MidlandRed

Sorry I meant D5026 - I’ve corrected the post!! There’s a good photo on Flickr of it at Walsall as well (referred to in the blue transition thread on RMWeb). Both it and D5021 were amongst the myriad of eventually to be, class 24s in the Birmingham Division from the Bescot dieselisation (1966 but some were there from earlier) - in reality Bescot (Ryecroft for maintenance until Bescot diesel depot was ready) - and I saw both of them multiple times in their blue liveries - my recollection is they were always filthy with just the numbers, windows and safety notices cleaned (D4 was also like this when I saw it in 1967) - so much so I only discovered D5021 had the old BR symbol far more recently!!

To be strictly accurate D7660 was unique (although D5026 was painted like this but with black buffer beams (I think…..)). I guess you’re referring to D7661 - which had four arrows (cab sides) and four sets of inboard numbers and I think, black buffer beams - effectively as per D7662-77 but with syp - so subtly different from D7660 - a livery it retained until at least 1969. Derby Sulzers is a little ambiguous on when most of this batch were repainted into standard blue fye layouts with central arrows etc.

D7660 is pre TOPS blue? I’m quite tempted!! I believe it kept that livery for a several years before repaint into the standard layout of the 70s.

I think you’re being disrespectful to the technical and professional people who put these things together. It’s a big task - and as I previously stated, the document’s purpose is to discharge legislative requirements - if people don’t think it does they can comment (and if it’s found the document is wanting in this respect, there could be a requirement to rectify this, with consequent changes to the project and delay). Political pondering is outside of this although the comments and responses to the document (all of which are available in the same area as the link) may well include input with political involvement (eg formally from local authorities) - although the responses will almost certainly be provided by professional staff. As I say - technical process - as with engineering design, members of the public often have views and behave as if everything’s subjective - it very often isn’t and you’ll find members of the public doing things like presenting views which conflict, for instance with the laws of physics. Or suggesting solutions to their perception of the problem being resolved by the design, their perception of the problem being entirely incorrect (and so, as a result is their proposed solution). There is a vast difference between professional design and construction activities and the public’s view. This is why large projects have professional communication teams which strive to support the interface between the project and the public and political interests.

Rather than pontificating on this, if you find the bit in the Environmental Statement that covers these you will probably find out. I would venture they may be to deal with significant objections that could have derailed the project (possibly in terms of inability to mitigate in any other way, and certainly in terms of creating significant project delay which may have cost vastly more to resolve). The best route is to read the document, not reach conclusions by some other method (like GB News for instance which seems to view any sensible environmental matter as ‘woke’ - other hack alleged news outlets are, of course available). I’m certainly not suggesting you guys are in this description btw, just that finding the relevant technical info is relatively easy - having done so a discussion about the rights and wrongs might be interesting.

If it’s a green tunnel, it’s environmental mitigation (unless it’s been mislabelled for some reason). Amazing though it may seem to some, these projects are designed by large multi disciplinary teams of professionals and it’s not just ‘latter day’ Brunels and the like who put the ‘Meccano’ together, as it were. This link is to the Environmental Statement for HS2 Phase 1, which is designed to enable the project to meet legal obligations - it describes environmental challenges created by the project and sets out proposed mitigations - the results of consultation on it are also there if anyone’s interested 😀 the exact reasons why green tunnels have been adopted as a solution to mitigate impacts (probably significant and multiple in types) will be described somewhere within the documents and possibly, alternatives considered will be discussed. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hs2-phase-one-environmental-statement-documents

It has to be said - this is really fabulous and includes the most accurate rendition of the windscreen area I’ve seen on a model of a Brush Type 2 - diesel and electric models in OO often seem to get the pillars too wide but this looks perfect (possibly the fine rendition of the windscreen rubber helps this). I’ve just been comparing it with Graham Wareham’s Flickr photo of it at Stratford in the late 60s (where it had a D!!) - good to see there’s room to add Ds for the pre August 68 modelling officianados 😀

It certainly could do dependent on what the stock in hand is and how skewed the cycle of transit, sale and delivery is. However I suspect the Red Sea issue, which is affecting many other industries and also competitors (unless their orders have been pre paid) has not been something anyone could predict.

