frobisher

Attenburgh surely?

Oh, oh well.

Technically, apart from one route, it's the Sassenachs that have ended up with them... ;)

I'm presuming these will be a little more "fit for purpose" North of Edinburgh, which allows the concentration of the Azuma's in those areas they don't need bi-mode capability and they can be readily reduced to being electric only units as per their design. Also Hitachi might not have capacity to fulfil this order in the required timescale.

It'll need a suffix at the very least to distinguish it from Newport on Tay.

You're forgetting the most necessary step in that process, an enforcement authority with the necessary teeth. And with due respect, that shows a failure to understand the problem being expressed.

Indeed - we have a proposed 6GW turbine field going in to the West of Orkney soon, which is the equivalent of 3 average nuclear power stations. I suspect that will mostly be aimed at keeping the lights on in Central Belt Scotland rather than railway electrification.

I suspect though there was much more an element of design in the assignment of the number range for the PCs though so that they could be Class 43 in the future when TOPS absorbed the carriage range (indeed the carriage numbering for the HST sets clearly reflects knowledge of forthcoming "holes" in the TOPS range).

Hornby missed the bus with British N gauge, and ditto 0. The other players are eying what Hornby does. I suspect Bachmann aren't really interested given the range of scale/gauges they are already covering (and their scarcity of internal manufacturing capacity which has lead to the whole EFE venture), Dapol are probably in a similar position. Heljan are the most likely to dip a toe in when the water is a little deeper after being totally gazundered on their initial foray, and there seems to be some interest from Revolution staff at least. Rapido might surprise us, but I think we might see some models from Sonic as commissions down the line. The big model for Hornby will be the Class 66 as that must be appearing under the Arnold brand for the European market in due course, which means we should see some of the more obscure (otherwise) UK variants being produced.

The cost of modifying a 155 will be cheaper than 2 153's because you don't have the extra cabs to contend with.

Most of those factors are irrelevant. Is it a "failed" model "rescued" by EFE? If so it is not a failure... Is it a model that was looking for a commission? Well it's found it in EFE so job done. Would it have been made without EFE? Who knows, but the fact that it has is more important. What we do know is that KMRC have a working relationship with Bachmann through EFE and that has produced some interesting products. This is another one.

One defining difference is the Hornby shorties have the tension lock coupling moulded integrally to the bogie all scale length Hornby ones have clip in Airfic style couplings.

Isn't that the EMU bogie type used under the MK3 derived ones?

The roofline has a large notch cut out on one end on one side as built, and no high intensity headlight and the big ones. The head-code boxes are also functional in the early days and I don't think they were plated over until refurbishment (so 0000 or two dots before that).

It should be noted thar the tooling is currently for refurbished examples only which knocks out anything before the 1980's and all but a select few in BR blue.

Getting stripped and scraped at the moment.

In theory, if you could clip a clear plastic shim across the face of both buffers you'd have something that might go down to set track radii.

That might beg the question of who's going to bite and do a TT tension lock for the NEM 355 of TT..?

A single Class 99 might though...

Hornby are also fitting them to their TT wagons so it's mostly down to appetite to do so I would say, regardless of scale.

I'm not a member of the group or a friend of anyone there and I can see them, so there's possibly something odd with your FB settings..?

Wouldn't the Class 50 be closer to the mark and being produced earlier?

Have Peco tried to reinvent the wheel there with the couplings? The NEM standard is the 355 pocket, yet it looks like their coupling has fishtails for fitting to the NEM 362 type pocket... Or is the 355 pocket secured using those fishtails?

What you want are the ViTrains couplings as used on their 37 and 47 surely?

So that they stayed with the commissioning franchises and couldn't be half inched by the XC franchise(s) as I understand it.