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Dugald Drummond designed the successful T9 Class 4-4-0 locomotives, using the experience he gained from the less than perfect C8 Class, and by incorporating large fireboxes and Stephenson link valve gear.

The first fifty were confidently ordered straight from the drawing board and constructed between 1899 and 1900. Twenty were built at the London & South Western Railway’s own workshop at Nine Elms in London and thirty were built by Dübs & Company in Glasgow, all supplied with six-wheel tenders.

In all a total of 66 T9s were built, of which 15 were further outshopped from the Nine Elms workshop between 1900 and 1901. These locos incorporated some modifications which included a wider cab, revised wheel splashers and the fitting of cross-water tubes inside the firebox, along with the connection of the Drummond ‘watercart’ eight – wheel tender for longer running. The previous batches were later retrofitted with the modifications.

The 66th and final T9 was built by Dübs & Co, in 1901 for the Glasgow Exhibition of that year.

Built specifically for the highly competitive express train services from Plymouth to London, they quickly came into their own, with their high turn of speed soon earning them the nickname of the ‘Greyhounds’. Their comparatively short frames and light axle weight suited the tighter curves of lines on the West Country routes.

Robert Urie, successor to Dugald Drummond, continued to make further modifications and improvements until 1929.

After initial service with the London & South Western Railway, they passed to the Southern Railway when the railways were regrouped in 1923 and in 1948 they passed to the newly formed British Railways.

In 1949, 13 of the T9s were converted to ‘oil burning’ the experiment was not a success and all 13 were withdrawn from service.

The remaining T9s were finally withdrawn from service in 1961. All but one were scrapped.

With the new range of Hornby T9 Class 4-4-0, modellers can experience for themselves the charm of this much loved locomotive. In fact, the first variants released earlier this year sold out almost immediately. Using new tooling, the detailing on these new locomotives is nothing short of exceptional. I swear that you can even read the sight gauges in the cab! Check out the 360 degree images of the Hornby R2712X T9 Class and the Hornby R2713X T9 Class at www.trainsnrailways.co.uk and hopefully you will see for yourself how wonderful this little locomotive is.

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The DKNY Appeal

The DKNY name stands for Donna Karan New York. The DKNY appeal is the fact the name is associated with the spirit and energy of New York. The DKNY name is recognised all over the world for being real whilst being fun and powerful. They make a lot of different things so whether you are looking for a pair of jeans to wear at the weekend, a DKNY purse, or something a bit special for the night out you can be sure to find it in the DKNY range and you can also be sure of getting an item that is of an excellent quality.

The DKNY Company is very much a design driven company and they are very much interested in ensuring that they represent the international face of New York, which very much is part of the DKNY Appeal. The DKNY Company prides itself in offering a dedicated level of customer service which together with the high standards of creativity and design all adds to the DKNY Appeal and makes this one of the most popular labels out there today.

The DKNY design team devotes a lot of time and passion to putting together the designs for the various products. The DKNY design team is still led by Donna Karan who is the founder of the designer label and she is still very much involved. Donna Karan sees the designs as an expression of who she really is and she devotes a lot of feeling and emotions to her designs. Donna Karan feels that the feminine input is what makes her label so popular, because she knows what the women of today are looking for when they go shopping for a new product.

Donna Karan and her late husband, Stephen Weiss, first started the DKNY Company in 1984. The company went onto become a worldwide name in 1996, and five years later in 2001, it was taken over by the French label LVMH, Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Donna Karan enjoys designing garments that will meet the requirements and needs of the modern day woman whilst still reflecting a very high standard of design and quality. Donna Karan aims to create garments, such as the DNKY bag range, that project a feeling of sensuality all the while maintaining very pleasing visual appeal balanced with luxurious.

Donna Karan designs a wide range of products including clothes and perfume all to create a feeling of simplicity whilst being very glamorous and elegant. Some of the most popular items are the Devore dresses that are hand painted; this dress was a limited release with a set number of dresses released.

The DKNY appeal has grown over the years, and now this is one of the most popular designer fashion labels known in countries worldwide. The line is associated with a wide range of products and famed for DKNY bags, but, there is one thing that they all have in common. That is the fact that they offer top quality fashions, that are trendy, chic and sophisticated.

Playing simple baby shower games will ensure that your gathering will be remembered for a long time to come. It will be this aspect of your baby shower that others will talk about, reminisce with each other about and bring that smile to their face when they silently think about the day you held your new baby’s shower.

It is, without a doubt, that of all the activities you will have on the day, it is the games that you all will play that is the glue that holds the function together, but you want to keep them as simple as possible. After all, you do not want to be reading instructions etc whilst playing so, as I stated earlier, keep them super simple.

Here are three such games out of a total of over 70 available:

1. When Was I Born?

Each guest is given a sheet of paper with the names of the others attending. They then have to guess A.) In what year that particular person was born? and  B.) What was thier birth weight? This is hilarious, especially when people of differing ages are playing this game together.

2. My First Born Baby

This is so funny. Place small baby figurines in an ice cube tray and fill with water. Once frozen, offer each guest a soft drink and place an ice cube in each drink. Over time, the person who has the first born baby wins a prize. There is no biting or sucking of the ice cube allowed. It has to melt naturally in the drink.

3. Who Said That?

This is an oldie but a true goldie. Each guest gets a diaper pin when they arrive and fastens it to an item of clothing. The idea is to NOT say the word “baby” during the whole baby shower. Whoever catches someone saying the word recieves the safety pin from the offender. The person with the most pins at the end of the baby shower wins a prize. If the Mom-to-be wins the prize could be a type of  baby crib bedding sets or perhaps a resource about pregnancy nutrition. The list is endless.

Every business needs to pay people who work for them. A definite fact when you’re in business. And doing payroll is not a glorious task, and it is certainly not a profit center. Payroll deductions costs money, even if you have someone in your own organization handling the payroll, it takes them time, and employee time is costing you and your inhouse staff have to be paid to do the payroll. So you need to check thoroughly your business and its particular needs to find the best solution to managing payroll.

Payroll solutions is a huge business. Every company needs to compensate their people, following the principles of being fair, accurate and timely. A lot people are dependent on their salary arriving on time and one paycheck mistake can cause hardship, and if mistakes happen repeatedly, maybe even loss of hardworking people. Many companies as a result, choose to employ a third party payroll operator, which is a special type of accounting firm that are experts in management and timely delivery of another company’s payroll – including relevant reporting requirements.

Understanding the significance of such services is something that is best experienced personally in order to fully appreciate how easy payroll deductions have become when taking advantage of such service. You can also utilize it to handle you taxes, something that is seemed to be very hard less than a decade ago. The advantage of technology is that it allows us to do many things with minimal effort and when it comes to payroll solutions and handling the necessary tasks at hand, payroll calculator is a big benefit to smaller companies.

So – if your payroll solution is complicated enough to be computerized and salaries are highly confidential in your company, or just too large a task to warrant one person making it, you can outsource this task to a payroll processing service, which is the kind of accounting company that specifically specializes in preparing payrolls and handling all the required tax accounting and withholdings.

Many of these services are so confident of their ability that they could be willing to give potential clients a free 30 day trial to sample their service. If you are small business owner you might really want to try this option out so you’ll find out how it’s beneficial to your business.

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