Roddy Angus

Hi everyone Harburn Hobbies in Edinburgh are holding their annual Bachmann & Graham Farish Promotional Days on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th August. There will be:- 20% off most Bachmann and Graham Farish products. Free prize draw to win Harburn Hobbies Gift Vouchers. Refreshments. Best wishes Roddy

For information, Harburn Hobbies in Edinburgh are holding their annual Bachmann & Graham Farish Promotional Days on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th August. There will be:- 20% off most Bachmann and Graham Farish products. Free prize draw to win Harburn Hobbies Gift Vouchers. Refreshments. Best wishes Roddy

Hi James90012 The easiest solution I have found is to remove the screws holding the ballast weights in place, gluing the weights instead, and then use those screws to secure the seating plastic ends. They have a far better grip and keep everything in place. One suggestion if you go down this route is be careful how far you tighten them, make sure that the self centring mechanism still works. Loosening the screw very slightly can make a big difference to the smoothness of the self centring mechanism. I would also suggest adding a small amount of super glue to both ends of the springs in the self centring mechanism. This helps hold them in place and stops them disappearing if you are taking the coach apart. I have made these changes to about 20 coaches and they work well. Sometimes after a while the self centring mechanism tightens up but it is easy to simply loosen the screw slightly if that happens. Best wishes Roddy

Here's a picture of the Bachmann TSO and the Hornby BSO side by side. The light grey on the Hornby model is slightly lighter and you can see the difference in the size of the red stripe. The Bachmann model is in InterCity livery whilst the Hornby is Intercity Executive. The Hornby Mk2f does not suffer from the Mk2e solebar issues, at least my BSO does not. Hope that this is helpful for others. Regards Roddy

I have a Hornby BSO and Bachmann TSO. The most obvious difference is in the colours. The Hornby light grey has a more yellow/ brown tinge to it. The red and white bands on the Hornby version are narrower and they are broken where they go over door handles. As far as the body mouldings go, it is difficult to say which is best, some of the moulding on the Hornby version is sharper than Bachmann's, but on other details Bachmann are better. The Bachmann bogies are better mouldings, with better detail than Hornby. If I was to guess, I would say that the Hornby bogies are from an older moulding, they just don't look as good as the body. Overall, I would say that the Hornby version would win on value for money but the Bachmann version is better because of the bogies and the livery finish. This is not an objective review, just my observations from looking at two different versions side by side. Whilst I probably won't buy any more of the intercity versions, I will probably buy the Scotrail ones. Regards Roddy

The limited edition version is still shown as being available to order direct from Invicta at £29.99, signficantly cheaper than the newer general release version. https://www.invictamodelrail.com/39-551z-exclusive-Bachmann-br-mk1-cct-4-whl-van-br-blue-3124-p.asp Regards Roddy

Hi Pete, people are suggesting that you report this or not but surely what is more important is whether or not your daughter wants to report it. It was her that was on the train and suffered any embarrassment and, if you report it, it is her that will have to speak to the complaint, possibly in court or at a tribunal. Should you not be speaking to your daughter and asking for her views on whether a complaint should be made. None of us were there and therefore it is not a decision for us to make, your daughter was there, so she should decide what action she wants to take. Whatever happens, I hope that it is settled without any further harm to her. Best wishes Roddy

Feel free to delete it now. R

Have a look at "Naval Firepower: Battleship guns and gunnery in the dreadnought era" by Normal Friedman, it might be what you are after. It only covers big guns but he does have a separate book on anti-aircraft weapons. Best wishes Roddy

Another reason might have been that the additional weight of an (armoured) bridge might have made the ships more unstable by raising their metacentric height. Weight, especially top weight, was critical on most Royal Navy ships. Flower Class Corvettes were particularly prone to rolling but had a good reputation as seaworthy ships. Regards Roddy

If I remember correctly, there was a livery error and that was why they were sold cheaply. I don'y think there was any suggestion of problems with the wagons themselves. Best wishes Roddy

That's not very fair on infants. Roddy

Is it about time to change the name of this topic? Roddy

Why then, if you did not believe that punishing naughty children was "his reasononing", did you post it?

