Pete, Dave and Harry examine the arrival of the new battery powered express freight service. The new loco, resplendent in ‘Thomas the Smug Engine Blue’ livery with matching wagon even sports a built in crane which can rotate 360 degrees to allow loading and unloading almost anywhere.
I know a few of you get rather nasal about loading gauges, which likely dates back to childhood when you had one of those wooden toys with different shaped bricks you had to put through the correct hole but were rubbish at. Fear not, the whole caboodle slides down inside the engine and wagon as smoothly as Nasal Nigel’s sticky hand does back in to the special pocket of his sticky green flasher-mac. It even makes a squeaky slurping sound like Nigel’s hand does.
Deliberation Dave has quite rightly noticed, that unless you’re an acrobatic ninja, climbing up and getting through the cab door could be tricky due to the lack of proper handrails and steps. But Harry the Hammer has read that the crew are craned up and then dropped in through the cab roof, the door being purely cosmetic to save money. Pete replies, quite rightly, that someone still has to get in to the engine in the first place to operate the crane, and what if the battery is flat?
And finally, Clive looks on from the comfort his new narrowboat which looks a little too big for him. Clive will trim the tiller later when he gets his saw out, should any boaters here start to get a little twitchy.