Today I went to Duxford, part of the Imperial War Museum IWM), as mentioned before this was on the list of "I want to do" and also on Jane's list of "I don't want to do". Duxford is only some 45mins from Bedford, and very easy to get to being right on the M11 motorway. This has been home to a RAF base from WWI and was home to the USAF during the latter part of WWII, it is now home to the IWM aircraft collection as well as a number of significant commercial aircr...

Today was Pendon museum day, almost every modelling magazine holds up Pendon as the pinnacle of modelling excellence. I have been reading about this model and viewing pictures of this for over 25years and was expecting it to be good. However the pictures in this and all the magazines do not do it justice. I went with Paul (my brother) and expected to be there for maybe an hour or so, then we could then go on to visit the Swindon Steam day. However once inside th...

For the next few days this blog will only report on Graham's travels. When i first decided to fix a date for retirement, and start to consider what I wanted to do one of the things on top of the list was visit The International N Gauge Show (TINGS). This is the major show for the gauge in the UK with over 40 different layouts and almost 50 traders showing their wares. This show exceeded all my expectations, the layouts were fantastic, the skill of the modellers...

Today we parted to do our own thing, Jane will be staying in Scotland with Sue, with the intention of imitating Thelma and Louise, and Graham has driven down to Bedford where he will be visiting more trains and museums.

yes today was the day to drive from Redworth Hall to Stirling and our mate Sue's, and as we were staying just round the corner from Locomotion, the National Railway Museum's 2nd site at Shildon we just had to pop in for a visit. Jane was thrilled of course and managed to find a nice cafe in the main exhibition hall to quietly sit and people watch. I had wanted to visit this site on the last few visits to the UK, but it was just too far for a day trip out of Bed...