GordonC

No, Class 158s replaced the loco-hauled services before they were in turn replaced by the Class 185s

Did they work a service train to get between Edinburgh and Newcastle or did they travel light engine?

Didn't Scotrail locos sometimes work the services when they were en-route to or from Crewe Works for overhaul?

Its possibly difficult to draw a line anywhere of a significant change to the organisation of the railway as a whole to indicate a new 'era'. Franchises come and go, freight companies appear or change livery or ownership but other than Railtrack to Network Rail is there any other obvious large change to the whole railway

'Modern Image' is a very vague term and often relates to anything diesel and electric rather than steam. It probably hasn't moved on in time period from the 1960s or 70s! My interest would probably be classed as modern image too, but I model early 80s to mid 90s and I buy very few models of prototypes from the last 20 years!!

Would Manchester Victoria have counted as a junction where 4 track lines split in years gone by? 4 lines continuing up Miles Platting Bank (not counting the Bury DC lines) and 4 diverging off round by Red Bank/Bury

I cant help but be disappointed that there isn't more progress with it to report by now

Was there not 2 versions of the GNER livery? One with Silver(?) and the other Gold lettering? and similarly with the Mk4 coaches was there not the pre-refurbushed version with the normal livery on the doors and the refurbished version with orange/red doors

How do the Hattons DCC Decoders cope with Heljan models? I'm thinking specifically of the higher current draw generally with Heljan models, does it cause any problems with the Hattons decoders?

you can ... you just cant flush til you have

37326 / 37111 is just one loco, it was renumbered to 37326 for a while along with other Ravenscraig/British Steel dedicated Class 37s at Motherwell depot

Its gone very, very quiet on them!

sectorisation led to ... i.e. BR split into the sectors in 1982 and afterwards new liveries came along is that really so wrong to describe it as a 'complete ficitious rewrite of BR history'???? where is the fiction?

I think its a browser thing. Replying quoting a post seems to work for me in Mozilla Firefox but not IE

I'd be surprised if all the tools were worn out, there must be significant differences in the numbers of some of the characters that have been produced from those tools. The tools for Thomas, Percy, James and possibly Gordon must have had a lot more use than many of the others

are you not wanting a Strathclyde PTE Class 101 to make an appearance too? I'd have to agree about the 3-car version though, had the model they've released been 3 car I'd have had one by now, but when its just 2 car I'm not so sure The Hamilton Class 116s would have come over on the Shotts line

Is the A not just a re-issue of the same catalogue item, in the same livery and same basic model, but often with a different loco number? You tend to see it more commonly with the coaches and wagons R2413 will be a BR Blue Class 31 (in fact 31270) R2413A is obviously 31174 as seen here ... another BR Blue Class 31 If you look at the coaches they are the same A, B, C, D, E releases all with different numbers but the same basic model and livery. There is also an R2413B - 31268 in weathered BR Blue

I think thats just a pretty disgraceful reply and shows how little they care about what they're producing and trying to flog off to us numpties. They actually found out before the models were produced, but still went ahead anyway. How hard can it be to re-tool the roof? Presumably they'd have drawings, or CAD already or even worst case go find a Hornby buffet off Ebay to copy!! I had been intending getting Eastern Region and Intercity Executive rakes ... dont think I'll bother now. I'm happy to wait for a definitive Loco-Hauled Mk3 rather than Hornbys railroad attempt

I was looking through an old Platform 5 Coaching stock book from 1989 and I was surprised to see a couple of Mark 2D air conditioned TSO coaches listed as being in Provincial livery. They were 5520 and 5614. I wasn't aware of any air conditioned coaches being painted in Provincial/Trans-Pennine livery. Is this true or is it a misprint in the book?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did the inspection saloons have a drivers position in them for when they were being propelled? If the driver was just in the loco behind then they must have had a very restricted view of signals and the line ahead. Was radio communication used between an observer in the saloon and the driver in the loco

The question is, if a 3 car Thumper does get produced, what would the price be if its £190 for a 2H? At the best part of £100 per coach, you'd have to be looking at heading for £300. Ouch!!! Its not that long ago the 6 coach Blue Pullman was not an awful lot more than that

Another thing I'd like to see would be articles picking on a wagon type which is available RTR and a selection of pictures of the various traffic flows they were used on. For example, I didn't realise until recently that KFA container flat wagons were used on the West Highland line to transport paper coils under tarpaulin.

on the other hand it might be an awful lot more difficult to sell 500 or sets of 4 than 500 pairs of coaches. The livery is a little of an unusual choice so it would be difficult to gauge interest without producing at least a pair of coaches, probably similar to the pair of test coaches that was released recently

I'm impressed with my copy. An annual of the Retrospectrum articles and more photos would be very welcome, they were excellent in the RE Modeller section

There has been a significant revision to the tooling since then too, not just limited to lights being added. I dont know whether the 'previous tooling' which catered for the flush front of which Ixion was one, is compatible with the current ones i.e. 45053, 45120, D186 etc.