My childhood, as I often reflect, was not one of the end of BR steam or even wall to wall BR blue - colourful and exciting yet tinged with both regret (for missing the busier wagon load traffic) and anxiety (for what privatisation could mean)…
My good friend Terry lent me a stash of old Rail magazines last month and it was like a Tardis. Within those dog eared pages I found childhood models and today’s inspiration. I’m still feeling under the weather so rather than some fresh new models, you’ll have to put up with some old Rail favourites with my reflections…
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| I swear that Lima must have just made what Rail put on a full colour page. These ‘colour sections’ seem to have informed so many of the models I remember - I had 73004, and it was one of my favourites. Alas, repainted many many times - Merseyrail perhaps the most appropriate, and long gone. |
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| Recently finished and off my work bench, here recently finished and off the production line! |
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| The rather unique Minilink system I have previously modelled. This was news to me when I discovered that I’d read all about it time after time in my favourite Rail Freight book as a child. I now own the whole system in N! |
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| These wagon profiles were fascinating. I feel none of todays rail magazines quite have the formula right, to me these old Rail are the perfect balance of news, history, opinion, modelling and reflections. |
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| More Minilink… |
So just a few pages from a whole pile of magazines but poignant never the less. Hopefully this Lemsip kicks in soon, but if not I’ve got sleeping dogs and sunshine for company. Until next time, more soon…
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Morning James. I've spent many happy hours reading through back issues of Rail Enthusiast magazine. The colour plates were always good, my favourite being an overhead view of Lostwithiel in the early 1980's, complete with clay hoods and blue 37. On a completely unrelated mater, is there a minimum radius that DG coupled stock will going around? My new N gauge project is definitely going to have code 55 track but I also need to address the matter of couplings. I have a continuous run planned. I've just spent the last hour browsing MRJ, drinking coffee and thinking that I need to finally up my N gauge game and stop being too precious with my RTR stock.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are feeling better soon. Take care.