billbedford

So not a replacement for the Mashima 10 series, then?

Rare footage of the US Army deploying a new secret weapon during WW2

Thanks, I had forgotten about Ian.

I've just had a request from a customer who would like to know of any professional builders of carriage kits.

You want the wayback machine for that

....and photographers have a bias toward the unusual, so they were/are more likely to take photos of things that appear out of context. A few photos of wagons still in pre-grouping liveries in the early 30s will not give any indication how prevalent such liveries were at the time.

It's s flattened part of one of the links that allows that link to be inserted into the jaws of the smaller hole of the coupling hook. Named after it's inventor.

What's the purpose of the third light on the front of the 378s?

There is a section drawing on p.94 of Weddell, which shows the window moulding standing proud of the panelling.

If it's D.1922 then I can do that, but the etches won't be ready until mid October at the earliest.

This really misses something. For almost all kits 40-50% of the initial batch are sold within 3 months of release, 70-80% with one year and then sales fall to a handful a year. Even if subsequent batches are produced the average annual sales doesn't improve over that made in the second year. The evidence therefore strongly suggests that kits are bought for the prototypes the models represent rather than anything that goes into the boxes.

Well, no actually. The idea was that somebody could open the box and feel confident about building one of these kits whatever their previous experience was. I can see why you have done that but it gets away from what I am trying to do. And using multiple materials opens up the possibility of problems joining them, especially where the components are small. I have less than 10 of each coach left, and I expect to sell some of these at Expo North and Scaleforum later this month

I would say that any kit that needs 'good instructions' has not been thought out well enough. My criteria for kits would be: Components are presented a way that makes them obvious and easily recognised. This will tend to limit the component count. There should be positive and unique locations for each component. Notes are provided only where the assembly is not obvious. The notes for the two GN coaches are online here and here

So many weasel words in this 'complexity of products', 'good results', 'fair degree of skill', 'specialised tools' that I defy any random dozen people to agree as to what was meant. The whole concept is so wooly that I believe it could only have originated in the US product liability industry. Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that the whole model railway business is a classic long tail. Many different products selling in penny numbers over many years. None of the kits I've designed in the last few years require any soldering.

Adrian had some L1 and V4 kits with him at Scaleforum last year, though the boxes looked as though they couldn't remember how many shows they had been to...

Funny you should mention that. I got samples of some truss rods in the post today. The cast brass is soft, so they distorted in the post, I'm not sure yet whether I want to use them. All I can say for certain is that they won't make the kits any cheaper.

After all that palaver, just how many extra kits do you think I'd be able to sell?

They are available as sides or full etches

What makes you think that these operations were not under control from the beginning? The whole scenario has the hall mark of a funding stream for the 'right' sort of warlord without there being any possibility of political repercussions.

That only goes to show how little politicians learn from history. No country has won a war by invasion since 1945, and even then it was the Russians wot did it.

World trade now consists of a web of connections, so any country that tried to attack ships at sea would quickly find that the negative consequences of their trade links being withdrawn would outweigh any perceived advantages of such an attack.

It's my understanding that the Chinese factories do not provide any spare parts, and that spares that are available from Hornby or Bachmann come from cannibalising other locos, mostly those that have been returned. Providing spares would therefore be much more of a problem for Kernow with their smaller batch sizes.