phil-b259

The 4F came after the 3F and if yours has tender pick ups (I'm not able to check my 3F & 4F locos right now) then they would have been fitted to all 4F models. Bachmann rarely seem to go back and tweak their locos once designed - some other manufacturers are noticeably better in that regard. Adding tender pick ups where the decoder is already in the tender wouldn't be a significantly difficult or expensive exercise and its somewhat stage Bachmann don't do this given the high prices they charge for re-runs.

It depends on the era the loco was designed... There was a period when despite Bachmann putting the decoder socket in the tender they neglected to fit power pickups to the tender and the 3F may have originated during this time. In recent years all newly tooled Bachman tender locos have included tender pick ups.

I'm not surprised, the Telegraphs readership are generally very much right wing 'state actions = bad' 'private business = 'excellent' mentality with an added does of selfish self entitlement which comes from generally being well off. Its not nicknamed the 'Torygraph' for nothing....

Regardless of its size or mass, UK laws require ALL motor vehicles to be fitted with seatbelts which MUST BE USED by the occupants while the vehicle is in motion. The only exceptions are for historic vehicles which did not come with seatbelts (or the provision for them when built), PSV vehicles (busses) and obviously motorcycles

Even if Hornby do include what amounts to a 'blanking plate' with a lamp iron on it, because it has to be robust and easy enough to remove it will not be a tight and close fit with the surrounding surfaces. A loco with obvious squares which stand out more than the rivet details etc round each lamp bracket will look naff however much you try and ignore it.

Firstly if the lamps are removable then they will have to be physically oversize so that your average Hornby purchaser can actually swap them round. It also follows that if the lamps are oversize using a tiny LED will only accentuate that look by virtue of the smaller lens Secondly its the likes of Sam who are precisely the people who will be wowed by the lamps so as pricy as it is I wouldn't rule out it getting a review as Sam does make a big thing of asking his supporters what they want him to tackle...

Yup - but again not is all as it seems. (1) The problem was with national grid feeders / equipment and not railway supplies (2) The repeated outages affected the Domestic supply to Arundel signal box (which controls not just Arundel but also the coastway route between Angmering and Ford) What caused most of the disruption was the Telephone concentrator failing (it has a battery back up but the prolonged outage drained it) with the signaller having to talk past 20 signals as all the level crossing phones were not working. There was also an issue where emergency lighting also started failing as its battery back ups went flat making it unsafe for the signaller to remain inside and forcing the closure of the box. There were also issues with power supplies at Petersfield and Havant…..

The ‘rebuilding’ was limited to the new interior where NSE wanted 2+1 seating in first class as opposed to the 2+2 RR had specified plus NSE wanted a slightly enhanced catering trolley provision and CET toilets fitted. NSE also wanted th3 couplers tweaked as outlined above. From a mechanical / structural perspective there were no differences to the 158 fleet. Yes the engines were a bit more powerful on the 159s as opposed to the 158s but that was something specified by RR before the idea of diverting the fleet to NSE was thought of. The changes couldn’t be made at the build stage (as opposed to things like the exterior paint finish which was altered from RR to NSE) due to the way the contract was worded so after BR took delivery of the units (minus the first class seating IIRC) which were immediately sent on to someone else to have the NSE alterations done. There was a nice article about the class which gave a bit of background as to alternative options to modernise the West Of England route in a 1992 edition of the Railway Magazine IIRC.

Neither of which could be said to be inspiring - the former being a grubby white colour (particularly where the carriage washers seem to be useless at removing grime) and the latter being a dark depressing green….

I liked that ‘multicoloured monstrosity’ as you put it - commuting itself is a soul destroying affair and a splash of colour on a dreary day helps lift the mood. I also liked the strategy of different liveries for long distance units - kind of marked SWT out as different from the other 3rd rail TOCs which come over as just boring commuter networks.

Yes - but to a certain extent* this is justified because of the nature of the charter train business - which aside from the Jacobite are generally ‘one offs’ scattered throughout the year between a huge variety of places scattered all over the UK. * Note the emphasis on the word ‘certain’ - that doesn’t mean zero hours contracts are a good thing as a whole and the way the Government has let them be abused by their private sector / outsourcing mates to increase shareholder payouts while low paid workers themselves suffer is disgraceful.

WRONG! Loco drive didn’t appear in ANY of Hornbys models until production was transferred to China in the 2000s! Once production had been transferred to China Hornby started the process of re-tooling popular items in their range and the 8F was one of the early products which benefited from this with both the loco and tender being new tooling both with respect to the innards and the bodies themselves. Come 2010ish Some of the 1980s era tender drive products got a chassis makeover to eliminate the tender drive mechanism and appeared in the ‘RailRoad’ range - but I’m not sure if the 8F was one of the models so treated.

I was speaking with respect to new safety initiatives. The railway is full of things which the safety regulators tolerate because it is impractical to replace them wholesale - 3rd rail, tunnels without emergency access shafts, stations on curves / gradients, level crossings etc. Fitting central door locking is by contrast very much a practical proposition - stop pretending it isn’t.. Seatbelts very much fall into that ‘it’s impractical’ category as regards the existing rail network - not least because voters will not tolerate being told they must pre-book / can only board trains if the operator can guarantee there is a seat for them to use. However If trains were invented these days then, as with planes I suspect that standees would not be permitted - and as such they might be applicable to new build systems….. For example, given the significantly higher speed of HS2 trains. providing that whilst on HS2 infrastructure all passengers are required to have a guaranteed seat reservation (and standees get chucked off before the trains reach HS2 infrastructure) then seatbelts could well be seen as a suitable safety measure.

