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JULY 2025 UPDATE
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GREG BROOKES
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ANDY LEE
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KIER HARDY
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It's been a fairly quiet month all round, and little to report from the workbench apart
from a handful of models being equiped with sound decoders, some of which will feature
on the next running session video.
It's much the same here with no progress on Johnson Road, but I have been busy with other
models. The Director of Photography / Cinematographer on 3 Thunderbirds episodes shot in
2015 for the 50th anniversary has wanted to borrow my models to film with... So I'm making
a replica for the Thunderbird 2 launch, and some other sets such as the runway.
On this visit to Hornsey Road depot, I managed to get in a couple of rooftop shots. There's
not been a great deal of modelling activity over the last month, so instead a few
more snaps will show what was spotted on shed that day.
Deltics, Brush 4s, Brush 2s and a few shunters populate the depot in this view, showing
a typical cross-section of motive power found in the Kings Cross area. Note the absence
of a bund around the fuel storage tanks - the same as Finsbury Park depot for most of its life.
A view from Hornsey Road, which runs alongside the depot....
... and looking back towards the fuel storage tanks.
I never visited Finsbury Park, unlike the other London depots because it was the
same old engines on the same turns as they came through Potters Bar in the early 1970s.
Most of the shunters could be seen in sidings and at the depot from passing trains, eventually!
A bit of a Southern theme going on here with a Class 73 propelling a TC set, and a Class 74
on a short inter-regional freight. The third rail here is handy for Jonny's 4-VEP, passing
a Class 33 and a rake of mark 1 coaches, whilst a 3-car Thumper chugs away in platform 1.
My latest video is about a 15" narrow gauge railway in a garden near Cheltenham, built
in the 1980s by my father Keith Hardy. A history of the railway from inspiration,
construction and operations, through to closing down and finding out what happened to the
locomotives and rolling stock. Please click on the above image to watch the video.
