Rail Express August 2012

[Jim Martin]

In the shops now. Front cover photo is of D9000 on the North York Moors Railway. This issue contains one of their double-sided posters: one side is DRS 66413 hauling Freightliner coal hoppers on a Longannet working, the other is a panorama of Blaenau with an Arriva Trains class 153 trundling towards the station.

 

Contents:

News (6 pages)

Photo feature on the opening of Northfleet terminal (2 pages)

The new "box-to-box" series (6 pages on the Leicester to Ashwell route, with Ashwell to Peterborough to come next month)

London Underground page (report on passenger numbers, plus the restoration of Metropolitan Ry. carriage no. 353)

Railtours bit (2 pages)

Big feature on Wales. All of it. The current and future state of the railways therein. (9 pages)

Full page photo of a Colas class 56 on Boston steel traffic (this doesn't seem to belong to any other feature: it's just there)

Preservation (3 pages)

Lackenby revival (1 page, photos of the Norwegian locomotives imported a while back in service)

Rolling stock news (22 pages)

Irish section (2 pages)

 

Model bit:

Building 89001 from the Silver Fox kit (plus a single page summary of the locomotive's career)

Modelling the Safeway swap-body services to the far north of Scotland

Modelling HST barrier coaches

Elcot Road project layout: scenic work

Reviews: Hornby "Van B" (another fine addition to Hornby's range... of use to many a diesel era modeller"); Bachmann/TMC Mark 1 horsebox ("a pretty much faultless release"); Dapol MRA ("Overall... an impressive release", "much of the tooling being pretty much faultless", "good value" - some reservations about Dapol's fondness for "play value" features and a couple of printing issues, but generally very positive)

 

A couple of observations:

The appearance of modelling projects continues. These aren't how-to articles as you'd find in, say, Model Rail, but more general descriptions of the approach taken. all of the photos are of the finished models.

 

The signal box series looks set to be REx's new staple, in the way the "Retrospectrum" was for so long. This one should keep them going for a while, and everyone likes photos with big signal gantries, don't they?

 

Most importantly of all, the Hattons ad on the back features the soon-to-be-with-us Beyer Garratt this month, and no dodgy Photoshop work

 

Jim