bluex5

Considering they had wraparound windows for about 10 minutes (i.e. untill they were first shopped) I don't see the issue in Hattons not offering this configuration. Plus they looked awful anyway.

The Hornby B1 looks sublime, although I agree with the above statements that the Replica / Bachmann effort is still pretty good even though the tooling is getting on a bit. For me it'll be down to price as I need several for my NE MPD project. Shame the B17's were never NE residents, Hornby's new tooling looks beautiful.

I would love to buy one, I don't even model in O gauge, if it actually looked convincing I'd buy one just to go in my display cabinet. In some ways it's worse than Bachmann's 4mm effort.

Something about it just doesn't quite do it for me I'm afraid. Can't quite put my finger on it but there's something wrong above and beyond the nose side grille cock up.

The lack of cab glazing is a bit of an a**e. Possibly get away with Kristal Klear for the spectacles but the side windows will need to be made up from sheet which takes forever!

Think I'll wait for deluxe version before passing comment. The cab / boiler mount arrangement probably woouldn't bother me if I wanted to backdate to a "real" A1 but i think the tender will offend and I'm not sure the cheaper initial purchase cost over the Bachmann version offsets the time and money spent sorting it. Yes, I understand it's a model of Tornado, I was just hoping it might have something to offer the serious modeller too.

Thanks Brushveteran, from the other views you were kind enough to post I'm happy it's just a quirk of the angle your initial shot was taken from, as it looks fine otherwise. Can't wait to see the GSYP version, IMHO that paintscheme flatters the bodyshape much better than full yellow ends (although I can't see anything glaringly wrong with the body shape).

Looks good. Only thing I can point out is that the axle boxes don't seem to line up with the wheel centres?

Oh dear. As I thought they've made the paintscheme fit the bodywork flaws. See this pic of D9000. Due to the error in position / depth of the nose grille, the lower bodyside green stripe doesn't come up high enough (made mostly apparent by looking at the step just above the buffer beam), and Heljan have made the the warning panel deeper below headcode box to compensate. I think it would of looked better if they had left the light green band the correct height and just let the nose grilles encroach into it. Heljan's solution just moves the problem round to the "face" of the loco.

That's about as good as 2mm gets. Excellent work.

Looks spot on to me - and I've built a couple in the past (both Silver Fox and Dave Alexander kits) and it's far superior in shape and detail to either.

I'm actually considering one of these packs now after seeing the website (based on my first post in this thread it makes me a shocking hypocrite). It's not the roof profile thats swayed me, but the rest of the spec, especially the etched grilles. My only worry is the same as that with the Dapol D1000 - so much of a deal has been made of it being the definitive model of the prototype that the buying public will not tolerate any compromises whatsoever, i.e. just being pretty good won't cut it.

A new 33/0 is pointless, especially at that sort of money. While I can see the shortcomings of the current tooling, it's hardly in the league of the original Bachmann 37 or 40 for being offensive to the eye.

Brilliant attention to detail as ever.

I think it looks pretty good but as Pete says this is a locomotive of odd aesthetics, and no amount of prototype accuracy will make the blue livery look good on this loco! I'd like to see one in BR Green but I'm quite happy with my preorder based on what we've seen so far.

Do we know if Dapol are planning to proceed onto modelling the disc headcode variants as yet?

Two words. Do want. Looks superb in the three quarter view, really captures the look of the EE Type 5.

I always thought of them as TOPS panels because they have the TOPS locomotive class in the top corner?

They all look to of been printed on blue vinyl - I have pics of BR Green Hymeks and class 15's with blue TOPS panels.

If the bodyside stripe begins under the grille then then it'll make the small yellow warning panel (where applicable) look rather odd as there will be a massive brunswick green void between the bottom edge of the panel and the light green stripe that simply isn't there on the real thing.

As above, they are manway type joints which are usually true ellipses.

Why? If someone wants to list something they own then what's the issue? And if someone out there is crazy enough to part with £250 for it then good luck to them.

Haters gonna hate lol