Stevelewis

I am told Cheshire Oaks \nr Ellesmere port has more bargains, As I work in the retail trade, I wouldnt know I try to keep away from such places!!! But theres no mdel shops in C Oaks though! The thread is drifting away from Dukedogs here!!

Yes Penketh Models has taken the ex Modelzone premises in the Upper level of the 'Rows' in Chester City centre The Modelzone premises was formerley the Arts & Crafts studio who sold out to Mzone not long after moving from a more central site which they had ocupied for many years. Although we are only 15 Miles from Chester I dont go there, unless i have some calls there for work, then i get my parking costs & mileage allowance paid by the company i work for!!

Chester has 2 Park & Rides, but even so that is a 10 mile drive to either and then the P&R cost which is around £2.00, so it still takes time and costs, so much easier to do it all online, allows me more modelling time at home, in between going out to work luckily these days I only work part time, but that still involves driving and these days that is not much fun!!

I have no problems with ordering on line or on phone I deal mostly with Hattons and Arcadia rail and occasionally with Rails. The last time I returned anything was some time back a Hornby 4 VEP and I think we all know the reasons for that.!! I find it much more convenient and time saving to order for Home delivery and in the long run its is less expensive , in terms of Fuel and parking!

My 2nd Dukedog arrived today purely an impulse buy GWR version, Just had a quick run performance is more or less exactly the same as my other one (weathered black) that is once the factory fitted decoder Accel & deccel CVs were adjusted. As with the Black one it had no problems hauling 6 Bachmann Mk1 coaches. Bachmann (and PECO) have done quite well from me in the last few days, My group have clubbed together their Christmas Money and we have bought 5 items of motive power aound 10 items of rolling stock and some Peco track, I am genuinly sad to say that amongst them there was only 1 Hornby item ( a 2-BIL from Rails at the reduced price), theres just nothing much Hornby that attracts us at the moment.

I got mine hauling 6 Bachmann Mk1s (Blu/Grey ones!!!!! were the only ones to hand!) as mentioned in one of my previous posts, it had no trouble doing this no wheelsip and part of the layout has 18" rad curves, there were no gradients involved though, However I do feel that in reality 6 on would probably have been exceptional,??

I am not unconvinced it looks OK to me maybe its my old eyes! I have been weathering locos for several decades!! When my 2nd loco the GWR green one arrives I will weather that my self so we can do a comparison

Rather sooner than I anticipated i have now fitted a decoder to my weathered Dukedog and just done a couple of trial runs, the Digital control is superb CV3 (acceleration) is set to 18 CV4 (deceleration) set to 12, decoder is a Bachmann 21pin, control Gaugemaster Prodigy 2. The loco crawled extremely slowly on setting 1 ( almost impossible to detect any movement), turning the handheld up to 14 the loco slowly accelerated to (in my estimate) a scale 30mph, then returning the controller setting to 0 it decelerated slowly & smoothly and stopped. Full speed ( setting 28) appears to be around 55mph these are only rough estimates of the speeds. It hauled 6 Bachmann Mk 1s with no problem on level track the layout I am using has no gradients (Yet)

A couple of additiional pics of the weathered version

Just after the war ended Norman Hatton sold many things apparently, including Firewood!

Does it really matter? At least the manufacturer is making available a model which many people will buy, an excellent altternative to the prospect of scratch or kit building which would cost more in terms of time & expense

My weathered version arrived this morning from Tim at Arcadia models, just had a brief analogue run on a layout under construction, ran impeccably crawled beautifully, no stalling on dead frog points ( tender has pickups as expected) It will be digitized later today. It also needs a crew cab looks a bit empty! The vac pipes etc are factory fitted, the brake rigging, front coupling hook, and some fire irons, also a speaker enclosure are supplied for user fittng. Some poor quality phots attached. Oh by the way I have just ordered a Green one!! apparently Bachmann are now out of stock of all variants.

As posted above Arcadia has stock of all three variants as of 1-30PM today well actually 1 less than he had!!!

