Jenny Emily

It isn't just trains that seem to get listed in this way over and over again. There's some-one with a vinyl copy of NOW 34 who lists it over and over again with a starting price in the region of £120. The thing is, I was under the impression that Ebay charges a listing fee each time so that quickly gets expensive for the seller. I think they only let you relist it once for free if it doesn't sell.

It never ceases to amaze me the people who try and sell Hornby Dublo as if anything is rare. From memory, the BR N2 reached 500,000 made over its lifespan? I used to pay £25-£30 for gloss BR black N2s in the late 1990s. To be honest, I wouldn't pay any more now if I was still in the market.The only truly rare BR N2 is 69567 with coal in its bunker (NOT 69550 with coal which are common as muck)

Interesting point - perhaps the taxman should be told to expect his share of the £500,000 through capital gains tax. That would really put the wind up the seller!

Just in case I'm being a bit thick - that's half a million quid? For that amount of cash some-one would have to be really desperate. You could pay Swiss craftsmen to hand carve you a replica out of gold for less than that. Note how no feedback appears for this item. The ebay listing fee must have been steep.

Given how overpriced it is, you would have thought that the seller could have been bothered to check that their listing was correct. For a start the box will tell you what its contents is.

Very tempting, and they're a reasonable price too. what scale do 28mm figures actually equate to? The monsters might have a bit of leeway on scale, but how accurate to OO would the Doctor and his companions actually look? Could they be blended in with a crowd of other OO figures or stand next to the Skaledale TARDIS without looking odd?

£30,000 seems like excellent value for money for this project. With the number of new build steam locomotive projects in recent years it was only a matter of time I suppose before some-one tried something similar for diesels.

I've personally always steered clear of vehicles in scrapyards because they never seem to look right. For a long time I couldn't put my finger on it, until I realised that fullsize scrapyards that deal with cars never actually quite look right either. I think that there's something about non bent or rusty vehicles piled in neat stacks that looks out of place in any scale, including 12 inches to the foot. Interesting things do seem to turn up in the scrapyards around here from time to time. A Rover P4 turned up around ten years ago, and was placed prominantly ontop of a container adjacent to the main road. It was there for several months, and I can only guess it was advertising its presence to prospective buyers and would have fetched the scrappy far more than its weight as a crushed cube of scrap. There is also a salvage yard that handles nothing but old cars which seems to have them linger for around six months. A lot of people go there to buy parts (I got spares for my Volvo 850 in there) and I suspect only leave when they are a completely stripped shell. One thing I have noticed in a lot of yards is that the first thing that cars lose is their wheels. I believe this is down to them being removed for part-worn tyres to be sold on and to avoid some contamination of the end cube of crushed metal when it goes for recycling. Engines also seem to get removed early on in a lot of places, and I've seen mounds of engines attached to gearboxes all oil-soaked and looking pretty down at heel. One cameo that might prove interesting for a model scrapyard is the way that residual fuel is removed from the fuel tank - usually by dangling the car vertically attached to a mechanical grab by chains and one very brave man holding a drum with a funnel in the opening under the upended car if the salvage yard here is to be believed. If the fuel is not removed, it can make for an interesting time when the car is crushed and the tank ignites. I was told that oil is drained by punching a hole in sumps and casings, but as the salvage yards sell complete working engines from otherwise scrap vehicles I believe it probably only happens to engines and gearboxes beyond any hope.

I think the question that would provide an insight into the end of four wheel wagons would be: "which freight facilities cannot use anything else?". I suppose new facilities tend to have generous spacing and track radii that don't prohibit bogie wagons. As time rolls on, older facilities will close or be upgraded. I think as long as there is a need for four wheel wagons they will be around. I don't see why the type would be prevented from new designs appearing in the future should a business need arise for them. If the government is serious about getting traffic - and in particular frieght - off the roads and onto railways*, then lower capacity wagons may well make a comeback. On the otherhand, containerisation, it could be argued, would eventually remove the need for smaller wagons as everything could be carried in demountable containers on container flats facilitating easy interchange between road, rail and sea. *They talk a lot, but as is usual, it rarely seems to pass from hot air to reality.

