Dungrange

I ordered one of these from Scale3D along with several figures at the start of the year. On opening the box, one of the figures that I ordered was missing, but I think I had two figures that I hadn't ordered instead. However, I was disappointed by the Fordson tractor, which looked too big. After carefully measuring the dimensions, I concluded that they'd sent me a pretty accurately scaled 1:64 model (not the 00 model that I'd ordered). I e-mailed them back to 'complain' about my order, indicating the prototype dimensions and the corresponding model dimensions and they said they'd investigate. About a week later I was sent two new Fordson tractors, which were correctly scaled 1:76 models along with the missing figure from my previous order. They didn't want the 1:64 scale tractor back, so I passed it onto a fellow club member who has a 1930s S Scale layout, for which a tractor of that vintage remains plausible. I therefore can't fault their service. Mistakes happen, but I believe companies should be judged on how they respond and I have no issues. I just need to actually get the paint brushes out and transform them into figures (and a tractor) that I can put on my layout (once I get to that stage).

Why the wrong line running in the video? Seriously, I don't think I need any more GWR wagons for a GER branch line, but were these O19 wagons ever in the common pool in pre-grouping days, or were they always non-common user (I note that one of those in post-1921 livery is so marked)? Is it fair to assume that of the three in pre-1921 lettering, the lowest numbered example would be the oldest?

Mike's Models seem to have one left https://mikes-models.co.uk/product/railway/oo-gauge/rolling-stock-1/wagons-freight/12t-tank-wagon-benzol-and-by-products-1000/

Is that not just for driver training? If you have an inexperienced driver practising stopping a train on track with wet leaves, it's better to do such training on a heritage line than on the mainline. The Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway is certainly used for the training of mainline drivers in such circumstances, but I don't think it's a regular usage. It's just an example of a reason why a mainline locomotive may appear on a heritage facility (in addition to a gala day). Aviemore is another example of a station where the mainline and a heritage railway coexist side by side, but the island platform between the two has a fence. There is a direct rail connection to allow transfer of stock and I believe this is used by railtours where the railtour stock may be stabled overnight off the Network Rail owned track.

Covered at length at

LEDs only conduct in one direction and the only electrical path that you have between Green and Orange passes through both one in the correct direction and the other in the opposite direction. As such, I'm not surprised that it doesn't work if you've wired it as per your diagram. I think you need to get rid of the blue wires and make sure that both LEDs are connected to both Orange and Green directly.

Competition in a large marketplace is generally a good thing for the consumer, but competition in a niche market generally isn't because it divides the small levels of demand across too many players such that they all fail. 00 has been around for the best part of a century. For the first few decades the scale was very much just what it was. Improvements in fidelity are vey much a new thing driven by competition in a much larger market. I fully expect the same thing to happen in UK TT:120 one day, but not in the next few years. As far as making comparisons of detail across scales, it would be much better to compare Hornby's TT:120 offerings with N gauge as these two scales are much closer than TT:120 and 00. If anyone is looking for the ultimate in fidelity, then they will choose one of the bigger rather than one of the smaller scales.

