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This is a real treasure from Buster Keaton taken from the movie "Our Hospitality". There is a scene in this excerpt where a man is throwing rocks at the loco and the engineer/stoker is throwing wood back. It reminds of a scene on an Irish narrow gauge railway where a woman would get her goat to stand between the rails. The loco crew would throw coal at the goat and when the woman thought enough coal had been thrown she would call the goat in. The train would proceed then on it's way and she would go and collect the coal. The railway went bankrupt eventually and I often wonder if her antics may have hastened the railways downfall. Roy.

This is another bit of fun along Buster Keaton lines ''> '> Roy.

Many people like to live near to trains especially if they themselves are railway enthusiasts. But would living here be a little too close for comfort? Roy.

Many towns in the UK have a "market day" but can you imagine being a stall holder and a railway enthusiast. This would be paradise. Trains pass through one an hour. It's also a tourist spectacle but no doubt the stall vendors would rather the tourists buy something than just take photos. Roy.

Such a pity that the UK closed so many old lines and took up the tracks. If they hadn't taken up the tracks something like this may have been possible before the era of H&S. Roy.

Some traditions from the steam era lingered into the diesel era. Many of the tool kits which were a tin bucket with old hammers, chains, brush and dustpan etc. Even sweat rags which were still issued but not used for wiping sweat away but in use as towels to dry ones hands. Billy cans in which the tea was made using tea leaves (no tea bags here heaven forbid). Pouring the tea out was done the way it had always been done by holding an enamel mug in one hand and placing the billy can with it's top portion on top of the mug and using the wire handle to pull the can over the mug to pour the tea out. The spoon would be left in the mug whilst the tea was consumed. Not the height of etiquette but it stopped the tea from sloshing out of the mug. In the steam days a bucket of water on the footplate would have a banister brush in it for the same reason. All locos had a hotplate although the hotplate ring was recessed and the billy can fitted it perfectly. All locos had a log book where faults would be recorded. I remember a fault with a seat on a 49 class diesel with the driver writing in the log book that he needed a seat belt just to stay on the seat. A piece of rope was tied from one side of the seat to the other and the fitter wrote in the log book, 'seat belt supplied'. The seats were all originally vinyl but then some idiot had the idea of replacing the vinyl seat with the same design but in fabric. In diesel locos it wasn't too bad but in the electric locos it was a disaster because dust was always present in the electric loco cabs. A sweat rag would be placed on the seat just to stop the dust from rising as the driver bounced up and down due to the state of the permanent way. Roy.

Hi Tony, yes all the diesels and two of the electric loco classes had toilets in them. In the box shaped locos like 80, 442, 422, 85 and 86 the toilet was located at the No.2 end (and that's not a joke). 42, 43, 44 had their toilet in the No.1 end or in the streamlined nose. 40, 45, 47, 48 and 49 had theirs in the short nose ahead of the cab. The toilet tank would be filled when the loco arrived on shed. For the diesel locos their tank would be filled by the fuel man when he was filling the diesel tank. The electric locos would have the tanks filled at the sand shed. In my time on the railways none of the locos had retention tanks so all the waste from the toilet would end up in the 4ft. The only locos that didn't have a toilet were the 46 class electrics which came into service in the steam age. They were never fitted with toilets at a later date either. The toilet bowls were originally porcelain but were replaced with stainless steel. Most crews would only use them as a last resort as brake dust would be sucked up the waste pipe and the toilet and the area it was in would be full of dust. The crews would usually "hang on" until they got to a station that was open and would use the toilets there. Others told me that they'd pull the train up mid section and take a call of nature behind a tree. A sort of loo with a view. Roy.

This is a Russian gas bottle truck involved in an accident and all the gas bottles bleve one after the other. The truck driver was unhurt because as soon as the accident happened he got out and ran into the woods to the right. I counted 38 individual explosions. Usually there is a valve to stop the bleve effect. As the gas pressure rises due to the heat the gas usually escapes via the valve. It didn't happen in this case so as the pressure rose the cylinders rupture in spectacular fashion. It safer by rail. Roy.

They say never ever work with animals and that's very true for this American weather man who was at a zoo seeing a newly born baby rhinoceros. The babies mother lets fly in a huge way twice as part of the "morning ritual". This is her 15 seconds of fame. Turn your speakers up for this one. Roy.

A while ago Griff I bought some Sennheiser cordless headphones so I can listen to the music I like without having to be tied to one spot as in a chair. We have an Afro American woman who settled in Australia years ago named Marcia Hines. She had a daughter Deni who is also a singer and for a while sang with the Rock Melons.

