RJS1977

Planning application now submitted for the relocation of Stoke Cannon signal box to Wallingford, and erection of a water tank. https://data.southoxon.gov.uk/ccm/support/Main.jsp?MODULE=ApplicationDetails&REF=P23%2FS0526%2FFUL&fbclid=IwAR3MOn4rfKHKBKCBrD93WNlNVYvqUEvBD6v6GyJB1Cy3Wb68vWF9dvmkXrk#exactline Submissions in support of the project would be welcomed!

So do I - albeit for the somewhat selfish reason that I want a go! At least two groups invited me on to their teams for the first series, but I was unable to take part as I had recorded an episode of "Eggheads" a year or so previously and had signed an undertaking not to make any other TV appearances until it aired. So I had to sit it out, despite the action taking place just up the road from me!

I don't think Hornby are hiding the Triang heritage particularly - the new Rocket set, for example, was made available in a box with Triang branding, and a couple of years back a version of the 9F was released in a Triang-Hornby box. I'm not sure how Hornby (re)acquired the rights to the Triang name - when Dunbee Combex-Marx bought Triang-Hornby in 1973, the rights to the Triang name remained with the parent company. Perhaps Hornby are using the name under licence (much as BMW use the Rolls Royce name under licence from the aero engine company) but that licence doesn't run to using it on TV. Or maybe they just felt the whole story of Hornby's multiple mergers, takeovers and dissolutions was too complicated for TV.

Simon Thanks for posting this - the layout is looking good. It would be nice to have it at Kenavon sometime but I'm afraid we can't run to van hire, and it sounds as if the set-up time is rather longer than we can accommodate, so sadly I don't think it's a practical proposition for us. However I'd be more than happy to help operate at other shows (I can only do Saturdays) if needed. Richard

If they're extending the Manchester Airport tram branch to the HS2 station, this will provide connectivity for the residents of Wythenshawe. Though, speaking as someone who was born there, I don't think the residents of Wythenshawe are really HS2's target market. Were they to extend the Network Rail airport branch to the HS2 station, or extend the Altrincham branch of the Metrolink to the airport HS2 station (potentially turning the existing airport line and the Altrincham line into a giant loop), that might be a different story. However, the HS2 airport station will offer good connectivity for motorists in the affluent north Cheshire area who can drive to the station.

The idea of a "Four seasons" layout is nothing new - John Wilkes's "Life of a Line" has several scenes depicting a narrow gauge railway's life from opening, through decline to closure, with (IIRC) each scene being a different season. However I think the ultimate was a layout that was on the South of England circuit some years ago, with four identical scenes arranged around a horizontal axis, with the backscene of one scene being the underside of the baseboard of the next scene. Each scene depicted the same station, again in different seasons and different periods from opening to closure. Every few minutes, as the operating sequence came to an end, all the rolling stock ran off to the fiddle yard, the scenic section was rotated 90 degrees about the axis, and a new sequence started!

Are those shelves built-in under the layout, or can they be wheeled out on castors? If they're built in, they're going to make wiring up under the baseboards/installing point motors interesting!

To my way of thinking, it would have been better to have left the Lion footage out altogether and filmed something else instead.

Wouldn't he be asking for an R456 signalbox?

Just think .... they could have had a shot of Simon dozing in his armchair holding a framed picture of Lion, waking up, looking at the picture, and having a sudden moment of inspiration.... ;-)

Mallard ran on the Western in the 1948 locomotive exchanges - not quite in the GWR period, but close enough. Flying Scotsman was sometimes based at Southall during McAlpine and Marchington ownership (although Marchington had it rebuilt with smoke deflectors), so not a complete stranger to the Western either, albeit in a different timescale. Perhaps your six-road fiddle yard could be built as a lift-out tray, which could be replaced by another one (the other trays being kept either under the layout or on shelves on the wall), allowing a change of stock to a different period.