Your logic is sound. If there is a limited choice of locomotives produced in TT:120 compared to 00, then a greater proportion of modellers in that scale will make do with what is available. However, I'd suggest that 5% of the 00 market is a significantly greater number of models than 50% of the TT:120 market. I'd suggest that the relative market sizes at present are that the 00 market is of the order of 100 times greater than the TT:120 market. That therefore means that a prototype in which only 1% of 00 modellers would buy would need 100% of TT:120 modellers to buy it for the manufacturer to get the same profit. Hornby have chosen to take a gamble on this scale in the hope that the market increases over time and they will sell more models in the long term. 'Selling out' isn't the same thing as being 'as profitable'. If we assume that the 00 market is 100 times larger than TT:120 at present, and that the desirable model you're suggesting would be bought by 5% of 00 modellers or 50% of TT:120 modellers, then the 00 production run would be ten times larger and the profit would be ten times greater (assuming the model sells out in both scales). Which would you choose? Ultimately, I think Hornby are playing a long game here, which doesn't align with the business models of the newer entrants. Let's just say that whatever it costs to tool up and produce a new model, the manufacturer needs to sell 10,000 models to make a profit. It appears that the approach taken by Accurascale, Cavalex, Rapido and Revolution is to produce all these models all at the same time. How do you sell so many models to the market all at once? Make 500 models of each of 20 variants by either marketing pre-grouping, grouping and BR variants all at the same time with several different number options available, or sell multipacks with differently numbered models. That approach is unlikely to work as well in the much smaller TT:120 market. To sell 10,000 models in TT:120, Hornby are probably going to have to sell 1,000 models per year over ten years (meaning it takes longer to recover the capital invested), but that's not dissimilar to the way that Hornby and Bachmann have worked for decades - bringing out a new livery every year. There is then the problem with picking a 'desirable TT:120 model'. What is a 'desirable TT:120 model'? It has to be something that will sell in large numbers, but it also has to be a model of something that Hornby haven't produced, announced or may be working on. Given that Hornby have already announced or have produced what may be considered the most desirable TT:120 models, where is the gap for another manufacturer to fill? Let's just say Rapido could scale down their forthcoming Port of Par locomotives - I'm sure that Hornby probably aren't looking at these prototypes, so duplication is probably unlikely to be an issue, but would these be 'desirable TT:120 models'? I'd suggest that jumping into TT:120 at this point in time, is an unnecessary risk for most manufacturers.

I can't answer you question, but would ask which version of the class 66, as I've several (not DCC fitted yet) and what the switch underneath does seems to vary between models, which suggests that they don't all have the same PCB.

I don't see anyone saying that. If I wanted Hornby to fail, then I'd encourage all the mainstream manufacturers to jump in and 'steal' Hornby's TT:120 market. The 00 market is much, much larger than the market for TT:120. Whilst there is enough demand for two or three manufacturers to produce the same model (thinking 08/09 shunter, class 37, Class 47, Class 60, Class 66) in 00, duplication in a niche market would create serious financial difficulties for both parties. The tooling costs for a TT:120 locomotive are probably comparable with the tooling cost for a 00 locomotive, so I think we can say that Hornby have decided to invest millions of pounds in what seems to be a reasonably comprehensive range of stock in the scale. They really need to be given the opportunity to return a profit from that investment before others jump in and try to undercut them. Obviously there are other companies producing TT:120 in a small way, such as Peco and also companies like West Hill Wagon Works, where 3D printing means their products can easily be scaled to complement what Hornby offer. In time, others may dip a toe in the market, but I don't see that being any time soon. How long will it take for the TT:120 market to eclipse the 00 market? Probably decades. DCC has been with us for just over three decades, yet there are lots of people who don't want to switch to DCC because they have a large collection of locomotives that would need to be converted. N gauge models became available in the 1960s, so the N gauge market has been growing for 60 years, yet remains a much smaller market than 00. Those with an established collection are unlikely to sell all their existing stock and jump to TT:120. Some may, but it's probably a minority. However, for people starting out (eg young people) or starting from scratch later in life (eg recent retirees), I can see that TT:120 could be a quite appealing choice. Presumably Hornby view this as 'their market' and if they can get you started in their scale, then they know that you'll be a customer for life (because there is no-one else competing with them). I doubt that Hornby would view competition favourably. The purpose of a business is to make a profit for their shareholders. It would be foolhardy for other manufacturers to divert production lines to producing a less profitable model than a more profitable model. Given that Hornby have already announced the most popular stock in the scale, where is the gap for others? One thing that hasn't been stated is of course that if sales volumes are lower (as they must be in TT:120 than 00), then it will take longer for the manufacturer to recover the tooling costs. The fledgling TT:120 market is therefore best suited to a company who can produce the same model year after year. Contrast that with, for example Revolution Trains, where the business model is to recover all of the production costs in a single large batch with numerous variants being produced at the same time. I would suggest that such an approach would not work as well in a niche scale. I hope that Hornby's venture into TT:120 is a success - I just don't see the need for people wanting other manufacturers to tread on their toes. If anyone is going to make the scale popular, I think Hornby are the best manufacturer to do that.