You seem to be continuing and restating an assumption that the £20 million of ‘stock in hand’ is sitting in a Hornby warehouse somewhere unsold. As discussed a page or so back, in reality it could, for instance, be made up partially of varying levels of stock paid for but still in final transit (and judging by various flyers received from TMS etc in the last couple of days there is a lot of stock in transit, presumably delayed by the Red Sea issues). Hornby is, of course, in somewhat different market areas than the likes of Rapido and Accurascale, although they do compete in the hi fidelity (in terms of accuracy) locomotive and rolling stock market - that ‘hi fidelity’ market seems to suffer less from the cost of living crisis in terms of the demographic having disposable income (probably because it’s skewed sharply towards the ‘retired gentleman’ demographic (with apologies to any retired or other ladies 😀).

In the immediate dieselisation of the Birmingham Division, class 24, 25 and 40 were the locos used generally. However referring to another photo (from spring 1967) in the book referred to in the earlier post I made, a selection of locos around a turntable at Saltley are all class 25s and 47s - the 40s and 24s were moved to the north west and Stoke divisions respectively - also for dieselisation. However I suspect many class 47s were employed in freight (admittedly an increasing number on fitted trains) into the era when the 135 class 56s and 50 class 58s had come on line - we also need to consider that from the mid 70s, HSTs came on line as the first choice passenger train solutions on some routes. It would be interesting if anyone has freight working arrangements and allocated traction from the freight orientated depots for the late 70s and early 80s. The reproduced regional freight plan (which formed part of a regional traction plan) for the remainder of 1966 for the LMR in the Changing Engines book shows all of the proposed reallocations and new build as applied to freight operations. It’s very enlightening. Similar planning documents for the mid to late 70s might identify the allocation of class 47s to freight work.

I suppose it depends what ‘stock on hand’ means. If they have paid the factory but it’s still in transit is this included? Also I would presume this is more than just railways and includes the other brands (Scalectrix etc etc) some of which will no doubt rely equally, if not more than elements of the rail business on being available for delivery to stockists etc. Hornby also provides ancillaries like track and scenic etc etc - the point is it’s not necessarily £20 million of model locos or rolling stock (as this would be with some makers).

Not massively helpful to this question, but regarding Brush Type 4s and freight traffic, they were conceived as mixed traffic locos. Many were built without boilers for freight use (generally ER). D1807-36 were allocated initially to D16 (Nottingham Division) and when new could be seen at places like Westhouses and Kirkby in Ashfield in replacement for Stanier 8Fs where they would have been used on unfitted mineral trains. As stated earlier in the thread, they were used, for instance in the late 60s/early 70s on class 9 trip coal trains from the Cannock Chase collieries to power stations like Birchills (Walsall) - Bescot trips, there being an excellent photo of two such trains (9T54 hauled by 1629 and 9T32 by another with multiple rakes of 16T and 24T minerals) at the power station in 1969 in the Changing Engines - The Transition from steam to diesel and electric traction in the Birmingham and Rugby Divisions of the LMR book. A number of these locos were fitted for slow speed control for merry go round working, which they performed until the arrival of the class 56 in the later 1970s. However the fitting of power stations and mines with the required loading and unloading equipment was a phased process and some continued to receive supplies hauled by type 4 power (eg D1-10 peaks etc). As has been stated the reducing volume of non fitted wagons in the late 70s and the increasing availability of Type 5 locos for freight would probably reduce the likelihood of BR blue domino headcode class 47s on non fitted mineral trains. The application of blue livery to the class was also a relatively drawn out process so that would also affect it.

Are we sure they still have mountains of unsold stock or is this a presumption from a situation years ago? Some firms ‘encourage’ payment in advance for pre orders in various forms, often on the pre-text of assisting purchasers to budget for their purchases - however the other sides to this are it enables the company to more accurately predict the order volumes but most importantly resolves their cash flow problem as they get a proportion of direct sales payments well in advance of delivery enabling interest to be earned until such time as they have to pay the factory. I’ve always wondered what proportion of their sales occur in this way - I guess we will never know but from posts on this site, it seems quite a few are happy to pay in advance. P Hornby does not follow this business model - they don’t take your money (or offer to from what i can see) until the model is despatched. I suspect this is generally because they’re not aiming for the same market segment except in the cases of some model locos. I could imagine the outcry if they did (though those companies that do this don’t seem to get negative publicity, surprisingly)!!

Crikey - that looks somewhat like John Lennon circa 1967!! 😲

The TT model Rapido team could feasibly be inspecting a model loco on a layout to investigate how they make them run so smoothly 😀