Mike Harvey

It is almost certainly a Paris-Bruxelles (Amsterdam) working, These incorporated SNCB Eurofimas in orange C1 livery, and a selection of SNCF Eurofima and Corail Vu and Vtu coaches also in C1 Livery. I have a photo somewhere taken in Amsterdam when I saw the Vu/Vtu stock in orange for the first time, and in a wholly orange set. The SNCF Eurofima A9 fleet contained the first 8 coaches out of 100 in orange livery (900-907), and the following Corail Vu/Vtu coaches also in C1:- 10 A4B6u Vu75 composite compartments (063-072); 11 B6Dd2 Vu75 Second class compartment baggage (not air-conditioned) (269-279), 35 B10tu Vtu75 second class open (291-325). Usually the trains were hauled by SNCF CC40100. The SNCB Class 18 was generally diagrammed for the Paris-Köln and Oostende-Köln services. The Köln services from Paris generally did not contain orange coaches and in the late 1980s one of the Parsifal sets was wholly SNCF stock in Corail grey livery. Details sourced from the Le Train Corail archive Tome 2.

That may be a factor in the historical stock, but would not account for the intake of new stock during Q3 when the diecast model supply was at a low level and what was delivered was selling through quickly.

By way of explanation, I have been away for the past 10 days and read the topic from the start. So my comment was made in reaction to Andy's post in the middle of last week! Although we do not have sector analysis for the Corgi and Oxford businesses, Oxford have been clearing old stock and sometimes very old stock in "mystery bundles" since the middle of 2022, and is still doing it 12 months on. If anything I would say that both the diecast businesses were starved of new stock in Hornby's Q3 and unlikely to be the source of the inventory increase. If anything the inventory value would have been higher and the cash inflow lower without Oxford's "mystery bundles" sales. They currently have numerous bundles on offer but are clearly getting to the bottom of the barrel as the newest versions contain "imperfect, and display" models, and surplus part-work models, rather than only factory fresh own brand items. Oxford Bundles

I could see a bundled Oxford Diecast and Corgi being an attractive proposition at the right price, and free of headquarter's overhead burden. I wonder who might spend their nest egg on that?

I have put off pre-ordering these because I wanted to see whether Revolution would be able to get the bodies closer to rail level than the motorised EFE 00 gauge model. From the models shown at York it looks like the N gauge versions will indeed be tube trains.

Kato have good form in exploiting and developing their tooling. Taking the SNCF TGV as an example, they have followed development of the real trains over the past 40 years, amending buffet car window layouts, bogie suspension changes, the evolution to double deck trains and the myriad changes to power car shapes and end coach window layouts. The Class 800 series offers similar scope but some of the more restricted variants might take 25 years to come to fruition. 😄

Back in the early days of the short-lived Lyddle End N building range I sent Simon a rather good mock-up of a country fire station. I pointed him to a couple of real ones which were within a few minutes drive of Westwood. Much to my surprise I received an early morning phone call from Simon thanking me and discussing options. In the end Hornby opted for a model of Upton on Severn's old fire station whilst Bachmann went for Studley both of which are close to my home. I wish him a long, happy and productive retirement.

Good to see Mk1 Fiesta, Mk5 Cortina, Mk3 Capri and Mk2 Escort added to the N range in tonight’s annoucement. And A Metro, Rover P5B, MG Midget, and current ford Ranger in 1/76 car range, plus a modern Dennis dust cart in 1/76.

The French language page of the Arnold part of the Hornby website evidently understands British humour.

From my experience they are likely to arrive in one package but you will be charged 3 lots of shipping. That is what usually happened to me over the past 5 years or so. A phone call to customer services then yields a refund of two lots of the shipping charge. Be interested to hear if your experience is different.

