Hornby - New tooling - Mk3 slide-door coaches

[adb968008]

9 hours ago, TomScrut said:

 

Yes and I'd say they have retracted the decision to keep tooling it, the 67 is newer (I think, as they used the Lima tooling for a while) and it doesn't have them.

Ive got to admit I like it though, whilst operationally sprung doors, posable vents even sprung buffers are pointless, so are in cab lights.
 

But when your buying a £150 loco, being able to occasionally touch, feel and know they are there, it gives you a sense of value, something to show off. I admit to being disappointed when I touch the fixed buffers on Bachmann's more recent releases, it feels cheaper, lower quality even if its operationally pointless.

 

[TomScrut]

48 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

so are in cab lights

 

Are they? They are allowed to be on when the loco is stood still aren't they, or the rear cab when moving? I have my Hattons 66s programmed so if a cab light is on it goes out when the loco moves in that direction.

 

Spring buffers seem to be slightly useful when using Hunt couplers on some of my wagons, as in I'd have to go up a length without I think.

Edited May 10, 2020 by TomScrut

[surfsup]

2 hours ago, TomScrut said:

 

Are they? They are allowed to be on when the loco is stood still aren't they, or the rear cab when moving? I have my Hattons 66s programmed so if a cab light is on it goes out when the loco moves in that direction.

 

 

Which is how all model cab lights should be. Unfortunately it's another feature I'm trying to remove from my Hornby HST Power Cars as not only do they not need to be on while the Power Car is moving, Hornby's addiction to using bright white LEDs means you do get some light bleed through the Power Car cab roof (FGW Blue). 

 

Another rather pointless feature I feel is the motorised rotating fans. Again, it's another nice but not necessary feature as, realistically, who is going to be looking at the rotating fans of a HST Power Car when it's moving at speed? Not to mention being a small drain on the motor.  

[TomScrut]

33 minutes ago, surfsup said:

 

Which is how all model cab lights should be. Unfortunately it's another feature I'm trying to remove from my Hornby HST Power Cars as not only do they not need to be on while the Power Car is moving, Hornby's addiction to using bright white LEDs means you do get some light bleed through the Power Car cab roof (FGW Blue). 

 

Another rather pointless feature I feel is the motorised rotating fans. Again, it's another nice but not necessary feature as, realistically, who is going to be looking at the rotating fans of a HST Power Car when it's moving at speed? Not to mention being a small drain on the motor.  

 

Yes I am going to attack my HST when I can be bothered! The Hattons 66 is the only loco I have any interest in the cab lighting as it's individually controllable at each end. All others either light both ends up which us daft or the front end. At least the Bachmann locos have it on a function and the Dapol 68 it can be switched off physically.

 

Anyway we have kinda gone OT here!

[surfsup]

2 hours ago, TomScrut said:

 

Yes I am going to attack my HST when I can be bothered! The Hattons 66 is the only loco I have any interest in the cab lighting as it's individually controllable at each end. All others either light both ends up which us daft or the front end. At least the Bachmann locos have it on a function and the Dapol 68 it can be switched off physically.

 

Anyway we have kinda gone OT here!

 

We probably have, although its all points worth talking about. 

 

I'm still looking forward to the arrival of the ScotRail ones, thats for sure. 

[Sir TophamHatt]

On ‎09‎/‎05‎/‎2020 at 15:22, Half-full said:

Why?  Whats the point in opening doors?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.  Its a bad enough gimmick on loco's but at lease you'll see a loco in action with a door open, you dont see that with coaches.

Realism?

You could apply that to any feature.

 

What's the point in lights?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in spring loaded buffers?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in etched nameplates?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

[Hilux5972]

2 minutes ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

Realism?

You could apply that to any feature.

 

What's the point in lights?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in spring loaded buffers?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in etched nameplates?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

Ok 2 arguments and 1 agreement here. 
 

Whats the point in lights? 
They make the models look realistic, because a train always has some form of lighting on it. 
 

What’s the point in sprung buffers? 
This one I agree with completely. I see very little point in having sprung buffers unless you do a lot of shunting on your layout and don’t have tension lock couplings. 
 