I must be getting old as I find the current pop music scene as blah. I like the music of the 1980's and 1990's. In the chemist the other day getting some things for mum they had the radio playing and the above song was playing out of the speakers. I remembered it from 1989 and got a strange look from the young girl as I was singing it and rocking along to it. Ian Moss was part of the Australian rock band Cold Chisel. But he went solo but never achieved the success that Jimmy Barnes did. Barnes tended to scream into the microphone whereas Ian didn't. The video was done in those days before fake tans, cosmetic surgery and all the other things they do to themselves nowadays. Mine you that girl must have been itching like hell after running through that wheat. Another aussie singer was Daryl Braithwaite who had a song I liked called One Summer. For this one for the English it's good to play on a cold winters day.

I've been watching another video of an indoor railway in the UK a very large one and a trip on it from the "man at the back". It tells the story of the guard on a pick-up goods train interspersed with life in the early 1960's in the north east of England. It made me think about life when I was a kid. Some say those were great times but were they really. I think we tend to look at the past through rose coloured glasses. I was born in Melbourne Victoria Australia in 1962 (53 years ago yesterday to be precise) and my dad was moved by the company he worked for at that time (Legal and General) an insurance company to Sydney New South Wales. I have no memory of where I lived in Melbourne but can remember of the early times in Sydney. My dad bought a new brick veneer house with a concrete tiled roof. It had three bedrooms and a double carport built as part of the house. We had an inside flush toilet and laundry. The house cost my dad in 1966 $17,000 which in those times was a huge amount of money. The house was situated on a new housing estate called "Kingsdene" in the suburb of Carlingford. We had no railway line anywhere near us or either heavy or light industry. It was purely a residential suburb and still is. In those time I went to Carlingford West Public School and later to Cumberland High School, both state schools. There was an exclusive private school near to where I lived called Kings School. But only the super wealthy sent their children there and still do. My dad had a second hand 1964 Ford Cortina in butter yellow and as a kid I can remember sitting in the drivers seat on a Sunday morning when everyone was still in bed and pretending to drive. It was a safe suburb so no one locked their cars. We(my brother and I) use to play in the bush round our house as for a short while we were the only family on our side of the estate. We didn't have a TV so we had to amuse ourselves and trains were one way of doing that. British trains from Triang. My brother had Princess Elizabeth in BR green a tender drive model that dad had built from a kit possibly Airfix. It never seemed to run well. He also had a clockwork 0-6-0 tank. I had Albert Hall in GWR green and it was highly polished as all Great Western engines always were, or so I thought. I had a little 0-4-0 tank in blue called "Nelly". All early buildings were from the Airfix railway range (now sold by Dapol) Dad also built the non working models of Evening Star, The Rocket and City of Truro. To say my parents were at that time on the poverty line would not be fair, but they were damn close to it. Our Ford Cortina had a brown interior (vinyl) with a 4 speed manual column gear shift and it ran on 4 cross ply retread tyres. There was no forced ventilation, no heater, certainly no air conditioning. In 1971 dad traded it in and bought a 1969 Ford Cortina 440. It was white with a blue vinyl interior but still no heater but a 2 speed fan. Neither car had a radio. Dad was also able to afford to fit radial tyres. For garden rubbish we use to take that to the local tip, which was at Kellyville. We use to load up the boot(trunk) of the car and go out along the Windsor Road. Just past the White Horse Restaurant the road speed increased to 55mph. That was awesome with my brother and I urging dad to go much faster, but he never did. Dad had been offered a company car (a Falcon) but said no as accepting a company car would mean a drop in salary and dad needed the money. Mum and dad never gambled or smoked but they drank but only socially. My first push bike was a metallic blue Malvern Star bought second hand from a local family. I use to ride that bike everywhere and no unlike today I didn't wear a helmet, shoulder, elbow or knee pads. I'd have been called a sissy if I had. I used to ride up Ferndale Avenue to where there was a vacant area of land where all the local boys would race their bike round and round the trees. If we fell off we got back on with bumps scratches and bruises. If you were in a lot of pain you could walk or ride slowly home and mum would fix you up. These days kids are taken for counseling and re-wrapped in more cotton wool. If were weren't riding fast on the vacant block my school friend Paul and I would go into the main bush area and ride for miles along narrow bush tracks through creeks (streams) and over waterfalls. Sometimes in summer we'd strip off and have a swim in