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Electrostar

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  1. Gaugemaster has shared some pre-production shots of the OO pre-production 02. Cute little thing.
  2. As a 12 year old in 1988 I wrote to Hornby asking if their forthcoming class 91 – shown in the catalogue with an all white front end - would include a front coupling to allow for blunt end running. The answer was of course a no. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for the new model to include the facility? I appreciate BR’s original plans for the 91s to haul overnight parcels or freight trains (I think) with the blunt end leading never actually materialised but the number two cab has been pressed into service on a number of occasions since.
  3. The pair of 66s are on display at the London Transport Museum shop. The printing looks very impressive up close.
  4. My mistake. I always thought it still looked like an adapted version of NSE. I assumed the blue window surrounds extending to the cab side in an upright diagonal could trace its roots back to NSE with extra blue where the original red slope was. The horizontal red line, though thinner than NSE appears in the same position as NSE without the slope. Obviously DDA requirements came later and meant changing the colour of the doors. Anyway enough of all that, great news about the blue-grey VEP. Will Hornby hold good on its promise to adapt the solid interior, the discussion of which now feels like years ago?!
  5. Interesting stuff. I find it incredible that the privatised Chiltern only tweaked the NSE livery but have kept it ever since, other than on their Mainline service. (And that's not a complete, just an observation about the last two decades of rebrands!) If I recall Chiltern, Thames Trains, Connex South Eastern and WAGN couldn't paint their Turbos or Networkers for some time as it would have invalidated the paint warranty. It explains why Chiltern tweaked NSE with vinyls and Connex did the same, in effect removing the red stripe and adding yellow which left it at odds with all (dirty) white/yellow of the Connex slam door stock, 455s, 319s and sole 456 on South Central and South Eastern. Privatised WAGN and Thames Trains left theirs in NSE livery for quite sometime I recall. Ps loved the Thameslink anecdote!
  6. Andyman7: I'm not surprised considering the South Central TOC was called Network SouthCentral and even kept the NSE flashes. I often wondered who came up with the pre-privatisation TOC names. As I recall only Thameslink was allowed to introduce a new livery - the 'graffiti livery with silhouettes of St Paul's - but why did NSC get to keep the NSE flashes and Network name when others simply became Southeastern, Great Eastern, LTS Rail, WAGN etc? Then there were the early post-privatisation liveries: orange stripe or green stripe added to the NSE liveries of South West Trains and LTS Rail respectively. Chiltern went for a thinner red stripe and different direction at the cab ends, but the livery is essentially still based on Network South East all these years later. Then there are names like South West Trains (which initially had the Stagecoach moniker added), Chiltern and the very-recently revived Thameslink that are still around today.
  7. Watching the excellent naming ceremony video reminds me when Intercity reversed the decision to use tiny numbers. I don't know if any of the early 90s received them but certainly the 91s and 47s (47/8s?) did. The former having the tiny numbers originally only at the blunt end before common sense saw larger numbers at the front end too. Not that Hornby were quick to cotton on! There was also the outcry in the railway magazines about the black nameplates with silver (I think) writing replacing the more traditional red ones. I think black writing on silver as shown here was the compromise. But it was sometime ago and I was just a boy.
  8. I appreciate the Hornby 90 is old but I always felt it never truly captured the light cluster. Much like Hornby's 466 Networker which also had something missing around the headlights. I guess we're a quarter of a century on (doesn't that make me feel old) and we can expect better from Bachmann. As an aside, all this talk of the Class 90 introduction reminded me what an interesting era 1986-1994 was. Every fortnight as a child I'd pick up Rail or Motive Power Monthly to discover another new livery (freight, intercity, parcels, civil engineers) or countless one-off depot special (how did they get away with so many after the corporate blue era?!). The axe hung over several classes and then just as you thought it was all over for them they'd earn a reprieve. The future was coming (Crossrail and Thameslink a little further than hoped), new locos like the 90, 91 and 60 were settling in and the Channel Tunnel was being built. Meanwhile on the back page of Rail at least you could be promised three new liveries by Lima, many on some fairly recent models. Hornby might have had a few showpieces like the 90 and 91 but models and liveries were limited to a set few each year. With Lima it was like Christmas every fortnight. (Well until few years later when Father Lima stopped delivering!)
  9. I remember when the almost-new 90s were pulled out of service en masse due to technical issues. It even made Thames News or LWT News. I visited Willesden in the hope of getting to see them all but the depot managers never allowed spotters in. They did however print me off a list of all locos on shed. (Compare Willesden to Stewart's Lane where no such restrictions ever existed, despite the third rail.) I loved the Mainline livery with its cast double arrows. It suited the 90s just as it did the 47s. The Intercity version was similar to what came with the 91 - lots of white. Was it a 90 in Mainline livery that was used on the BBC's Railwatch line up to unveil the new sectors - (Swallow) Intercity, Mainline, Departmental (grey) and Parcels (red pre-RES)?
  10. I think there's only one livery version of the 450 although there might be minor and possibly accidental variations of the swoosh. There are also high capacity versions that had first class removed but I think these are in the process of being converted back to their original state. I've always found the shade of the blue bodywork really attractive. Even after many years in service the 450s still have a nice sheen to them. Fingers crossed this gets the oh ahead.
  11. Ron Ron Ron, I meant Bachmann considered the risk and realised it wasn't going to lose a lot of sales if it allowed Model Rail the commission rather than releasing a 450 to the open market and keeping all profits for itself.
  12. That's brilliant news, put me down for both. It's interesting that Bachmann have decided against selling it themselves. I wonder if they've looked at sales of the slam-door third-rail stock and the 350s and decided producing it as a third party commission is a risk worth taking.
  13. I certainly remember wishing the railway mags would publish colour photographs of the 84 put into departmental use, just so I could see what it looked like in blue and orange.
  14. That's certainly some fade out. Perhaps it would look a bit better if the white body was weathered. After all the slam door stock were often quite dirty.
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