Robin Brasher

You will be pleased to see that my D class has arrived from Locomotion Models. This is number 737 as preserved at the York Railway Museum. I am impressed with the paint finish and detail but I have not run it yet. Although my main interest is the Swanage Railway on the LSWR I spent my childhood in Orpington, Kent which is in the area that the D class ran.

A view of the road behind Corfe Castle Station and the goods siding on the 0 gauge layout at the barn at Godlingston Manor. It looks like they have started a production run of Corfe Castle stations as there is another model of the station in the background. The wagons and coaches are my Dapol models.

Dear Paul, Mike was an architect for London Underground. Unfortunately he died a few years ago. Yours sincerely Robin

Paul. I made a drawing of Swanage Signal Box and sent it to Mike Stollery for checking which is how I got to know him. Then the Railway Modeller published my article about Swanage Signal Box and several other articles about the buildings on the Swanage Railway. Mike Stollery produced an architect's drawing of Swanage Station for the Swanage Railway and we sent it off for publication in the Railway Modeller with my narrative. The Railway Modeller paid substantially more for that article due to the quality of the drawing. Someone told my brother that the drawing of Swanage Station was brilliant: it could almost have been by an architect.

Thank you for showing us your plan of the Corfe Castle station site. I took a picture of the station site from Challow Hill last Thursday and that might help anyone modelling the station.

I was very impressed with the amount of information Hattons has supplied about the new Dapol N gauge Schools class in their information sheet. Hattons has supplied detailed information about the Dapol model, about the prototype and about the history of the models going back to the Airfix and Trix versions introduced in 1959. It looks like Dapol and Hattons work very well together and I am wondering if Dapol will emerge as one of the leading manufacturers.

Hornby's statement explains why I was able to get a limited edition of the Rocket from the Swanage Railway shop and not from well known retailers who supply mail orders. It looks like the railway shop is in tier two whereas the mail order shops are in tier 3. The Rocket was not a must have model as it is unlikely ever to have visited the Swanage Railway that I am modelling. It is not impossible for the replica of the Rocket to visit the Swanage Railway in the future and my model shows what it would look like if it did.

The Model Railway Constructor compared the Tri-ang Hornby and the Trix Flying Scotsman locomotives around 1968 and I found the article very interesting. If the magazines are not interested in comparing models now there is no reason why we cannot compare models on this site. For instance a few years ago, when the Hornby Duchess of Athol came out, I compared its performance with a Wrenn City of Liverpool each hauling a rake of about 10 coaches for 30 minutes at the Godlingston trials at Swanage. I think that the performance of the two locomotives was about the same and in forty years time some of us will see if the Hornby Duchess lasts as long as the Wrenn City.

Thank you for the recent posts about the Dapol Mk 1 coaches. I have now been able to display them on the Purbeck Model Railway Group's Swanage Railway layout and the picture shows one crossing Sandy Hill Lane bridge at Corfe Castle. While I was there another member compared the length of my coach with a Lima Mk1 and a Heljan coach which was 5mm longer than the others. The Dapol Mk1 is about 460mm including the buffers which is 65' and this is the correct length. In the Hornby Magazine's review it says the length is 564mm which comes out at a scale length of 80'.

I have been a customer of Hattons since I bought some Hornby Dublo Pullmans from them in 1966 for about 15 shillings each when the retail price was about 19 shillings. In the model railway magazines Hattons never used to advertise anything unless it was in stock. Hattons would not take pre-orders as they said it was an administrative nightmare but they must have changed this policy somewhere down the line. Over the last couple of years I have been ordering model railway items from the Swanage Railway shop as I get a 10% discount from them as a premier life member and the profits go to a good cause and to my surprise I did get a Rocket set from them. Perhaps Hornby is giving the Swanage Shop priority over Hattons. When Simon Kohler gave our model railway club a talk he said that the discounts Hattons were giving were unsustainable and he seemed particularly disappointed about Hattons selling the new Pullmans for £25 each. If Hattons has paid Hornby for the models I don't know why Hornby should be worried about how much Hattons should sell them for.

Both the R226 green and R227 red Tri-ang utility vans appeared in February 1958. At the time I thought it was a wonderful model and I bought one shortly later. It was my first Southern Region model as Hornby Dublo seemed to almost totally ignore Southern Region enthusiasts and Tri-ang were not much better. The models had the old style coupling hooks and coarse scale wheels and a weight on the chassis which enabled it to run well on my imperfectly laid track. Unfortunately I ruined my model by replacing the bogies with versions with finer scale wheels and repainted it in Southern malachite green. I have lost this model but I bought the model in the picture at a toy sale. Hornby Dublo's 4 wheel utility van came a couple of years later but their green shade was a yellowy green which looked totally wrong to me. Dapol subsequently reintroduced them in the correct colour. Despite the criticism here the model received an excellent review in Model Railway News and owes me nothing for an outlay of 9 shillings and eleven pence 63 years ago. The pictures show how the old and new versions compare and how models have improved over the last 63 years.

