The Evil Bus Driver

That tooling certainly did the rounds. I dread to think what kind of state its in now. I'm guessing Hornby managed to get one more run out of it before it was just too far gone. I'm happy to be corrected though.

See you all there on the Sunday!

I'm hoping for a reissue but I'd be going blue and grey. I'm not paying £235 for one second hand. This is just price gouging by the seller. One of the Revolution guys said at GETS that Trains4U had a few B/G ones left but they're long gone now. It's a case of holding out for a second run as clearly there are people who want one who don't have one. But for me it's not essential, it's a 'nice to have' rather than a 'must get' so for me, if its re-run then great, I'll order one but as I said, I'm not paying 150% of RRP to get one.

I'm hoping for a 2A at some point as I'm going to need a few. Maybe 3 or 4.

I think mine will be smoking after that. I've got a full rake of Airfix 2Ds though so they won't be a high priority for me.

I have sympathy for my credit card. Sort of.

There are some on there for £75 - 80! 😳

They might need hazmat suits by now though. Mind you they probably needed them back then

That looks great! Just needs a big glass dome full of BR sandwiches* and paper bags full of cups of tea on the counter, maybe a few packets of crisps and you're there. *Truly a thing of terror

Thats a great looking bit of third rail there.

Got one of these beauties on preorder

That's good to know. I'm looking for a few to complete my two West of England rakes.

Looks fantastic! What third rail did you use? It looks great!

Oh nice. I'll look forward to seeing it at GETS.

Just as a bit of whimsy, were mk2s ever portion worked? I'm kind of used to fixed rakes and mine will be running as such however I was pondering this the other day. Since I grew up on and around the Southern Region, portion working of EMUs is commonplace there. I know LHCS is a lot more complicated to shunt around and I'm told there are certain rules around reversing over pointwork with passengers on, however it's not unheard of.

I've just been comparing my solitary Bachmann 2A with the Accurascale mk2B. There was already a Hubt Magnetic coupling on the Bachmann coach and the Accurascale one has the one out of the bag and there's a decent close couple there. I haven't tried it around a curve yet though.

Now that sounds like a double whammy of goodness

That's good, since one of my 'off scene' destinations is intended to be Reading.

Might be worth looking at some of the old footage of the 50s on 8 mk2s at Waterloo and see how some of the consists are made up. There do seem to be two brake coaches and often a BFK in there.

I've just noticed one of mine is NSE branded rather than Inter City. Not a problem as I can get a blanking patch and alter them (I'm mindful of the warranty, of course) although certain rogue thoughts have now turned to building a small 1980s era layout... that's the era of my childhood too 🤔 On other things there's a third detail bag with yellow thingies in it in the IC branded ones, on a sprue. Destination boards perhaps? They do appear to have writing on them. It's all part of the fun figuring these things out though.

I haven't been brave enough to venture 'into the bag' as yet. I reckon once I've got a few hours free I'll set up a test track* and run mine. I'm planning to build a portable test track. More on that soon.

I've just finished making up my 2D rake, with one (Mainline) exception it's all Airfix. It took ages to get the TSOs due to their relative rarity.

Excellent! Thanks for the info. I must admit my look at them on my test plank was a bit quick since I was laid up with the horrible lurgy that's been going round. I'll give mine a closer look once I get a few minutes. Now we need to ask for some 2As at this quality.

Mine just arrived and they are beauties! Great Underframe detail and two accessory bags each plus a wafty stick. There's a selection of different coupler options plus various pipe details in the bags. The free running of them is a dream. So smooth! I'm looking forward to running them on more than my maintenance plank though. The detailing is exquisite, even picked out are the little hinges and flat metal parts on the gangway doors. The buffers are modelled in the retracted position, as is correct except for on the end coach (one of which might have been a mk1 BG anyway) Another win for Accurascale!

It certainly is a House of Goodies at the moment 😀