PhilJ W

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Shopping was easy today, plenty of parking places and no crowds. Bought newspapers and some yoghurts and thats about it. Just as well you didn't try to post after that lot.

Same here, there were plenty of grumbles when the horse drawn float was replaced by an electric one.

Great find! In the first film starting at 1:50 you can see a train entering the Richmond Road tunnel filmed from above the tunnel, this gives some idea of the sharp curve into the tunnel. Also there is a shot in the second film of one of the two USN engineers Brill diesel-electric locomotives used in WW2. These were converted from interurban electric baggage cars by installing diesel engines and generators.

Circuses do not neccessarily have to have animals, many here in Europe operate successfully without any animals.

Good morning and happy new year to all. As I mentioned the fireworks kicked off about 6 yesterday evening but apart from a few pops and bangs at the correct hour for about 15 minutes then there was silence. By then I was in bed and went off to sleep. Muggatee awaits, be back later.

Happy new year to all ER's and goodnight.

The fireworks started around here about 6 o'clock and have been coming and going since.

The stock was quite wide at 9 foot, so perhaps that is why standard gauge was chosen. It might also be because the power units were mounted on the bogies. As for motorising, Tenshodo produce motor bogies with the correct wheelbase for both 00 and HO (28mm and 24.5 mm). The main difficulty would be getting suitable connecting rods and getting them to work. Having said that I visited a toy fair yesterday and one of the traders had on display an HO Swiss 0-4-0 electric shunter with side connecting rods that looked about the right size, only problem was it was £85.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. A bit grey this morning but dry. I expect all hell will let loose tonight when the celebrations kick off but I will probably be in bed by then. Muggatee to drink, be back later.

The loading gauge can be explained by there being two tunnels on the line. One in particular, the Richmond Road Tunnel was entered by a sharp curve which continued into the tunnel, IIRC neither tunnel now survives.

It was similar in many ways to American interurban lines such as the South Shore Line. The high initial cost of electrification though could not be justified, in fact it was built on the cheap with wooden trestles across bays and inlets. This was a factor in the lines demise, the trestles needed replacement and the cost could not be justified.

Goodnight all.

There is a photo of one of these locomotives on a trestle with a works train with the doors open. Why not make the doors as separate items so that they can be modelled open or shut?

On some of the photographs the sides either side of the sliding doors appear to be inset slightly and the doors when opened sit flush with the sides and the door runners are enclosed. The curved protusions are the exhausts and in some photographs the exhausts seem to be raised slightly above the roof, perhaps to reduce heat transfer, the roofs were also painted white to keep the interior cooler.

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Great to see Debs back even if we now have to behave ourselves. I went to the swap meet at Rayleigh this morning and found a couple of working tram models, one was a motorized Corgi Blackpool balloon and the other was a built up Bec kit of an LCC works car. Nice to see you back Debs.

Glad to see RMweb back. This Christmas I have had four phishing attempts, all of which went straight to my spam file, last year I had none. One in particular, a ransomeware demand appeared to come from my own e-mail address claiming that they had control of my internet. However the passwords they claimed were mine I did not recognise and a quick check of the source revealed it was from Russia. I ran my computer security just to be sure and everything was in order.

Yet they built a new depot to accomodate the trolleybuses that is now the Ipswich Transport Museum.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Pleased to see RMweb back again and a round of applause to Andy. Can't stay long as I'm off out shortly, such a busy life us retirees have.

Most of the line was in tunnel under the rock itself.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Just received a package this morning from the L T museum shop. Three books from their sale, two on railway subjects and one on the B type 'Old Bill' bus, all for £10.24 including postage. I did miss out though, they had the Heljan Metropolitan Bo-Bo Sarah Siddons at £35, sold out within minutes. Now to read my new purchases, muggatee at the ready.

Goodnight all.

There were some colour photographs taken by a Japanese tourist c. 1938 I found them quite by accident on the internet but I now cannot locate them. The passenger cars were longer than the locomotives, the length is quoted by Colin Pomeroy in his book. Despite their size they must have looked quite impressive when moving especially in the earlier bright yellow livery and their red painted connecting rods. The yellow livery though didn't wear to well and was replaced with crimson lake. Someone mentioned the possibility of one of the luggage vans surviving in Guyana, I very much doubt that there would be much left as the Guyana rolling stock was abandoned to the jungle over 60 years ago.

If you view the building from behind the back of the bus you can see the upper part of the original building.

Just been checking my e-mails. A couple more spams today, both from the same people and both claiming that the credit cards used on my Amazon account have been rejected. The thing is I don't have an Amazon account and in all such transactions I use Paypal.

About 40 years ago one of our departmental heads* had just passed his test. So he went out and bought his first car, a bog standard Mk. III 1300 Escort to which he added fancy wheels, go faster stripes and an aerofoil. Having done that he came into office complaining that he couldn't get the rear wheels to spin. Before anyone explained to him that the car was front wheel drive I suggested he take it back to the dealer to have it checked out. A few days later he came back and told us that the dealer had checked it and couldn't find anything wrong and had charged him £25 for the priviledge. *Pronounced 'de part mental heads'.