drmditch

Quick question. Do you have an overall wiring plan that you are working to ? If so, how do the cable runs relate to all the carpentry? I realised two days ago that when, about three years ago, I ran my main (not 'mains') circuits I omitted one of the four. Now having a 'happy time' underneath the railway, when the whole plan was to avoid such discomfort and mess!

Gradual progress. I've been tidying and covering the surface-mounted point motors with neat (well I think so) cardboard covers. You will also see the crank mechanisms built to allow PL-10 type motors to fit without being inconvenient. This is all in preparation for the grand 'lowering of the top level'. However, I have now realised that three (?) years ago when I ran the main (not 'mains') power circuits beneath all the fixed baseboard structures, I managed the Red, Black, and Green circuits, but omitted the Blue. This is the one which powers and controls the top level. I did place some connector blocks, but now realise that they are in the wrong place! I have spent most of the last two days grovelling underneath, drilling, fastening cable-guides, and threading cables. Getting there! (Sorry for irregular picture sizes. Struggling to cope with W10.)

You'll have to get up earlier now!

I'm sure that Emma Hart/Hamilton would have created a fascinating blog given an opportunity. I can recommend 'England's Mistress' by Kate Williams. Thank you for reminding me: it's due for a re-read. Actually, of all the characters in her story Norfolk's Favourite Son doesn't come out too badly. As for the others - well let no one deny that the patriarchy existed and exists!

Excuse me! We've been having some magnificent dawns recently. (Although perhaps I'm a little further North than you!)

Good Afternoon I notice that the bracing to the outside of the deck is a has a sold web (sorry if that's not correct teminology.) When I was researching for my scratch-built version a few years ago, all the usual sources (Tatlow Vol 2) etc seems to show these as round bar. My model (nowhere as neat as yours!) has these. Not that I have any intention of changing mine now, but have you managed to find any other information?

Carlisle in Preservation I have just heard, from a usually reliable source, that the track laid in/at Locomotion came from Carlisle Kingmoor. Since it is FB, perhaps Ok for Peco Code 100!

Thank you. Ordered and now with DHL. Thank you also to DaltonParva. I think I understand the concept, but either there is some adjustment that I can't get right, or the springs have weakened over time. Hope the parcel arrives before 31st December!

Roles I fill on my railway:- Chairman of the Board Chief General Manager Chief Surveyor Chief Engineer Chief Mechanical and Electrical Engineer Chief Stores (and therefore Procurement) Agent Chief Accountant Architect. Foreman - Erecting Shop Foreman - Paint Shop (No Boiler Shop required owing to fireboxes being filled by large (proportionately) electric motors) Locomotive Shed Foreman Foreman Carpenter Mineral Agent (this also involves mining and sorting local coal - and I mean that. This is County Durham - coal comes from my garden!) Posts not filled by me:- Passenger Agent (no passengers) Goods Agent (plenty of traffic but no deliveries, invoicing, or demurrage) Now excuse me - I must go and make the tea!

Well, I don't think the Tyne upstream of the swing bridge is being dredged much these days, so you might get away with it.

Indeed it is/will be. And I need to get on and build my version!

Thank you. I need one of those (although on my railway it might have to be in (ersatz) teak. Please what is the model's provenance? And - if it is D&S, does anybody know if it might still be available? Despite the above comment, I do like the NER liveries of Saxony Green and Lake, and have one special train in exactly that, although it needs some improvements before I photograph it!. I am minded however that many trains on the ECML were ECJS and NE/GN JS, and were thus in varnished timber finish. PS - and of course the NER was the most important constituent of the LNER. It was supposed to be the most profitable part as well. Shame that didn't work out! Never mind. I'm quite happy to regard the GN main line post-1923 as the NER London Branch!

I hope Durham is, ultimately, welcoming. I am afraid that for University Students, it won't feel much like God's Own Country at present. Not just Durham though, my nephew is locked down/up in Cardiff at the moment

May I echo this please

There was a discussion about curves and Gateshead a few posts ago. Thanks to the marvelous NLS facility (please observe all copyrights etc.) one can see the full extent of these after the King Edward Bridge was built I have often thought what a splendid 'big' model this would make, with a natural operating well in the middle! Actually, it might provide more operational interest before then, with all the ECML trains 'reversing' in the station. There are accounts from the 'Races to the North' in 1895 of the very competetive Gateshead crews coming up the Team Valley and then taking the curves around the SE corner of the shed very fast indeed so as to impress their colleagues who would turn out to watch. I don't think we'll see No.1621 do that again!

Although hardly in common use on a small Norfolk line, parishioners might like to know that ECJS No.12 has returned to Locomotion at Shildon. It is marshaled behind No.1621 and looks magnificent. I was able to walk through the corridor today, while assisting some colleagues, and could admire the lincrusta decorating the walls. Rather strange however is the lincrusta ornamenting the lavatory. Was this to make third class passengers feel at home in a brick-built privy? They certainly did not have much space to feel at home in! (I hope that such subjects do not lower the tone of this informative and august thread. Although perhaps some of the more recent political content might be best used in such a facility. Provided of course that it does not fall into water-troughs and thus clog up locomotive injectors!)

