"Six foot under Ernie"

I guess Underground Ernie was just a flash in the tunnel.

I recently bought two of the small ernie maintenance trucks ( useful for the power bogie ) at £3.99 each, which was the shops whole stock. I didn't create a run on it then?

"kim" wrote

Never really took off.

I partly blame the use of the hideous American trackage system which wasn't compatible with anything else in the UK. With standard Code 100 setrack it

John.

Nah, it was just a nasty, pointless, exercise in derivative marketing: all fluff and nothing behind it. The point with Thomas was that the stories are well written, are about the sort of human situations kids can understand, with some well-understood railway technology irretrevably woven in. But it is the relationships that matter, and it is no co-incidence it was written by a clergyman.

The tie-in hardware works because the stories work.

Talking tube trains was just another postman pat (a low-rate re- invention of Trumpton). Had the bachman models been superb, the kids would not have wanted them. it was cynical marketing which has thankfully failed, because the real world is more complex than these two-dimensional marketeers will ever understand.

I cleared a local shop of them last year at 4.99 plus some random extra discount. One now powers a Soviet armoured train, two more to go.

Originally. The stuff after Britt what's-her-name was pretty awful.

But it's not so much that he was a clergyman.

He knew railways and made up stories using his knowledge to tell his son Christopher when he was in bed sick.

Christoper Awdrey who wasn't a clergyman carried on in the same tradition getting the railway stuff right.

Wow, the Soviets are really getting short of money these days aren't they?

Fred X

I bought some bits and pieces in TKMaxx a few months back, IIRC I bought four different 2 car units, two warehouse buildings and a couple of track packs, each with a point in, for a total of 21 quid; presumably Kader had given it up as a bad job by then.

The track is pretty difficult to align, the plastic catches on the 'ballast' base make it more difficult to make sure the fishplates are joined, and the units themselves are pretty difficult to re-rail correctly; the bodywork is much wider than the bogies so it's difficult to see when all wheelesets are on the rails. Not surprised it didn't succeed.