Darth Vader

I picked up mine at the post office today (Victoria Australia), very impressive beasts. Well worth the wait Was very surprised at how heavy the box was.

The Hornby Class 60 has on my layout out performed any of the other Hornby products when it comes to pulling power. Cheers Manfred

I ordered the gunpowder vans from Kernow Model Centre. They have all the Rapido UK items listed on their website including the Titfield Thunderbolt items. Cheers Manfred

Maybe Rapido could actually finish off the gunpowder wagon that they were going to produce.

If your oven cleaner is in an aerosol can, then check to see what propellant is being used, most propellants are LPG, which is a hydrocarbon and will attack the plastic. I assume that when you say restore, this means you would like to keep any painted surfaces intact and not clean the model to bare plastic. Most paints used in Tri-ang models are fragile in that they can be removed with methylated spirit. This will not affect the body but will ruin any painted finish. So beware. Whatever method you choose, I would recommend testing it on some Tri-ang model that if ruined will not be the end of the world.

Typical of survey producers, they don't get the end user to try out the survey to find out if there are bugs or things that don't work. If you put out a survey that is flawed then the results will be meaningless.

It would appear that Horny have released both types. R4899 and R4900 are the later versions of the clerestory coaches with the printed sides and Dean bogies. R4913 and R 4914 are the old Tri-ang short coaches from the 1960's

The ones fitted with the Dean bogies were a much later tooling that Hornby produced in the late 70's or early 80's and are totally different from the ones referred to in the original post. If you Google "Hornby clerestory coaches" and then select images you can see that there are two very different mouldings.

These coaches are from tooling that dates back to the early 1960’s and are therefore quite rightly part of Hornby’s Railroad range. This is aimed at the budget end of the market. I would suspect Hornby are trying to squeeze a few more quid out of a really old tooling. No point in fitting a NEM pocket unless you intend to switch couplings. You will need to snip of the awful angle iron that is the coupler moulded to the bogie. As for Kadees, the best option would be a 146 fitted to the body. It will require some packing behind the buffer beam to allow attachment to the body. This will allow for the coupler box to fit snuggly against the buffer beam and the shank will be long enough to clear the buffer heads to avoid buffer lock. This all depends on how tight the curves are on your layout. If the curves are too tight for a 146 then the next option would be to fit the 146 coupler into a 252 coupler box, this will extend the coupler head out a little further but still keep the couple box snug against the buffer beam.

As Bachmann have been re-tooling their older coaching stock, my guess would be a re-tool of the Mark 1 suburban coaches. From a manufacturing point of view, a class 104 would make sense, as the tooling could also include a the front end for a class 110, which had an identical body but was fitted with the 4 character head code box.

The cement truck that could be filled directly from a presflow wagon as in the attched link. http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/photo?group=British%20Transport%20Commission&objid=1996-7038_BTF_C5_41

First let me say that the selection of a coupler is a modellers own personal choice - not for me to judge. While not a fan of the tension lock coupler I can see why they are used by manufacturers. They are reliable and rarely uncouple. The only issue is when you try to mix the different types produced in the past with the modern slimline ones. As for the NEM pockets, it’s not always a simple matter of plug and play. Each manufacturer does not seem to understand that ‘NEM’ is a ‘standard’ and needs to be manufactured conform to the standard. No end of times, has different rolling stock (from the same manufacturer) had NEM pockets that are set at slightly different heights or set back too far or not far enough from the buffer beam. Quite a lot of NEM pockets have too much slack and the replacement coupler sags. Most time for me, it’s out with the xuron cutter to chop the mounts off and fit the desired coupler straight to the body at the correct height. It usually works out quicker that trying to fettle the NEM pocket to get it at the right height or position. The other pet hate of mine is magazine reviews that state the item has a NEM pocket, but never fit another coupler to see if it works properly.

Hi Dave Thanks for the reply, just committed to 17. Cheers Manfred

Just checked the crowd funded web page. There are wagons listed as 'BR Grey', but there is no mention of numbering, either pre or post TOPS. I like the idea of being able to but 17 wagons each with a different number. It's about time the UK manufacturers woke up to this concept. Local manufacturers here in Australia have being doing multi packs for years and they sell out very quickly. If they are TOPs then I won't bother. Don't want to place an order only to find that I have to renumber the lot to pre TOPS. Dave could you confirm the numbering, pre or post TOPS. Cheers Manfred

Tried looking for these, but the website does not even list Dapol as a brand. Tried the search function , but that did not get a result either.