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fiftyfour fiftyfour

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Everything posted by fiftyfour fiftyfour

  1. Has anyone else taken a Hornby Mk3 RFM "four window" buffet car apart and found it's banana shaped with the centre of the coach shell higher than the outer ends? This coach is a rehash of the Lima Mk3 buffet rather than a scale length Hornby one, it dismantles the same as a Lima one albeit with a bit more effort needed but rather suspiciously the roof section has a cross-ways strengthener every centimeter or so suggesting that they have strengthened the roof in order to hold the bodyshell up to keep the coach in shape after stuffing up the bodyshell moulding somehow. This renders it useless as a source vehicle to become a HST TRSB 404xx series vehicle as I'd planned to use the roof from a Lima trailer and add the roof vents in the correct place for a TRSB rather than make do/hack about trying to make the RFM ones do that job. I have the shell upturned on a flat surface with a heavy box pressing down at each end to try and "iron" it flat but I'm not optimistic. any thoughts?!
  2. As we have not been given a number for new build coaches we have to guess one, lets outlandishly base that on the vehicle coming out at half the price of a Mk5 and say that we are looking at £5M for a six coach rake. It's no good continually saying that they are cheaper in the long term than continuing to maintain Mk1's, that is pure conjecture which assumes all the preserved lines are spending a considerable sum maintaining stock whilst also failing to take account of ongoing maintenance of the garden shed engineering Mk6 replacement. More importantly it assumes that preserved railways have the means or collateral to secure the loan needed to fund this incredible largess, and that their income would be unaffected or in some bizarre parallel reality actually increased by removing the "heritage" element from their operation. Cold hard reality time- they do not make that sort of money. Even the likes of the SVR and NYMR couldn't afford that. Oh, and allowing passenger operation on a preserved line above 25mph requires a substantial law change and opens up a 101 cans of worms which are best left closed...
  3. But new build is ruinously expensive- the majority of preserved lines are running using volunteers cobbling together a make do and mend fleet of vehicles and even if they had a spare £5M knocking about to buy a rake of new carriages there are probably 101 other things they would spend that capital on. A new carriage with power operating sliding doors, air con, electronic info displays and so forth belongs on the national system where it can earn its keep. I think that for the "day out" market there needs to be some element of "this is what trains were like 30/40/50/60 years ago" otherwise what is the point- if you live in Keighley you can go for a nice train ride from one side of the station in modern (ish) stock or you can pay a bit more and go on an "old train"- if you sink an absolute fortune into making the "old train" to Oxenhope the same in terms of travel experience as the "modern one" to Leeds or Dent you've thrown away your unique selling point as far as Jo/Joe Public are concerned. A Mk3 straight out of service is perfectly serviceable- they have to be otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to run them at 100mph from London to Norwich! The refurb may be a few years old, but if you want to keep running with a viable business model on the mainline with CET toilets and other facilities dictated by shifted goalposts then I don't see what choice you have. If the choice is a Mk3 rake that meets Network Rail's criteria or not running steam at all then which do you go for?
  4. Go on then, tell us what you think the unit price of a new passenger carriage works out at and we shall see how that stacks against the actual price of a Mk5. If well maintained there is nothing wrong with a Mk1 continuing to trundle along a preserved line at 25mph, I've seen some shockers over and above the "headline" incidents but that says more about preserved railway economics than it does about the coaches per se- railway economics that would never ever stretch to new build coaches even for the heritage railways that are primarily businesses, like the NYMR. Mk3 coaches- what conversion do they need. Hook and haul- the Anglia ones already have retention tanks and CDL- what more does the charter sector want/need?!
  5. Not my photo so sue me... NOT 12140, the one next to it has original LSL. 12140 has the SIG rubbish or some other development bogie.
  6. 100% correct, the bogies in the shot are all SSL.
