Andrew

How sad that cheerful, optimistic Tony, always so full of ideas, new projects and revisions to the plans for his dream railway, has now left us. All the regular readers of this forum will share his family's sorrow and will miss his fascinating contributions, and digressions into shipbuilding and other things. The loss to his wife and family will be tremendous. Tony had shared with us an earlier family tragedy which must have been a great blow to him, although his positive and ambitious approach to model railway building may have helped him cope with that. It certainly kept him occupied, and the way he revised his plans to adjust to the recent house move was another sign of his can-do attitude. I shall be very sorry not to see any further contributions ending with that cheery byline: "Tony from down under keep on moving ahead".

I've only just got round to watching that video of the BP tank wagons, Mick, but it's superb. It really showcases the Skew Bridge layout effectively, and the scenery and trackside detail all looks really good and highly realistic. Well done.

Meanwhile, out on the real railway Today was "Giants of Steam" at the Bluebell (although I didn't manage to capture everything that was running):

Too true, Mick. Ballast would be a great improvement. As some of the trackbed timber needs replacing after nine years of service, ballast will have to wait for DGR Mark 2.

You can wait a long time for a train to come along... so when it does, better have the camera ready. Here, after a lot of maintenance work on clearing the track, is the 4MT on a local train, first heading along Bamboo Curtain Straight: Catching the driver passing Throstlebeck Sidings: Rounding Sycamore Curve Three shots at different points on Foxdale Bank And finally heading into the sun across the Northern Viaduct

All looks great, especially the ballast. Hope it all survives the ravages of winter.

Old French photos discovered Yesterday, courtesy of my friend Philip, I came across these railway scenes which look as if they were taken around 1900 mostly on the Paris-Orleans railway:

Thomas, Well done for running your first train on a complete circuit. You've had to wait a long time for that, so celebrations are appropriate for such an important milestone. And now you have an alternative activity to working on the layout: just running a train! Enjoy it.

An engine, a few coaches and a bit of sunshine Who could ask for anything more? In this instance, it's just the Black 5 stretching her legs after too long a break. Seen here running off the Northern Viaduct onto Foxdale Bank: On the Bank further along Passing Throstlebeck Sidings And on down Bamboo Curtain Straight

Moving away from the Southern Region... and from much further afield is this DB Class 216 diesel: Josh's sound fitted Class 66 looked and sounded good but his intermodal wagons were a bit of a handful to keep on my erratic track: Finally, in the absence of any conductor rails to clean, it was time for a bit of weedkilling:

Two lovely videos - a real summer feeling. Great to see those grimy locos, esp the 56 and 37. It must take you a while to put all those wagons onto the track. And the flowers are superb, a fine show.

Once you're home again Tony, everything will look better and you'll have some great ideas for the railway. Get well, and I hope they let you home very soon. Here's an old Lima NSWGR loco especially for you:

That looks like a great railway, with quite a long run. Well done for getting all that track laid. You'll have to watch out that the plants don't grow up and start to grab the trains...

Continuing with the Southern theme from Geoff and Josh's visit, here's a Class 73 on what looks almost like a Gatwick Express: Never mind about the absence of a conductor rail. After which we move to the Uckfield branch where this Turbostar, having left Victoria far behind, cruises through the Kent countryside on the single track section near Cowden: