big jim

The volker rail one is sat in bescot at the moment with the point carrying wagons behind!

a few more pics.... yesterday i did a bescot-mountsorrel-hinksey job which i picked back up this afternoon and took back to bescot one from the verhanda on the 70 while waiting for this to cross my pass after picking up the train i headed back towards hinksey via nuneaton, stopped in knighton loop to let a MML pass and into oxford after running round in hinksey and onto today, picked the loco back up at loughborough and worked it to bescot where it is stabled until i pick it back up again tomorrow and put onto 6V46 to westbury! couple of 60s stabled on the reception lines parked up couple of 97s 97302 97304

Dont know how it works but i wish i got clubcard points on 5000 litres of diesel!!

a few more from the last week, started off on a family break in cleethorpes where i had to leave early to work on thursday so i caught the train back to didcot from there, annoyingly when i got back to my hotel in oxford i was looking on ebay and ended up buying a new car from near scunthorpe so ended up catching the train all the way back there yesterday! 180 in cleethorpes 153 off to barton on humber the next day it was a hinksey-bescot-hinksey job a bit of a bluury shot of a 66 passing by and into bescot with the train where i had to fuel both the 70s waiting to get n the fueller being fuelled 66007 on a liner 70804, waiting its turn to come on for fuel 70802 being fuelled i left 802 in bescot for a job i'm just about to go out of the door for, l/e from bescot to mountsorrel then mountsorrel to oxford before driving back in a van to leicester into lodge so i can work the 70 back l/e to bescot tomorrow!!

the ews 'eurosheds' have the no retarder symbols on them too, as did the internationally registered fastline coal hoppers and that was 7 years ago, i think anything new and internationally registered has it on to be honest

it means 'do not use retarders' as on the continent in automatic hump sorting yards

if i had been on it i'd have give you some advance warning bob!

i think your right mick, the 4 mesh sided wheeler did indeed have wooden packaging in it as can be seen in my pics passed an interesting consist at rycroft jn this evening too....... EWS 66 beam carrier wagon network rail MPV! points carrying wagons x 6 salmons falcons very strange to see an mpv in the consist rather than behind the loco

having now driven a few im quite impressed with them, very powerful machine, there are a few niggles though, they are over complicated in places, difficult to get comfortable while driving (ive still not worked out how to drop the seat yet!) and boy they can whine when they get moving!

i didn't realise there were 2 different types of wagon, anyway i had 8 point carriers in my train tonight so i waited while it was shunted forward at hinksey to see what the consist was as the train list gives up no clues! basically i had....... 70804 OAA 3 coupled point carrier (7093780262-247-254) single point carrier (7093780239) single point carrier (7093780155) 3 coupled point carrier (709378148-163-213) 3 x yra 2 x fda 3 x ywa totalling 1112 tons, a nice easy load for the 70!

had double headed 70s this afternoon, split them off at bescot to fuel them, left one there (for a job i have saturday) and the other is on 6X46 back to hinksey/westbury tonight just having a break before threading my way back to oxford with this

some pics while im on a break..... added plates to stop people climbing on the wagon/wheel area note the cantrail stripe!

And as it happens my train tonight from bescot to hinksey is 70804 and the point carrying wagons!!

thanks, lets hope the real colas 37 looks like that when its done, i've not seen any paint specs for it yet! i tried to get a pic for you in toton the other day, the point carrier train was parked next to the kirow crane!

without being a party pooper why in your first post did you make out that you went home and built the wagons yourself then futher into the thread you say that all the work has been done by other people? did you actually respray the 37 yourself or is it someone elses work, i'm just a bit confused! (great looking wagons and 37 whoever did them!!)

wnxx says it was 805 and 803 Im on it on thursday so i wonder if i'll have a pair of them on it then?

they certainly got a shift on with the work, it was relaying the track either side of a double crossover, i arrived on site at 07:00 and the old track was already removed and looked to have been placed onto a train of salmons at the london end of the work site, the ballast had been stripped back to the base (as can be seen in the pictures), the train in front of me moved forward and the ballast was machined out of the wagons into the void, i didnt move til about 11:00 (nice sleep) then i was ordered to move forward where they started to tip the ballast from my train too, my ballast appeared to be being dropped onto the top of the black membrane in the 4ft area, this bought the level back up to the track level where it was then whackered with a cool remote control triple whacker plate gadget, )i wouldnt mind seeing if colas have a spare one so i can get my new drive base nice and level!!) the rear of my train had a few salmons with new concrete sleepers on so i had to move back and forth so they could be off loaded, that was done by about 14:30 when i was told i wasn't needed anymore so i pulled out of the work site ready for the next driver to take over, when he arrived at about 15:45 i looked back and noticed the sleepers and track were loosly back in place at the london end of the crossover, obviously needing reconnecting and tamping etc but i was impressed how quick the rails were back in situ! the way the site was worked meant that 70804 at the london end of my train was uncoupled and recoupled to the ballast train in front (66606 london end) so the rear 70 could head to swindon solo with 'my' train, 70804 would then top and tail 66606s train and the train of used track panels at the london endof the site (with a colas 66 on the swindon end) would be the last off site

a few pics from today, did a possession train in uffington, top and tail 70s on it

66606 on the train in front of mine in uffington

its just a shame the 2nd hand appeared behind the first slightly blocking tornado!!

i put this in my status update a few days ago but here is my 9 year olds school homework, he had to do a space training video but we got a bit sidetracked with slapstick, fart and sick gags! we made it using an iphone lego stop animation app, edited it together with splice and i put together the soundbite "script" into scenes using audacity on the pc he got a homework award for it!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-26878349 round peg, square hole!

if you look at the time lapse webcam on the bbc link, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-26874503 the mobile floodlight nearest camera the must have a dodgy ram or something, from about 1:07 in the video you see it being raised over a number of nights and slowly over the course of a few hours it drops down night after night! made me chuckle anyway

you really are obsessed by washout plugs aren't you!!

Wow that scene is totally unrecognisable now!!