roddy

Looks great Mick. Hope you haven't forgotten all of those lovely weathered mineral wagons too. I bet they will look fantastic crossing the girder bridge.

A ring of copper wire glued to the top of the chimney and painted will give you a lip.

WOW! That last picture is impressive.

When I was a small boy in the early 1950s (I was 70 last weekend) my favourite books were Sammy the Shunter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_the_Shunter I wonder why Thomas the Tank became so popular when Sammy just disappeared?

Instead of a slide switch that needs some effort to move, why not use a mini microswitch that only needs some sort of wiper to activate. It's still on or off after all.

I have always really struggled to stop smoking. Help from Doctors, or Pharmacists, or anything else, and within a couple of hours I would be bad tempered and headachey. 55 years I have been a smoker, and just over a month ago, with no previous thought, I stubbed out a cigarette and thought to myself, "Why do I do this?" Haven't had a cig in that time. Haven't had the cravings or the mood changes or anything at all. I wonder why the difference. I also have close to £200 in an old wallet, that would have gone to the local tobacconist.

It's definitely photobucket. It really has spoiled a lot of long threads on forus. From being a free site, they suddenly asked for quite a large subscription. They had become very slow and difficult to use, so when asking for money, everybody left them. Of course, if you don't subscribe, your pics are gone.

Photobucket have changed the way that they operate, and many forums now suffer from the loss of pictures hosted there. Damned nuisance!

Thanks Jimbob. The night service would have been well past my bedtime I'm afraid. Interesting stuff. Have you seen this? http://www.eastbank.org.uk/ferry.htm

I can remember the Golden Arrow during the day when I was a kid. Spam can loco and Pullman carriages. I can remember the French wagons lit in the carriage sidings at Victoria during my commuting days. They don't seem much different to our Pullmans apart from the livery.

You should get some information here. https://www.dfds.com/group/media/contacts

I confess to ripping out all of the trackwork and base from the garden. Building that gave me a good recovery from major surgery, but the cost of stock made it difficult to continue. Despite being laid for four and a half years, and totally ignored for four of those, nothing had moved, rotted, or come adrift. Some time ago, I built a layout in the garage to represent Ramsgate Tramways. There is a hill at either end, but despite the care that I took with scale adjustments, they were too steep to negotiate. This Summer, I have redone Ramsgate, but a shorter distance over the same length of board. Portable too instead of fixed. That's a work in progress and I am confident that my hills are much more useable. A fortnight ago, I purchased a Petter stationary engine that was built between 1945 and 1947. The serial number makes me believe that it's from 1947, making it a year older than me. Something to clean, and paint, and polish, and occassionally start up and annoy the neighbours. So I'm still busy, but not in a railway sense. I am still here watching and sometimes commenting, but had I kept every locomotive and wagon that I have owned over the years, the garden railway would have been much more viable. How though, can I start from scratch and justify spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds on rolling stock?

So sorry to hear this Tony. As usual, words aren't enough to help in any way. Be strong for your wife, and together you will come through the dark times. Roddy.

Theres a Bachmann wagon on Google Images that shows it to be a lightish brown. You had better check, because I'm a bit colour blind.

Absolutely agree Griff. I have been wondering how to say something similar myself. Mick deserves much more than just pats!