Robin Brasher

Thank you for the information about how long it has taken for Hornby to develop TT 120. For my layout the World will be a 4' 6" x 2' 6" baseboard which can fit in my car. Unfortunately I have got no idea of the radii of the curves or the lengths of the straight rails and points. I did access the information at the outset but I forgot to make a note of the dimensions so I could convert them to feet and inches or convert my board to millimetres. Now I cannot find any information on the dimensions on the Hornby website. Perhaps there will be some information in the November Railway Modeller. I would be grateful for some help please.

If you need to transport your layout in a small car you may need 1st radius curves. Anyway I cannot get started on Hornby TT because I have forgotten my password and I just get a message: 'your passwords must match and be at least 8 characters long'.

From 1972-1996 models from Margate were called 'Hornby Railways'. The models still had the R prefix followed by three digits. The nickel silver track made magnadhesion obsolete as magnets did not attract the new track and the points had closer to scale frogs. As a result many of the locomotives had rubber tyres to improve adhesion and some had tender drive with a powerful ringfield motor. The wheels of the locomotives and rolling stock had closer to scale wheels. Hornby represented regional coaches with 4-wheel coaches and 57' bogie coaches which, in my view, fell short of the competition from Airfix and Mainline. Most of the wagons were private owner wagons which were also not as good as the competition. Hornby also introduced some new building kits. I thought that the locomotives were mainly fairly accurate. I liked the rotating pony trucks with flanged wheels. Surprisingly the Hornby Railways locomotives have stood the test of time better than the Airfix and Mainline models and better than the new Chinese Hornby models. This is because the Hornby Railways locomotives were more robust and can still be repaired whereas I don't think that Hornby will repair locomotives over ten years old and spares for the Chinese Hornby models are hard to come buy. The picture shows a BR Flying Scotsman from that era and I look forward to seeing other members' models.

I thought my days of running Tri-ang Hornby locomotives were numbered when the gear wheel on my 9F and Flying Scotsman came loose and I could not glue them back on. I met a man at the Harmans Cross classic car show who repairs Tri-ang Hornby locomotives and he repaired them for £50 and now they are as good as new. I have heard that Hornby does not repair locomotives that are over 10 years old and the man told me that he cannot get spares for Chinese Hornby locomotives. It looks like my 9F and Flying Scotsman will be running long after the Chinese locomotives have become expensive paper weights and my Flying Scotsman has flanges on the swivelling pony truck which looks much better on curved track.

The Hornby Model Club may not be owned by Hornby but 474 Corgi Toys Wall's Ice Cream Van was made by Hornby Hobbies Ltd, Margate as stated on the box, I would prefer to go to my local model shop and buy one around £20 rather than having offers sent through my email account,

As I bought the ice cream van Corgi have offered me a 10% discount on their retro models which include 417 Land Rover Breakdown Truck for £29.99 with no seats or suspension and 224 Bentley Continental for £28,99. The post and packaging seems excessive at around £7 for the two items and the discount expired at midnight last night. I had a look at their website and they are offering an RT4170S Land Rover with seats and suspension for £21.99. I have also received an offer from Corgi for free postage for orders over £30. Most of their vehicles are just under £30 , There is another offer for a free Morris Minor in Highways yellow. It looks like they are having problems shifting their retro vehicles and it would have been much easier if they had just sold their models at around £20 each without all these gimmicks. I think that Corgi is part of the Hornby empire so I hope that Hornby does not start marketing its trains in the same way as Corgi is marketing their cars and cutting out the dealer.

Looks like some people have had problems ordering their Corgi Ice Cream van. One person ordered an ice cream van for his 89 year old father who sent a cheque for £1,99. Corgi said that it did not receive the £1.99 cheque and sent the debt collectors to the customer for the full value of the model of £28,99. After the Daily Telegraph intervened Corgi called off the debt collectors. Please see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/katie-investigates/debt-collectors-claiming-199-toy-ice-cream-van.

Local model shops cannot shift Hornby big -ticket items if Hornby does not supply enough of these items to the shops.

As Hornby do not seem to restrict the number of sales from their website, don't charge for postage on expensive items and honour the price at the time of the order it would make sense to order directly from Hornby. If the price goes up by more than 10% after making the order it is cheaper to buy from Hornby Despite this I am still ordering directly from my model shop on a preserved railway as I it will not get damaged in the post and I can take the model back if it is faulty. I think Hornby provide more models that I like than anyone else. They have a good range of coaches and Southern engines. A good test of a model is if it appeals to someone outside their main interest. For me these include the Coronation coaches and 'Golden Fleece' and 'City of London' for nostalgic reasons as models of the same prototypes as Hornby Dublo models. I don't like the way Hornby treats its retailers but if Hornby is the only firm that provides what I want I will continue to buy from them I

I expect you will be able to get your S & D coach from a Hornby dealer when it comes out. The four wheel LSWR coaches were moderately must have models for me. I ordered them from Kernow. Some arrived in February 2021. The others were available from Hornby in July but Kernow's allocation was not available until December. Now they are all readily available. I think some people bought the Hornby models as a stop gap measure until Hattons produced theirs. When they do I expect the Hornby models will turn into Hattons bargains. Rather than pulling the rug from Hattons Hornby would have done better to have produced some bogie coaches in pre grouping liveries. In a couple of years time I expect there will be more 4 and 6 wheel S&D coaches around than anyone needs.

