T ' ebay Complaints Department.

Three weeks it is since I personally delivered my complaint to t'ebay and to date I have heard nothing.
The BIG Zero,,, Zippola,,, Diddly Squat,,, not a Richard Sparrow.
I also ruined a decent pair of trousers shimmying up the drain pipe to post it all,,, in fact I notice the drain pipe is no more,,,, ooops.

Anyway more interestingly this lovely stone building is obviously miles from anything like a polluting chimney,, it is also of considerable age as at the top of the wall corner the bricks are at right angles to each other and the bottom or below the door line they are rounded to allow easy access for horse drawn carts I would imagine.

Dosen't surpise me that t'ebay get cart loads of complaints to be honest, probably something to do with their complete lack of interest in swindled vendors,,, anyway I'm not going to bang on in RedNose week!!!

And all this was designed & constructed long before Blu-Tac and MDF had even been thought of, and it's still a mystery to me why people use them,,, for me Blu-Tac always seems to stick to what I don't want it to and has very little grip on what I do want it to hold on to,,, and MDF is an even bigger mystery,,, you can't screw into it,,, if you try you just generate an O gauge mole hill which the screw seems to settle down in nicely,, completely detached from the rest of its self but at least it's comfy,, somebody's making a fortune out of selling these DIY aids,,, why didn't I think of them!!!

And as it's RedNose week I was delighted to here that Coca Cola are currently spending an absolute  fortune on a GLOBAL campaign to highlight to their "core customers" [ie 4 to 25 years of age] the importance of a healthy diet!!!!! YO HO HO Yeh Right,,,, Coca Cola are to healthy diets what King Herod was to babysitting,, that's nearly as tasteless as the Super Slimmer Mac,,, get real people do you honestly think we don't know what your really up to and can't see through you little ploys to make europe as blobby as you lot are!!! NoWay Jose,,,oh and have a nice day!!

Red Nose Week Modelling!!!!!

Feeling depressed, tired of life's humdrumedness,, are you lacking a certain Gortonaura,,,well here at the Pastures we are confident we can put a smile on your face at least one day a year.

For the serious Modeller

I have been aware for a couple of months of various comments on modelling forum's about some of the staggeringly "amusing" prices people are asking for stuff on our old friend t'ebay.

Tuesday night Mr Mourinho was correct "the world did stop" for a couple of hours from around 7.30pm,,, I went on t'ebay just to see what was appertaining,,,,, now please enjoy some of these veritable bargains,,

OO Graham Farish LNER suburban coaches,,,, 3 on offer,,, a brake end and 2 standard,,, all are available on the "Buy it Now" scheme,,,, the brake end at £165,,, the 2 standards at £150 and £145,,,,
YO-HO ho I don't know what they drink in the lake district but can you send me a couple of gallons as a sample.

Now I have a couple of these myself and I have had them since about 1968,,,, when they came out they were a definite improvement on Tri-angs coaches,,, you remember the one's,,, one side was maroon,, the other side was also maroon but not quite the same shade or warpedness,, and the roof looked like a relief map of the M62,,, anyway I'm glad I kept my Farish items if they have appreciated that much,,, and,,, if anybody is interested in buying these 2 obvious collectors items you can have the pair for £75,,, including postage!!!!!

Somebody else is selling a K's LNER ROD 2-8-0 which looks as though it has spent the last 3 years shunting uphill with Mike Tyson on the regulator,,, and yet again this is another bargain with a starting price of a mere £245,,,I'm pretty sure this will be one of those K's ROD's where you get a chassis block forged out of old banana skins and 8 driving wheels which if you are really lucky will have 3 which are roughly the same size, shape, and concentricity,,,,or how about a Bec Director in Brunswick Green [surely not even a Bec kit deserves such a fate,, British Railways even agree with me on that one ] at a cool £165,, oh and add a chassis, wheels and motor to taste,, not only that but this one apparently is "vintage"!!!!
I'm going to have to let Bachmann know their advertising is obviously not hitting the target audience.
Or perhaps I've got it all wrong and these jesters are also entering into the Red Nose Spirit!!!!!

For the not so serious modeller.

Whilst lying in the prone position in bed one morning this week in that wonderful layby land between sleep and "ah well here we go again" I heard my old friends on the BBC breakfast programme wittering on about the 2 panda's in Edinburgh zoo,,,, apparently the female is so hot to trot she is now doing handstands and we will have to be quick as she only lets him get amorous 2 days a year,,,, reminds me of a girl I knew from Rotherham,,, she was very similar,,, from memory it was Tuesday's and Saturday's.