Is that an office desk (i.e. a workstation with a computer, monitor, etc), or a modelling desk, to hold a cutting mat, kit parts, paint, etc)? (My dining room table currently fulfils both roles, while I have my dinner on my knee!)

My querying the S&DJR livery wasn't so much about whether it was prototypical, as much as it being an odd choice from a marketing point of view (other than it looks nice) - better in terms of range consistency to have LMS and BR versions with appropriate rolling stock. Additionally, all the preserved examples are either in LMS or BR livery (or in bits!). Would I buy an 8750 to a similar standard? Not for myself, mostly because I've got several already! But for a son or nephew to foster their interest in railways - absolutely! They're not too worried about the shape of the chimney, that the wheel spacing might be a few scale inches out, or that the connecting rods are wrong (and nor am I, quite frankly!). But would I buy them a £160 tank loco? Probably not! To my mind, a Pannier is something that absolutely should be in the Railroad range. Once they've got the Holden tank, a couple of coaches and some wagons, it's the obvious next step.... (And, like the Jinty, it's a type - or at least similar enough to a type - that sees regular use on a number of preserved railways).

If I was modelling the LMS rather than the GWR, and I wanted a Jinty, I for one might well buy one. And if I had a child of modelling age that I wanted to give a present to, to encourage them on in the hobby, I almost certainly would. Plus, that sort of model at that kind of price point is the sort of thing that can be marketed to families visiting a heritage railway as a "souvenir" in a way that a full-fat version might not. (Better still if it could be offered as part of a set with a couple of Mark 1s and an oval of track for say £120). Incidentally, there is currently a Jinty in the Railroad range (in S&DJR livery for some reason), albeit that the price is £80 rather than £50 and the detail is better than on the original Triang model - but even at £80, it's still considerably cheaper than high-spec 0-6-0Ts like the Rapido Hunslet at £129 or the EFE Austerity at £149.

Yes, there are of course different types of kit building. I have built any number of Chivers/Five79 whitemetal Vale of Rheidol locos over the years, but wouldn't know where to start with a Backwoods brass one! And arguably some of the 3d printed models you can get these days are effectively kits with a very small number of parts....

I would say (certainly from the earlier pages) that it's roughly 50:50.

That's a shame, I was going to invite it to my show next year!

A search on the Hornby website shows there to be currently something like 90 items in the range (not counting spare parts and some oddities like the TT 08 and the Rivarossi Big Boy that the search also threw up! More than I've seen in the range in a long time. In terms of "brand new" items in the range, no there haven't been a lot, but in the time the range has existed we've had Tornado, the Crosti 9F, the Mark 1s, the Javelin, and the C4 on the way (and probably others I've forgotten), as well as improved mechanisms for the 0-4-0s and the ex-Lima diesels. I don't think there's necessarily a need for a lot of "brand new" items in a starter range anyway (other than a few up-to-date "modern image items"). I think one of Simon Kohler's intentions on returning to Hornby was to expand the Railroad range - in the earlier TV series, when he discovered that many of the legacy toolings had been destroyed, he said something along the lines that he had been hoping to reintroduce a good number of them. Children may not be going into model shops these days, but they are still going to heritage railways in good numbers so there is still an interest in trains. Perhaps if Hornby were to talk to the heritage railways more, they could market the range better.

Though could the top loop be pushed further into the corner, and the bottom one possibly reduced to single track, to create more room?

Again, I'm not necessarily saying manufacturers should make lower spec models of everything - just that there should be sufficient lower-spec models for someone to be able to operate a geographically/historically coherent layout - which Hornby in particular are capable of doing with their back catalogue - and as I noted earlier Railroad does seem to be heading in that direction (with a lot more in that range currently than I've seen in recent years) but aren't quite there yet. And the success of the Railroad 66 in particular suggests that there is a market there. However I would like to see more "previous version" models appear in the Railroad range when a new-tooled version comes out (e.g. the Terrier) rather than just being dumped altogether. I suspect the reason that doesn't happen is at least in part because Hornby wants everyone to buy the more expensive new model rather than the old one. Another factor is the actual pricing. We all know that many retailers sell models for well below the manufacturer's RRP - indeed even many of the smaller retailers say "We will match prices elsewhere". So, why not just reduce the RRP in the first place? The Rapido Hunslets have an RRP of £129. I bought mine from Cheltenham for £109, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that by not fitting sprung buffers or firebox glow, and adopting an unlined livery, a price below the psychologically important £100 mark might be possible. Though I appreciate that's not Rapido's philosophy.