the pool at the base of the main big waterfall. All the kids use to do it boys and girls. There was no sexual attraction at that age it was just good fun. The water wasn't purified in any way and may have had bad chemicals in it but we used to swim in it not drink it. In 1976 dad bought a new car a VW Golf LS which had a heater and 3 speed fan. A tachometer and a speedometer in KPH. In those days VW's were made in Germany....all of them. The golf still didn't have a radio although there was a space for it as dad never liked having music playing whilst he was driving. The space for the radio was where dad kept his sunglasses. The car also came with a clock and bucket front seats which reclined. I learnt to drive on that car and when driving at 100kph (60mph) the tachometer pointer needle would bounce between 4 and 5,000rpm. Dad said it was going through the sound barrier and once you hit 120kph (75mph) the pointer needle would be steady. Dad kept that car for 14 years but sold it when he and mum bought a caravan for their trip around Australia which took them a whole year to do. In it's old age the golf started to leak coolant. Mum said she (the car) had become incontinent in her old age. Where we lived on the Kingsdene Estate we where on a slight rise and down the bottom were located some shops. I remember very early on buying for mum a loaf of Buttercup sliced brown bread (the word wholemeal hadn't been invented) and it cost just 13c or 5.5p. Mum had a wooden ironing board which had a bed sheet folded into several thicknesses and pinned to it with drawing pins. Her iron was a dry one only as dad didn't trust steam irons. Electricity and water in such close proximity. So mum had an old piece of cloth which she used to lay over the cloths and drop water in droplets from her fingers. This used to steam like blazes and get the wrinkles out of cloths especially jeans. After a number of years using this method mum finally put her foot down and insisted on having a steam iron. Dad bought one but he was never really convinced that it was safe. We went on holidays to other states mainly Queensland and Victoria. Of course every time we went to Victoria we had to ride on "Puffing Billy". Later dad hired a motor home and we went to South Australia It was a big motor home complete with shower and chemical toilet. All I can remember was that the previous people had split milk onto the shag pile carpet so the inside stank rotten. The bathroom cubicle was full of red dust. Mum actually got down on her hands and knees (not easy with a bad hip) and scrubbed the carpet and got it clean to get the stink out of it. She also bleached the bathroom and got that spotless. They gave the motor home back in a far cleaner state than when they first picked it up and dad got a sizable chunk of the hire fee refunded. The owner and his wife were gob smacked at how clean the interior and exterior was. The motor home sat on a Toyota Dyna light truck chassis and was under powered for the job. But the owner said that too many higher powered motor homes had tipped over due to the higher speeds people were able to go. They forgot about the high centre of gravity when going round corners. All the years of dad's driving he was a member of the NRMA or National Roads and Motorist Association and eventually became a gold member. I too am a gold member now which is attained after 25 years of continuous membership. Other states in Australia have Motorist Associations too and look after members from other states. In 1991 dad bought his first Falcon a 1989 station wagon which he fitted with a Heyman Reece tow bar for towing the caravan. That tow bar places the weight of the caravan on all four wheels not just the rear two. Mum learnt to drive at my insistence due to the fact that they would be traveling to some remote areas and if dad fell ill they would be stuck. There were no mobile phones in those days and even today a mobile phone doesn't work in remote areas. You need a satellite phone and they are very expensive. At one point they had a flat tyre on the Falcon and a local bloke said he would take the flat tyre to the next town and give it to some bloke at his tyre shop to fix. Dad without a second thought handed over the tyre and this bloke just drove away towards the horizon. 120 km up the road dad found the tyre shop and the tyre had been fixed as promised. Mum got her license before the went away on the big trip so she was on her "P's". In South Australia she was unsure if she could drive on her "P's" towing a caravan and was informed by the local police that yes she could do that. Mum said to them that in NSW it was illegal for a person on "P's" to drive towing a caravan. The police officer said to her ' well you can do that here because this is a civilised state. My first car was a 1981 Suzuki Hatch 800cc in lime green. I had my first car accident in it when I was too busy perving on a blonde girl on the footpath and ran into the back of a Valiant (Chrysler) Charger. When the bloke who was driving went to get out of his car his wife wanted to know why he was getting out. When he told he that they'd been run into she replied 'well I didn't feel a bump'. There wasn't a mark on the Charger but the front end of my car was wrecked. Chargers were built like battle tanks.

