Re post #34, the Falcos were shipped to Sweden and assembled right here in Gothenburg. So please send our Falco back when it’s complete! We have just the right place for it in our Aeroseum!

Thanks for the info, Pete, the GCR is now on the list to visit on my next trip to the UK! I presume that Tornado will still be there around the time of Legends, as the schedule to start main line running is not until September.

91Regal, did the Beyer-Garratt coal trains go past you? I never managed to spot a Beyer-Garratt myself, but I believe that may have been their territory.
Apropos Victors, my first posting in the RAF was as a radar technician working in the control tower (on PAR and ACR7D) at RAF Cottesmore with two whole squadrons of Victor B1s on it – 10 and XV squadrons. I thought I had died and gone to heaven!
PAR = Precision Approach Radar for ground-controlled approaches
ACR7D was the Decca Airfield Control Radar for control up to 30 miles away
The last ACR7D console I saw was in the aviation museum in Stockholm, and I was itching to undo the screws and pull the display out to check the wiring!

One of my regular bike trips was the 15 miles to Newark, past RAF Swinderby (with lots of Vampire T.11s in the circuit) and if I saw Bittern or any other A4 (“Streak”) on the main line I would have been well chuffed! (Do people in the UK still say they are “chuffed” when they are overjoyed?)

I was at Grantham too! Around 1954. On a school trip from Lincoln City School a few years later, we trainspotters bunked off to Dover shed, see the results here (use the Search facility for Dover).
http://www.train-photos.com/
At the ripe old age of 64, I still photograph locomotives (steam preferably, but there are very few in Sweden) at every opportunity.
I had an Eagle badge once, and read it avidly from the very first issue onwards. Dan Dare was of course my favourite, and there was a space-type radio programme that thrilled me. What was that called? I suppose kids today would not be able to understand what it meant to have sugar (i.e. sweets) rationed!
Those were the days, when I would disappear on my bike all day and my parents didn’t worry at all. A bit later, when I was about 14, I biked all the way from Lincoln to Scunthorpe along the main road – no gears on the bike, no sandwiches, boy, was I tired and hungry when I got back! That was the road that goes past Scampton (obligatory aviation mention there!).

Hurricanes and Tiger Moths were repaired at the Taylorcraft (Auster) factory at Rearsby, Leicestershire, and also nearby at Syston and Mountsorrel. I don’t know if that was a CRU (Combat Repair Unit?) however.

They had all weekend to do it – in a multi-storey car park – it’s typical of Sweden that other people with cars parked nearby probably saw it being done and took no notice!
It took 2 months to repair the car, as there was also damage to the doors and ignition lock in an attempt to get in and drive it away, presumably, before they set about the engine! Apparently the immobiliser was very effective.
I now keep the car in a heated and securely locked underground car park that costs me a fortune in monthly charges, but the insurance costs the same!

The standard complaint by the Swedish police is that “the politicians won’t give us enough money to recruit more policemen/women so we don’t have enough police to investigate minor crime” such as a friend of mine who has been physically assaulted several times by the same lunatic, or the unfriendly people who stole the engine out of my car. Mean while the number of roadside cameras in Sweden is increasing exponentially, although each one costs a fortune to install!