Where Worlds Collide

If you’re a Mostly Autumn fan, you get used to semi-regular lineup changes. As Bryan Josh has just announced on the Mostly Autumn website, we’ll have to say farewell (for the time being at least) to Angie Gordon, Chris Johnson and Andy Jennings.

As Angie Gordon states:

It was my intention to return to touring after the birth of my daughter, Scarlett but I could never have anticipated how my feelings would change. Although there are several reasons, ultimately, performing locally over the last few weeks has made me realise that being away from Scarlett to tour further afield is out of the question at this time.

Meanwhile Chris Johnson, who has touring commitments with Fish, has this to say:

To remain so creatively focused on Mostly Autumn would have been spreading myself too thinly, and MA isn’t the kind of band where you can give less than 100%. This is going to be a key album for MA and they’re playing some of the biggest shows of their career in the next 12 months, I’d feel like I’d be letting down myself, the band and, most of all, the fans if I was going into this with my attention elsewhere.

And we see the return of some familiar names:

We are extremely pleased to announce the welcome return of…

Liam Davison on guitars.

Iain Jennings on keyboards (Barring the occasional gig due to former commitments).

Anne Marie Helder on keyboards, guitars, vocals and flute.

We would also like to welcome on board a fantastic new drummer by the name of Henry Bourn who is playing on the album as we speak.

I’ll miss Angie Gordon in particular. While her flute playing has been seriously underused on the last couple of albums, she’s played a very important part in the band’s live show, both on flute and on keys. Indeed, she was virtually holding the whole show together at one point in 2006. But when it comes to trying to combine being a touring musician with being the mother of a young baby, I think she’s made the right decision.

Chris Johnson’s departure really doesn’t suprise me in the least. With his touring commitments with Fish coinciding with the recording of Mostly Autumn’s new album, and a planned European Fish tour that clashes with MA’s own UK tour, it was going to be inevitable that he wouldn’t be able to continue as a member of both bands. And while he’s a good songwriter, I’m not sure of his style quite fits the Mostlies’ established sound. He’ll still be missed.

And I’m in two minds about Iain Jennings’ return. Not that he isn’t a superb keyboard player (and all-round nice guy), but it leaves me wondering where that leaves his own band Breathing Space, who have been getting better and better over the past year.

Four years ago, I posted about Signature Trains for a West of England layout. I tried to come up with six trains which ‘defined’ the Cornish main line in various eras. A lot has happened in the world of model railways since those days, and now I find myself in the early stages of building a layout based very loosely on Lostwithiel in Cornwall.

The layout will still be multi-era. With some careful juggling I think I can fit in eight roads in the fiddle yard, which means I’m can expand to eight trains rather than six.

Let’s start with the post-privatisation era. I had originally selected 2002 (the final hurrah of daytime loco-hauled workings), although since then the introduction of Dapol’s Virgin Voyager has allowed 2004-ish to be modelled.

1999 : This was the indian summer for classic traction. I visited Cornwall in the final weeks before the new EMD class 66s took over from the venerable 37s on freight workings

• Paddington-Penzance express formed of a GWT ‘Merlin’ livery HST. Because Farish never did the TGS or Buffet in this livery, this will have to be a mixed-livery set including two vehicles in the old InterCity colours.
• GWT loco-hauled set made up of InterCity liveried stock behind a Merlin-liveried 47/8. This was a semi-regular substitution for an HST, because GWT were a set short at the time.
• Virgin Cross-Country HST. I don’t have a full set of Virgin liveried coaches, just a TGS and a Buffet, so this will be a second mixed-livery set, with most of the coaches in InterCity
• Loco-hauled Virgin Cross Country set made up of a 7-car Mk1 set behind a 47/8
• Class 158 on local working. Post-privatisation liveries hadn’t come to the 158 fleet this early, so this needs to be a Regional Railways one; which means I have to coax my dead RR back in to life
• Cornish TPO behind a RES livery 47/7
• ‘Enterprise’ freight working, behind a pair of 37s. The stock will be a mix of Bachmann VGAs, Dapol Cargowaggons and Minitrix bogie tanks, the latter a continental product that makes a suitable placeholder for the ’silver bullet’ clay slurry tanks while I’m waiting for the ATM version.
• Local clay working behind a single 37. I’m building a rake of EWS liveried CDAs, although I’m not sure if very many carried EWS livery this early.

2002 : Three years later, a surprising number of things have changed.

• The Paddington HST now carries FGW “Barbie” livery
• The loco-hauled London train is now a timetabled fixture, but the Mk2 coaches now carry FGW’s “Fag Packet’ livery, as does the loco. I’ve also got a “Purple Ronnie” 57/6, which I’ve seen in FGW loco-hauled workings before, although I don’t know if it ever made it into Cornwall.
• We can now model the ‘Night Riviera’, since Bachmann have done the Mk3 sleeping cars in ‘Fag Packet’ livery (they’ve never done them in InterCity). This replaces the second HST in this sequence.
• The Virgin Cross-Country loco-hauled set remains unchanged
• The local 158 must also carry a different livery; I’ve actually got two suitable ones, one in Wessex Trains Alphaline, and one in Central Trains, representing a unit on hire.
• The three freight and parcels workings have the same stock, but all change motive power. The TPO now has class 67 haulage, the ‘Enterprise’ is behind a 60, and the local clay working has a 66.

2004 : We’ve lost the daytime loco-hauled workings, and the TPO has stopped running, but there’s still enough to make for a worthwhile sequence.

• The Barbie HST as before
• Dapol class 221 Voyager replaces the loco-hauled set.
• 158 as before
• Night Riviera sleeper as before, although the motive power is now an FGW liveried 57/6 (my most recent purchase!)
• The Enterprise and the local freight as before, except that both are now behind EWS 66s.
• The Hope-Moorswater cement behind a Freightliner 66; in 2004 it consisted of a mix of Cargowaggons in Blue Circle livery and PCA tankers.
• Engineers train behind a third EWS 66. In the summer of 2004 there were a lot of engineers trains working in conjunction with doubling of the track between Burngullow and Probus. Some were MHAs (Bachmann). Others were things like autoballasters (the forthcoming N gauge society kit).

A future post will cover the sectorisation and blue diesel eras.

First, Psycho Chicken, posting from Glasgow:

The wind’s so strong the building is moving - and when you consider that my building is a 100 year old sandstone tennement block, that’s quite something - and I can’t see the other side of the street for the horizontal rain.

There are actual waves in the school playground.

Then this morning the West Coast Main Line gets seriously disrupted, not by fallen trees or damaged overhead wires, but by an intermodal train shedding containers at Shap at 3 in the morning..

At least one of them was a forty-footer as well. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before. TV reports show one of them took out a signal and reduced it to a mangled wreck. Yet it didn’t derail the train, which continued into Scotland before the driver realised anything was amiss.

And it wasn’t a single incident either; a second train lost containers south of Milton Keynes.