GordonC

Was the Class 117 tooling not butchered to make the bubble cars? I'm not sure they can produce that anymore

incompetence?

I'd be a whole lot more interested in the larger grain Polybulks than a duplicate of the Bachmann china-clay ones

I haven't seen as many Polybulks going for much more than the latest ones from Rails recently so they seem to consistently be going for around £80 even if some asking prices are higher. Still a lot for a single wagon

Glasgow Queen Street would never have been able to accomodate the length of the Class 91 sets so through trains to there would have been a non-starter. The HSTs that ran before were a coach shorter and still more than filled the longest platform

I think thats a difficult question to answer - whats a 'fair' price for an Azuma? I dont see it being worth £100 per vehicle for the detail and complexity of that tooling. If Accurascale can make the Mk5 TPE sets at £225 then surely it must be very possible to make MU's cheaper than they are from most manufacturers. MUs are obviously more complex, more vehicle bodyshells to tool up, but equally more known production quantities of selling complete trains in a set. Accurascale will be selling more of their products directly so will keep a larger chunk of retailer margin than those being sold through shops. I think the prices are being jacked up to sell initially as high as possible then with scope to clear stock at a lower price. Whether they do end up in the bargain bin will depend on production quantities compared to demand. There will still be money being made at £300 for the Azuma, but obviously not as much and selling a whole batch at that may not be enough return to encourage tooling up of new models.

I would have thought the Mk1s gangwayed stock would be an open goal as the prices of the existing Bachmann models creeps up year on year. With the period they've been used for and pretty much anyone from steam modellers onwards can use some. If modelled to the current standards, they would really have potential to sell a lot.

There was a couple of conversions if I remember correctly where they had rollers embedded in the floor of the van to help move the air freight containers around. I think one of the vans had the rollers in the floor always 'up' while the other needed an air supply to raise them presumably for loading and unloading.

I think its really frustrating that the Hornby 87 really should be better for such a recently tooled model (and even updated now to 21 pin), but especially for a supposedly £220 model. The thought thats gone into DCC fitting is like something you'd expect from 15 years ago, but now you must expect a reasonable percentage of the models becoming DCC fitted and potentially sound fitted.

I think the difference is with Hornby it tends to be stuff tied into a particularly niche event so making the models more of a commemerative or collectable item rather than the 'what if' liveries of the others. But when you're talking about a full HST rake (e.g. Coronation HST or even the LNER Farewell Tour set) its a pretty expensive memento for a short-lived prototype that might be current at the time but quickly forgotten too. The buying demographic for Hornby must be very different to other manufacturers to have a ready supply of buyers with £500+ to throw around. Would there also be a sense of disappointment for popular, mainstream models being produced in random liveries while other far more common liveries have been overlooked? e.g. How many Intercity Executive HSTs could be sold compared to Coronation ones?

Is that meant to be a decoder space under the PCB or is that not the space meant to be left for a speaker? I thought it was marked as that on the sheet

It seems an odd choice bearing in mind they'd already done 37142 in the same livery. Having one of those already I wouldn't want one of these too

There's probably not too many exhibition layouts in the right area - these wagons did have quite a localised area of use and I dont remember seeing them outside that in their lifetime (but I guess they must have been transferred to works for attention at times, probably in ones or twos)

Did 50s not make it to Swansea regularly? Was it not at Landore that 50010 gained its blue roof in large logo livery?

Seems crazy if they haven't speeded the service up at all with electrification, thought that was always a selling point of electrification

I think it probably depends on the model you're meaning. The Bachmann Mk2F is a really nice coach, but obviously the DCC fitted ones for the lighting are about £100 each now. The price of their Mk1s and Mk2s has risen pretty steadily and I'm not really sure I understand how they're quite so pricey now for the standard of tooling. You can get cheaper second-hand sometimes, but not necessarily a reliable supply of the coach types you want. If you're mixing and matching between brands they dont always look right together e.g. colour matches, window flush glazing or not, window tints etc. If you're buying older models, would they necessarily need re-wheeling?

I dunno, just think its odd for an in demand item to be sold out for ages and a fair number to suddenly appear available for sale with no fanfare or announcement which does seem to match what happened with the Hattons Class 66 tooling just recently. But having said that, none of these wagons look like quite such wrecks as lots of those spares 66s that turned up.

a couple of interesting things about those wagons, there doesn't seem to have been any kind of announcement of a new production run for them, but as far as I was aware they were a Hattons exclusive before they sold out so wouldn't expect any other shops to have had unsold stock to return and even so it was quite a few years since they were in stock. Is the Hattons warehouse so vast they can lose this many wagons somewhere? If it had been a pre-owned collection being sold on I would have thought it should have said, these look new When they were sold before were they under 'Hattons Exclusives' brand where these are under 'Oxford Rail'. Is it like the Class 66 tooling where they cleared out their stocks of spares before an announcement appeared elsewhere .... 🤨

and the Mk2D BFK has never been made RTR either

I'm no expert, but I'm sure the 3 variations of boiler type are one circular and 2 different shapes of rectangular vents - then of course they were later plated when the boilers were removed.

The triple packs of HAAs were certainly numbered differently (but sequentially!!)

I actually dont think there's much to pick between the two, the Bachmann doesn't look as big a step up as most current models compared to the 'previous' best model. For me the front and underframe are better on the Bachmann, but there's just something about the bodyside windows that doesnt look right to me - not sure if they're too large or too high up the bodyside.

Hornby do or have done a 3 car Class 101 at times. No lighting like you'd normally expect in models now, but its one of the better ex-Lima toolings I'd say. If you're looking for one also search for Lima, for older releases of the same tooling. I think the Hornby ones have a more modern power-bogie but externally the same. The Bachmann Class 101s have through-wiring to only require a single decoder per 2 car unit. No sign of Bachmann doing a 3-car Class 101 yet.

the filename has 45141 in it 😉

Looks fantastic!!