Martin S-C

The double gas lap mount attached to the safety valve cover is a very thoughtful touch by the 0-4-2 designer. I suppose it helps the driver read his newspaper at night along the quieter stretches of line. As for that fireman figure - he's fantastic but it does worry me that he seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to Christopher Walken. And those 6-wheeled vans! Awesome! I want one in 00!

Thanks for giving us a picture of it - finally! You've done a beautiful job on dirtying it down. It always struck me as odd that while milk is one of the cleanest and purest of natural products (this is just a concept created by its colour of course, the stuff is jam-packed full of bacteria and such), but the tank owners and railway operators allowed them to become some of the absolutely filthiest vehicles on the railways. Would it have been so hard to hose them down after every couple of trips? I've always been curious as to why the effort wasn't made.

Another slew of lovely images Gilbert. I may have said this before but the crimson and cream livery really suited the Thompson coaches.

Did you leave any written notes behind, or was this process in your head? If the former I'd be very interested in seeing anything of the working-out you went through since a timetable or sequence for my layout has been bumbling about in my head for literally months and I'm no nearer a solution.

I was wondering about that. The rear centre upright looks like an original structural member, so is the collection of wonky timbers also part of the designed support for the lever frame floor or might these be temporary props put in after the accident to stop it all falling down? It does say a lot about the lack of strength of timber built boxes - not that trains habitually crashed into signal boxes of course...

I find driving toy trains performs that function.

Two bells: "train is entering signal cabin section". Quite the pile-up. Loco seems to have left the rails and ploughed into the signal box and the loaded wagons had so much momentum when they hit the tender, it was forced upwards as the wagons continued into a crushed heap under it. The track visible in the right foreground appears to run straight towards the signal cabin so I wonder if it was a passing siding and the mineral train overran the trap point? Regarding afternoon teas, the kind you get served in the better sort of English hotel and even some pubs now are excessive and probably big enough to do as a main meal of the day. This one certainly did.

Someone's got to take one for the team. Not Coronation chicken, its red Leicester cheese and pickle and was utterly delicious, I mean awful. I had to force down every mouthful, such an ordeal. I hope this blasted layout is worth these sacrifices. I'm going to have to widen the operating wells by 3" when I get back and that's going to play havoc with the track plan. I'll upload some images tomorrow night proving that I did escape the hotel restaurant a few times and burn some calories. Probably not enough to balance against the food intake but some.

I am trying very hard. Its awfully difficult to get out of the Speech House Hotel orangery and walk the few yards back to my bed... Right in the middle. Cinderford is not so great and really good for one thing only. The Curry Leaf Indian restaurant. Checking out the popadums in there was hard going I can tell you.

I have been quiet this last few days as I'm doing a 4 day trip to the Forest of Dean to get the lay of the land, study farming types (turns out its basically sheep!) and photograph any interesting older buildings. Unfortunately this fieldwork lark is proving to be a bit of a chore.

Give us s***t a**es a break - need to have something to do!

You didn't type "late in the evening", you typed "museum of arm transport".

The Daily Mail article touched upon a comment from the Market Deeping chairman about using part of the funds "We are also looking at how we can support anyone across the model railway world. We are looking at how we can support other clubs who are putting on exhibitions who have extra security requirements that they hadn't budgeted for." which curiously enough was exactly my thinking as I began reading the latest posts on this page. The money being donated to the club creates something of a responsibility as has been mentioned but there are obvious beneficiaries - those whose layouts and trade stands and hard work were destroyed. After that MD club owes itself, without any embarrassment, a large cut of the donations, but a very worthy third direction the funds could go in is to establish a fund that could be a pot of cash to be drawn on by other clubs all over the country who could buy better security measures at their own events. As already discussed here, there are some venues such as the extremely large convention halls, sporting, university and civic premises where security is already excellent but it is the middle and lower tier of smaller clubs whose annual shows take places at schools and village/town halls who could really benefit from such a fund.

