Heljan announce a Sparky

Hope they (also) do a pre 'flexicoil' suspension version...

I wish they had delayed the announcement by a few weeks as I was about to sell my Hornby versions on Ebay and now the market will be flooded with them.

Fred X

One of the British Transport Films I downloaded from TheBox is entitled "Modelling for the Future". It's on the Volume 3 DVD, "Running a Railway". Made in 1961, it demonstrates a conceptual terminal layout for the future Channel Tunnel. It opens with a technician playing with the pantograph on a Hornby-Dublo Class 81 E3001. He then attaches it to the front a rake of

4 HD tinplate Stanier coaches to represent the London-Paris train; the journey is projected to take 4 hours. The rest of the quite complex layout is populated with various Hornby Dublo rolling stock, as well as Dinky, Dublo Dinky and Matchbox trucks and coaches, plus 00 Minic cars travelling on double-deck 4 wheel wagons carrying 4 cars each. They even have a working Minic Motorways setup showing how cars will roll on and off, while passengers stay in their cars through the tunnel (which they do today). The goods wagons are mixed standard 4-wheel types of the period, and the 2-rail tracks have simulated overhead.

This was 33 years before the Chunnel opened, but only 3 years before its construction was approved by the British and French governments. The design concept was quite advanced for its time, and it's interesting to see our childhood models/toys being used for a serious purpose!

I remember seeing that layout at the Boys and Girls exhibition, or maybe the Schoolboy's exhibition.

There actually were plans for the tunnel at that time, but they got dropped.

That one got dropped.

What be have now was a later plan pushed by the EU. I remember all sorts of alternatives proposed to what we have now, like a bridge and a hybrid bridge/tunnel. The government of the day was originally adamant that it should be road not rail, and that there should be no public funding.

In 1997, a 13km/8-mile road bridge was opened connecting Prince Edward Island with New Brunswick on the Canadian mainland. It is 200' high in the middle to allow ocean-going ships to pass under, and has to contend with strong tidal currents and heavy winter sea ice. It is often closed to trucks due to high winds, and occasionally closed altogether due to fog, or snow and ice on the surface. The Northumberland Strait isn't as wide or as deep as the English Channel, but it was still a major engineering challenge. Rail or road tunnels, causeways and bridges had been considered as far back as the 1870s. The bridge, which replaced car ferries, led to a major increase in tourist travel to the Island.

MartinS schrieb:

great - I really enjoyed that too ........

I thought you were referring to the new Dogfish wagons with their track-occupancy detector and auto-reverser compatible wheelsets.

"Nigel Cliffe" wrote

LOL - yes, just found out about the non-insulated wheelsets.

John.