PhilJ W

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Thanks for the update on Sandy John, looks as if its going to be a bit of a roller coaster hopefully with a satisfactory outcome. My Korean car was built in India, it arrived 3 months late due to a strike in the factory making them. Its now more than ten years old but still under 28,000 miles. If I do replace it I am considering an electric car, the only drawback being the range of such vehicles. Thats all for now, be back later.

Oops, it is the Wrenn not the Triang one that is the same length. I compared one with drawings in a couple of books of Metropolitan stock. If you wanted to make a conversion etched overlays would be the best idea.

Goodnight all.

The Triang Pullmans are the correct length for the two Metropolitan cars. Unfortunately the window size and spacing is completely wrong.

Colin Pomeroy gives enough measurements to go by, for example the twin engined motor luggage vans (100/101) had a bogie wheelbase of 7 feet on bogie centres of 19' 6" and the width of the passenger cars is given as 9 feet and as the photographs show uniform trains it can be safely assumed that all the stock was the same width.

Hatton's has No. 1 in wartime grey at £64. As for the LT museum ones it looks as if some are on E-bay already, same trader with low start price. I've bid for one but no more than £35, it stands at £20 at the moment. The trader is still adding them on so I might put in a few low bids and I might get one for less than £34.

Likely as not, they were built c. 1930 for the Orient express. They had sleeping accomodation for the crew and a central birdcage guards lookout. I was wrong in what I said about them fitting the UK loading gauge, the birdcage lookout would have been too high.

Metro-Cammel built some very similar brake vans for Wagon-lits, to the British loading gauge but longer than your model.

Out of stock last night. Doubt very much if they will have any more, certainly not at that price.

I could not locate any drawings, the card kit I had made was designed using the full side photographs on the website and a few published basic dimensions, principally those in Colin Pomeroy's book. I have the IRS book on Drewry-Baugley but the information in there is somewhat scant. I am sending you the card kit today as promised, it is as accurate as we could make it the only error was in the colours, the livery should be bright yellow and the roof should be white. Incidently the maker of the kit included the exhausts but because the roof was finished in dark grey it was not very noticeable.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Best birthday wishes to Sandy (and John) and I hope things turn out well. David, I seem to recall that the four digit password was from a website that gave you a password that you could then change (which I would have done anyway). It appears that they may have hacked that website. I am pretty sure that the website concerned is defunct, the owner having died or moved on and just left it. An easy target for such hackers I imagine.

Goodnight all.

Heads up. The London Transport Museum have a sale on up to two thirds off. Unfortunately some of the best bargains have gone including the Heljan Metropolitan Bo-Bo electric locomotive Sarah Siddons on offer at £35! all now sold out.

Sometimes a larger unstressed engine can be more economical than a highly stressed small engine. Quite a few early Transit motor caravans had their 2 litre V4 engines replaced with the 2.6 litre V6 when it was found that not only was performance enhanced but so was fuel consumption.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Went down to Tess Coe's this morning, plenty of parking spaces and no crowds in store so I went bargain hunting, they were selling off stuff as much as 90% off but I didn't get a lot, just some veg and a few other bits. Before going home I popped into town and grabbed another bargain. A 'pop up' shop had a few Oxford Diecasts on offer at half price so I grabbed a few. Thanks for that Neil, they did allege that I'd been viewing dodgy material as well. My usual policy is 'If in doubt, click on nowt.'

Morning all from Estuary-Land. John, good to hear that Sandy is improving, however slowly. No sign of the hackers/electronic blackmailers but I ran my computer security as a precaution, nothing was found of any significance but I was able to chuck out a few old files. Need to venture out today to the shops but only for the papers, weather looks dry if a bit grey. Thats it for now, muggatee awaits, be back later.

Thats what you really mean.

Goodnight all.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Just had an E-mail appear in my spam folder demanding that I pay 500 bit-coins otherwise they will take over my account. As 'proof' the e-mail appeared to come from my account and they claimed that one of my passwords was a four digit number which is obviously not one of my passwords. I checked the 'history' at it did appear to come from a different e-mail address. I deleted the e-mail, perhaps I should have held on to it and passed it on to the police.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Christmas dinner has been consumed, washing up has been done now so all I have to do is put my feet up. Might have a ham sandwich later if theres room. There's room for a couple of drinks, I have a bottle of Kraken rum and a glass handy. Now to watch an archeology program on the National Geographic channel.

I've read the book, seen the film and the remake and tasted the stew.

Happy Christmas all from Estuary-Land. Nice to hear from a few hitherto absent ER's, I see Debs has posted on Facebook as well.

A merry Christmas all and goodnight.

Its 1/43 scale. Oxford are starting to make JCB models in 1/76 scale and some of the Atlas 'World of Stobart' *plant models are quite good and quite cheap at the moment. *The Komatsu bulldozer and the Volvo excavator are very good.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Just remembered that I have no cream to put on my Christmas pud. There is a place locally that never closes even at Christmas but I think I'll save the Christmas pud until Boxing Day.