Many in the UK maybe familiar with the iron stone or ore lines which use to be in the East Midlands. However what we have here in Australia make those East Midlands lines look like a garden railway. A J94 on 6 wagons? Oh dear. In the north west of Western Australia is the Pilbara region which contains some the most extensive deposits or iron ore in the world. In 2001 one of the railways there set a world record. On the 21st of June 2001 the Mount Newman Railway set a world record for the heaviest and longest train with a train weighing 99,734 tons which was formed of 682 wagons and it ran for 275 kilometers (170 miles) between Yandi (a mine) and Port Hedland (the sea port). The train was 7.3 kilometers long (4 miles 943.3770 yards) and carried 82,000 tons of high grade iron ore. The train was hauled by 8 GE AC6000CW 6000hp diesel locomotives. The whole monstrous train was controlled by one man who had to carefully apply the 48,000 combined horse power of the 8 locomotives The majority of trains on the iron ore railways in the Pilbara are of 2.5 to 3.0 kilometers in length with a total weight of 25-30,000 tons per train. A J94 on six wagons just isn't in the same league. Roy.

I phoned Richard Johnson at DCC Concepts and asked him about the power base outdoors and he recommended using a "no more nails" type glue to glue the base plates to the track bed. He also said that dirt and grime from the weather outdoors shouldn't affect the operation of the magnets as indoors the magnets are completely covered by ballast. So here's hoping that's sorted. Roy.

On your railway Trevor is a lot of rock. Is it real rock or artificial. I have a lot of rock where I live and it's all sandstone. Is your rock used to keep the garden soil from falling onto the track and do the rocks also provide a windbreak. If some of your rock is artificial how do you make it and if you have photos perhaps an article on the making of artificial rocks. I've had a look on you tube and Beckonscot uses a lot of rock on their gauge 1 garden railway and it seems to form a windbreak and keep the soil from their numerous flowerbeds at bay. Roy.

Mick here we have the ACCC or Australian Consumer and Complaints Commission which on their website lists what a consumers rights are and what actions a consumer can take against manufacturers when things go wrong. There maybe something similar to it in the UK. Here there are stiff penalties for manufacturers and shops who treat customers with indifference or who try tricks to get out of there consumer obligations. I know if people overseas like yourself by a product from DCC Concepts and it's a dud, DCC Concepts can't say to you 'well you don't live in Australia so our consumer laws don't apply to you. They do. It works both ways if I buy something from Hattons of Liverpool they can't use the same excuse either. If you have no joy with Samsung perhaps you could make a video and upload it to you tube. Negative publicity is not in the manufacturers interest and the internet can be a very powerful tool in that regard. The more people (outside this forum) that know of your troubles it's just possible that Samsung may then "bend over backwards" in order to help you. That's what a Canadian guitarist did to American Airlines when they broke one of his guitars. They tried to fob him off but once the you tube video got around they were falling over themselves to help him with new guitars and compensation money. Samsung may do the same. Roy.

Just my personnel thoughts on garden railway construction materials. Manufacturers like Hornby,Bachmann, Dapol etc would not want to tempt people outside because some people would leave the models outside all the time and then send damaged locos, carriages and wagons back to the manufacturers saying that their products weren't ok for an outdoor life. It wouldn't matter if the manufacturer put all sorts of warnings on the packaging as many people would take no notice. Bachmann has a hard enough trouble now with people sending loco back to them for repairs under warranty with a little note saying 'I haven't touched it'. Yet one can clearly see where the family dog has been chewing on the loco. So outdoors it would compound the problems. As for a uniform of construction materials for either ground level or high level railways I very much doubt that will happen as people will use what is available in their area and what they can afford to spend. Take thermalite blocks which aren't available here. We have the AAC blocks which are similar but not the same. The width is only 200mm but the thickness varies. Trevor Jones's "rubbercrete" materials only some of which are available here. Granulated cork haven't seen it here, Shredded rubber hard to come by here. The Softfall/Softtrax is similar but not the same. So people all over the world will use what is available in the part of the world in which they live. Roy.

Cleaning out one of mum's cupboards I came across a book I haven't see in years which is an American book called Gardening: The art of killing weeds and bugs to grow flowers and crops for animals and birds to eat. It describes itself as a "Dictionary for Weed Pullers, Slug Crushers and backyard Botanists. Take the insect Aphid: An insect which inphests gardens and makes gardeners phoam at the mouth, stamp their pheet, and utter phour letter words. Rotary Lawn Mower: Gasoline powered metal detector used to locate misplaced trowels, shears and hose nozzels in tall grass. The machine indicates a "contact" by giving off a loud WHINNNNNNNG! sound, and then immediately stalling. Pathway: In most gardens the shortest distance between two eyesores. Nursery: The only place where money grows on trees. Hardy: A plant is said to be hardy if it survives long enough in a nursery to be sold.

