutley fantastic show and i thoroughly recommend going to see it if your in london, off to see book of mormon again on wednesday with my trainee as we have a free time between jobs, well we finish 23:30 on tuesday and not back in til 22:00 wednesday night so im not sitting in the hotel all day!!

Imagine falling asleep on the tube and seeing this when you woke up You damn dirty ape!!

well you'd think that wouldn't you but our run round move at the north end drops behind a GPL on the down fast where we changing ends and once clear head back the down fast and cross over to the goods (which is the line with the hooky board on), the warning board (and associated magnet) are still futher north than the 'change end' point so during a run round we dont encounter ANY advance warnings at all on the lines we use or indeed a reminder board at the north end change end point we do however pass beyond the warning boards for the right direction moves (the mainline one being a simple 30/50 double dot sign and the one on the slow the same but with the arrow pointing towards the up fast) but they are on adjacent lines the more we delve into this the wronger its beginning to look!! if i get a chance i'll do a track plan with the signals locations on and see what we come up with, i am however working away for the week now so i may struggle!! by the way, whats a WON? (that last bit is a joke!!)

i can see what you are saying about the board being at the signal on the goods (which is on the gantry 1/4 way down my train), that makes sense however as my train is capable of doing a wrong direction move from the ground signal on the down fast to access the up fast then really that signal should have an arrowed warning board too!!

i wish the kids would stop putting N gauge cars on top of my OO gauge locos

Got to the bottom of the speed board conundrum, there is indeed a 30/50 TSR on the up fast that the board corresponds to so i recon that the board is missing an R 'reminder board' below the speeds The reason i'd not noticed the TSR is when we run round in toton, either on the fast or slow line we don't use the up fast at all and the warning for it is beyond the north end yard ladder, so again not somewhere i get to when running round. as for not seeing the commencement boards on the up fast, when we stop the train they are to the left if we're on the slow and the right if we're on the fast, both run rounds then involve us returning South light engine on the opposite side of the train to the warning board, as for not seeing the T board at the south end, after the run round we generally head off toward the slows so its 2 tracks over hence why it doesnt register as it does not apply to our line Hope that clears it up

all will become clear tomorrow morning regards the crossovers thats another strange one, the first two nearest the camera (down goods to down fast and down fast to up fast) are 15mph and the one to take you on the slow (up fast to up slow) is 20mph (you can see the boards to the left of the picture)

its got me thinking now!! i get a warning for the 30/50 TSR on the down fast (ie coming towards the camera on the centre empty line) which starts roughly where the back of the train is below the signal gantry (you can just make out the back of the TSR board) that continues past where i took the picture to pretty much the north of toton yard the puzzling bit is the crossover is 15mph as is the next one which is where i normally run round to get back onto my train and (as far as i know) trains cannot be signalled wrong direction onto the up line where the TSR is situated as there is no limit of shunt on that line or XF indication in the theatre box, there is certainly no T board in the wrong direction on the up on the rear of the TSR board and i'm damn sure there are no TSRs on the up fast either as i dont pass a T board there either i can see gary's logic that its telling the driver of a train coming from the right hand line he is joining a 30/50 but surely that would/should have a R board as well EDIT; sm42, the line to the far left of the picture is the up fast, there is another line futher left again, the up slow (former high level goods) which is one of the ways i go to ratcliffe from toton and i can confirm there are no TSRs on there at the moment, even if there were then the board would surely be after the pointwork, and the linespeed is only 45 anyway so it definatly doesnt apply to the slow the only thing worrying me now is that if there is a TSR on the up fast i've missed it everytime ive been to toton in the last 6 months, not that i'll even get upto 30 anyway after running round and clearing the crossovers, if there is one there then the warnings for it will be too far north for me to acknowledge as i only stay in 'station limits' as it were i'll have a look in the morning as its bugging me now one thing the advent of bidirectional signalling has certainly bought about a lot more "AWS does not apply" X cancellation boards as ESRs and TSRs have to be shown in both directions on each line, the line between wigston and leicester is a prime one at the moment, you get 5 AWS cancellation warnings in the space of about 1/2 mile (4 for various TSRs and a fixed one for the 30/50 aproaching leicester station