A British pal of mine moved to France about 20 years ago and lives about 25km inland of Calais. I visit him for wargaming weekends about 3 or 4 times a year and while there are some quite restrictive laws and practices especially in the area of home improvements to older properties - his house was built in the 1870s - and the rules covering contracting workmen, and insurance generally, there are other facets of French law as well as their social behaviours that really appeal. The values of Liberté, égalité, fraternité from the 1790s really do still run deep and function well and I have never met a nicer bunch of people than the locals who frequent his nearby bar. I was brought up to dislike the French - the xenophobic attitudes of those around me in my youth left deep scars - but now that I've had the opportunity to meet some ordinary French people and chat at length with them, I don't understand why the English, generally speaking, traditionally don't like them.

It's reported that Sir Rod has offered a donation of £10,000. Even so the generosity of Miniatur Wunderland is wonderful.

This is the silver lining to the cloud. Its early in the day and also a little crass perhaps, due to all the personal loss, despair and heartache this incident has caused, but this event may turn out to be an actual positive boost to the hobby (or at least the public face of it). I would have thought that the bulk of the disinterested public see Hornby train sets and think there isn't much more to the hobby than that, but the figure of £8000 being placed against one model loco could well create a readjustment in the public mind about what happens at these shows and what efforts go into the creation of the models.

GWR circa 1930s IIRC.

That is an exceptionally sensible law and carries with it all kinds of additional benefits such as better parenting and probably better education all round.

Wrong thread? How do you come to the conclusion that it's possible to wrongly disseminate useful information? What's "wrong" in people learning? Every single piece of prototype information helps everyone, whether they run Hornby Dublo or they are Ian Rice or Geoff Kent. He's not building in P4, correct, he's building in the scale, gauge and standards he enjoys modelling in and you are no authority to tell him what will be easier for him or what he should aim for. And Chris' forum name is Chuffinghell. Even while judging his efforts and telling him what you think is best for him you could do him service of getting his name right.

So much helpful information coming out of this thread. Images and notes going into my own points-and-signals library. A big thank you to everyone involved.

I would suggest a light sepia/brown wash over the whistles.

"Ah, zose Eenglish. Zay make ze leettle cakes on wheels. How cute!"

Either that tank is signalling "I am about to make a right turn", or the officer is a pal of Oswald Mosley.

We actually had some fairly solid tank designs right from the early war. The Matilda II was good and had a better a/t gun that the contemporary German tanks and far superior armour. It lacked only in maneuverability. Later the Cruiser Mark IV or Crusader was a very good vehicle and once it received the 6pdr gun had an excellent balance of the three requisites for armoured warfare. The Infantry Mark III Valentine was also good and although slow, had a turret ring of sufficient diameter to allow it to carry a 75mm gun. Later marks of Churchill were excellent machines, again slow, but well armoured and gunned. By late 1944 we had the Comet, which with its 77mm gun and excellent turn of speed was a very good vehicle. By that stage however with General Motors and Ford churning out Shermans by the mile, the Comet wasn't produced in useful enough numbers, and arguably wasn't really needed. Comet however was the useful design step from Crusader to Cromwell and finally to Centurion. A very small number of Centurion Mk.1s with 17pdr gun were sent to Germany in spring 1945 but fighting ended before they saw action. British armour in WW2 suffered mostly due to incorrect design theory (cruiser vs infantry tank concepts and not a maid-of-all-work design that would finally become the MBT of the 1960s) but more than that, very poor tactics. And I mean dreadful. We suffered many thousands of casualties and equipment losses quite unnecessarily due to not grasping the proper concept of how to use armour and it was misused again and again in France 1940, throughout the western desert and right into 1944 in Europe. Britain however was not alone in this, early American armoured tactical thinking was also lacking, as was French, Italian and Soviet. About the only combatant who grasped the correct use of armour were the Germans and they realised it was merely a component of an overall tactical system involving all arms. Where the Germans suffered was in over-complex designs that were simply too well engineered and they suffered through mechanical issues with some designs rushed into service too soon, and of course later on their obsession with bigger is better, when what they really needed was average in quantity. The Sherman provided such a vehicle for the Allies by the war's second half.

At about 06:54 is that the site of Swithland Sidings?