Oh ho! OO? HO? Oh no! OO! Blow! So ...

Should fbb buy them?

Many moos ago, fbb asked his knowledgeable readers a question, namely whether Lime ever produced any OO tank wagons for the UK market apart from their 6 wheel milk tanker which is now part of the old codger's collection.

The response was a thunderous silence; either because nobody knew the answer or (more likely) that nobody read the blog.

Lima S.p.A (Lima Models) was a brand of railway models made in Vicenza, Italy, for almost 50 years, from the early 1950s until the company ceased trading in 2004. Lima was a popular, affordable brand of OO gauge and N gauge model railway material in the UK, more detailed HO and N gauge models in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States as well as South Africa, Scandinavia and Australia.

Lima was bought by Hornby and still offers a few bits and pieces on its UK web site. There is a Lima "Experts" brand, very expensive ...

... and a Lima "Junior" brand where most rolling stock is out of! BUT it does offer a tank wagon ...

... equally unavailable! But keep the above picture in mind for what follows.

Imagine his surprise as fbb was perusing pertinent products on-line when he came across this offer from EBay. It was advertised as a Lima OO Shell tank wagon.

The accompanying picture showed the wagon with Triang type couplings but gave no further information. Cost including postage was just over a tenner, so maybe worth adding to the collection?

BUT ...

Other EBay adverts showed what looked like exactly the same wagon ...

... but with "continental" couplings and offered as OO/HO. Confused.com? One offer (from Australia) correctly used HO ...

... showed proper Lima couplings but declined to deliver to fbb mansions!

OO (a UK invention) is to a SCALE of 4mm to the foot but runs on 16.5mm gauge track, too narrow for 4ft 8½inches. Across the channel the scale is 3.5mm which is close to correct for 16.5mm track. The models are thus smaller.

As fbb had already bought a Jouef (French) HO tank wagon rejigged for the UK market, he felt he could justify obtaining the Lima OO/HO model and take a look at it.

More on this exciting tale tomorrow.

Wot No Wires?

No wires past the largest Council house in the UK.

Anyone other than Brummies would call it the Town Hall, but there is one of those just along the road; and its a hall owned and operated by the town.

So it was that Northampton Alan sent this tease e-mail.

Now what runs along these rails and, as there is no electric string, what is the source of power for it?

Is it –

a) Batteries, 

b) Diesel / Hybrid

c) High pressure vapourised cocoa (Note 1)

d) A horse

e) Hydrogen

f) Steam.

Note 1. Dr. Strabismus of Utrecht (Whom God preserve) is reported to researching thus 

as a fuel.

Most of our readers will know that it is the first bit of the extension to the extension of the Birmingham tram route, recently opened. From its former terminus outside New Street Station (confusingly named Grand Central station by the Tram people) ...

... it climbs steep track up Pinfold Street to a stop near the Town Hall.

Its current terminus is one stop further adjacent to the city's somewhat surreal Library.

To avoid spoiling the historic architecture (?) there is no power, no overhead, so trams must run on their batteries. To prove that the trams can make it up the hill, Alan sent pictures - one climbing the hill ...

.... and one progressing beyond the Town Hall stop.

The further extension to Edgbaston will not open until 2022.

Doubts About Derbyshire?
The county's timetable library is usually updated promptly and usually one of the most accurate sources for bus information. The timetable books have been a beacon of excellence for many, many years.

This page, showing the revised timetable for the Stagecoach Sheffield to Chesterfield service 43 is strange.

Note the times at Dronfield Coach & Horses and Dronfield Sainsbury's.

The stops are approximately ⅓ of a miler apart, travelled Jodie Whittaker style (who?), in no time.

No; fbb cannot explain it - but it does differ from Stagecoach's data.

In the opposite direction is another oddity.

Look at the tome at Dronfield Coach & Horses (again) for the 0717 from Chesterfield.

0760 is mathematically correct but more conventionally it would read 0800. Again the error is not present in Stagecoach data.

 More Mixture blog : Friday 3rd January