What’s the point in etched nameplates? 
They look far better than printed nameplates that follow every little corrugated and bend in the body. 
 

Now my counter argument. What is the point in having open doors when you have little plastic figures inside the coach and on the platform that don’t move? When you can get 1/76th passengers that walk into the coach themselves, then we can think about opening coach doors. 

[TomScrut]

I think the point is that trains tend to spend most of their time with their doors closed and therefore the realism factor is reduced. On the other hand, lights add a significant amount of realism as they tend to be on all the time the train is running. Etched nameplates look a lot better and are a significant detail to the model vs printed. Also in terms of etched plates the amount of work that goes into them isn't very much really, especially when most of the time you're expected to fit your own. Lights obviously need an element of effort but in reality won't cost much to implement.

 

The buffers I agree with in principle, but as mentioned before I do get a small win out of them on my PCAs with hunt couplings. That's a functional gain rather than detail.

 

One more thing about the buffers. If they were made up of separate components to give a better sense of detail (as opposed to being all one moulding) then the cost difference between sprung and unsprung would be minimal. It is actually the difference between an all in one buffer vs one where the head and mounting are different parts which does look better IMO.

Edited May 12, 2020 by TomScrut

[Sir TophamHatt]

1 hour ago, Hilux5972 said:

Now my counter argument. What is the point in having open doors when you have little plastic figures inside the coach and on the platform that don’t move?

One thing at a time  
At one point, model trains didn't have many more features than than wheels!

It's more of a case of beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I don't care much for cab lights or many of the sounds (like coupling mechanism, other shunting sounds).  Yet there are many who do.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Sir TophamHatt

[Guest Half-full]

1 hour ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

Realism?

You could apply that to any feature.

 

What's the point in lights?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in spring loaded buffers?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

 

What's the point in etched nameplates?  What value to they add to the model?  Extra tooling and assembly costs, passed on to the consumer, for no added value.

Coaches sitting with doors open for any length of time is unprototypical, and for slam door stock you would need fully independent moving figures to justify them.  An argument could be made for sliding door stock with doors that slide inside the bodyshell, more prototypical to see a unit sitting in a station with the doors open (before air-con fitted units became the norm)

 

Lights are prototypical, used when the stock is in movement or parked up in a station.  Loco/Unit tail lights are left on a lot when parked in siding, and there are different combinations of lights used for day/night/shunting and light loco

 

Spring buffers, personally I don't see the need for them, unless you are using 3 link couplings and have the rolling stock properly weighted.  Works better in larger scales.

 

Etched plates create that extra bit of relief on bodysides that can be cleary seen on the prototype.

[Sun Street]

With regard to lighting.

Remember operating protocols were different in various eras, as was the intensity of light emanating from the interior.

Basically, if it's steam-hauled then coach lighting would often be turned on only for tunnels to preserve the batteries for use at night. No shore-lighting in those days, modern lighting presumes a feed from the air-con/heater power circuits to perform.

Cab lights are rarely turned on at night, so as to preserve night-vision away from the station.

Often a driver used to use the station lighting for any paperwork as the cab lights if they worked were probably too bright.

Just because it's fitted to your model does not mean that it is realistic to turn them all on.

Of course, if you want to brag about what is fitted then do turn'em on, but expect criticism from others, particularly where cab-lights and tail-lights on locos are concerned.

 

What brought me here today is wiring Heljan railcar lighting in their earlier 4-wheel railcars.

I wondered if anyone has looked into this issue? Their wiring [imho] is atrocious.

 

[Guest Half-full]

25 minutes ago, Sun Street said:

With regard to lighting.

Remember operating protocols were different in various eras, as was the intensity of light emanating from the interior.

Basically, if it's steam-hauled then coach lighting would often be turned on only for tunnels to preserve the batteries for use at night. No shore-lighting in those days, modern lighting presumes a feed from the air-con/heater power circuits to perform.

Cab lights are rarely turned on at night, so as to preserve night-vision away from the station.

Often a driver used to use the station lighting for any paperwork as the cab lights if they worked were probably too bright.

Just because it's fitted to your model does not mean that it is realistic to turn them all on.