  7. No offence, but are you absolutely barking mad? Replacing a Mk1 or Mk2 which was probably donated or as good as donated to the preserved line with a fleet of new build coaches which would cost millions per set is totally pie in the sky. Even for mainline use you'd need solid six or seven day a week use for 18 hours a day to justify the expense of new build. Getting another new type through type approval for mainline use alone would be prohibitively expensive for the charter market even if the coaches were given to them free of charge. If retention tanks became an absolute must for mainline operation the best option would be to grab all the Anglia Mk3's and use them, that's about 14 sets worth of coaches all with retention tank toilets, all with Central Door Locking, all with a better standard of passenger comfort and crashworthyness than the stuff already out there. The sleepers could play a role, if you wanted a full kitchen car you could start with a SLEP/SLE and rip everything out except the pair of toilets at one end, install a state of the art modern kitchen facility in the rest of the coach able to easily do around 200-250 meals from each kitchen- with two of those in each set and the rest of the train formed of Mk3 FO you'd have a formidable offering.
  8. All BT10 bogies were built with the fixed stirrup type swing links (later termed "long"), their replacement by cable type swing links was retrospective and has no performance effect on the bogie whatsoever, still fully fit for 125mph with no adverse effect on ride or bogie wear- it was just an unnecessary expense to convert all BT10 bogies to SSL as only a small percentage of the fleet would ever need to traverse third rail fitted lines.
  9. I was under the impression that the risk came from the bogie coming into contact with the barge boards and the possibility of hitting one, more or all of these causing damage to the bogie or infrastructure. This was why there are (and remain!) no barge boards at any point between Euston throat and Camden Jcn so LSL Mk3's can safely operate on all lines including DC electrified lines B and C even with air bags defective.
  10. From a HST trailer point of view EVERYTHING that Cross-Country ran from 1991-2003 had SSL bogies and a good percentage of the GWR fleet got them as well. It's very hard to nail down an exact number as bogies are swapped around all the time when they come off for overhaul and are replaced meaning that vehicles labelled or on the system as SSL may very well not be and SSL bogies ended up under EMR and LNER trailers unlikely to see a juice rail. GWR was keeping a bit more on top of this and went through a campaign of physically examining their vehicles as knowing which were SSL became relevant to them ahead of pre-planned diversions of HSTs into Waterloo and summer Saturday operation to Weymouth, the latter train was once subject to a last minute set-swap before departure from Bristol when a visual check revealed LSL bogies in the planned set. Getting route clearance for such jollies is super tough these days, basically if you cannot prove to NR that Mk3's have been there before then forget it; they tried rejecting Skegness as a route until EMT (as they were then) persisted and proved it, same went for Carlton Road to Harringey via Crouch Hill.
  11. I think you'll find it was the SRA that told Virgin to curtail the Cross-Country largess to save money- hence Brighton, Portsmouth, Swansea, Liverpool and others were dropped from the Cross Country network. Apart from wacky test runs and royalty I think the only loco hauled Mk3's ever to grace Southern Metals in normal service were the Poole portion of the Cross-Country sleeper and that was after someone invented SSL bogies to get around the restrictions on the use of original BT10 bogies around the juice rail.
  12. It's like going back in time to a good old Lima release (which even now still look good given a bit of work) albeit with a slightly better motor and DCC capability for the digital fetishists. The InterCity 125 wording and logo are too low (VERY noticeable when trying to shoe-horn a "Sir Kenneth Grange" plate into the space!) so could do with replacement, That wording should be silver with no infill in ALL applications except if modelling 43002/003/004/005/007/008 in 'as new' circa 1976-1977 when the infill should be black. The guards van window layout is, however, ONLY correct for 43153-43198 in blue/grey, and for the 'retro' liveries applied to 43002/006/112 in recent years, none of 43002-152 lost their guards van windows until much later. If you are using them as a basis to model 43002/006/112 you will need to tinker with the roof layout somewhat, the top of the radiator depicts a Marston Excelsior cooler group which were all replaced during the MTU conversions, also the (detatchable) exhaust deflector needs to come off and be cut down (43002) or left off altogether (43006/112). You'd also need to add modern orange cantrail stripes and warning flashes if representing any of the retro trio. In all cases except early (until about 1978) WR modelling you need to hack about with the chassis a bit, the main item is to remove the number 1 fuel tank which is located on the secondmans' side between the front bogie and the main fuel tanks.
  13. That's the one- I knew someone would know the number. Ran safely- undeniably. Passed through overhauls without causing aggro because things didn't fit as they should, or run full term between needing wheelset changes - certainly not!!
