frobisher

Mind you, the chassis is completely new being metal, but clearly Hornby wanted to stick with the power bogie they had rather than go for a low profile central drive to both bogies as they were needing to tool up a new interior anyway etc., A missed opportunity.

But 12 - 2 ~= 8... Just saying...

The GWR coaches eventually got Collet style bogies as well.

I suspect the biggest improvement would be in the number of pickups (the original will have the one rail on one bogie and the other rail on the other setup of Hornby's whereas the new one will have all wheel pick up (including from the traction tyred wheels)), and the paint job will be better (though the 110 was around the start of where Hornby really started upping their game and minimal use of self coloured plastic and lots of printed details).

If you're going to do any one of those, there are obvious bolt ons; 312 - 310 313 and 315 - 314, 507 and 508 317 - 318, 455, 456

Particular locos are on the list; But it would seem that Dapol are able to produce (in N, can't find any details of their Black Label 00 models at the moment) 2S-011-008A3 Flying Scotsman 60103 BR Green Late Crest (As Preserved) 2S-008-016A4 Valanced Mallard 4468 Garter Blue & 4 Gresley Teak Coaches 2S-008-017A4 Sir Nigel Gresley 60007 BR Express Blue E/C as preserved Which might suggest the licences are not that exclusive (to a particular scale at best) Also, Bachmann also produce; 32-550DLNER A1 60163 'Tornado' BR Lined Green (Late Crest) And have previously done 5 versions of it, ditto Mallard, Sir Nigel Gresley and Bittern I'm suspecting many of those licences are non-exclusive.

Do they though? And if they do, is it an exclusive license? If Hornby can apparently sell A3s and A4s by the truck load (across several detail levels) then why wouldn't it behove another manufacturer to produce a "more definitive" version? Bachmann's A4 did very well for a long time given the age of the tooling, so why not do a new one?

I was meaning the 71; The CAD from that could probably be used as a basis for 74 or modification of the 71 bodywork tooling, and an EFE rework on the drive chain as we have seen before as I understand it.

It might depend where the DJM tooling and CAD ended up, and which manufacturer/brand has reinvigorated some of that in the past already as to what relative chances might be.

This is where the Bachmann EZ-Mate NEM couplings score, though only available in one length.

To be fair, yes, we have roughly 10-15 times the number of liners visiting Orkney than stop at Oban (though some of those are the same ones...). I find it rather amusing when Amsterdam kicks off saying 15 liners a year is just too much for them to handle (Orkney has 270+ liner stops this summer scheduled). Yes. These year we have one occasion with 5 (admittedly these are all very small ones), 3 with 4 and 17 days with 3 arriving at the connected Mainland. and probably about 30 days with 2.

The situation you're listing in the second paragraph sounds an awful lot like the problems you're citing in the first, just saying. Lochaber has a very limited carrying capacity itself for hotel accommodation so many of those coming down to see the Jacobite aren't staying locally in any case but are in the locality. My experience with cruise liners is more concerned with the pro-active UK visitors who're organised enough to have booked private tours. I know what value they bring into the local economy. I also know that for every tour my company took last year we had to turn back 3 more turning up on foot and trying to book on the day, plus a similar quantity rebuffed beforehand due to being at capacity.

Except it would likely put the manufacturing costs up, otherwise why would Hornby have dropped them in the first place. As it is, the motors themselves these days really aren't that expensive.

Fixed that for you. The fallacy is always to see the low volume higher value customers as the ones that are spending everything.

I think you may be overestimating the impact of those couple of hundred passengers have on the local economy compared to couple of thousand that come in on the cruise liners.

To my mind this announcement has almost the exact same feel as the first of Bachmann's now regime of "when it's nearly ready". "Disappointingly" few actually new things (though here a batch of new things looking like really old things...) but a seemingly sincere message of clearing the decks of old announcements to come through the system. This is, I think, a good thing. We know we have an announcement in April for TT, so you never know if something will come in on those coat tails. Quite happy about Locomotion No 1.

These days Parcel Force seem to be subcontracting a bunch of their deliveries to evri and the like...

So are we also getting updated Classes 66, 37, 47, 73 as well?

The market has a level of saturation coupled with batch production that has opened that door The big players are playing whack-a-mole with certain subjects and maintaining a hump of historical products that perhaps should be updated, and all the while the new players are building nice, broadening ranges focusing on items that will sell and complement each other in the main.

You'd need at least one other manufacturer seriously in the mix for that to happen. It took Dapol to stir up Bachmann/Farish to get things where things are today.

A quick google finds this which gives some explanation; The X28 is because the maximum the sensors could record was X28 and was probably X45, the recurrences of 8 and 2 are just coincidence. What are X flares? Can they harm us? (earthsky.org) solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/flare.html Gives the actual scale...

Given the tooling so far only covers the refurbished class members there's very little overlap between it and BR Blue (I think it was as low as 3 or 6 members of the class carried that livery when refurbished).

You missed; Class 06 - awful but they have that one to themselves Class 87 - they have to themselves Class 91 - they have to themselves And Class 08/09 covered by Bachmann (though I can't remember an 09 in a blue box?) Class 33 (Ex Lima) covered by Heljan Class 42 (Ex Lima) - Bachmann one is still better... Class 52 (Hornby and ex-Lima (possibly)) covered by Heljan and then bettered by Dapol Class 57 (Ex Lima cough!) - Heljan and Bachmann are waaay better

Erm the Express Point surely does this?

Redbox syndrome I suspect. Those two don't come so attired...