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Unfortunately the nose isn't always as good as suggested. I was 9 when I took this picture, I still recall today reading that the driver was found half way back in the engine room, despite the nose and the large peak bogies, as you can see, they would have offered him no protection. 45147 at Patricroft, following recovery from Waste after crashing on 5th December 1984. Only ever returned to this spot once, on August 10th/11th 2008, to watch 48151 on the 1T57 re-run, something about this initial memory, with the Peak and all the foam across the motorway kind of put me off being here. 48151 (with 2xPOB and 70013) on LE to the MOSI on August 10th 2008. Fortunately todays railway is not so just about rolling stock strength, but preventing the accident occurring in the first place. August 10th 2008 did however hold another surprise for me, on returning to Eccles station to return home, I heard a sound I'd not heard on the mainline around Manchester since 1981... Imagine how stunned I was, after seeing a 142 exit towards Liverpool, this happened upon me..., days before Realtimetrains, Ipads and UKSteam only lists..steam (I honestly thought I'd gone mad)…

My back pack was famous by its TV appearance at Warley. it’ll be on ebay shortly. :-)

If the garlic had gone through to the bearing it would have been a really nice accompaniment for the onions :-)

Like the Deltic, Like the 40, but can we have the Newton Chambers mk1 motorails behind it please ?

Sounds like the kind of quote one of these locomotives namesakes might say.

You might be in a hole, but I can throw you a rope... 25 “toy shops” closed in a single month in March 2018.. https://www.toysrus.co.uk/pages/store-closures Don’t know if any of them had model Railways though. According to Wikipedia 47 Modelzones closed between June and September 2013, that gets to around 4 per week. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelzone but both were extreme events.

A few pages back, I put links to Hornby, Bachmann and Peco websites for customer listings, which suggested a range of between 400-600 retailers. if 5 a week are closing then by year end there will be no shops left !!! i might be cautionary of the future, but even i’m more optimistic than that !

Does it perhaps depend on tooling complexity, associated to assembly time ? The railroad 47 consists of 1 piece each for body, glazing, frames, but also buffers, headlight/window lenses, coupling hooks, two different bogie frames etc... without counting, i’d Guess it’s somewhere around 40 component pieces, if split down to the axles and coupling hooks themselves. That’s nothing compared to the class 50 which is nearing 20 years old, and has the sprung cab doors, and some lucky person has to fit each and every Louvre into those body side grills...there’s 40 pieces in those adjustable body side louvres alone. If someone tooled a class 50 today I don’t think it would be made with 12 pieces just for the 4 cab doors... but if you want a class 50, that’s the only tooling in town, and it seems to still be selling... those doors need painting too, and lined if NSE, as do those louvres, and before fitting because they are adjustable. That said the class 50 is popular, would Hornby continue with this tooling or simplify ? (Personally i’d Have thought they may have moulded on the doors and louvres before now, but I don’t know if that would be possible or just worth sticking as is for the runs they make ?)... its the Concorde of modern image rtr.. way ahead of its time, very manual but a lovely model.. I don’t think a replacement would be any better, but quite possibly simpler and faster to paint/assemble. Just thinking ?

I just wanted to share something on this, back in 1998, right at the start of my career I worked in Seattle for a few months for Amazon, at that time just an online bookshop. my local friends were telling me how much a good thing Amazon was, as when it came to dvd’s, music and books Blockbuster and Borders were controlling the market due to their size.., chief complaint was their decisions effectively were telling the Music / Film and Publishing companies what to make, dictated by sales volume... Amazon was open to anyone doing anything, independants and all. so I felt good... working at a dotcom was somewhat more interesting than your average UK company too. Roll on 20 years, both Blockbuster and Borders are gone. Amazon stands accused of not only controlling the film/music and book market, but they’ve ben able to short circuit the manufacturers and now promote their own Films/Music and books (Amazon Originals etc)... chief to remember is both Blockbuster and Borders were on the high street (several in every US town), Amazon was online. I should point out Amazon is my local model shop, you can buy model railways, sometimes competitively... in May last year I ordered 16 packs of Hornby R8264 * wheels for 50% Hornbys RRP... they arrived at lightening speed in an Amazon box, sold by Amazon EU Sarl, not an independent retailer. It might be measured in $bns of dollars, but the power of retailers out growing their supplier still applies, as does your way of selling, whether it’s a good thing or a bad depends on your point of view. *Still available today on prime, just not so cheap any more (10 months later they are 3x the £6.60 price I paid) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hornby-R8264-Gauge-14-1mm-Coach/dp/B004648IAU/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Hornby+r8264&qid=1552849463&s=kids&sr=1-1-fkmrnull

Just to get my priorities right, ive arranged my weeks meetings so that they are all up front (up till 11pm on Tuesday night in one case ! ), so that Wednesday i’m In my home office and so Thursday / Friday are looking ... a little bit clear...