Rails have remained viable without selling any Hornby items so perhaps that is a way ahead for other retailers. r

You will be pleased to read that the GWR small prairie no 5526 has now arrived and the picture shows it on my model of Corfe Viaduct. The prototype arrived by road on the Swanage Railway on 16 February. It ran on the Swanage Railway in Spring usually with a rake of BR green Mk1 coaches which look like an anachronism to me. It looks like a well made locomotive but it is more expensive than the Accurascale Deltic.

A view of the SR open third as I exceeded my maximum total size for pictures on my last post.

I have got my first coach with magnetic couplings as an option. I think the magnetic couplings are a good idea as they will be easier to couple and uncouple than the alternatives to Hornby couplings. I am happy with the Hornby couplings that have served me well for the last 65 years and my view is if something works don't fix it. I have received my SR 3rd class dining saloon no 1363 from the Swanage Station shop now and it was interesting to compare it with the SR open third coach n0 1400. The dining saloon is in plain olive green livery but the ventilated windows give a much clearer view of the seats and tables than the small windows on the open third. The open third has elaborate yellow lining and brown window droplights on the doors. The roof on the dining saloon is grey on the dining saloon whereas it is white on the open third. The open third has smoking and non smoking signs on the windows although I expect that the smoke drifted into the non smoking areas. The dining saloon had one toilet whereas the open third had two. I wonder why the Southern needed to build the dining saloons when both coaches had tables. I think that the Southern were ahead of the other railway companies in having open saloon coaches. t

It is interesting that the class 31 and 08 diesels were in the Tri-ang TT range in 1959. Perhaps we will see some nostalgic purchases. I can remember seeing the Tri-ang TT range when it came out. At the Children's Shop at Orpington there were two ovals of track: one outside the other. The outer track had Tri-ang 00 gauge on a grey base and Tri-ang TT gauge on a brown base. A yellow diesel switcher ran on the outer oval with some Transcontinental goods wagons while a TT gauge Jinty ran with some suburban coaches on the inner circuit. To see them running you had to put 6p in the slot machine but I never did this: I used to wait until someone else did.

The bottom seems to have dropped out of the market for items that I want to sell like Tri-ang wagons and coaches and I would not get much for most of my Hornby Dublo and Wrenn rolling stock. Some locomotives like the Hornby Dublo 3-rail emu and 'Ludlow Castle' seem to have got very expensive recently. Hornby Dublo 3-rail seems to have come back into fashion with people converting 2-rail locomotives to 3-rail.

I enclose a picture of my model of Corfe Castle station. I used a combination of Metcalf platforms and a Metcalf road surface with the road surface extending to the platform edge on the station building side. You can see that the main problem is the joints between the cardboard sheets.

Metcalf platforms are good but are not very robust for my portable layout. My Hornby platforms are robust, have stood the test of time and it is easy to attach them to fencing. I have also made wooden platforms and covered them with a card surface which is just as easy to make as a Metcalf kit and does not have so many joints as the card sheets are bigger. The disadvantage is that they add weight to a portable layout.

I wonder if Hornby will issue some Silver Jubilee coaches for my silver A4.

My interest in model railways probably started when I played with my uncle's 0 gauge Hornby clockwork train when I was about 4 years old. My grandfather was interested in trains. He was the headmaster of the local village school and I have got a picture of him teaching the children to make model steam engines out of wood. He took me to see the 'Golden Arrow' passing through Orpington Station. When I was five my parents bought me a Hornby Dublo 0-6-2 goods train set and laid it on a 4' x 3' sheet of hardboard. It used to derail a lot as did my Hornby Dublo Mallard and every time it derailed it blew the fuse on my transformer and the fuse cost me a week's pocket money. We went on holiday to Greatstone when I was six and my parents had a job to take me away from the wonderful Modeland layout at New Romney Station. I also enjoyed travelling to Greatstone by train from Orpington and travelling on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway. I eventually got my trains running well when I built an 8' x 5' scenic layout mounted on chipboard when I was 15 and Jones Brothers of Chiswick converted my 0-6-2T and Mallard to run on Tri-ang Hornby track. Now my model railway collection has got completely out of hand. I have not got enough room in my flat for an 00 gauge layout but I run trains on my Corfe Castle layout about once a month at Furzebrook village hall.

Anyone who does not like purple or West Country Pacific locomotives may be interested in this picture of "Queen Elizabeth" running at the Hornby Railway Collectors Association at Corfe Mullen tonight

A view of my Ace Q class on the Hornby Collectors Association Wessex Group layout. It can haul 48 Hornby Goods Wagons and I can leave it running all day at exhibitions.

Ace Trains 0 gauge Southern Q class 0-6-0. Wills made an 00 gauge kit and Crownline made a conversion kit for a Hornby 4F but no-one has made a ready to run Q class in 00 gauge.

I have not repainted my R219 50T Bogie Brick Wagon as it looked authentic. I expect the Hornby 0 gauge No 2 High Capacity Wagon and the Hornby Dublo 32,050 D1 High Capacity Wagon inspired Triang to produce it a lower price. it was based on a LNER prototype. I bought the model from the Childrens Shop in Orpington in the 1960s.

After travelling from Brussels to Cologne before covid I found that Hornby were selling a model of the train I travelled on in their international range and was available on Hornby's website. I did not buy it as it was rather expensive and I have got far too many models already. I expect I could have ordered it through my local model shop. As not many UK modellers would want that model the supply here would have exceeded demand so there would be no need to ration the model in the tier system