Robin Brasher

Hornby would like us to believe that it started in Liverpool

I expect the Boeing Assembly workers get paid more and are higher up the social scale than the Hattons workers but the Hattons workers do a better job. I returned a faulty Dapol O gauge coach to Hattons and they told me that they packed the models by hand. I thought that they used a machine. Their new boxes are worth keeping. I use them to take models to the model railway club or for storing my collection or for packaging when selling items. Perhaps their boxes will become collectors' items.

My last purchases from Hattons were the two green Rolls Royce cars in the picture that I bought last month. There were only a few left and I bought the two for less than the cost of two of the new replica Corgi Toys. I think I also bought the other Rolls Royce cars from Hattons a few years ago. I hesitated about buying an Alvis as my flat is getting a bit cluttered so fortunately Hattons made the decision for me by selling out of Alvis cars. Hattons used to drive my local model shops mad because I think they knew that I was buying my locomotives from Hattons and wagons and scenery from them. Once the owner came up to me when I was working and told me he would match Hattons prices. I took him up on his offer but he told me he could not possibly match that price for a Hornby rebuilt Merchant Navy and anyway he had no problem selling those locomotives at the full price. As a result I went back to buying models from Hattons.

Who were the essential workers during Covid?

Perhaps we could start a topic for our last purchases from Hattons.

In the 1960s hardware shops or local village store often sold model railway items. As a mail order customer of Hattons since the mid 1960s I have always had excellent service from them and I am sorry to see them go. Most of the stock that I browsed through recently had run down before Hattons announced it was closing but not all. I noticed that Hattons have still got 226 Dapol 0 Gauge 7S-010-015 Class A1X Terrier locomotives in plain black with over 30% off. New £150 (list price £251.51) It reminds me of when they were clearing their Hornby Dublo stock. Has anyone else noticed large stocks of any other items?

If you are looking for a relatively cheap terrier you may be interested to see that Hattons have got 226 of the plain black versions in stock at £150 each.

At Swanage the Hornby catalogues have been left on the shelf for years at W H Smith and the Swanage Railway shop stopped selling them years ago. For me the catalogues are an institution and I have still got Tri-ang and Hornby Dublo catalogues dating back the 1950s. I always had problems with the Tri-ang catalogues because the price list came out after the catalogues. I think you can still get the price lists from Hornby. The catalogues tell me what has been deleted as well as what is new but I often find new items not covered by social media. I have been getting the Hornby Catalogue and Magazine Bundle direct from Key Publishing as my local W H Smith does not do that offer. I usually find that I am disappointed with the Hornby Magazine rather than the Catalogue and everyone at the model railway club wants to see the catalogue when I take it there.

There seems to be far more interest in Hattons closing than Hornby's announcements. For me the most interesting item is R30351 Hornby BR Class 9F 2-10-0 92203 'Black Prince' as the prototype ran on the Swanage Railway in 1997 that I am modelling. Modellers of other heritage railways may also be interested. I am pleased to see it is not a limited run.

Declutter my collection and get on with my model of the Swanage Railway. This is the same as my Resolutions for the last 50 years.

I ordered both the Hattons and Hornby 4-wheel illuminated coaches they were produced so I had no idea how effective the lighting was. I ordered a set of Hornby LSWR illuminated 4-wheel coaches from Kernow. Two arrived in Spring and Kernow said that the rest would follow. By June the rest were available from Hornby in June but not to the trade until December. I cancelled my order from Kernow and asked them to send me some non-illuminated coaches which they had in stock. It looks like I made the right decision and Kernow also thought that was the best thing to do. This was a couple of years ago so the dates are from my memory so they may not be entirely correct but that was the broad picture.

If Brunel's broad gauge had become the standard gauge few people would have had enough room for a model railway

Hornby is now selling some of the LBSCR and LSWR 4-wheel coaches with lights at a discount of up to 40% in a New Years Day sale. The price has been reduced from £43.49 to £26.09 which is less than the price of some coaches without lights. Hornby has also reduced the price of an LSWR brake third from £36.49 to £21.09. The lack of demand for these coaches my be influenced by the competition from Hattons where some of the LSWR coaches have sold out on pre-order and by the lack of interest in illuminated coaches. I need not have panicked when I thought the Hornby coaches would sell out on pre-order.

