Horsetan

YES!!

"The Birds"?

....or their droppings....

Is Crossley back in business?

New SSM J15 etches have arrived, and a new batch of kits are apparently now being packed... Goes without saying, if you want one, now's the time to get your order in, as it took five months for the etch company to get round to producing the relevant etches.

Dear God, I thought my DC Kits Derby Lightweights were bad enough, but to have to tackle MTK......

That's the last iteration of Bulleid's turf-burning testbed, prior to scrapping in about 1957. 356 was colloquially known as the "...Mental Turf Burning Locomotive"

Is a bit like Macmine Junction, but with the branch at the opposite end...

The GSR didn't exist until 1925.

Who's to say that the Drumm battery system itself couldn't be further developed?

The WLW design looks vaguely like one of the Cambrian Railway 0-6-0s over in Wales....

In terms of £££, what budget was available to the GSR during that period for building new locomotives? What were the building costs of 800-802, and 850? How much money was left after that? Note 850 was made possible partly because it made use of some existing Woolwich Mogul parts. The impression I get is that, money being somewhat scarce, the GSR stuck to the conventional principles that it saw as being cost-effective, or cheap. If the 25 engines of the 342/670/700/710 had not been built, what could the GSR have created for the money not spent? Innovation tends to cost, so developing a new mixed-traffic design, with Walschaerts outside motion, may not have resulted in as many as 20 engines. There would have had to have been some sort of testing of the initial tank and tender designs to see if they really were of universal use, before asking for approval to build more. In the case of the 2-6-0, would all-new tenders have been built for them, or salvaged from older withdrawn engines? We don't know. I'm also looking at the W class moguls in the North which were introduced in 1933: - As a contemporary design, what did they cost the LMS(NCC) to build? - Would they have been suitable for use on the GSR network and, if so, on which routes? - Would it have been realistic for the GSR to ask permission to test a W or two? If such permission was forthcoming and the engine found suitable, would the LMS have then agreed to build them for the GSR? What would that have cost?

How many of them did Bus Eireann have to start with?

Not that easy. The smokebox/G8AS parallel boiler/firebox and possibly the cylinders and outside motion are directly transferable from the Fowler engine, likewise pony and trailing bogie, but the chassis frames appear different. The 6ft driving wheels are shared with the Stanier Black 5. The tank and bunker plate work are also Stanier/Fairburn-like, without being a direct swap with either of those 2-6-4T designs. If it had been that easy, Hornby would have had alternative tooling for their Fowler 2-6-4T ready years ago.

D'ye think the Illuminati were involved?

D'ye think yer man's becoming a "seagull manager"?

Don't eat chips in their presence.

Doesn't say much people's commitment to things generally, either

I think they still do the divide/rejoin on the North Kent coast route, where down trains divide into Ramsgate and Dover portions, and up trains join, at Faversham.

I first saw the Clifden carriage in 1988. I remember it as being relatively complete, in a very faded grey/green shade. I last saw it in 2001. By then, it had been partly wrapped in sheets to keep some of the elements out, but some of the exterior timbers were missing, exposing the interior. Presumably a bit more of it has fallen off since then.

Basically a new-build, so.

We don't often hear about the oul station at Clifden, but it has made national news.... Is that MGWR 6-wheel carriage still rotting there?

Can't remember how much I paid for mine, but the rewheel to 21mm gauge was cheap.

In some of the SLNC photos, you can actually see the way the rail head undulates on each length due to long-term wear.