Well mum is now in the Hostel of the retirement village and settling in. My brother and I are clearing out her unit and discovering that mum and dad were hoarders. Mum had antique furniture circa 1850's which is to go to the national trust. Mum also had a Royal Standard 6 piece tea set which belonged to her mother but I'm going to keep that and will give it to my niece if and when she and her boyfriend get married. If I was to sell it here it wouldn't get more than 50 pounds. It's fine bone China with hand painted flowers on it. Mum's car a 2002 Ford Focus has been offered to my niece for free. Oddly she wants to buy it but mum said no, you can have it for nothing. Well not quite nothing as my niece needs arrange insurance, registration and their is damage on the front right fender where mum hit the garage, the back of the left exterior mirror is cracked, theirs a dent in the left rear door and the windscreen washers don't work because a piece of plastic pipe is missing. The pump works but sprays water over the engine. Other than those things everything else works including the air conditioning. I recently put two new tyres on it due to two on their becoming very hard and the tread starting to separate from the tyre. My brother and I guess that those two tyres are original tyres and are 13 years old. The local hospital told me to bring my mum down to them for a thyroid test at 7am!. I asked if my mum had requested a test and was told that the hospital where she was having rehab requested the test. I told the bossy bitch of a woman 'if you want mum there at that time you can arrange patient transport to take her down and bring her home. She snapped back 'no that's your job!'. I replied ' in that case she won't have the thyroid test'. Once the unit is cleared out and life begins to return to normal I can think about having another garden railway

Hi Duncan, as you may have seen my garden railway is know more and I'm so busy with family matters to start another one at the present time.

On a previous post in my drivel was our administrator wondering about 'bonking' at 5-6am. Well there was a sort of Grumpy old Woman on the TV here but all Australian females. One of them said that you get home from work, your tired but you have housework to finish, dinner to make and serve, washing up afterwards, and ironing some washing. At the end you have a nice relaxing bath and watch a bit of TV before going to bed. You and your husband get into bed and you snuggle down dreaming of the wonderful land of nod you're about to enter.......and then his hand comes over and you think, oh no not tonight. So 'bonking' first thing in the morning made not be a bad idea as being men there is usually one part of us that has a 'full head of steam' and is raring to go.

That is sad news on your house sale Ian. A friend of mine put his house on the market here thinking that he'd have loads of time whilst his new house was being built. His old has went on the market on a Monday and was sold by the Wednesday. So he had to move into rental accommodation whilst his new house was being completed. It really p*sses you off when people waste your time in playing games with the sale of your home. There was a lady (and I use that term very broadly) who used to live across the road from mum and dad and when she put her house on the market every buyer who was interested she would up the price to try to get more for it. So for buyers she was playing games. She also went through a number of real estate agents who were sick of her antics. So the gate can swing both ways. I'm not implying that you would do that Ian. So when it comes to garden railways your get up and go has got up and gone. Don't worry it will return. Roy.

G'day Trevor best wishes from us all to your wife (Janet?) for her hip operation. My mum has just had a second hip operation which replaced the first artificial hip which was 44 years old. The doctor told her that the biggest enemy of replacement hips is weight gain. Mum did the post operative exercises for her first hip replacement for 44 years and when she visited the doctor who did the operation, he asked her to raise her leg. She did and almost kicked him in the face. She told him that she was still doing the exercises and he was very surprised saying that most people only do them in post recovery in hospital and then don't worry about them after that. We also all look forward with great anticipation to your cab ride video of your stunning railway running through your beautiful garden. Is the garden your work of is it a joint effort with your wife or do you place the plants where your wife knows where they will look their best. A friend of mine once said 'never ever dig a hole and plant the plant you have bought because you're bound to put it in the wrong place and if you don't replant it in the right place you will never hear the end of it'. Roy.

I put the David Attenborough video on here as there are others. But people modify them and add sounds that the bird doesn't make. Like rude language. Roy.

Here's our Lyre Bird a great imitator and not just of bird sounds either. It's all done in the name of love. The better his repertoire the better his chances of luring a female. In this concert we hear the whip bird, kookaburra and other birds plus, a chainsaw, car alarm, camera shutter, motor driven camera. Roy.