With the risk that next year you can walk into Barwell and Margate to find your latest liveries on a cut price alternative ? Lets face it Hattons/Rails maybe Hornbys biggest customers, but they are their smallest competitors... Has the lesson Hornby wants to teach been learnt ? Or will it accelerate a UK equivalent of Walthers emerging ? for example, ( its only a random thought but imagine say) ..If a few of the retailers / commissioners decided to joint venture and pool their comission operations side of their businesses, whilst retaining independant retail. they are suddenly nolonger too small to be kicked about... mergers / jv’s are afterall an industry norm of growth, and toolings only earn money if used, and Hattons already have established a trade customer base. Afterall the big boys couldnt cut off themselves from every big customer who jv’d together could they ? of course, if the market goes too cut throat in duplicating each others liveries & toolings.. those wanting a new 37/47 may win that battle but only some companies will win the war... afterall theirs a growing number of fish in the pond, but is the stream supplying water fast enough ?

I just hope that copying the liveries or competitively duplicating tooling of your biggest customers isn’t going to be Hornby’s headline approach in the future. Its noteworthy the new management of Hornby built their Oxford range by pretty much taking on duplicating Hornby with the wagons, Dean Goods, mk3’s and Radial and so were doing what to my eyes looks the same thing, as Hornby has done this year since they took over. sticking a TV camera In front of your biggest customer, whilst smiling at him as you demonstrate you’ve just impacted a 6 figure investment he’s made does not to me seem condusive to a positive image. on a wider subject duplication doesn’t do it for me in general, the Heljan class 25 is another such example. You”’ll note my omission of the cl92 as crowdfunding is a whole mother area of lost confidence (Accurascale got my order solely because it wasn’t cf). Its ok claiming Hornby’s’ territorial claims, but the sales phrase, that comes to mind is you can be right, and you can be dead, right... To me the consumer has lost this year, my lack of pre-orders is testament to that, I don’t go for duplicates myself... my interest this year are mainly new tooling to come, the Ruston, Suburbans & Peckett. The rest of it can stay on the shelf, so no pre-orders for Terriers, 61xx (neither Dapol, Hornby or Rails versions), 66, mk2f etc.. My 2019 spend on Accurascales Cemflos is greater than my 2019 planned Hornby spend. That lot combined with the discount limits restrictions and the sordid world of crowdfunding, it’s not only lowered my spend, but it’s lowered my confidence and my interest in the hobby too, you really don’t want to know how much I’ve spent in the past, but it’s being spent a little differently this year, my wife’s noticed that only 3 packages this year have so far arrived, more than that could arrive in a single day in the past. I myself am contemplating reducing the collection too as 5+ of this and that is too much, which translates into reduced quantity of pre-orders in 2019 (I thought nothing of buying every Peckett 0-4-0 last few years, and could have bought all 10 Barclays in the past, but this years my limit will be 2 on any new loco tooling, what I want is innovation, not more of the same, I just don’t need it all, and as i’m also thinking this could all be a bubble.

Hey hey ! This is the most uplifting post I’ve read in the last 2 weeks. I cant wait to get my hands on them.

The funny thing is, when I tell colleagues I have model railways as a hobby, they tend to say pretty much the same thing to me as well. Between VR, AR and MR* Theres a normal world I must be missing somewhere. * MR= model railways

You could, but then how do you relate that to your own layout ? the products are isolated. that said if you gave your self space in the lounge to stand and felt the urge to shovel coal firing a duchess up Shap VR could let you (the data point size for a footplate would be quite small), it just wouldn’t have much bearing on your Hornby Duchess, which would be in the cabinet staring at you, as no doubt would be a few puzzled pets. with AR however you could set data points to your layout, and then adopt scenes... obviously things like smoke etc, but you could have virtual scenes... it could be raining, night, day, snow etc your layout could be open country one minute, inner city another, or oddities.. your farm animals could be walking about, or go sci-fi and put Storm troopers on the platform. More importantly though, your locos and stock are part of the story. (Yesterday I had a demo with Daleks and a hot tub in a £300mn IT facility using AR, just because I could).