Hi, great site!

rovercoupe · Post by **rovercoupe** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:09 pm

Found this site whilst wanting to know a little more about class B12's. I've just bought one off ebay, brand new condition but no box, made by Hornby with proper loco drive.

I'm only 19, currently work at Arup in the Rail department although I'm leaving asap, the who training side never worked out. I'm planning on taking up aerospace up to a degree shortly. I'm probably one of or the youngest here!

My interest in railways, well steam anyway, is inherited from my family, at about 4 years of age I visited the Severn Valley Railway for the first time, and of all the engines I got to see, it was the Scotsman! back then it was in the candy apple green LNER livery and numbered 4472 without any deflectors. I even got to go on the footplate!! Still have the photos. Second time the Gresley was there, also in LNER livery, as 4498. I also have Hornby models of both!

Until the other day my interests in these had been abused for probably six or seven years until I got chatting to a friend, whose uncle has a massive stock of rail models, and is trying to set up a site to sell them, next day I got the old board down!

As I will be getting a lot of free time when I leave work (fortunate enough not to need the money at the moment!) I may strip and restart the board, it's only half finished and its the last time I'll get to be a kid again for a while!

Having worked in a rail department I have designed some S&C on various bits of rail around the country, mostly in the locality of Birmingham, and worked on other alignment details using InRail design packages. In another time and place it would have been a fantastic position. In the past I have worked on the ongoing East London Line Project including bits of the underground, even coming up with some ventilation ideas and input into Wapping.

My main interests though at present are cars, I am particularly interested in the BMC>MGR story as you may be interested on http://www.austin-rover.co.uk, anopther sad British demise

. I myself have started a general motoring site forum at http://www.automotivated.net which is basically for all enthusiasts and aimed at all cars, and aspects of motoring, a good place to moan about road management, insurance problems and so on that a lot of other sites leave to one side for reasons of PC. I currently own a 95 Rover 216 Coupe which I am in the process of restoring to original glory with a few subtle improvements (no daft body kits here!!!)

Anyway, great site, glad I found it and keep up the good work!

Regards,

Post by **richard** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:14 am

Thanks for the compliments!

I also have a few Land Rover pages. Much much smaller and static, but they tell a similar story to the Austin story but from a different angle. The history/time pages are here:

http://www.winwaed.com/landy/history/index.shtml

(I used to own a Series 3 FFR)

Richard

rovercoupe · Post by **rovercoupe** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:30 am

Brilliant, glad I'm not the only one with a passion for the two!

I did work experience at Land Rover Special Vehicles a few years ago. Also was offered an apprenticeship with Land Rover/Jaguar but turned it down for a supposedly more secure future with Arup, and boy was I wrong. Biggest mistake of my life. Also applied at MGR last year, but what do you know, they go bust...

Post by **richard** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:10 am

Land Rover / Jaguar are now a part of Ford, so you would have probably been thinking of leaving by now anyway!

Give them a couple of years and they'll be in the same ditch as Leyland.
Here in the US, GM and Ford are both having big problems. Bankruptcy isn't impossible (esp. for GM), although it is much more likely that both will survive in a much smaller form. This would transform the US car market to be similar to the European one - lots of manufacturers with none dominating.

Richard

Bullhead · Post by **Bullhead** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:12 am

I'm often struck by how much diversity of manufacturer is a bit of an illusion - for example, the way in which Audi/VW/Skoda/Seat share components like floorpans. The Jaguar X-type is a Mondeo under the skin. My (lovely) Alfa 147 had lots of disturbing echoes of the (dull) Fiat Stilo. The Saab 9-5 (or is it the 9-3? I forget) is "really" a Vectra. My Audi A4 has had the VW Group parts bin emptied into it.

This doesn't necessarily make them bad cars, of course, and I understand the economic imperatives for component sharing. It's just that they're not quite as individual under the skin as we may think.

Post by **richard** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 2:41 pm

Yes, it is a very grey line between different companies and brands of the same company. The traditional US market has lots of "brands" instead of companies - eg. Lincoln and Mercury, but these days with the mergers/etc, "Jaguar" and "Land Rover" (to give examples) are little more than brands albeit with some specialised experience.

Richard

rovercoupe · Post by **rovercoupe** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:43 pm

That said, Land Rover and Jaguar are somewhat decentralised from Ford engineering, case in point, the new XK.

Tom Quayle · Post by **Tom Quayle** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:35 pm

I discovered the site in a simerlar way while looking for info on LNER freight engines. Advice comes in handy. Richard has a good site here and its nice to see others comending him for his work. As far as Land Rovers go the subject has been a little off with me as thats all I hear about at College from the DT staff. I prefer rallying and enjoy helping with things like car washing at the Grisdale event every December. Blackpool Rally this Sunday