Locomotion Models have invited me to pay the balance for the D class but there is a message on my laptop that the site is not secure and my security has told me not to send any sensitive information such as my credit card details to them. I will try and contact them by another means.

It looks like British Railways departmental olive green and the Tri-ang green one with red doors are the only colours missing from my collection of gangwayed bogie luggage vans. It looks like none made it to British Rail blue but the Hornby model shows what it would have looked like if it did.

I am finding HMRS Livery Registry no 3 LSWR and Southern difficult to follow on this topic. Electric sets had grey roofs. It looks like the other coaches had white roofs up to the early 1930s and grey in the later 1930s. I think coach roofs were grey during the 2nd World War so they were more difficult targets for the bombers. It looks like olive coaches had white roofs but not all coaches with grey roofs were malachite.

My LSWR five compartment third class and brake baggage coaches have arrived today from Kernow in Cornwall via Birmingham and Bournemouth. This has enabled me to display them by my model of the original Swanage station.

Thank you for the information about the kitchen car bogies. You will be pleased to read that I have now received my full set of Coronation Scot coaches. I bought the Coronation locomotive and two coaches from the Swanage Station shop and the remaining coaches came today from Kernow in Cornwall via Birmingham and Bournemouth.

With all these Merchant Navy Pacific engines coming out it may be an opportune moment to view my collection. My favourite is the air smoothed blue East Asiatic Company with the Pullman coaches.

Thank you for the video. I went along that route on my way to Rudesheim in December 2019 to see the Christmas market.

Perhaps someone could ask a well known marketing manager if he had tested the Coronation to see if it would pull nine Coronation Scot coaches and if it would be a good idea to produce a Hornby Dublo version with sufficient weight.

Thank you for the information about the kitchen car bogies. You will be pleased to read that Hattons have now got all three versions of the R4965/A/B LMS Stanier D1981 Coronation Scot 57' restaurant third opens in stock.

Following this interesting discussion about whether Hornby is honouring its commitment to retailers I am finding it better to deal with my local model shop. For example I ordered some Coronation coaches from the Swanage station shop and some other Coronation coaches and some LSWR four wheel coaches from another retailer with a large mail order business ( not Hattons or Rails). Last week the manager of the Swanage station shop sent me an email to say my Coronation coaches were ready and I walked down and collected them with the same 10% discount I would get from the other shop. On the same day I received a message from the shop with a large mail order business telling me that it had cashed my credit card for the LSWR coaches. No sign of the LSWR coaches a week later so I rang the shop. It was clear from their web site that the LSWR coaches had not arrived so I asked them why they had cashed my credit card and they said that the arrival was imminent. I was not expecting to pay postage as the order was for over £200 but they have charged me £4 postage for the LBSCR coaches that arrived earlier and another £4 for the LSWR coaches. Also there is no sign of the rest of the Coronation coaches that I ordered from them.

Thank you for the pictures of the LNER coaches. A new book about Harmans Cross Railway Station has a chapter about the restoration of LSWR six-wheel 5 compartment composite (body only) built in 1891. After Mrs P Bayley donated the coach to Dorset Council the original intention was to restore the coach to working order. Unfortunately the railway had to abandon this aim due to damage done on its move to the end of a platform at Harmans Cross. Despite this the panels damaged by the ravages of time have been repaired, the coach has been repainted malachite green and passengers painted behind perspex windows. There is a lot of information about the coach and its restoration. When it was at Corfe Castle the Swanage Railway painted the coach in LSWR livery. It is interesting to compare this with the Hornby LSWR 5 compartment 3rd class coaches.

Possibly an Ivatt 2-6-2T chassis with a hand built body.

You will be pleased to read that I have picked up R4961 BFK and R4962 FK from the Swanage Station shop before I have received any notification from Kernow for the rest of the Coronation coaches I have ordered. The new coaches are a huge improvement on the old Hornby coaches. The roof detail is correctly moulded, the windows are flush glazed with blue ventilators, they have curtains, smoking and non smoking labels, guards look outs, windows at the back of the coach by the guard's compartment, guard's door window surround picked out in brown, blue seats and brown tables which are clearly visible because of the lights. The brake coach is free running but the corridor first is a bit stiff. The enclosed pictures show a comparison between the old and new models.

The East Asiatic Company saga is an example of the problems of pre-ordering. Ordered from Rails 13 April 2018. Rails fell out with Hornby and cancelled order. Reordered from Swanage Railway Shop in 2020 which is a ten minute walk away. Available in most shops 19 March 2021 but arrived at Swanage Station shop 15 April 2021 due to a delay by Hornby. I would have been better off just waiting until it was released and then I would be able to cherry pick the supplier. Despite this I am pleased with the result because I got a 10% discount and there was no danger of the model getting damaged in the post.