Busy Busy

It's a slightly mad time ahead as we prepare all the web pages and supporting information for the unveiling of the first three stock packs from Project East Coast. With any luck the next posting you see here will be that the announcement has been made ....

In other news we've had a fun week unwrapping the first of the Project East Coast models ready for texturing and baking after testing the shape in RailWorks.

When's a Stock Pack not a Stock Pack?

A bit of updating time on the website today.

We've added some details about the format that the Stock Packs for Project East Coast are going to take and a few other tweaks here and there.

If you haven't noticed there's also a chance for you to get involved and influence the project.

Murmurings

Well it looks like our recent announcement has started a bit of discussion.

It was fun after getting home last night from seeing The Lovely Bones having a browse around forums where folks are discussing Project East Coast. Some seem a little perplexed, some don't even think we're serious and other have a sense of anticipation. We'll leave you to draw your own conclusions on each of those view points...

The next seven days should see a lot more information out there and a true picture of what Project East Coast is really going to look like, and a lot more discussion!

Back in action

After an interesting week of delving through some of the lesser seen areas of the internet that we all take for granted when it actually works we're pleased to say that the website is now back on line.

We've not been idle while the website has been down and have been making some good progress with the first items that form part of Project East Coast. We're not quite ready to tell you what they are yet, but you can expect a big announcement in the next week or so.

Something Fishy

While we're waiting for the website to sort itself out we thought a picture of something we've been working on for a while would liven things up, we'll be adding it to the maybe section once the website is back.

Built to an LNER design British Railways built a large number of fish vans (INSUL FISH) to service this once large traffic. Given the nature of the product speed was always of the essence so the wagons were built fully fitted, with a long wheelbase and through steam pipe to allow them to work in passenger trains, even being given numbers in the NPCCS series. The vans gained the name of Blue Spot fish vans after being fitted with roller bearings as this upgrade was signified by the application of a large blue spot on each side of the van.

Almost overnight the fish traffic was lost and subsequently there were a large number of fish vans looking for new work. Some wagons were taken into general goods stock while others were refurbished and put into use as parcels vans, coded as SPV. The vans lasted in this traffic until the early 1980's (gaining the TOPS code NRV), a number finding further use as barrier wagons, with the engineers departments and as internal user vehicles.

Spanner in the works

A weird day today.

After sending out media releases about Project East Coast last night we awoke to find the website wasn't working. For once it wasn't broken by us tinkering so that was refreshing!

Investigation showed that the problem was due to changes on the part of the domain registry stopping the domain resolving. After updates at the registry and with the hosting company it's now just a case of wait and see for the changes to propagate through.