Kelly

Morning all from Alexandra palace. Looking forward to a good day. First though a demu committee meeting. Hope all are well, if not, consideration and sympathy and wishes to get better as appropriate.

Arrived with little issue with traffic etc, thankfully m1 was fairly quiet aside from the roadworks areas. Grabbed goody bag from the brm stand (part of the 5 for £5 offer, which gave a free ticket). Looking forward to a good show. Been a few years since last came here, the free ticket offer certainly helped make it a more viable option.

I guess it made sense to make them narrower to be more usable across the whole region (possibly excluding the Hastings line, which had a width limit of 8ft iirc, or Maunsell Coach Restriction 0). The Eastern section lines were quite tight in a number of places too, until parts were rebuilt under BR. It makes more sense to build a brake van to a single width rather than 3 different widths like the maunsell coaching stock.

Looking forward to the show on Sunday.

I'm hoping that it being on my phone will be enough as my printer has also packed up. Can brm/Warner's confirm if ally Pally will have suitable bar code scanners as mentioned on the ticket?

The one with the mankinis? ;-)

As company photos go, it isn't so bad, I've seen FAR FAR worse.

Mine turned up in my inbox. That's £12 saved and available to spend at the show, which makes a big difference.

Natalie and myself signed up for this offer, but no indication of how the ticket will be sent/presented etc?

I've effectiely thought of Hurst as being defunct now. For Class 442 parts, search on eBay, there is a seller selling parts (cabs, bogies, undergubbins for centre car) on there (a member here too). As for 156 parts, there have been some members on the DEMU forum working slowly on their own 3D printed parts, but I'm not sure on the availability or what stage they're at atm.

Yep, 20001-3 had electrically powered boilers for train heating. Don't they could also do ETH, but the coaching stock at the time of their introduction was still steam heated iirc. Class 24s were used for heating until stock was replaced with ETH stock and 33s took over in the early 60s.

The second part was certainly much better than the first imo. Didn't feel quite as disjointed. The 'fight' was a bit as expected. I don't think either Rails or Hattons especially should be too worried. The Hornby 66 is going to be no comparison with the Hatton's one, and I think it is a good entry level option, giving the more seasoned modeller the choice of 3 types of 66 at different price points. The Terrier is probably as a case of Hornby had started the tooling and so they couldn't really afford to write the costs off. Hopefully Rails will survive and sell enough as I've always found them pleasant and easy to deal with. It would be nice if Hornby paid a bit more attention to their Diesels perhaps though, but at present, I expect it is whatever will sell best first, understandably to bring profits back which are much needed.

The Tri-Comp looks nice. Saw it over on the S4S forum. Look forward to seeing how this develops, any plans to do other LSWR/SECR/LBSCR coaches in this fashion as I might be interested in some potentially (my modelling period is initially 59-62 for the Southern, but the layout is being planned to allow 1919-1990 to be possible with some license at different times, so a wide variety of stock potential will be needed over time). PS: Congrats on the new job.

If following a KISS approach speeds things up, then I'd go with that. If people really want those features, then perhaps make it so they can opt-in, and give a warning that the site might be slower as a result? therefore for the vast majority the site will be speedier. In the meantime, keep up the good work.

If the drive system follows along similar lines to Heljan and Bachmann mechanisms, then conversion should be fairly straight forward in terms of dropping wheels in. It depends really how the gears are aligned etc, ie whether half axles are used (as per Bachmann MUs) or whether a wider axle is used for the gear and brass bearings (as per Heljan diesels in some cases). Hopefully Hatton's can give some answers on this when they're closer to release. Accurascale have worked closely with the EMGS and S4S on their wagons to allow easy conversion to EM/P4. They'll be doing the same for their 55s, 92s and Mk5 stock I'd expect as it is a welcome feature. Of course, the best manufacturer in this respect has been SLW with options for EM/P4 wheels to be fitted before dispatch for a small extra charge. I would love it if more manufacturers offered this option, but accept it is likely to be a relatively small number of buyers for viability to be unlikely.

That looks lovely.

It doesn't need a motor bogie though as it was effectively a coach with the 73 providing power with a 4TC set.

I agree it is something that could have 'legs' so to speak. Perhaps future releases will be modules to go in a station building, or maybe an engine shed, with appropriate sounds at a competitive price point. Not sure how viable that might be with modern tooling methods. Airfix kits are iirc made in India rather than China now as they don't need the assembly and tampo printing which adds to the costs significantly (iirc, they found it didn't work when tried in India with model railway products).

Not sure what to think about that. It felt a bit disjointed and didn't really seem to look at the problems Hornby have faced, etc. Didn't really feel like something I'd expect on BBC4, but maybe that is jut me. However, having said that, it was enjoyable enough and Simon's enthusiasm was clearly evident. Hopefully part 2 will answer some of the questions raised.

The Hornby Networker mechanism is closer to a Scaletrix one than the Pendolino iirc.

I intend to convert mine to P4, so will probably have spares at some point when I get around to converting them. I'll likely be re-placing the motor bogies too.

The 4LAV looks really nice. I will have to have a look at the Pheonix website and order some Bil/coach parts and have a go at some point as it'll be something different to the Mk1 based units and 2Bil/Hal units I currently have for the layout I'm (slowly!) working on).

Would anyone risk it with Bachmann doing the 20/3s? I'd be surprised if they'd not tooled for doing other variations.

That is what I picked up at the Stafford show last month. Looking at photos, they need some modifications (dampers removed and other alterations). There are two different (3 if you include the articulated ones) types, the other type to what I got is probably an easier start. Peter's Spares probably have them listed.

I have been looking at doing a model of this loco (well technically coach as the 83xxx number was in the carriage number range iirc?). I have some suitable eurostar bogies (need a bit of fettling) and just need a 33/1 donor at some point. I suspect I'll give 83 301 from Kernow a miss due to the standard Heljan 33/1 bogies.