ARCADIA Models SHAW, Nr Oldham has stock of all 3 Dukedogs excellent prices telephone contact is best 01706 882900

Yes its a (nother) 2 -Bil they are OK , not as good as Bachmann Multiple units in my opinion ( no lights etc), Like the 5-BEL the connections to the motor bogie are quite fragile, with tiny soldered connections whhich can fail, we had 2 Bels on which this occured

I ordered from Rails yesterday at around 2-00PM ( Friday Jan 10th '14) specifying normal delivery as the order was not urgently required. Order delivered this morning Saurdayt. at 9-30AM Good service

I hope that I am not deviating from the original thread here. but................ Likewise around the same time I purchased a Hornby-Dublo Co-Bo and 6 Gunpowder vans around the same time (66/67) and have dealt with them ever since (yet another order placed today) only wish I had purchased some of the Wrenn Streamlined Coronatiion class locos when they were on offer at £25.00!

There was the Rivarossi unrebuilt Royal Scot LMS livery 6100 and a couple of LMS coaches in the 70s, I had the loco and some coaches which I ran on my Garden Railway!! Didnt Fleischhmann do a Warship and some Bullied Coaches in HO scale in the 70s I believe that 'British Trix when they introduced their revamped range' around the same time as the above used a scale of approx 3.8m/foot. The range included some quite good for the time) LNER locos A2 & A4, also a Britannia and I think an L1 Electric, The factory was just up the road from me so to speak in Wrexham

Thanks for the info as a localish resident I suppose it may come in handy if the price is right, These days though I find its actually cheaper to order on line which I do quite regularly. Snag with Chester is the parking cost, almost equals a well known retailer's postage cost, and thats before the transport cost! I do work occasionally in some of the nearby retail outlets so no doubt will have a look in when i have the time.

Well that is quite economical actually, This refers to post #158 If I were to actually drive to Hattons it would take up at least 2 hours driving time most likeley more for the double journey, then time in the shop to sort out the purchase. Then theres the cost of fuel! The round trip is around 55 miles so at around £6.00 a gallon is around £8.50 and then The Mersey Tunnel Tolls x 2 (actually not sure what the toll is these days but it was around £1.30 last time i used it) So my cost would be around £10.00, I could actually avoid the Tunnel by using the Widnes/Runcorn bridge route off the M 56 but that is longer mileage and driving wise and more likely to have delays! So I save both time and money by using online sales

Perhaps the word ' eventually' should be added as well!!! Seriously though Yodel Deliveries from the actual Yodel Vans are just about acceptable, but we have had some real issues with the courier deliveries (ie the private car) I have had deliveries left at the wrong address, and thrown in next doors garage, and a couple of occasions quite valuable orders just dumped by the front door in clear view of passing pedestrians, I always state City Link deliveries when ordering from Hattons, unless its less than 2 KG and then I use Royal Mail

What memories that brings, that is the window through which I glimpsed WRENN Streamlined Coronation Class locos being cleared for £25.00 silly me i didnt buy any, and a few years later they were selling for Hundreds!

Yes its very much like that with Hattons, I have dealt with them for many years I used to call in the shop when my calls took me to Liverpool which was very frequently!!, These days it is much cheaper to Mail order ( although on a clear day we can see Liverpool from a nearby hill!!) I reckon I order on average every 2 weeks!!

Just a quick aside here re 8 coupled locos: We found the superbly performing Hornby 01 2-8-0 would easily haul around 45 to 50 plastic 4 wheel wagons (95% of these being Bachmann) Whereas the Hornby 8f ( the most recent weathered version around 2yrs old) would slip with more than 20 of the same wagons on . Not really able to give a reason, the locos weigh approx the same, the tender wheels on both are free running, the 01 has a flywheel but this is such a small diameter one that I cant see that making much difference to the haulage capacity

Yes I forgot to add that in the good old days, we used to get up before the sun went down played with our trains for 10 minutes wnt to work for 25 hrs cam home ( to our shoe box ) to eat the left overs from last week!! I was only thinking the other day, we dont see much of Monty Python on TV these days I nearly added ' You've never had it so good' to the end of my post but thought that a bit too political!!