MikeParkin65

You surely haven't let that beauty got for scrap have you? 🤯

Dare I say that whilst the bogie wheels have the correct Stanier bevel that same bevel is noticeably missing from the drivers? Strangely Hornby did the same with the recent 2MT

I'd go for Locoman - best sounds I have heard. My Black 5 from him is old though - back in the days when he was offerring Zimo. Currently has an offer on D&H decoders @£92 . I've got his projects on D&H for the 2MT and A2/2 - running quality is good though for absolute smoothness I think Zimo remains the benchmark. Yoochoose and Digitrains very good too although I will say Digitrains sound (depending on the project of course) can be a little treble biased in my experience ('heavy LMS' in a Duchess, BR Standard 7 in a Clan, BR 2MT in and Ivatt 2mt).

I've got to say when I was running DC all of the sweetest runners were Hornby (Black 5's, Princess, Duchess - you can see where my heart is!), all with motors in the body and none of them had flywheels. That was running with a basic trainset controller. Hornby mechanisms are one of their strong points in my experience. I am DCC now but with live frogs for the points, reasonable (but not Brunel standard) tracklaying and with the minimum of track cleaning I find everything runs reliably without the need for stay alive. If I were buying the new Black 5 apart from the lamps going the other 'straight in the bin' item would be the loco tender coupling. I assume the DCC socket is in the tender so would need to add a new connector wired connection for that but thats easy enough.

I dont like to labour a point but the front 'removeable' lamps are obviously not easy to remove - see Youtube - whilst the tender light is fixed and no spare iron is supplied to fill the gap after it is 'Xuroned'. On DC you'll need to address 'light bleed' with the lamps removed, on DCC hopefully you can just turn the LED's off. The tender-loco gap is fixed and unnecessarily wide - the cam should allow for close coupling but clearly that potential has not been taken advantage of. Worse, the electrical connection appears fragile, again see YouTube. The frustration is that when Hornby get it right it can be so good - 2Mt is lovely, so lovely I bought a second.

Perfectly capable of doing it myself but as I think you said earlier - reluctant to - and why should I on what is marketed as a scale model and costs north of £200? True it shouldnt be any different to ' choosing whether or not to add a snowplough or coupling shank' but clearly it is! This has been demonstrated on various YouTube reviews.

'Moan' is used to often these days as a pejorative. It isnt unreasonable for us, as modellers and prospective purchasers of this new version of the Black 5 to express our disappointment at how it has been spoilt by a couple of very minor changes that have no place on a well researched scale model (remember it says in the small print 'this is not a toy'!). I've voted with my wallet on this one and cancelled my pre order (which I deliberately made with a large box shifter so as not to leave a smaller dealer stuck with stock as I could see the way the model was evolving) . As @cctransuk said earlier the working lamps would be welcome if they were properly developed and didnt compromise the core product. As they are at the moment they would be much better deployed on a Railroad Model - Tornado perhaps?

Yep - good spot. Will edit now so this post will make no sense at all lol

Too late - Heljan D5243 will be joined by SLW D5234 whenever that arrives. And I have to say that the Heljan model is very good indeed, beautifully finished, silky smooth runner and despite its lightness has no apparent haulage problems. I did notice that with the Rails and Kernow discounts it is the GSYP's that sold out first.

Maybe as a club model or a commission?

I paid £149.98 for a J15 and Royal Scot 'The Ranger' from a well known Cotswold based shop. I do think the J15 had been mis priced at £49.99 tho as I added a link to 'Bargain Buys' on here and the next person to try and buy one was charged £75.

Pose-able firebox doors; AS Manor - has it ? Only found the Bachmann V2 had them as thought the flicker wasn’t working until I read the manual 😂

Again, already done both on factory fitted projects and aftermarket

Smoke and steam don’t scale down - all I see is ‘Michael Bentines Potty Time’. Also wonder what the long term effects of water based emissions will have on electrical components around the layout and card structures.

Factory fitted projects in the Accurascale Manor, Rapido 15xx and Bachmann V2 all do just that. Bachmann V2 even has pose able fire box doors!