Horsetan

Parts of Hounslow and Hayes still look like that, albeit with more satellite dishes and SUVs. Also the smell of curry.

This just screams "Hayes and Hounslow, late 1960s/early 1970s"

I suppose he did whip it out...

This is the test photo I took. One half of the Heljan Hymek bogie casing is on the sprue, and the standard spur gears are lined up. At the time it wasn't possible to buy the individual gears from Heljan or their service agents, but I worked out that they were 12-tooth, Mod 0.5, plastic spurs which were available on eBay from a stockist in Hong Kong. I bought quite a lot of them, and they are a perfect mesh with the original Heljan gears. You should be able to see the new middle axle position which I drilled under the 2nd/3rd gear. It lies exactly on the scale 5'3" point between the outer axles. It's so close to hitting the gear teeth that there's no room to allow the axle to rise. If it were possible to move the gear centres, life might be easier, but these are fixed by the manufacturer.

Anyone familiar with Vincent de Bode's work will know that he works in P87 - the 1/87 equivalent of P4. He also owns and operates a P4 layout called "Flintfields" based on Great Eastern Railway practice.

Märklin were a bit like the German equivalent of Hornby-Dublo/Wrenn. Because they prioritised robustness over almost anything, their chassis design was stuck in the 1970s, with not very realistic driving wheels on steam stock, plus quite massive flanges. It's only in recent years that they've started to move away - somewhat grudgingly - from coarse standards. Also, other manufacturers such as Roco do make some of their locomotives and stock available for AC compatibility, and these are noticeably finer in the chassis department.

Unfortunately I found that Plastic Weld didn't sufficiently fuse the Class 40 sections together well enough, despite also using styrene strip to overlap the joins inside, resulting in a split. The only way I could get them to co-operate was to - very delicately - drill for locator pins to keep it all aligned. The Hornby Hymek bogie is a little too short in the wheelbase to match the B101. Only the Heljan Hymek is dead-on.

There's a lot I need to get back to. Time is not currently favourable, unfortunately.

The 10'6" total wheelbase of the B101s can also be obtained by using Heljan Hymek bogies, which are the exact overall wheelbase. You do have to drill a new middle axle position, though, hopefully without striking the internal geartrain! In terms of cutting and shutting, do make sure that your chosen glues and solvents are up to the job - the last thing you want is your body splitting along the joins because the glue won't take to the plastics. It might be a good idea to pin your joins with appropriate wire (0.7 or 0.9mm dia) so that everything is aligned correctly. I should have done this from the start when I experimentally sandwiched the centre section of a Lima Class 40 between the cabs of a Bachmann 40 (the original Bachmann 40's centre was wrongly-shaped), instead of trusting it all to the strength of Plastic Weld solvent.

What will happen is that the usual can-kicking will take place; it's cheaper.

I had a bit of craic helping to put the prices up.

It's a bit like an unplanned Plandampf

As it happens, Mel Brooks ran with the same joke over 40 years ago:

If anything, that quality should be gravitating towards a more accurate gauge....

Nowadays, I think they call that a "side-hustle"....

....which may also mean that "a nation once again" is likely to be a very long, long way away.

The other undercurrent that I detected years ago, and it's not just in railways, is that in Ireland there's no problem supporting something, but not if people have to pay for it.

....I mean, 'tis not like the British walk blindly into things they don't quite understand....

It's a lot more interesting than watching the England football team playing.

Clones shed is brilliant, as if a flying saucer had landed. At least it still exists, even if it's not publicly accessible, unlike Portadown.

As it happens, the Germans did plan to build a 2-6-8-0 Mallet. This was to have been built by Borsig of Berlin, and would have been the DRG's class 53⁰. There is conflicting information as to whether construction ever went ahead; a couple of sources claim Borsig got as far as building the bare frames. Whatever the truth of the matter, Märklin produced a model of the Class 53 in the 1970s, and continued producing it, on and off, over the following decades. It's quite a sight.

Should be possible to motorise that....

More feralism.