Of course, if you want to brag about what is fitted then do turn'em on, but expect criticism from others, particularly where cab-lights and tail-lights on locos are concerned.

 

What brought me here today is wiring Heljan railcar lighting in their earlier 4-wheel railcars.

I wondered if anyone has looked into this issue? Their wiring [imho] is atrocious.

 

Completely agree, cab lighting is only noticable at night, and is usually turned off when in motion.  Interior lighting again can only really be seen at night, although in saying that it is more noticable in daylight in stock that have heavily tinted windows

 

Locomotive/unit lighting, whilst bright in today's railway, was very dim before.  Almost invisible in daylight and rather dim at night too.  Steam locomotive oil lamps were also very very dim (as were the electric lamps fitted to some LNER locos)

 

Tail lights on locomotives should only be seen when running in light loco, or parked up.

[TomScrut]

14 minutes ago, Half-full said:

Tail lights on locomotives should only be seen when running in light loco, or parked up.

 

But hopefully in 2020 any newly developed locos should be capable of independent end lighting. Although I aren't holding out much hope on Hornby's 91 given its 8 pin

[Rhydgaled]

Looking at various pictures online, it appears that these sliding door mark 3s include many of the variations found on mark 3s in general:

• The guard's door on the TGS is presumably unmodified from slam-door days
• The roof detail is presumably unmodified from slam-door days
• The XC TCC has the roof vent detail more commonly associated with coaches that have single-phase ETS
• The ScotRail TGFB (R4907A) has a (presumably largely unmodified) slam-door (just missing the handle) although on the Hornby web store R4907 appears to have a TGS door

If I'm right, this means the only missing variations needed to do the slam-door FO/TSO/TF/TS coaches (including mark 3a/b single-phase ETS coaches) are the toilet windows, buffers for the mark 3a/b coaches and a handle for the doors. That would leave the buffets, which of course would need window and roof differences, and SLE/SLEP coaches. Would be nice to see matching tooling for all mark 3s with no odd ex-Lima vehicles in a Hornby formation or Hornby vehicles in a Lima rake.

 

I know nothing about tooling, but the extra CAD work required to do the slam-door coaches appears to be quite limited, given that the doors themselves (minus handle) seem to be CADed up already. There are probably a load more variations I'm not aware of though.

[TomScrut]

Aren't there some changes to the underfloor valances? I thought I saw some bits I hadn't seen before in pics, possibly to do with the door systems?

 

Note I am not an expert on injection moulding but I am familiar with the concept and know about it from some other types of mouldings. A lot of it depends on how forward thinking they have been with the tooling. They can make them modular, which means replacement blocks get put in to add different features. This has downsides:

 

Added complexity (and therefore added cost for one variant)

 

Needs doing from the start really

 

Seam lines at joints between modules, if done cleverly can be obscured by features. We get these anyway where the tools come apart to get the part out but there is more the more sections the mould has.

 

This will be done with a lot of things where a mass variations happen across a particular type of item. For example I expect this will be the case with the Hattons 66 with different windows, lights etc. They won't have a mould for all the combinations (although they may have different body moulds for the low emission ones as that door may be difficult to put in without marks).

 

So if they have planned it, then I'd say it's doable, if not then probably not as the tooling probably won't have had that extra cost built into it.

 

I'd expect the windows to be different tools as they'll be making enough of each variant to justify the cost.

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

2 hours ago, Rhydgaled said:

Looking at various pictures online, it appears that these sliding door mark 3s include many of the variations found on mark 3s in general:

• The guard's door on the TGS is presumably unmodified from slam-door days
• The roof detail is presumably unmodified from slam-door days
• The XC TCC has the roof vent detail more commonly associated with coaches that have single-phase ETS
• The ScotRail TGFB (R4907A) has a (presumably largely unmodified) slam-door (just missing the handle) although on the Hornby web store R4907 appears to have a TGS door

If I'm right, this means the only missing variations needed to do the slam-door FO/TSO/TF/TS coaches (including mark 3a/b single-phase ETS coaches) are the toilet windows, buffers for the mark 3a/b coaches and a handle for the doors. That would leave the buffets, which of course would need window and roof differences, and SLE/SLEP coaches. Would be nice to see matching tooling for all mark 3s with no odd ex-Lima vehicles in a Hornby formation or Hornby vehicles in a Lima rake.

