No Decorum

For what it’s worth, my Class 11 is a beautiful runner. Like the PWM, it has a cab light but no exterior lights. Some do, so check before buying if running lights are important to you. My second PWM is also a good runner but the first was a dog. Unfortunately, it is missing one sandbox. I haven’t summoned up the courage to send it back for fear that I’ll get another dog.

I’m very keen on one of these; possibly two depending on what else is demanding funds at the time. That Dapol has managed to fit them with sound is added temptation. All the same, I’ve learnt the hard way not to pre-order but to wait until any new model is out in the wild.

You need to watch grandchildren; they are dangerous, though not necessarily in the way you’re thinking. Due to a complicated series of events, I found myself taking my ten-year-old grandson to a play in his cousin’s school. Later on, his mother phoned to ask where we were. When told that we had gone on directly after the performance, she knew what had happened. “******* attic!” Yep, we rolled in at ten, with school the following day. The trouble was, amongst all the locos large and small, he fell for Hornby’s Peckett Bear and said that he would buy one when he’s 18. I managed to find one for him, so he didn’t have to wait. I suppose I should count myself lucky that he didn’t take a fancy to a P2! Putty in his hands, I am. 😄

There is much sense being talked here. However, it is the people who buy a model and moan who alert the rest of us to problems and we are in their debt. There is much about Hornby models which is good. I hesitate to say that their motors are the best on the market but I don’t think they have been improved upon. After admitting (far too late) that their paint finishes were awful and doing something to correct them, their appearance isn’t bad either. All that said, the final models often have some error which lets them down. Take the Turbomotive, for example, the last Hornby model I am likely to pre-order. I think I can turn it into a good model but only by disabling the lighting which has added unnecessary cost to the model. There is a string of Hornby models recently which really should not have been released to the market in the state they were. Dapol is another company which, to its credit, rectifies shortcomings in subsequent releases but leaves people who have pre-ordered the first release high and dry. In fairness to Dapol, shortcomings are nothing like as bad as Hornby’s and in fairness to both companies, I have to add that they are not alone.

I preferred them like this. https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotorus/8514373392

I’m glad someone else asked. 😄

I did spot the GNR 2-8-0 in a video. It looked much the same; still very light in colour.

That’s very useful. Could I possibly repeat my request for such documents to be available as PDFs? With the best will in the world, things on t’web can go missing and it helps to have such things secure on one’s own system.

I hope that’s not the “very soon” which preceds “image” on some retailer’s sites as soon as something is announced! Let it be steam and let it be something not produced RTR before. Let it be green but not too dark. Ah! A K4! (A K2 would also be most acceptable.)

I’ve never seen a launch to beat the Manors’. The object of curiosity emerging from the morning mist. Much better than a series of shots of tempting locos preceding an announcement of something which had been done before; more or less. The flash of LNER green had me dribbling at the prospect of a K4 until I realised it wasn’t a K4. Cruelty to a dumb animal, that was!

That would be France, I assume. (I’ve been reading a reprint of Chapelon: Genius of French Steam – an eye opener.) 😄

Like many reviewers, he tends to drag things out rather too much for my taste. However, his postings are neatly arranged into chapters, which makes it easy to skip a lot of it and watch the interesting bits.

I believe the round-top boiler was a try-out for a possible Pacific, which was never produced. The original LN design was hampered by a firegrate which was flat at the back and steeply sloped at the front. Those were difficult to fire because it was difficult to get coal to cover the sloped part and all too easy to put too much on the flat part, where it wouldn’t jiggle forward as it would on a grate with a consistent slope. The early Jubilees on the LMS had a similar arrangement which contributed to their troubles. All in good time, I hope to find out if Bulleid tackled the grate.

A Freudian slip if ever there was one. It sums up model railway purchasing for so many of us these days!

I think that Richard Maunsell is an under-rated CME. It was hard luck that his magnum opus was a bit of a dud, or at least didn’t live up to expectation. Bulleid apparently transformed them. I recall that when Lord Nelson itself was restored to mainline running order, its poor reputation had persisted. The first run, I believe, was a failure due to scale in an injector but the crew was full of admiration for the loco on the next run. One thing on my long to-do list is to get hold of a publication to find out what the problem was and exactly what Bulleid did, over and above tweak the steam passages and fit a Lemaître exhaust. That Hornby model looks good. I have an LN in BR green and I think it’s about the worst looking object I have from when Hornby was making a mess of BR and GWR greens.