  14. Hell of a thread creep but the repair to 50041 was only possible for one reason- repairs done to locos under BR were seriously low quality and therefore cheap, not one of the Doncaster works repair jobs done in the 1980's would ever be allowed back out on the rails nowadays and the same went for a lot of works. There was a 47/8 entered into the Class 57/3 program which had to be scrapped as the thing was banana shaped following an earlier repair lash-up decades before, some of the HST power cars that went into Brush for body overhaul as part of MTU re-power would never have come back out if they didn't need each and every shell, some repairs wouldn't have withstood a minor shunting incident let alone a heavy impact.
  15. answering my own question- you get enough CDL release handles in the Precision pack to do nine coaches, so that's a HST set with two spares in my currency. It comes with CDL lights (which are too flat and large, discard these and use the excellent Railtec 3D ones), 18x original style red release handles in red surrounds and 18x later style with the green instruction stickers around the handles. Most particularly useful for the Lima First Great Western "fag pack" livery rake which had mysterious white squares printed where the release handles go (presume the extra colour wasn't able to be done economically/reliably 20 years ago) which are now filled with the precision labels, remembering of course not to repeat the Lima error (same error from Hornby) and put a release handle where there isn't an adjacent CDL operated door (ie brake van end of TGS and buffet counter end of caterer). Now leaving it all for 24 hours to see if the Railtec CDL lights need something to seal them down or if they stay on the coach all by themselves- I'm hoping for the latter...
  16. A man after my own heart- we do have the Virgin Mk2's coming from Bachmann eventually but across the board its a lot of blue/grey and current era stuff and not a huge amount between.
  17. The point was that a 317 or a 321 is quieter still on approach, and no less lethal if struck by one. It sounds like an unsafe method of working (eg relying on hearing an approaching train vs looking out for one) had become the norm and the arrival of the DVT was to somehow change that perception, probably for the better in terms of track worker safety. Now that we have black/very dark coloured front ends (!!) on some Class 350's and most TPE stock its indicative of a different time when a reduction in the amount of front end yellow to a still fairly substantial amount as found on a DVT caused consternation back then.
  18. That sounds to me like an imaginary problem which arose from them being something "new". The lead vehicle in a DVT lead formation would have been noisier on the track than the lead vehicle of a Class 317 running on the same lines, and at speed there would have been no noise difference on approach between a DVT leading and any Class 86-90 leading.
  19. The market may be twice the size but then so is the selling price, almost! My main problem with the Hornby ones I've got (and I accept this may be unique to me) is that I don't dare do anything to a model I've just paid £250 for!! On my blue/grey duo of W43032 and W43033 all I dared do was renumber one to something else (as anyone modelling any period after c1980 with a consecutively numbered pair has something highly unrealistic!), remove the set numbers from the front, some very light weathering adding exhaust stains to the roof and dirt around the underframe, paint the fuel gauges and the ETS jumper receptacles and then leave everything else well alone.
  20. I'm seriously perplexed as to why anyone wants Hornby to re-do the power car- any new issue would be only fractionally better than the existing power cars. Lets have some tweaking on the Mk3's like a better buffet car selection, more accurate detailing on planned releases etc etc
  21. I wonder how seriously WB took keeping the "W" prefixed ones on the Night Riviera and the "M" prefixed ones on Anglo-Scots?!
  22. But the "new era" branding was a very short-lived interim and probably never saw passenger service (and could only have done so on debranded GWR slam door stock prior to the power cars being overhauled)- hardly worth modelling such an obscure lash-up, especially when the six-years of service by 40% of the fleet FGW "Barbie" blue with pink swoosh has NEVER been done.
  23. What depot were the W region ones based at? My earliest book (1988) shows them all being at WB in one big pool shared with WCML examples.
  24. Pet hate of mine- I prefer a bog standard un-named one, and if the model is a bog standard un-named one its easy to name it whilst renumbering it, whereas its a pain to have to try and remove a name from a brand new model.
  25. Tangent subject- does anyone make the replacement SLE/SLEP coach ends for the OO Lima or Hornby models? Hurst used to do a resin "paint it and swap it over" replacement end incorporating the built in lights, their website (last updated 11 years ago) lists this item but out of stock.
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