The new Tomytec bus chassis has arrived initially as part of set A3. Each set has an oval of snap together track with an embedded wire with the curved ends made up of 90 degrees 103mm radius and 90 degrees 140mm radius. I have two sets so I have set things up with a smaller 103mm radius oval inside the larger 140mm oval. The curved ends are linked by 280mm of straight road which on one side includes a pull-in bus stop with a manually operated STOP-GO slide switch. In the STOP position a magnet is brought close to the guide wire and operates a reed switch on the motorised chassis. There are no sophisticated electronics on board unlike previous Tomytec bus chassis with their lights, fast and slow speed and a function to pause for about 10 seconds at the bus stop. Power is from a single LR44/AG13 button cell. The set comes with a lovely static model of the Toyota SARO fuel cell bus in 1/150 scale. The body from the static model fits over the motorised chassis. The wheelbase can be adjusted so that the wheels are centered appropriately in the body. A bit of fettling was required to get the magnet in the steering arm to reliably follow the embedded road wire, so not entirely plug and play. In the videos below the buses have old batteries (use by 2018!) fitted and one seems slower than the other. When I get some fresh batteries I suspect they will speed up to about 25mph. Layout image https://i.servimg.com/u/f41/12/12/53/02/tomyte10.jpg

@Dr Al What you have written is thought provoking and matches my experience. The coupler displacement issue is important from an operational viewpoint. The layout i am building involves a lot of shunting and I have designed in the uncoupler magnets for Dapol Easi-Shunts to all be where couplers will be close to the track centre line. It all works well and is a pleasure to play with using an N gauge Society Hunslet and Kato class 77 (66 with air con). I did try coupling the Class 77 on a curve to a continental 4 axle grain wagon and this worked fine. I did not check how the lateral coupler displacement on the Class 77 catered for this. It may be that the obstacle deflector limits the coupler movement. I' ll check when I am back with the loco in a week or so. Just as an aside, another bugbear can be poor soldered connections which in recent times have been an issue with some Arnold locos and railcars. I prefer a brass to brass connection with the potential to adjust the tension as needed (Farish Class 150). My vote would be for an Accurascale Mk 2c range.

They could always tool the very similar but noticeably different Class 77 for Arnold initially. Harmonising the UK and continental prices later on would be easier once away from the “lead- in” pricing period.

I had written a complete reply but describing what I did to a different continental shunter which has a different pick-up system. Doh! I won’t be back with my Hunslet for a couple of weeks. I’ll then have a careful look to see what I did. I think it involved the sanding pipes being adjusted to limit the lateral movement of the wheelsets.

This sounds like a problem of getting power from track to the decoder. As a light weight loco with fine wheels and a short wheelbase, the Hunslet is very susceptible to minor track irregularities or dirt on wheels. It might be something as simple as contact with the wheels on one side being lost as the wheels move laterally. I would be checking that the pickups remain in contact with the wheels even when a wheel is displaced laterally to the maximum extent. I only run mine on DC but obviously with every loco being decoder-fitted by default, this involves the chip. I tweaked my pickups to overcome the occasional stall with the loco sitting on straight track.

Not quite sure why the vacuum brake couplers require Air Raid Precautions.

If you want replicate it without acquiring 3D modelling skills, why not make a rubber mould and use that to make replicas in whatever material you choose? No fancy chemicals needed if you cast in something like plaster of Paris. Rubber mould kits widely available online or in retail outlets like Hobbycraft.

https://revolutiontrains.com/projects/

Using an existing outer may well have been more valuable than creating the cutting tool and other parts for a bespoke box, especially as the brand is likely to become part of the Hornby range sometime soon. No problem with recycling the larger box though if it is not required for storage of the model.

You must have a knack. It only happens on preorders as I said originally. It has happened on every pre-order since 2017. Each year the items are pre-ordered on the same day. Hornby splits the pre-orders into single item pre-orders each with a shipping charge as the system does not know when each item will come into stock. I know that items I pre-order (Arnold grain wagons) always arrive together from the factory. The items come into stock together. All arrive in one parcel - good. Each one attracts it’s own shipping charge although the total is substantially over £50. What am I doing wrong?

In my experience, even if they group pre-orders into one package, they still charge separate shipping for each item, and you have to claim back the excess shipping cost over the phone. Hornby probably would not qualify as a Tier 1 dealer.😀

The instructions refer to it as an ESU decoder.

I was in Kerrville, Texas recently, and a bit surprised to find a half-ish size stonehenge in a dedicated park! it shared the space with a few Easter Island stone figures. https://texashillcountry.com/stonehenge-texas-hill-country/

And the 2009 survey was a readership survey not a market survey, which may or may not be skewed by the magazine’s scale specific content. You couldn’t make it up………..well it seems like you can.

I would accept that N predominates in the Japanese market, but without evidence for the UK market share for N, the assertion that the UK N share is smaller than in most other nations is meaningless. In my experience, taking our nearest neighbours as examples, N in France and Belgium is a much much smaller market proportion than in the UK.