Unbelievably in the same bulletin they advised that some prince in Saudi Arabia has thrown his toys off his camels back as Forbes the publishers of  the Top 100 Wealthy Hit list have under played his wealth by around £10 Billion!!!! and he is not happy,,, he is getting all aeriated and litigious,,, & having lived there for about 8 years I bet the camel is pretty nervous as well.

Exhibition Calender

Now here's a novelty,,, me attempting to get more organised with the exhibition info,,, so,,, I hope you have aleady noticed we have now included on the main page the basic info of our next outing and will be updating THIS page on a regular basis with more info on exhibition bookings as it becomes available.

Anyway to date we are booked in for the following:

Barrow Hill Live Steam. Chesterfield Derbyshire,,,celebrating Doncaster 160 years!!!!
Sept 28th & 29th  2013
Now that has to be worth attending,, I wonder if SNG will be adequately represented!!! He'd better be.
We also hope by then that the highly sophisticated Webbens CLOP "Computerised LocO Programme " will not only be fully functional but in glorious technicolour,,,hopefully,,, it will tell you what your looking at,, what your going to be looking at and what you've just missed,, it really will cater for all tastes,, so bring your old Ian Allen compendiums and relive your childhood with a bit of spontaneous trainspotting.
My parents lived in Chesterfield, father was a member of the organising club,, Little Midland Society and therefore I know we will be needing the CLOP as it is almost guaranteed I will be feeling socially jaded on both days before about 13.30 hours!!! Can't wait.

Tonbridge MRC Kent.
Saturday 15th February 2014
Our first foray south of the river,,,,, sinkplunger will you be attending,, can you translate if required??
I met a bunch of the Tonbridge lads at another show and what a happy/friendly bunch they were too.
It's also nice when people invite you to their show, mean it, and confirm as much in writing, unlike some!!
We have also been assured by our resident medico that penicilin will protect us against the highly contagious  "sarf of the river malachiteous"!!!


Norwich 2014
EasiPeasi lemons and all that guff,,, it's our home show,,, was booked to do it in 2008 but since then my regular movements have quite simply got in the way,, I will be offering more info when I know what it is!!!!

TrainWest Melksham Wiltshire. 11th & 12th April 2015.
Frighteningly close to Swinedon,,, but we are always game for a "larf",,, here at the pastures. As it's that far from Gorton or Doncaster I will probably get one of my hefty nose bleeds,,,, so be warned.

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Needless to say along with just about every other modeller in the land with an exhibition layout I have a list as long as your arm of people who invite you at one show,,, you give them your pre-printed blurb,,, and then you just never hear from them ever again.  So if it's you,,,,,Swivel!!!

Missing,,,, Boris the Spider!!

We were doing rather well until Boris the tame shed spider decided he'd had enough of making bicycle spokes and just wandered off under the work bench.

I tried originally with very fine wire which was relatively easy to solder to the brass rim but I couldn't get wire fine enough to get the correct number of spokes or more importantly look right.

I then had a flash of inspiration what about Boris the Spider,,, [The WHO,,, A Quick One Album,,, 1966] and we were getting on famously until I inadvertently got the super glue nozzle a bit too close to his excreting gland and he took instant umbrage,,, also found the Joe90 magnifying helmet ran out of puff when it came to working the extremely fine thread which Boris was providing in I have to admit COPIOUS quantities,

Also tried separating used bits attached to the shed window from one of his earlier webs but it had gone brittle and wouldn't bend round the axle anywhere near as nicely as the fresh produce,,,,mmmm,,,, I never realised web went brittle when it got old,,, that's perhaps why  the wing mirror on the van never actually falls off,,, it's held in place by the 2 or 3 of his firm webs!!!

Ah well back to the drawing board on that one,,, mind you the frame looks the bizzo and unless you are extremely well endowed in the opticals you probably won't notice the spokes are missing,,,, but it would have looked a lot better,,,, all I have to do now is fashion a saddle out of some old piece of leather I have lying around,,,, very adjacent to one of Helen's old handbags actually!!!!!!

Isn't modelling fun,,,,,,

Who remembers Sturmey Archer.

I have long held the belief that OO gauge finescale modelling could really do with a half decent representation of a pushbike,,,, the black plastic offering that we all use has it's Merit's but for me that is part of the problem every pushbike on just about every model looks exactly the same and having taken a measuring stick to one recently it appears that in OO land all adults ride a kids bike anyway as it is definitely on the small side.

I do remember seeing an LMS layout based around an inland port/waterway that had a "proper" pushbike leaning against a shed and it was one of the finest pieces of modelling I have seen,,, ever,,, the layout was wonderful but the pushbike casually leaning against a shed was even better.