Well i was making comment on it being in the way of my picture but looking at it again i see what you mean, hadn't noticed the error til now!! My trainee can do an RT3185 tomorrow for it

couple from today dodgy iphone pic stupid speed sign!! a couple from whitacre junction, same location different height again compare that to the last one i took of a coal train there back in 2008!! the existing signal has been moved back from the junction by about 4 wagon lengths

No, its real...... And dont call me shirley!

a bit blurry but taken from the pole freehand at 01:00 this morning its not come out TOO bad!! also spotted this outside toytown earlier, another 60 for us, don't know which one though? we very nearly had a 50 on the coal earlier (briefly), we had to do a wagon swap at washwood heath and 50007 bought the wagon down from heartlands park, unfortunatly boden was given the wrong info that the wagon to be removed was at the rear of the train so had positioned it north of the 50 to simply drop on the rear of the train, had it have been positioned correctly at the south end he would have been able to have drawn out and backed it onto the train and i could have got a pic of 50007 at the head of the train!! as it was at the end of my day and i wanted to get off home i didnt wait to bother getting a pic of the 50

the unedited version makes much more sense, i watched it with a smile this time, guru murthy's questions were a bit bizzare, are you a role model for black norwegens? what a great answer richard gave, obviously saw the obsurdity of the question and worked it for comic effect!! one of the funniest things on the IT crowd involving moss was when he had a bang to the head which knocked him out and came round to the sound of windows restarting also the bomb disposal robot "look roy a real robot, ive never seen one in the wild before" then when it goes haywire, "what operating system is it running?" "vista" "we're all gonna die!!"

The 'padding is the stuffed snake!! There's a spiderman lurking in there too I'm down there all next week with various jobs so i'll grab some pics of the bits difficult to see from the bridge like the picnic tables made from sleepers, chock storage units etc

Don't forget the stuffed snake in the trellising when you add the foilage to it (Ill get a pic on monday if i remember)

too long! its a full 12 hour job by the time i get to brum and back in the van with about 8 hours driving in it, you do get a lot of sitting around time on it though, 3 hours in humberstone loop in the middle of the night where you can get a good sleep, then there is 1 hour in elford on the return but you do get a break in the power station either before or after discharging the coal where there are proper facilities and a cafe, vending machines etc its a bit of a grueller to be honest but there are currently only a handful of us who sign landor st to the power station but once more drivers pass out or learn the route from landor st it will make the job shorter as we can say do landor-ratcliffe-toton instead, taking 3 hours off the job

the only thing that spoils that is the splicing in of the tarantino interview, would have been better to see the whole thing start to finish unedited i'll be honest i love richard ayoade, very good deadpan comic actor but i cant make out in that if he is genuinly p'd off or playing it for comedy effect, if he is doing it for laughs then i think he's missed the mark somewhat, i certainly didnt laugh (as i would normally do at him on the IT crowd, boosh etc) just came across as arrogant and rude or was that what he was going for? its certainly bought attention to his new book via the medium of social media and viral vids (any publicity is good publicity and all that) he must have been wearing womens slacks!

just a few from today, same job, different places, all from the lens camera dont worry i had a block on the line i'm stood on to run round! toton stenson Jn derby bound voyager willington power station cooling towers where to get pictures tomorrow? on the same job again

Im itching to get back into the shed this week but work is preventing me doing so, all ive managed is to get hold of a couple of low relief industrial units from the modeller which i was hoping to use in the 'oil terminal' corner of the layout, as it happens it will only fit one of them (the other does have a nice corner to go in anyway) but im going to need to move some track about to get it to fit This is the corner as it is But to fit the building im going to need to slew the tracks over, they will be parallel with the other one, may have to replace the Y point with a small radius one too, then i can put the building as shown below I can then add discharge pipes between the lines and the storage tanks pretty much on the old track alignment

on the coal again this week but doing landor st-ratcliffe-landor st far too wet and wild for pics this morning but a couple after our arrival at landor st on the return from the sony camera, nothing of any real interest but here for the record

in town the other day my little un (5) noticed that the "granger games" computer games shop had a makeover, replacing the old orange signs with black ones...... "daddy, look, a new shop has downloaded"