It is easier to glue these bits back on if you first unscrew the bogie from the deck. The bar obscuring the screw is flexible enough to get a small screwdriver past without having to remove it. Best wishes Roddy

Have a look at a military modelling website to get an answer to your question. Best wishes Roddy

Perhaps the original intention was to do a hatchet job on Hornby but when they actually began filming they discovered that things weren't as bad as had been portrayed on social media. Like model rail projects, most TV productions can take a long time from the idea to actual fruition. If you look back 12 to 18 months ago you would have found a lot of views which supported the end of Hornby. It may be that, rather than Hornby having a say on content and direction, the production company realised that the original prognosis was wrong. Regards Roddy

Sorry everyone, the point I was trying to make with my earlier postings was that all branches of modelling are important and we should never assume that one is better than the others. I find more ways to improve my modelling skills by reading military modelling magazines than I do from model rail magazines. A lot of the content in model rail magazines is focused on complete layouts, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the majority of the content in military modelling magazines are about how a model was built and the techniques used to make it. Next time you are in Smith's, have a look at magazines about other branches of modelling and you might be amazed by what you can learn. All branches of modelling involve different techniques but there is nothing to stop us learning from them. My point about Airfix was meant to be that if you compare the size of the market for plastic kits with that for model rail world wide, model rail is small in comparison. That is why Airfix might be more important to Hornby than model rail. Please don't see this as trying to start an argument, I just want to say that no aspect of modelling is better than another, they are just different. Best wishes Roddy Ps. I should say my other hobby is R/C boats and there is only one magazine for that. That is a far smaller hobby than model rail.

There are kits available which are made from etched parts only. There is one which is a WW1 aircraft where the complete structure, including wing ribs etc, are made from brass. If you want to play one upmanship are there any model rail kits which are made from balsa wood and tissue and can then fly? This is a rhetorical question of course. The use of brass etches, particularly in military modelling far outstrips its use in model rail. Roddy

The plastic kit market in the UK, yet alone the rest of the world is I suspect substantially bigger than the model railway market. The number of major kit manufacturers way out numbers model train manufacturers and the choice is substantially greater, for example one British outlet lists 167 different models of the Spitfire in a number of marks and scales costing between £6 and £200. They stock more than 6,000 plastic aircraft kits alone, with the dearest costing over £440. Their dearest kit is a multi media U-boot costing nearly £1,500, and it still needs to be built and painted. You only have to look at the magazine section in WH Smiths and compare the different numbers of magazines supporting each sector of modelling. Although, as railway modellers, we might like to think that our hobby is the best and biggest, compared to plastic kits we are probably comparative minnows. Years ago, plastic model magazines used to use railway modelling as the standard to aspire to, no longer. You just have to look at the models in some of these magazines to realise that the skills in other hobbies are every bit as good as, if not better, than ours. I am not trying to do rail modelling down but to emphasise that other parts of the Hornby company, like Airfix, may be more important to the company's good health than model trains. Airfix have been investing significant amounts of money in replacing older kits with new versions, as well as bringing out totally new models, they would not be doing that if there was not a market waiting to buy them. Regards Roddy

Sorry if this is a silly question but have you programmed them as a consist with the loco so that the DBSO knows when it is going in reverse? Regards Roddy

Sorry Grahame, I didn't appreciate that you had got a press release which was different to that received by subscribers. Please accept my apology. Best wishes Roddy

Hi Grahame You obviously did not read the covering email closely, it said "Although I have, this morning sent the images, to all the magazines, i would appreciate you keeping the newsletter to yourself for 2 weeks to give everyone a chance to read, and digest before i post the newsletter to the DJM web site." Dave will want those who have invested in the model to have any news first, some of whom may not be on-line, before it is made widely known and possibly incorrectly passed on. In the light of past experience, the request for a two week delay is understandable. Best wishes Roddy PS My version of the news letter did not mention 60 days?