Saturday Variety

Railway Modelling - A Dangerous Hobby!

Toy train set? Model Railway, surely?

Even Mt Tubbles has yet to explore the developing indoor rebuild of the former outdoor layout.

The stress would just be TOO much!

GoAhead Goes Ahead Into East Devon

This has been an open secret for a couple of months now; and recent press releases confirm the acquisition.

GoAhead spouts the usual platitudes ...

... whilst Dartline's boss, David Hounslow ...

... bids a fond farewell; and, fbb suspects, breathes a HUGE sigh of relief!

In 2022 the bus industry is no place for an old gent - probably it's not much of a place for a young gent (or gentess) - and our Dave deserves a contented retirement with a nice cup of tea and a pair of comfy slippers!

But Dartline is a strange bedfellow for a go ahead commercially astute company owned by a profit hungry investment bank like GoAhead. Dartline's work is a mix of (mostly) rural tendered bus services and school contracts.

Does GoAhead really want this sort of business or does it have a greedy eye on Stagecoach's rapidly declining empire based on Exeter?

We wait and see!

Here is a typical timetable for the 173 ...

... operating on tender to Devon County six days a week.

And below, a group of four buses that sit in the coach park at Seaton for most of the day, resting peacefully between various school runs, mostly to Colyton Grammar School, which is at Colyford.

Not quite sweating GoAhead's newly acquired assets! Or staff.

New Trains For Wales

Soft Launch? That usually means "we are not making too much fuss in case they don't work properly." Cynical fbb, surely not?

Meanwhile in Brummyland ...

Uncle Roger has blogged a whole blog on new trains for the West Midlands.

They are equally as ugly as the Welsh ones, but classed 196 and, according to Rog, the launch has been equally low key.

But, we are assured, there are more to come!

Gaziantep Tram Times Discovered

fbb is enormously grateful to correspondent Andrew who has managed to find some tram departure lists,

So the information DOES exist! But as fbb pursued the link sent to him by Andrew, things did not seem as they should be. So more on this tomorrow!

Maybe Start With A Look At Art

Alfred Sisley was born and lived in France although he retained British citizenship. He was a member of the Impressionist Movement in Art. The movement's paintings use small blobby brush strokes to create an "impression" of actuality. So his picture of "The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garennce" ...

... appears to show quite realistic detail. But, when you look closely, those parked boats are just well-placed splodges ...

... and the bridge would throw dedicated engineers into paroxysms of anguish at its likely instability!

Every model railway is a result of compromise unless it is the exhibit at Pendon where realism is sacrosanct.

So most modellers are happy to  create that "impression", that happy memory perhaps, of what a railway once looked like. 

So what might this be?

Just add boiling water and you get a mug of hearty vegetable soup?

Answer tomorrow.

One For The Price of Two

From Oxford Diecast (based in Swansea, hence the name), two 1:76 (OO scale) traction engines.

But they come as a matching set of two and you have to buy both to get one! This is a growing trend in the model industry and makes some purchases unrealistic. 

It is true that, sometimes, these beauties did work in pairs in real life, but who has space for a full sized ploughable field, work in progress, to show the pair doing their togetherness stuff.

But, if you want the pair ...

... OUCH!

But they are gorgeous models and far more detailed than an impressionist model!

The Matchbox "Models of Yesteryear" are now quite rare and very collectable!

 Next Variety blog : Sinday 20th Nov