Our world in miniature, hobbies

"Earl Bathurst". Castle class. The distinctive feature of a Castle or King (having four cylinders) was the curved exhaust steam pipe, entering the smoke box. I saw this loco working South Wales trains several times around the late fifties. In HallBrooks, being a secondary line, our largest passenger engines are the West Country light pacifics. We have many halls, granges, maners, jubs & so on, but no castle or king. When I have seen the Hornby & Backmann masterpieces, I have often been tempted but not yet. In real life, the last grange that I saw was going up the Lickey incline, dirty & minus its name & number plates. The last really good grange that I saw was ex works condition in 1962. I was at Kemble & watched 6817 Gwendwr Grange, shunt its own train & then leave the yard for Gloucester. I had a huge box of 2by2 colour slides that I had lent to a friend, but they were destroyed in a house fire at his home. So all I have is my memory. Over a hundred slides were lost in that fire. The silly thing was that the negs were in the lid of the wooden box. I learnt a lesson from that. I have our railway though. In this pic at HoundsHill, the grange, after shunting its partly unfitted freight, is waiting to leave for Banbury. I hope you like.

Hi Catshed I am sure that we all have our favorites from whatever era we reflect back on. My son (43) misses the deltics, class 25s 31s 37s & so on. Even I do now. No joke, I get so sucked in when I am in our railway room here. For about five years, we only ever bought diesels. I have even thought about having a third rail electric sub unit on one of our routes. Now, that is not Coventry. Shhhhhhhhhhh.

"The Joy of Train Sets" is on BBC4 at 9.00pm tonight.

Hi all & thank you Dutchman I have always enjoyed playing trains. I am playing trains for real this week, as I am commuting to B'ham most days this week. You know, that work thing!! This is a big week for builders & their tax returns. Thank you for your info post.

Not a bad program for a change,i had forgot about 'Trix' and they never mentioned the 'N' gauge layouts,still......mustn't grumble eh.

Repeated at 3.00am UK time and also available now on iPlayer The Joy of (Train) Sets

BBC 4 tonight (Tue 19 Feb 13) 11.10pm : The Joy of Train Sets

Hi all After my adventure last weekend, I would love an A4 on our forum railway. I already have locos that were not part of our Coventry scene on the model, which take too much explaining as to how they come to be there. Not only is an A4 not part of our area, it is a top link loco that would not have been seen on secondary lines like ours in HallBrooks. I will just have to dream. Hattons (on-line) in Liverpool have this beauty for sale. The other snag on our railway is that for part of its journey, it would have to run either light, or pulling tender-first. Now, that would be like telling a Scotsman to drink a single malt with a mixer! Wha, wha & wha. ps. I am pleased that my Pam reads what I post on here, Hey! Shhh though!

Hi all Few disappointments are worse than when something that we were expecting & looking forward to gets cancelled, like today's speedway for Midland Red, or our football fan members, who are at their wits end, at the state of our city football, where no one knows what will happen. I know how it feels. I could not imagine a model of our speedway, or of our city football, but as poor a substitute as it is, our model railway does give me some solace for the same feelings that I had fifty odd years ago for my steam locos. In this pic, the Grange loco is cold & will be raised to steam overnight so as to work a freight tomorrow. It is not in a shed, as so many of them were in ruins, but is in a siding that is only now used for summer fruit vans. I saw this happen at Kemble, where I was staying. I watched the loco the following day leave the small yard attached to its goods train & leave for Swindon, where I later learned that it had been scrapped. I am very sorry for all of the disappointments for our members, whatever.

Hi all I was delighted when my grandson yesterday evening disappeared into our HallBrooks railway room & lost himself totally, as he went through a couple of hours of 'playing trains'. At one point, I did poke my head around the door to ask if all ok & delivered him a drink, but I left him to please himself. That prompted me to have a "shunt in the goods yard" as we call it, for an hour this evening. The picture shows ex-works condition all black Grange waiting with a train load of washed vans & return them to Worcester via the Midland line & Washwood Heath. Sundays & bank holidays often gave rise to odd routes for goods & passenger trains.