Sunday 5 February 2023

Sunday Variety

A Selection Of Snippets

Pier Road P. S.

A view showing how close the Royal Pier Hotel was to Ryde's promenade pier entrance. And the same view today,
You can just spot the fuzzy half-timbered King Lud centre right.

Cartographic Skills - NOT

This collection of tangled knitting is on a  London Overground train. The idea of a route diagram is to make a network easy to understand. 

Definitely a failure here.

Long-gone Logos Languishing ...

At Leatherhead.
The Bearded Bus Beautifier from the Bush opines thus.

That’s just “can’t be arsed to take it off,” I strongly suspect, or maybe, “no-one told me to take it off,” or perhaps “there’s no-one to tell me to take it off.” Any other explanations?

Not sure that the vulgarity adds anything to the situation, Ray.

At Watford Junction

In this case "London Midland" has been replaced by a bit of high viz sticky tape, sign top right.
No doubt it would cost millions, involve huge amounts of negotiation and take a couple of years to put London North Western up there.
Now, if it were all called, say, British Railways, you wouldn't get these problems.
 
Arriva North East
This spotted VERY recently by Roger French whilst on a visit to the far north.
Or maybe Arriva is getting ready for Christmas 2023.

Is It A Bear - Or An Alien?

It is the mascot of East Midland Railway -hence the purple He/she/it appears on the web site ...
... and of you look carefully, the "creature" ...
... pops up in front of the EMR logo.

Is it "just a bit of fun" or does it denigrate the professionalism ot the company and its services.

It does pottery as well!
Depending on how big it is, fbb would not like to meet the purple "thing" up a dark alley!"

Hornby TT120 Review
The March edition of Railway Modeller has a review of one of the first train sets to be released by Hornby for this new scale. Watchers of the model railway trade are divided about this new range using the same metrics as continental and American TT.

Those uneasy with Hornby's announcement of a complete range of models wonder if the company has taken too big a commercial risk. 

In addition there are those who also wonder about the wisdom of only selling on-line. The idea that you would be willing to shell out several hundred pounds without actually seeing a sample is, indeed, a worry.

Others applaud Hornby for taking the risk and see a great future for this true "table top" model railway.

The set reviewed is for an A3 loco ...
... which look superb and comes with three Pullman coaches. These have exquisite detail.
The review includes a size comparison with OO.
This head on shot shows how much better a loco looks with the correct gauge of track. OO scale uses 16.5 mm gauge which is approximately 2mm too narrow for a scale of 4mm to the foot. The new TT120 is nearly spot on.

When will the first TT120 layout appear in "Modeller" as "Railway of the Month"?

For comparison here is a Triang TT Britannia ...
...and a Triang TT Pullman coach.
Production ceased on the late 1960s. Things have now improved somewhat - and increased in price relative to inflation.

And THAT Point
You can see why the electric solenoid didn't work properly. fbb's track lies on sheets of patio grass which is squidgy. It was bought for the outside layout because it is waterproof. But try to pin track through it into the plywood baseboard and you get problems.

The only possible solution was to glue the point and its motor onto a solid slice of plastic. The motor does not clip to the point (why not?) so it needed fixing down in some way.

Under the tins of fruit is the point and motor being stuck to a sheet of plastic with two part epoxy glue.
Did it work?

Ah, well; it is not quite as simple as that.

More in due course.

Gorgeous
First Bus Exmoor Coaster in full flight.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
On he right, an elderly and frail Rev Wilbert Awdry, creator of Thomas the Tank Engine. The Rev died in 1997. On the table are some of the models used in the first of several TV series of the Thomas stories. With the Rev is a little known drummer from Liverpool who narrated the early programmes.

About Time, Too
Real passengers?
No, of course not!

 Next IoW Bus Station blog : Monday 6th February 

1 comment:

  1. I thought Ray's comment was about the sleigh on the Arriva bus, not the logos

    ReplyDelete