Here Is A Coffee Pot
It is, surprisingly, a pot made for serving coffee. It is, in essence, a can with handle, lid and spout. Its shape is, broadly, vertical.
According to "Trackside" (a magazine which specialises in railway preservation) ...
... This Is A Coffee Pot
All together now, "Oh No It Isn't!" It is a small saddle tank locomotive that looks nothing like any coffee pot fbb has met in his travels. It is very sweet.
fbb is qiite prepared to accept that some people call it a Coffee Pot, but he has never been served coffee from anything remotely like this blue beauty.
This Is A Real Coflee Pot
It worked as a shunter at Seaham Dock ...
... in County Durham.
Others exist as static museum exhibits.
Will any manufacturer be making one for OO scale? fbb reckons you could mount a small electric motor vertically in the coffee pot itself!
And Talking Of China ...
.... more rubbish from on line!
But fbb has corrected the national rail logo on his Optics Valley map!
Better!
And a high speed commuter train is launched.
160 kph is almost exactly !00 mph! Don't expect to see anything quite like this on the former Southern suburban lines in London. A few bends would need straightening first!
However, the National Rail classs 700 series ...
... also has a maximum speed of 160 kph/100 mph which makes the Chinese snippet far less newsworthy!
Something Special
This is the front cover of 'Enterprise', the members-only magazine of The Isle of Wight Bus Museum.
The FLF has just been refurbished and outshopped in National Bus Company leaf green. Cheekily your old bloke blogger decided to attack the cover screenshot with his tablet's clever software.
The result is even more magnificent.
But, have you spotted something even more special?
Most Lodekas and FLFs were delivered with bog standard black 'rubber' surrounds to seal glass into the window apertures.
For a while, body builder, Eastern Coach Works, began using cream 'rubber'. Whether the cream stuff was more expensive than black, or maybe it deteriorated in the sun. So, often, cream was replaced with black.
This United Counties VR has a mixture.
As part its refurbishment, the IoW Bus Museum sourced a stock of the cream, thus bringing their FLF back to its as-delivered standard.
Well done, the lads!
The results are magnificent.
The cream 'rubber' also looked great with poppy red!
Hundred Tons : Heavy Tanks
fbb realised that he did not have a bogie TEA class tank wagon supplied by Hornby in his extensive collection. True, he had bought the Beatles version ...
... as an example of the silliness that infuriates 'serious' modellers. fbb is a little more realistic in his attitude. If Hornby can make money selling silly liveries, it might keep the company afloat to the benefit of those seeking accuracy rather than 'toys'.
So when fbb saw a shiny silver version of the TEA tank (by Hornby), he was interested, thinking that the only other shiny tank wagon in his vast collection was the Dapol "silver bullet".
So he quickly bought the silver Hornby!
O foolish one. In his excitement (?) he did not look carefully at what he was buying.
It is another unrealistic fake livery ...
... being Hornby's "year" model for 2000, the year when the world celebrated 1999 years of calendar history. The true mathmatical millennium happened in year 2001, ignored by all!
So the collectoin is still missing an accurate livery on what is a somewhat inaccurate Hornby model.
Ironically, the more realistic liveried tankers are more expensive, second hand, than the two silly 'toys' that himself has recently purchased.
The bogies are very basic with some blobs if yellow paint ...
... and the complexity of the gubbins under the tank is reduced to three simlplistic cylindrical "things".
These 'features' are the same for all Hornby livery varuatiins!
In a future blog, he will contrast and compare Hornby with the plethora of similar models from many other suppliers.
But, next, the old and nearly recovered codger will look at repurposing our railway infrastructure.
Next recycling blog : Tuesday 30th June
