You can use the old ones to slice your pizza.
Clan Line is always immaculate when out and about. Usually on the Pullman, but occasionally other stock.
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Kaito, it appears 
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She’s a thing of beauty and I need to go witness it at some point, tho’ perhaps a closer MN (or BB/WC) will have to substitute. Happily a ton of them got saved.
I did have a look at what the railtours she heads cost, as I thought a luxo-dining trip would be one way for Sam to get dragged along while doing something she actually likes…
Then I looked at the price list 
Remortgage territory.
Yep tours with meals are getting really pricy. Perhaps pop over to Grantham or Newark when something is due through. Although looking at advertised trips nothing booked for a while. Suspect the November/December Christmas Market specials to York, Norwich etc are going to be the best bet once they start to be advertised. Suspect most of the summer trips will either be cancelled or diesel hauled if this dry weather continues.
This is a useful site. Railtour Info 2025 Tours
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PS: that video is fucking excellent 
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But then some people actually want that sort of thing.
Even with a loco that couldn’t (as originally built) heat or stop any carriages built after the Mesolithic and which uses all of its engine power to swirl fluid around a mismatched transmission rather than actually pull a train.
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Yep, would be happy to re-visit Deltic, Whistler or Peak haulage of my spotting youth. Never had a Western as withdrawn before by the time I was 11. Would actually love a rat (Class 25) to go mainline, had loads of those on short haulage trips in 1980/1 around Manchester. Usually between Manchester Victoria to Bolton on Southport runs.
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I cannot recall ever seeing a Western or Warship in the ‘wild’, but Hymeks were about in fair numbers when I was school-aged, and I always thought they were handsome little things.
We also had another thoroughly unloved oddity, the poor, depressed-looking class 74 -
Diesel-electric with a third-rail shoe much like the class 73 (which we also often saw before they were nicked for the Victoria-Gatwick service). In combined mode they could swing around 3,000hp - rare for their day, but the diesel motor was hugely unreliable (and offensively loud), making them useless for their intended purpose. Every last one went for scrap before the 70s were done.
For a while, all we ever saw were class 33 ‘Cromptons’ - weedy but reliable -
I believe a few are still on the books of a couple of haulage operators and PWDs.
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Interesting & free access piece comparing the US (when investment in transport infrastructure stalled decades ago) and Europe (where it didn’t)
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Popped a few quid in, it will be good to see these out and about on LU.
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I doubt Q Stock will appear on the rails any time soon. Their 1938 set sees fairly regular use on Heritage Events though!
For anyone who’s ever cursed their luck stuck behind some fucking Jocasta driving her mobile-dogfood at 25mph everywhere, here’s a pic of the halcyon days when horses were transported either like this:
Or like this:
Something that anyone could do on BR rolling stock right up to the 1970s -
The things we’ve so-casually lost… 
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PS: They say Aintree’s fences are dangerous, but they’re as-nothing to 1930s Ascot’s palisade of sharpened spikes!!! :o
Honestly - who thought those were a good thing to have around horses? Someone had to hammer them into the ground and then deliberately and systematically whittle the tops to a murderous spike!
Is that what they do with the losers before the last trip to the dogfood factory, pour encourager les autres? 
Health & Safety inaction [sic] at Eastleigh Works Open Day 63 years ago - back when Natural Selection was at #1 in the rule book 
(264 Squadron for those who care)
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I wasn’t really sure quite where to put this, but due to its resemblance to a rail loco, here it is -
“Railroad tracks? Where we’re going we don’t need railroad tracks!”
This is a Lombard Steam Log Hauler, and far from being the one-off Heath-Robinson bodge-up of random vehicles that its appearance suggests, it was actually a commercially-successful vehicle (83 sold), and the (claimed…) first ever successful application of continuous-track-laying traction, a mere 124 years ago…
No two looked alike - later variants could be steered from inside the main cab rather than the lethal arrangement of earlier examples, and petrol engines became an option.
This quote from the Wiki page is pungent -
" … Downhill grades were the most dangerous, where ice allowed the sleds to accelerate faster than the engine. Jack-knifing sleds pushed many log haulers into trees, and most photos of log haulers show rebuilt cabs and bent ironwork on the boiler and saddle tank. Hay was spread over the downhill routes in an effort to increase friction under the sleds, but hungry deer sometimes consumed it before the train arrived. … "
Naturally, I now want one
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And you have space for it too…
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