I think it's also fair to say that whilst they made up a very small proportion of the total wagons stock, they would have made up an even smaller proportion of total wagon miles travelled, because being 'special' means that they spent a greater proportion of their lives sat around in a siding unused. That probably explains why, I think, a higher proportion pre-grouping era wagons that survived into BR days were special types. The regularly used wagons had a much shorter working life because they were always in use. Going back to the initial question, it's probably worthwhile highlighting that most stock of pre-grouping origin had gone by the late 1950s. There was an instruction from around 1956 that all such wagons were to be withdrawn as soon as any repairs (no matter how minor) were necessary, so by the 1960s you'd just be left with the newer grouping era stock and all the BR built wagons. With regards wagon planks, there was a tendency for the number of planks to increase over time, so whilst I understand that 1 and 2 plank wagons were common in Victorian times, they would have been rare by all of your periods. However, I think you can justify running 3, 4 and 5 plank wagons in both your earlier periods, but the five plank versions would have been much more common.

Okay, so this is the difference between a sidereal day and a solar day. The orbital progression in a 'day' will be ~1/365.25 of the time that it takes go round the sun, which means that the earth needs to rotate an extra 0.985 degrees, which it does so in just over 236 seconds, to maintain the same orientation to the sun, hence how we get from a ~23 hour 56 minute and 4 second sidereal day to a ~24 hour solar day. Just to prove the use of the kilosecond, an 86.164 ks sidereal day multiplied by (1 + 1/365.25) = an 86.400 ks solar day. And yes, that's the difference between a calendar year (365 days) and the solar year, during which the earth makes one revolution around the sun, measured between two successive vernal equinoxes: equal to 365.242 19 days, or the the sidereal year, during which the earth makes one revolution around the sun, measured between two successive conjunctions of a particular distant star: equal to 365.256 36 days. Anyway, that's far enough off topic or we'll next be discussing the speed of our stationary trains as everything around us hurtles round the galactic centre.😁

That's all garbage. The SI base unit of time is the second. For brief amounts of time, we regularly use metric units such as the millisecond (ms). Obviously for larger units of time we should use the kilosecond (ks) (1,000 seconds), and the Megasecond (Ms) (1,000,000 seconds) but it's difficult to relate to these units. A kilosecond is 16 minutes and 40 seconds. A Megasecond is a little over 11.574 days. It's easier to just state that in the pure metric system, a day (the time it takes the earth to rotate on its own axis) is 86.4 ks. A year (the time it takes the earth to make one orbit of the sun) is 31.536 Ms. All your suggested ratios are just nonsense that has nothing to do with the metric system.

No. The pooling of the most common types of wagons stated in 1915 when the GN, GC and GE started sharing unfitted open wagons with three or more planks. Pooling was gradually expanded until by 1917 it included unfitted open wagons from every company in Great Britain and by 1919 it included unfitted covered goods wagons as well. Further wagon types were added over time. What it meant in practise was that any depot could use any wagon as though it were their own, so the Southern could use a LMS wagon for goods sent to the GWR. The need to return wagons back to their home territory had largely ceased by Grouping in 1923, so by your post WW2 time period the fleet of wagons would have been well and truly mixed up across the network, with the largest number of wagons on the Southern being marked LMS. I think the proportions are roughly LMS - 8, LNER - 7, GWR - 2, SR - 1. However, if you are building a real backwater, then I suspect there were still a few extra home company wagons in the mix that just shuttled up and down the branch.

Just go for the ratio 1:76.2 and it can be in whatever measurement system you like. (eg 4mm model = 304.8 mm prototype).