Weekend Oddments (1)

"Royal" Visit To Peterville Quarry

Today the fbb's are expecting a state visit from the Fearnley family  with, weather permitting (???) operation of the model railway for Archie (6) and Georgina (4). All worked well after some fettling-up and track cleaning on Wednesday last, but the visit provoked fbb to tackle a few of the smaller jobs that had slid to the bottom of the list.

The Bachmann "wooden" (i.e. resin i.e. plastic) engine shed needed its replacement brick wall (i.e. plastic i.e. polystyrene) re-fixing. 

The original shed surface is not smooth and the two different plastics don't stick together very well. Thus fbb was forced to use drastic measures to hold things in place until the gunk had set.

Those who are not technically minded can ignore the specialist tools employed! The new front wall was needed because the old wire door hinges rotted in the open air, so an Airfix kit (now Dapol) was "bashed" to provide the wall/doors doors and a brick extension - which also needed a bit of re-gluing.

The pepper pot (including pepper) holds the open end apart while glue sets at the other end. The laggy band holds the glued bits together. More clever technology.

fbb has lost the shed doors.

Then there was a miscellaneous outbuilding that had lost its delicate etched window frames in a combination of overscale wind and overscale raindrops. 

A serendipitous purchase of some Ratio windows frames for another project looked promising ...

.... and they fitted perfectly. Job done. Before fbb "got to it" it used to look like this ...

... from the Hornby Skaledale range and no longer in production.

Hopefully the young visitors will not notice the repairs, all explained in fbb's Model Railway manual by I Bodgitt and U Cobble (the old man's favourite source of advice!).

A Superb Selection Of Twits

Every so often Twitter sends fbb some stuff - odd because the old man never Twits for himself. A few nostalgic railway snaps have recently appeared.

A "Peak" thunders through Burton on Trent with a "cross country" train before anyone had thought of branding it.

There is a fine selection of Deltics at Finsbury Park.

At Kings Cross, a poster heralding the change from English Electric superpower to the highly successful HST.

And talking of HST, how about this luxury?

It is the first class saloon on the shortened HSTs now being introduced by Scotrail between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

But, oh how fbb loved these ...

... but could never ever afford to travel on them. Western Region Pullman units graze at Paddington.

Is it just nostalgia or were these the zenith of suburban train design and livery?

Contrast and compare!

The most challenging thought that passes through the aged but still active (ish?) mind of your blogger is that these trains, well remembered by fbb, are now very much ferroequinological history.

The exception is the HST that was so well designed that it will keep going for many more years yet, albeit in a rejigged form.

And Some Helpful Signs

Once again a useful warning that fbb's hot coffee on the West Highland line might be "hot".

fbb, being a rebel at heart, REMOVED the lid!

In the Glasgow Travelodge, the holidaying fbbs were encouraged to wait for their breakfast cuppa by this helpful message ...

... but struggled to understand the quality of their fruit juice.

And a helpful hint if you stay in a hotel which requires you to blunder around in the dark to prod your room key-card into a little box to make the lights work ...

... a used railway ticket does the job just as well.

Lancaster Map

Thanks to those who sent comments. Taking each in turn ...

Destinations for longer distance routes. As reported in the blog, this was designed as a map of Local Services, published to fit in with ther Stagecoach network change; longer distance services will also be shown in more detail but the best presentation style is being debated.

Adding yet more boxes and lists at the edge of the map would add more clutter and, the designer thinks, make for more confusion. What do you include in the box, and what do you leave out?

More detail in the town centres. This was asked for by the Bus Users Group, but it proved difficult in Lancaster and utterly impossible to squeeze in the detail and make it (a) legible and, more importantly, (b) understandable. There are too many route variations in Morecambe and too many route numbers in Lancaster. Separate town centre maps are being considered.

The cartographer and LBUG would be very happy to receive possible design ideas  - fbb@xephos.com will reach both. Remember also that the map has been designed for possible printing as an A4 page - so size matters. As does cost!

The mantra of public transport information is, maybe, worth repeating.

It is, after all, a work in progress.

And A P.S.
Three deliberately offensive comments were removed from yesterday's blog. As should have been obvious, the main contributor (not fbb) lives locally and is fully aware of all the ramifications of the new UON and its "travel opportunities". To suggest otherwise is simply rude.

 Next weekend oddments blog : Sunday 14th October