In the Dark...

I don't want to keep harping on about this Ann Widdecombe business, but with the police investigation seemingly in chaos and contradicting itself, isn't it about time that they called in Miss Marple?  I mean, this sort of thing is right up her street: some bigoted old spinster gets offed in a remote and obscure village in the rural south west of England, there's no shortage of people who hated her thanks to her views and political connections, while the local police are a bunch of carrot crunchers.  I'm sure that Miss Marple would have it all tied up in no time, with assistance from the local vicar's daughter and the village cub scout pack.  Now, at this point, I was going to go off onto a complete tangent about some model railway stuff I'd just bought at this evening's local model train and toy fair, but at just after ten, the power went out, meaning that I have no internet, other than the very expensive minutes on my mobile phone - some of which I've been forced to waste making an outage report to the electricity company, (you can't just call them and report this sort of thing anymore - you have to fill in, in the pitch dark with a half charged phone, bloody online forms).  But hey - it's just come back on, so let's hope that, once the broadband connection has reset, it stays on long enough to get this finished and posted.  So, anyway, the stuff I got tonight:

These are a couple of the old Hornby 57ft coaches from the late 70s/early 80s.  They were actually mostly based around a generic moulding with a few variations to produce 'Southern', 'Great Western' and 'LNER' coaches. The latter had beading around the windows and doors and a teak finish, while the only difference between the 'Southern' and 'GWR' coaches, apart from the liveries, were their roof designs.  The upper of the two here was a unique later addition to the range, a restaurant/buffet car that was only offered in GWR (and later BR Western Region) livery.  The lower one is the 'Southern' version of the corridor composite.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with them -  they were bought on a whim because they  were cheap.  Both will undoubtedly be repainted and renumbered, then I'll figure out what to do with them - the 'Southern' coach will probably end up as part of a boat train formation.

These three are some rather tatty Trix wagons which I picked up very cheaply.  They all have various marks on their bodies, (the container wagon's other size has what look like several melt marks from a soldering iron on it). and one has a missing coupling.  But there's nothing that can't be repaired (even the soldering iron attack aftermath).  These will supplement my Trix locos and, with the use of the converter wagons I now have, will also be able to run in formations with stock and locos with Triang-style couplings.  

Well, the power's still on, (I'm guessing that it was a tripped fuse at the sub-station, although, until they find out why it tripped, there's a risk it'll go out again), so I'll post this and e-mail the police as to why they haven't got Miss Marple on the Widdecombe case yet...