The price of our pleasures!

Dijon ...... mustard. It's one of the few places I know of that have shops specifically for selling mustard, you can even have a tasting session ! I have seen a couple of HO Liliput SNCF 2-8-0 loco's with good detailing, DCC ready for about =A3160 ! in the UK.

Marklin do a SNCF model with a pantogragh and sound for about =A3290.

I remember reading about a comparison between the prices of today's model railway kit with those from the 40's & 50's. Today's kit is good value for money !

What's the price of a GOOD bottle of wine in Dijon !

"Sailor" wrote

Don't ever go to Dublin then!

Two or three days there in October made me grateful to be a subject of Herr Brown.

Beer - GBP5.00 a pint; fish & chips GBP12.95; Litre of Famous Grouse whisky - GBP32.00, and don't even dream of buying a house there without a serious Euro Lottery win! My prices assume 1GBP = 1 Euro, which isn't far off the mark (not Deutch Mark either).

John.

You can reckon on a good Nuit St Georges for about 8=8050 or a St Emillion for about the same.

My favourites are a nice Tarragona ( with the fancy gold wire mesh) at lidl for 2=8075.

I suppose that I could have mentioned that whilst I was in the model shop a guy bought an aeroplane for a cool 950=80. I don't think that included things like engines and control gear.

Dont go on a real train either. Sure NuneatonEuston return used to cost less than GBP50 for peak fare and less than GBP35 for off peak 10 years ago. Now its over GBP110 or GBP £65 respectively. By having a go at the lottery of which train to go for (travel time and legth of journey time and change at Rugby) got it to GBP80.

Cheers, Simon

VIA Rail between Toronto and Montreal is trying to compete with Megabus (Stagecoach) and their fares as low as $1 for early booking, by offering up to half off rail travel for advance booking.

Cheapest Toronto-Montreal (335 mi.) return rail fare is about GBP105.

In the 1960s I used to travel between Bradford and Oxford (via Birmingham and Banbury or via Penistone and Sheffield) for 52/6 single (£2.625).

Um, that's what - about 160 miles?

And how much did you earn in a typical week back then?

wolf k.

Derby to St P' return ( standing until Leicester on the trip down ) some 30 years ago was =A322 after about 10 am / 5.30 pm !

I know people like to have a visual look at an item like a model prior to purchase, myself included, but the Internet has force-changed everything. Does France not have the UK equivalent of Amazon ?

Chris

That journey to Oxford was quite pricey, then...

cheers, wolf k.

wolf k.

Something like that.

I didn't. The government was paying me to attend university.

However my summer job as a bus conductor paid about £12 a week.

About equal to our minimum wage back then. IOW, not enough to eat and=20 play with trains too. I went through that phase about a decade earlier=20 than you. Learned a lot about the virtues of cardboard. Still have a=20 caboose I made with scored card back then, and a tank car whose body is=20 a cash-register-paper core.

;-)

wolf k.

:> However my summer job as a bus conductor paid :> about £12 a week. :>

: About equal to our minimum wage back then. IOW, not : enough to eat and play with trains too. I went through : that phase about a decade earlier than you. Learned a : lot about the virtues of cardboard.

Err, for a moment I thought you mean Cardboard, as in boxes and doorways! :~0

I used to remove the bodies of my Hornby Dublo locos and replace them with home-made cardboard tram bodies so I could play trams. Of course the EE Type 1 (later Class 20, HD's and BR's first mainline diesel, introduced

Meccano was also good for building larger-scale trams.

Ok, some comments on N. American usages (which are not consistent across =

the continent BTW):

"Cardboard" is used for cereal boxes, etc. I believe you call it "card". =

"Box board" is corrugated cardboard (a term that is pretty well obsolete =

now). "Straw board" is cheap, soft, pretty useless cardboard (another=20 nearly obsolete term). "Card stock" is a model railroader term for what=20 printers call "card" or "cover stock." "Poster board" is usually thicker =

stuff (2mm and up), but sometime just refers to large pieces of=20 cardboard/card stock. "Mat board" is used for picture framing, and is=20 about 2mm or thicker. "Foam board" has a styrofoam core with paper or=20 light card covers, around 3mm and up.

What's with "cardboard" re: doorways????

FWIW, those foam plastic trays used for packaging meat cuts etc are a=20 versatile material, too. I'm using it for building a couple of roads.=20 Maybe we could call it "foam card." ;-)

cheers, wolf k.

Cardboard is used as a generic term for pretty much any kind of card over here. A "cardboard box" will often be made from corrugated cardboard.

Sounds like the grey stuff you get on the back of a cheap pad of writing paper.

It's a universal term for thin card, usually of decent quality. From little more than heavyweight paper upper to a mm or so thick.

Mounting board or mounting card over here.

Same here.

You sleep in doorways (or under the viaducts, or anywhere...) by night in a cardboard box when you're on your uppers (meaning you've worn away the soles of your shoes tramping the streets by day and all that's left of them are the uppers). In other words you're a tramp or, perhaps, hobo.

MBQ

Good stuff, cardboard. Corrugated (the coarser the better) is best by far

- I had the pleasure if it's company many times when homeless.

Cheers Richard

SNIP

SNIP

Visited my favourite 2nd hand model shop today, noticed he had a few old hornby Jinties and Scots amongst many other locos. really liked the look of them and was very tempted to buy one or two of either. realised of course have enough jinties and the Scots are soon (I hope) to be upgraded. Then saw an LMS Black 5 and red Duchess (GBP35) - both tender drive of course, but again was tempted as it looked so good. Made me realise that no matter how many photos look at, despite having seen real thing and got the latest super detail version am not able to carry the vision of a super detail to make the not quite right one look a problem.

The point ? Well maybe should buy several older models rather than one or two new ones. May be happier ? Plus was reading another article in Modellers Backtrack where although rivet counters are not criticised as that is their preference the author felt that having a good overall impression of a real railway was more important than the fine detail (true they are not incompatible).

Cheers, Simon

I couldn't agree more!

MBQ