I don't think anyone is saying the manufacturers should stop making highly-detailed models, provided that they also have some models for those who are excluded by the high price of the detailed ones.

And I certainly wasn't intending for it to come across as a complaint. I understood your point to be that the "cheaper/less detailed" strategy wasn't working because Oxford/EFE weren't selling in huge numbers, and you challenged those of us who think there should be more budget models as to how many we'd bought. TBF I'm not really too worried about the lack of budget models for my own purposes (though I wouldn't have bought the DG if it had been a £200 high-spec one). Even if I never bought another model again, I have more than enough to keep me happy! I'm more concerned at attracting the younger generation into the hobby. Whilst sales of traditional train sets may be slowing, the smaller-type shows still attract a good number of families, and plenty of families visit heritage railways etc with excited children. So I think there is still a train-set market there, and Hornby seem to think so as well, given that they're now developing a new train-set type of loco. The challenge is to get children from the train set into "junior modellers" and then continuing on in the hobby into adulthood and eventually retirement. (By that time, of course, the investment in keeping them in the hobby through childhood and the teenage years will have more than repaid itself). I hear too often of people who were given a train set, watched the train go round a few times, then it was put in a cupboard and eventually wound up on eBay. To encourage children to stay in the hobby, at least two things are needed: 1) Parental encouragement 2) Models that the child/young person (or their parent!) can afford to buy. We weren't always flush with cash when I was growing up, but as well as my original "train set" ( Hornby 101, three four-wheel coaches, a few wagons and a brake van on some old Triang track that may have come from my father's train set), other locos (Lima 94xx and Class 33 spring to mind), and bogie coaches at around the £8-10 mark weren't beyond the reach of a few weeks' pocket money (though true, the bogie coaches are still available at an affordable price). Plus all the usual scenic items (Airfix crane, etc). (Even with these two things there's no guarantee children will stay in the hobby, but without them, they won't). And whilst Railroad is a great idea in principle, I'm afraid it's still a bit of a mess - though much less so than for a long time. Plenty of "train set fodder" 0-4-0Ts, and plenty of (mostly) modern diesels, along with a smattering of big tender engines (Mallard and Tornado). There's currently only one GWR bogie coach in the range (and the only GWR loco to pull it is the Holden tank). There are LMS coaches, but no LMS loco, and HST packs, but no extra Mark 3s to expand them. The only 0-6-0T is the S&DJR Jinty. What's needed for each of the Big 4 (and BR steam) is an 0-6-0 tank, a "medium sized" loco (e.g. 61xx or Dean Goods), and an express loco (Castle or King), plus appropriate rolling stock. Similarly there is currently no class 08 in the range, or any smaller bogie diesels (22/25/31/33/35) apart from the 20. Ideally the steam locos in the range should be associated with preserved classes ( e.g. Pannier, Jinty, Austerity tank, Terrier) - so families visiting heritage railways on which these classes run can buy a model of the loco they've just travelled behind at the station gift shop on the way out.

But then of course that depends on whether Oxford/EFE/Railroad are actually making the prototypes we want. I bought an Oxford Dean Goods, but I wouldn't have bought a Radial, or 1938 Tube stock because they neither ran to Aberystwyth, or (so far) on the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway!

I would like to think that it is the start of the branch (for obvious reasons!), however the inside of the curve should be on an embankment, not in a cutting.

When I was doing GCSE/A Level geography in the 1990s, we were told we had about 25 years' worth of each!