 

I know nothing about tooling, but the extra CAD work required to do the slam-door coaches appears to be quite limited, given that the doors themselves (minus handle) seem to be CADed up already. There are probably a load more variations I'm not aware of though.

I'd go along with that, except the door handle on the TGS guards door is identical to the passenger door handle so the CAD work on a Mk3 slam door with handle ought to already be done. Someone will come along and say they want a sensor that automatically illuminates the CDL light on the platform side only when it detects its stood in a platform (to go with their opening door presumably) but the fact that the XC sets contain a mix of ex loco hauled and HST proper coaches means they have indeed done the donkey work.

 

[Sun Street]

Iirc correctly, the Oxford tooling allowed for the vast majority of variants in their tooling suite.

Now that  there is a link between Oxford and Hornby, then maybe, just maybe there will be an appropriate correct range of coaches progressively developed, albeit some having to be compromised in the name of production economies.

As said previously on this site, there are detail nit-pickers that will deride the product, yet have no intention of buying.

If the manufacturers are not supported by purchases, then they will not support us.

Me? I'm building the HSDT prototype between other projects, everytime that l go back to it, l find my standards are higher than before and have to re-engineer what as been done or compromises reduced.

And boy! Are there differences!!!

[adb968008]

Rather than opening doors, i’d have thought modelling a few random open windows would have been cheaper and more prototypical for most coaches before 2019.

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

Or populate the carriage seating areas, or put curtains in first class, or some more detail on the interiors such as seats and seat backs in prototypical colours rather than one plain moulding in whatever colour comes to hand?!

 

[adb968008]

12 hours ago, fiftyfour fiftyfour said:

Or populate the carriage seating areas, or put curtains in first class, or some more detail on the interiors such as seats and seat backs in prototypical colours rather than one plain moulding in whatever colour comes to hand?!

 

that costs more though.

more printing, more painting, more parts.

people responded negatively to paying more for passengers preinstalled in some recent coaches.

 

tooling an odd window open, on a glazing tooling mould costs nothing if done at time of manufacturer... Bachmann class 47 is one such example, and is better for it.. one of the cab windows is open.

Edited May 13, 2020 by adb968008

[Rhydgaled]

On 12/05/2020 at 17:44, Sun Street said:

Iirc correctly, the Oxford tooling allowed for the vast majority of variants in their tooling suite.

Now that  there is a link between Oxford and Hornby, then maybe, just maybe there will be an appropriate correct range of coaches progressively developed, albeit some having to be compromised in the name of production economies.

As said previously on this site, there are detail nit-pickers that will deride the product, yet have no intention of buying.

If the manufacturers are not supported by purchases, then they will not support us.

Me? I'm building the HSDT prototype between other projects, everytime that l go back to it, l find my standards are higher than before and have to re-engineer what as been done or compromises reduced.

And boy! Are there differences!!!

 

Yes, Oxford originally announced that they would eventually do the three-phase (IC125) variant not just the mark 3a - I was looking forward to that until the mark 3a models started to appear with the rather less-pronounced roof ribs and the underframe which appears too square in some pictures instead of being narrower at the bottom.

[GEOEng03]

Email from TMC suggests the Scotrail and XC TGS should be in stock in the next two weeks. 

Cheese 

[Sir TophamHatt]

I'm surprised Hornby didn't add passengers.

Although I suppose some may want empty stock coaches.

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Sir TophamHatt

[Legend]

It does seem we are on a mission to add costs to these coaches . I'm very happy with the spec as it is , delivering a good coach @£31.95 a pop .  Cant wait for my Scotrail ones .

[TomScrut]

15 minutes ago, Legend said:

It does seem we are on a mission to add costs to these coaches . I'm very happy with the spec as it is , delivering a good coach @£31.95 a pop .  Cant wait for my Scotrail ones .

 

Exactly. £31.95 each. I'd probably not be having any if they were £50+ each.

 

Likewise with my ScotRail 2Fs, the Bachmann ones aren't really an option. I don't want them enough to pay that price!