For me the ideal size for a transportable layout is a layout that can be carried by one person in a small hatchback. Metric sizes don't mean much to me but it is possible to fit an 00 gauge layout on a 4' 6'' x 3' 3" board with a couple of sidings inside. This does not give much operational interest. My friend has more loading space in his car so he can fit a 5' x 4' layout in his car. He has got a Hornby Dublo 3-rail layout so it is double track with radius 1 curves and points on the inside. There is a goods yard and a turntable with an engine shed. The layout holds our club's attention at our meetings in the evening and we run Pacific locomotives with four or five coaches. We need two people to unload it but he manages to load it into his car alone. Anything larger than that takes longer to build, unload and set up.

The Swanage Railway has fitted central locking on their DMU service to Wareham so there is no reason why other railway companies should not do the same.

I wonder if any of our group remembers the 0 gauge model railway on the first floor of New Romney Station. I have heard that this was Captain Howey's own layout. I went there in the 1950s and my parents had a job to get me away from the layout. It was a scenic freelance layout with hills and a lake and I think it lasted until around 1965. I remember some A4 Pacific locomotives. The coaches had illuminated interiors, passengers and working corridor connections. The BBC made a television programme about it. The trains were run so much that the flanges wore down on the engines and the owners had to reprofile them

Unfortunately I knocked my goods shed off a work surface and it fell three feet onto a tile floor. It was still in its box and I was pleased to see it was undamaged. Accidents like this seem to happen a few days after I have bought something but it does mean that the models are still available so I could have bought a replacement. It also shows that the model is very robust.

Some people can match the fidelity of ready to run locomotives and rolling stock with an appropriately designed layout and scenery but if you can't you can always pay someone who can. In my model of Corfe Castle Station I paid a friend to paint the backscene and I recently bought a model of a London and South Western Goods Shed. In some respects the ready to plant Goods Shed is better than mine but I think there may be some errors in the livery. I prefer a painted backscene to a photographic backscene because I think a photograph behind a hand built scene looks wrong in comparison with a hand painted backscene. I also think that the professionally made Corfe Castle sign looks better than the hand painted sign that it replaced.

I have bought a set of three LSWR ventilated vans to go with my LSWR Terrier and LSWR brake van. The picture shows them passing the original Swanage Station. I look forward to someone producing some more LSWR wagons.

I expect that the amenity service to Wareham will have been a drain on the Swanage Railway's resources. The Railway is facing unfair competition from the buses as a lot of people in Swanage have free bus passes and for other people the bus fare is capped at £2. If it is cheaper to travel from Swanage to Wareham by bus people will not use the train.

I have bought a second LSWR 4 Coach Set so now I have got enough LSWR coaches to run a passenger service on my model of the Swanage Railway. I think that the bogie coaches are more representative of the Railway in the 1900s than the four and six wheel coaches produced by Hornby and about to be made by Hattons. The picture shows my collection of LSWR coaches together with some locomotives to pull them.

Comparing the Kernow model of the North Cornwall Goods Shed with my model of Corfe Castle Goods Shed there are some variations in the colour scheme: Corfe Castle North Cornwall Gutters and downpipes Green Black Soffits and fascias Light buff Green Window frames White Green I wonder if the prototype for the Kernow Goods Shed was painted in a different livery to the standard British Railways southern region livery. Corfe Castle Goods Shed was built of Portland Stone but the stone on the Kernow model looks similar to that on my model

My number 1 Goods Shed has arrived remarkably quickly. I ordered it on Friday 3 November and it arrived the following morning. I bought it because it was similar to Corfe Castle Goods Shed. I am very impressed with the model. I built my model from Plastikard in the 1970s and I like the weight and feel of the Kernow version. I think it conveys the texture of a stone goods shed better than a plastic model.

Could this mean that it will be cheaper to buy TT models from the retailers rather than Hornby?

13:18 Tuesday 26 September 2023, 563 was in steam today and was on display by Swanage Goods Shed.