Wheels

Progress has slowed for a variety of reasons in the last month, mostly work related.

Hopefully I might recover some impetus after the arrival today of a package from Ultrascale

EM gauge wheels for the Class 25 and the Sentinel

Nairn Across Britian

This is very much a case of get it whilst you can, and it might not be available at all to those of you outside the UK. First though a little train spotting from my 28th floor hotel room in Vegas

Can you spot it? If not there is a close up at the end of the post.

Ian Nairn was a great writer  and broadcaster about architecture. The BBC are currently re-showing on line a previous retrospective of his 1972 series 'Nairn Across Britain' .

This episode covers the route of the Settle & Carlisle in the days when there were "two trains a day in each direction, and two of those travel in the middle of the night" It also covers the then recently closed Waverley route.

That explains why little of the journey is actually made by train, but there is lots of 1970's BR atmosphere and detail as well as shots of small town life. There are lots of vehicles on the road that many of us might have forgotten about or expected to see in the '60s but not the early '70s. Morris Minors abound in the year they went out of production.

Oh, yes and here is that closer view of the train in Vegas, and no, I didn't spot it at the time either.

Point Rodding

I've been rather quiet of late, partly shocked into silence by the size of an unexpected tax bill, and partly the result of a lot of pontificating in my professional life, where I get paid for it.

I had been planning to bring you up to date with my tie bar experiments, which are beginning to bear fruit, but I want to wait until I have some better photographs, which will mean digging the DSLR out of semi-retirement which isn't going to happen now until I get back from my next trip to the States.

What I very quickly want to draw your attention to is the current edition of Great Western Journal  No 89 which has a detailed article by Mike Christensen on Point Rodding Operation on the GWR.

This is the sort of article I would have just briefly scanned over a few years ago when I thought point rodding was an optional extra for those with more time than sense.Now that the Wills product is available there seems little reason not to use it, and if youa re going to use it you might as well try and avoid glaring errors  It clearly explains how point rodding would be installed and why, with lots of photos. Highly recommended reading.