Category: Model Railway

Mk3 Impulse Purchase

Is it really an impulse purchase if it takes three years to act upon that impulse?

For three years now I have been attending the annual Steam Gala at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and at Picking station there is a stall selling new and used model trains, and in the box of unboxed odds and ends, the bargain bin, there was a distinctive orange mk3 carriage. It was there in 2023, and I thought about buying it, it was there again in 2024, and I thought about buying it.

It did not occur to me to take a picture of the carriage in the bargin bin, but I did get a picture from the opposite platform

This year, 2025, it was there again, and I thought about buying it. And again, I put it back and walked away.

But, over a plate of scampi and chips at a nearby chippy, I gave the matter some more thought, and there and then I resolved to buy the carriage, if it was still there.

Proof of scampi and chips, should it be necessary.

So after lunch I returned to the stall, and there it was, the Northern Irish Railways Intercity Mk 3 carriage.

And there it is. Mine.

This is my first Lima carriage, and it immediately reminds me of how poor my Hornby carriages are. This is not only sturdy, and nicely detailed, it is weighty, and the correct length.

I feel compelled to compare and contrast it with a Hornby variant, but I’m writing this from the Youth Hostel. Something for another time perhaps.

I did wonder why no one had wanted to buy this over the past, at least, three years. But now that I have it, I don’t really have any use for it. It doesn’t match any of my existing mark three coaches, being a different manufacturer, to a higher standard than my hornby set, a different length, different livery, different railway.

There is no prototypical scenario in which a NIR carriage would run on BR rails. They’re not electrically compatible with the British variant, and they’re not even the same track gauge.

Purely academic anyway, as I don’t even have a railway to run it on. Not yet anyway.

Edible Coal

There is a curious confectionery to be found at Railway Museums and similar. Blocks of coal that you can eat.

I’ve had it before, at the Yorkshire Coal Mining Museum. It’s a sort of cinder toffee, coated in chocolate, and coated in a blackened sugar compound concoction that turns your mouth, lips, teeth, and tongue, black. One piece is plenty.

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Hickleton Plank Wagon

“Dad bought a random cart from the train stall!”

No. Dad bought a 1:76 scale model of a seven plank coal wagon, with which he has a deep and personal connection.

When ‘Dad’ was a nipper, there was a decommissioned coal mine where he would explore the derelict buildings, play in the abandoned marshalling yards, and stomp recklessly across the death trap slagheap. Would splash around with mates in the heavy metal stained orange waters that flowed from the mine nearby, and climb the felled floodlight towers for a laugh.

Family worked that mine, uncles, grandparents, his mother was born in its shadow. The lifeblood of our community in its day.

That coal mine was Hickleton Main Colliery. I had no choice but to buy it.

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