Horsetan

Ah.

BR were trying, by various degrees, to make some branchlines - East Anglian ones in particular - viable, or rather less lossmaking than had been the case with steam, so anything that was cheap to procure and capable of carrying low-volume passenger traffic (and it was very low volume for some routes, with some services regularly failing to reach double figures in terms of passengers carried) at relatively low cost had to be a goer. That was good news for AC, Park Royal and Waggon und Maschinenbau in particular, all of whom turned out 4-wheel railbuses.

I'm guessing that any weatherproofing had long since failed

The Pacers were cheap to build, which is why they came into existence. Using a bus body on a rail underframe was no different to what the LMS, GNRI, CDRJC and others had done in the past. Even the various small single-unit diesel railcars introduced by BR in the 1950s/1960s share the same philosophy. What could be simpler than a 4-wheel chassis? Back in the mid-1980s, the 142 Pacers were enough to inspire Railway Modeller to run a scratchbuild competition. The winning model 142 I remember being a superb effort - finer than Hornby's eventual RTR model.

Thing is, the Irish loading gauge used to be almost capable of taking European stock, but still needed a bit more height and width.

I think you did say quite a while ago that it was rare for any train to be completely uniform; it was more a case of forming a train out of whatever stock was available that day.

Ex-Württemberg Class "C" Pacific (DRG 18.1) hauling 1960s DR Doppelstock?

To be fair, if people wanted to campaign to support their local model (railway) shop, they should have started that campaign 30+ years ago, when there were rather more such shops available to be supported. It's a bit late in the day to be banging the drum now when most of the damage to survival has already been done.

Effluencers, surely? I blame it on the meds.

Probably Australian.

That looks like a knock-off of the current generation "Unimat-1" lathe which itself isn't quite as capable as previous Unimats.

Interesting. I used a slightly different CSB spreadsheet and tweaked your measurements a touch.... J26_CSB.pdf

Distracted by thoughts of the Missus? Or possibly turning into Pat Mustard?

The Roman god Janus would have been very much at home in Ireland.

Probably a bad reaction to meds.

There's also been a fair degree of price-gouging involved as some have bought to punt on later...

The onboard bag size limit is the biggest scam going.

The name's O'Rea. Gon O'Rea.

Painted numbers? Or the ones cast on locomotive numberplates?

That assumes aviation fuel is available

I took the same approach. Twice.

Similar thing happened to the original 1981 Hornby APT. Values for full sets, individual cars and even spares on eBay ran quite high for a long time. Then Hornby released their 21st century model a few years ago, and values of the 1981 model are on the floor as a result.

The electric drill is an acknowledged emergency method for all oleopneumatic Citroëns

I think OttoMobile (or AutoArt) also produced 1:18 models of my car, the Citroën CX. I've never bought any of these as they were never offered with a right-hand-drive interior. To my eyes, left-hand-drive just looks wrong.

That one is insanity