Just wish to point out that I am one of the founder members of The Society for the Preservation of. teabags from drowning.

None-the-less, Compound2632's summary above (I was too lazy to look it all up) shows what influence Crewe (and McDonnel) had. Is not the swing-link bogie one of his developments?

Re: LNWR 'Queen Empress' class. Was not one of the then Crewe apprentices, one H N Gresley, very impressed by these locomotives? For all his foibles, Mr Webb seems to been responsible for training a number of very well thought of engineers. Which one of the above class was painted ivory white? Shame that never caught on.

Sir, I fear that you may be succumbing to another form of '......ism' ! Caroline ('drmditch')

I'm flattered! It is scratchbuilt, using parts of a very old Triang coach. It could be better, but I have not seen any other models of the Diagram 89 car, with the articulated engine portion.

Excuse me Ladies and Gentleman, while I will, carefully, express no opinion on the Railway Station/Train Station debate, I do feel I should raise objection to the above assumption that having longer arms in proportion to one's bodylength is a mark of inferiority. This is 'apeism' in a particularly ugly form. If I understand the taxonomy correctly, 'modern humans' are one of the surviving types of Great Ape, and in terms of breeding success clearly the most successful. However, we have achieved this at enormous cost to our fellow Great Apes, to the other big-brained social creatures (for example the Great Whales and the Elephants), and I am deeply suspicious as to why we form the only extant version of Humans and the other recent forms,the so-called Neanderthals, Denisovans, and others have somehow vanished. If the ability to use a large brain and having binocular vision and an opposable thumb has given us the ability to change environments to suit ourselves then we have been singularly irresponsible with it. What is so superior about bi-pedalism and balancing the heaviest weight in our bodies on top of a critical and highly-stressed structure? If a rapidly changing tectonic environment, and our co-evolution with fast and deadly predators, encouraged us to develop tools and weapons, then it is rather sad that we haven't evolved a more extended sense of responsibility. In my 'bucket list' of things to do in what must be, presumably, the last third of my life, I would, in addition to sailing across the Atlantic (in a crewed-up boat obviously, none of this single-handed stuff), want to meet a Great Whale and an Elephant. I would also very much like to meet an Orang-utan, and possibly some Gorillas. Bonobos (largely matriarchal) would be very interesting, but I would be nervous of meeting Chimpanzees. They are far too close to us, both genetically and in behaviour to be comfortable with. If there had been a slightly different series of tectonic events in what is now East Africa, we might have developed more in an arboreal environment, and stayed more a climbing animal than a running animal. Then long arms and prehensile feet would have been very useful. Think what advantages that would have for railway systems! Multi-level carriages with more hanging straps than seats. No need for expensive footbridges, just simple fibre structures. So please, don't claim that our fellow Great Apes are very inferior to us. We have, so far, had a few lucky environmental breaks, and then set about abusing our heritage. I don't think many Orang-Utans, Gorillas, or Bonobos voted for DT or BS. Chimpanzees I'm not so sure about, but if I understand correctly, dominant males are most likely to be deposed by younger, stronger rivals. Not ones much the same age as themselves! Anyway, why should we be so proud of our physical form? Big heads (with all the problems those confer) and Big Bottoms are what define us! Addition:- The Postman has just delivered a cardboard tube from that nice Mr Isinglass. So now a choice is required about what locomotive to work on next:- NER Class Z NER Class V LNER Class V2 Any opinions? (I am happy to use my binocular vision and opposable thumbs in the course of construction!)

Yes, that will do. Warfare with high-velocity rifles. 'Concentrating' civilian populations in war-zones. Mass-targeting of political opinions by the owners of the popular press. Large scale industrial unrest. Colonial oppression (although I do like Tsing-Tao beer.) No wonder the works of the not-quite-recently-deceased Mr Marx became so popular. For reference (although I may have referred to this somewhere above) see 'The Dark Continent - Europe's Twentieth Century' by Mark Mazower. I'm quite happy to select the bits of history I like, and make interesting models of for my railway. Whether I would actually have liked working on the NER (or anywhere else in the North East of England) is another matter. Anyway, I (or half of me anyway) come from Essex/Suffolk farm labouring stock; that was for the men, and the women would have gone into service until they got married. Let us be nostalgic by all means, but keeping a firm sense of what changes needed to be made, and what changes were made, by our forebears. After all, 100 years on it may well be that the early 21st century until February 2020, will be seen as a high-point of comfortable living. (For some of the world's population anyway.) I am looking forward to writing a history of these days in about 30 years time, by which time I will be 98. This is a good way of keeping detached and not screaming at the radio/television/computer etc etc

Are you suggesting that fish do not need to travel at express speeds?

Rather than the Scots being the Irish who could?