Now this may transpire to be compete madness but I have offered myself a challenge to make a pushbike which will hopefully look better than the one's I already have and I am already toying with the idea of it having spokes, as after playing about on the workbench in my lunch hour recently I reckon it can be done!!

Not without the usual assistance from my Joe 90 magnifying helmet,,, the milk bottle was a challenge, so were the spectacles in the opticians window, but we shall see,,, I will also keep you abreast of developments,,[that's more like it],,, but this is something else to keep the old grey matter confused and it is also a little project I can fiddle with on the kitchen table,, in the warm.

Another bit of good exhibiting news is we have been invited to the Steam Open Day at Barrow Hill in September,, ho ho,,, all them chuffs and puffs wandering about to give it all a bit of 12" to 1' scale realism,, and the beer in that part of the world is more than half decent as well!!!!

If you don't hear from me again the little men in their white coats have probably taken me off to meet Messr's Sturmey and Archer,,, who apparently sold out in the 1980's to some Egg Noodle manufacturing company in Taiwan!!!!! Is nothing sacred. 

  

N.U.J,,,,,,He look's sort of familiar!!!!

Was it something I blogged???,,, I do hope I haven't upset anybody at the AuntieBeeb.
After my light hearted rant last week on the "Weather Forecast plus some Blog" we appear to have hit a raw nerve!!!
All them autoqueue readers,,, sorry journalists,,, have thrown their toys out of the mineral wagon and gone on strike.

Doubtless it's all about a fair day's pay for a fair day's autoqueue reading,,, we have no idea how hard it is sitting on the sofa reading a hard days night,, especially at 6am,,, "they have no idea have they Billie".

Journalist's,,,, mmm,,, Banker-W's,,,, Estate agents,,,,politicians,,,, they are all in the same pontoon as far as we are concerned,,,,, wasn't the same in George's day,, now he was a proper journalist,,, had his own pencil's and sharpener on him at all times,,, and he knew how to use a them,,, he got that good at it the NUJ named a river after him,,, those were the days,,, black and white characters,,, smokey scene's,, factory's,, canals,, and L.S Lowery scribbling away on an old envelope in the middle distance.

I wonder if anyone ever told him he looked like Oswald Mosley

That's more like it.

Shot's like this I find quite emotional,,, silly old sod,, but click on the pic please.

What a lovely scene,,, and I know exactly where this shot was taken,,, in fact my brother in law was brought up in one of those houses in the background, progress has seen fit to demolish all these atmospheric dwellings to make way for a synthetic ski slope!!!!! Come the revolution brother's someone will pay!!!

A D9 on it's home shed,,, Sheffield Neepsend I guess mid 1930's,, wonderful.

I am hoping my efforts do the original proud and we are even more pleased to announce that due to the sudden rise in shed temperature:
the gorilla has replaced his private's back in their fur lined box,,,
the cat has returned and taken up it's favoured and relaxed position in front of the heater,,,
I have been soldering with fingers that have a new found sense of the infamous touchy feely.

This weekends efforts have seen a complete set of reversing rod apparatus appear,, we are well on the way to having some safety valves, and a smokebox door, and a large steam pipe down one side of the boiler, and after a quick rummage through one of my many bit's boxes I have found a chimney and dome which after some judicious fettling should add to the general Gortonaura of well being.

I also occasioned upon an Alexander kit for a GC 4000 gallon tender which with many of my other projects has been gathering dust in the office for a considerable number of years,,, but it has now most definitely shot past the,, "will come in handy one day"  category.

This is what can happen when we have a working temperature and perhaps more importantly there is no rugby on the box at the weekend,,, still don't really believe what I saw from Dublin last weekend.

As mentioned on one of last weeks epistles [just thought I'd drop that one in,, 2 entry's in one week] the management have now committed in public that both the D9 and Valour will be on show at future exhibitions,, not necessarily finished but they will be on show!!!!

Also found out last year that attempting to spray paint in damp murky sheds is not conducive to acceptable paintwork,,, which is a bit of a mystery really co's when I was gainfully employed in the the motor trade just about every body shop I visited worked out of a damp and murky shed,,,, but I don't have the benefit of one of those industrial heaters that when turned up to regulo 5 look like the blast pipe of a BAC Lightning on take off with reheat fully engaged,,, those were the days,,, 56 Sqdn Akrotiri,,, taking off at dusk,,, a sight and sound I will never forget.

Anyway enough of all this sentimental cobblers,,, I would have included a picture of the aformentioned model but for some reason my digital box brownie has hit a phase of not wanting to play,,,,, hope it isn't temperature related???