I have a feeling that this may be the same seller who has made a habit of doing the same with every prior Modelzone limited release. It does show though that the legion of bidders on this items must be really thick to not realise they are being fleeced or too lazy to go to a Modelzone outlet and buy one.

Getting back onto the moron quotient of Ebay, here's a video of a case on Judge Judy where an Ebay scammer gets sued. They were putting up listings purporting to be mobile phones, then upon receipt of the money sending out a printed picture of the phone. I couldn't believe the scrote actually turned up and had the arrogance to try and defend scamming people.

Aparently we're the Trix Mafia? Never collected the stuff in my life. He sounds like a complete Muppet suggesting he would rather bin something he had been trying to sell for a grand than accept £87.

That Trix seller is having a laugh. We could all annoy him by everyone here adding it to their watchlist and not buying it.

There are some incredible pictures appearing in this thread! I've been through over a hundred pictures of my own looking for pictures that try and come close to the bar being set by others: Swansong of steam, as 49395 sits between duties in the warehouse sidings.

Taken on Grove Street yard. Unadulterated except changing to B&W.

The ones that get me are those that capitalise every single word. In my view that's harder to read than the shouty people who type with the caps lock on. Then there are those who treat punctuation like a game of pin the tale on the Donkey. Finally, my biggest pet hate are the ransom note writers who capitalise random letters. Why? I don't know. Then there are the keyword spammers ("...suitable for Hornby, Trix, Bachmann, Lima, Heljan, any other train manufacturer I throw at this listing...") and those who don't seem to understand that if they mass produced thousands of an item, it isn't rare no matter how much you want it to be. Finally, those who seem incapable of describing the condition of their item as anything other than 'very good' or 'nice condition' when it is clear that it has been eaten by a dog, played with by a wannabe Ninja and beaten to within an inch of its life.

Now 25? Now that's what I call a chancer, more like. I buy these albums on LP in mint condition from record shops around the country for usually the princely sum of between £1 and £3. For information, Now 25 is not rare on vinyl at all - but we already knew that, didn't we? http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item563d044a20

I do like the wearthering on the tar tank, especially the cracked and peeling paint under the tar. I presume you use something like paint thinners on the nearly dry top coat to encourage it to craze like that?

Probably does, but having used the Peco couplings for years I'm familiar with them, and making the discreet equipment to get them to uncouple on demand.

I await a NEM version of the Peco coupling with interest - I have a large wagon fleet, but I would be tempted to at least replace the ones used a lot for shunting. The original Hornby Dublo coupling was a ghastly afair. If anyone has ever played with prewar HD they will know what I mean. Certainly the Peco coupling was light years ahead of them, and certainly better than the competition that seems to have lumbered itself on the UK market. The Peco coupling always reminded me of a very crude buckeye coupler.

As others have said, a converter wagon is probably a better option, as the HD couplings are held in by a rivet, and it can be a damaging process to get them out. Wrenn wagons tended to have facilities to attach both types of coupling. The Hornby Dublo (actually, I believe, designed and patents held by Peco) coupling is much better, though it is impractical to fit to newer wagons like Bachmann. Certainly the coupling and uncoupling process was a lot easier to deal with - no trying to pick a wagon out of a train and ending up with a string of wagons dangling like sausages!

I don't know whether to be really happy, or cry; it's going to be expensive for me when these come out. I held off on the class 14s, and am glad I did as I quite fancy the Loadhaul liveried one that's forthcoming. The weathered BR blue class 28 looks interesting, but that's a lot of squids to now have to save up. Does anybody think that some interesting liveries may appear in the second batch that Hattons will inevitably produce? What livery might the class 28 suit from the later BR period? I think RTC red/blue probably would have and maybe Dutch.