The ‘super detailed’ model was introduced with separately fitted details like lamp irons and smokebox door handles from the very beginning plus finely made valve gear / connecting rods. Although It did retain the older wiper strips and peg type coupling from the 1980s, all other elements including the chassis and body shells (including the tender) were completely new tooling. It share NOTHING in tooling terms with the previous 1980s era tender drive model (which had provision for the crude ‘firebox glow’ feature) that preceded it lacked the aforementioned separately fitted detail plus with fitted heavy chunky motion components.

I think these are exactly the sort of problems which have been highlighted when seatbelts have been looked at in the past. As I see it seatbelts on trains require (1) A total ban on standing passengers (2) All seats to be facing the same direction (so that if someone isn’t wearing a belt when the train decelerates they impact the seat in front and not the passenger sitting opposite). (3) Alterations to ticket T&Cs which put an onus on passengers to use said seatbelts when seated. The top two being features of long distance coaches and planes…..

I’m talking about the tooling - not how much something may have been used or how well an owner may have serviced it before selling it on. You could easily get a 10 year old model full of dust and fluff and having been used intensely (but with the plug and socket setup) You could also get a 20 year old model that has run very low miles and been regularly serviced by its owner with the wiper 1980s style connector on it. Which of the above do you think is a better buy….. Judging a models merits simply on the basis of a minor tweak to a connector and DCC socket location is rather foolish - the whole point of buying an 8F is to get a good model of an 8F steam locomotive - not a lump of metal and plastic with a DCC socket on it!

No it doesn’t - CDL is not applied selectively to individual passengers - and you know it so stop twisting things to suit you agenda! If you want to discuss seatbelts on trains then that’s fine to do as a standalone topic - but have the sense to realise they have as much relevance to CDL as door locks on planes or road vehicles have to seatbelts in said transport (I.e. none)

I would love you to demonstrate how a seatbelt helps a standing passenger from being flung down the carriage / to the floor due to sudden deceleration… Yes a seatbelt will potentially stop those seated from adding to the numbers sent flying - but I repeat that given seated and standing passengers can potentially have paid exactly the same price (or the standee has paid even more than the seated person if the latter has an advance ticket) then, in law, the standee MUST NOT be subjected to a grater risk of injury than the seated person! It doesn’t mater whether a person is seated or not - they all have to enter and exit the train at some point and as such CDL helps protect them all from exiting / entering the train when it is unsafe to do so, be it while they are passing though the train while in motion, waiting by the door to alight or even preventing them from boarding a train which is about to start moving off from a platform.

No it’s not - the plug and socket setup (usually accompanied by moving the decoder socket into the tender) was retrofitted to a number of ‘super detailed’ models* around 10 years after the tooling was first released - and no changes were made to the body shells or chassis at that time. As such the type of loco to tender connection makes zero difference to how the loco looks (or runs - I have several of locos fitted with the original setup that run perfectly well with it), the only real difference is that if you want to fit sound then having the decoder in the tender means you would probably want to go for a later release with the monied loco - tender coupling. * Tbe N15 was another

I don’t know the specifics of the study and as it was done by BR before privatisation the mechanics of the study may not be the same as if it were done today. However the point still stands that seat belts would only have a chance of protecting seated passengers - and unless you ban standees then your risk reduction will only apply to some of the trains passengers! That goes against all modern safety regulation - in effect what you are saying is that some passengers are more valuable than others and have a grater ‘right’ to safety than others - which any court of law would find to be ridiculous not to mention an act of negligence by whichever company installed them. Therefore if you had a train company which fitted seatbelts and an incident occurred where a standing passenger suffered a minor injury then there is a very good chance they could take the train company to court for providing seat belts for seated passengers but doing nothing to protect those standing dispute both types of passengers having potentially paid the same fare. seatbelts in other forms of transport are fine precisely because the relevant la2s prohibit the carriage of standing passengers and thus EVERYONE experiences the same level of safety. As I said earlier there is also the little matter that in terms of safety, it’s far better to eliminate the possibility of something happening than deal with mitigating the risk - that’s why the HSE say best practice is to design things so they do not need the use of a ladder to access them (e.g. have the equipment be able to be lowered to ground level like the ‘fold down’ signals we see on the rail network) than address the risks resulting from ladder use by sending people on ‘working at height’ training and issuing fall restraint equipment. Thus, it’s far better in railway terms to invest in preventing collisions etc from happening in the first place (TPWS, better fencing, better drainage removing level crossings etc) than seatbelts (given the legal difficulties surrounding their fitment to trains which also permit standing passengers.

But planes cars and long distance coaches don’t have standing passengers - everyone who has a ticket has a seat! For seat belts to be made effective - and for the railways to stand half a chance of them being used then it would require standing passengers to be banned - something which commuters (who are voters) and politicians wouldn’t tolerate. BR did some research into seatbelts towards the end of its existence and concluded that money would be better invested in stopping trains crashing in the first place through signaling improvements and things like the replacement of slam door stock.

I refer you to the post made by Northmoor just a few hours ago…..

I suspect all doors are locked while on the move to prevent undesirables from trying to gain access should the train come to an unscheduled halt for any reason

Yes and no. Although it showed the under frames being very strong the passenger accommodation was pretty mangled… The same is obvious when you look at photos of the Clapham crash in 1987…

Google maps is updated frequently at no cost to reflect changes (and I’m not just talking about new roads) to the road network - when was the last time your car manufacturer supplied a free update? Also google maps can show live traffic information and can warn you of delays ahead plus offer you alternative routes - can your built in car system do that? Car manufacturers have a history of being slow to update the latest trends into their vehicles - plus deliberately make it hard / expensive to update things like Sat-Nav’s…