Robin Brasher

Thank you for letting me see it on UK TV Play. I enjoyed watching it. The only problem seemed to be at the end because the 'Flying Scotsman' was pulling the train but the wheels were not rotating. It reminded me of my tender driven Schools class. Perhaps that is what they are going to edit.

I have got several Hornby T9s and they have got Mazak rot so the gears no longer engage. They are now expensive paper weights and well outside the guarantee period. I am a DCC luddite but I can nearly understand Hornby's new system. Turning to the new products how many coaches are there in the Caledonian 123 sets? Two coaches in 'Product Information' but three coaches in 'What's Inside'.

My local WH Smith has never known about the Hornby Magazine and Catalogue bundle in the past but I have ordered it directly from Key Publishing again and it arrives pretty quickly as stated in the last post.

The Hornby Magazine video mentioned that Key Publishing are offering the February Hornby Magazine and the catalogue together but I could not see anything on the Key Publishing website. The video also said that the offer is available at Tesco and WH Smith but my local WH Smith has not known anything about the offer in previous years so I have obtained them directly through Key Publishing.

I have built Hornby's Dunster Station kit so it will be nice to have a Goods Shed and Engine Shed to accompany it. I cannot remember Dunster Station having an Engine Shed.

I am not an expert in Scottish liveries but I think the Caledonian coaches were brown and white rather than maroon and white as in the Hornby set.

It looks like it is more accurate than the original Hornby Dublo model but will it be able to pull a boy?

What is Yesterday playing at?

Hattons are selling Peco TT:120 items. I did ask Peco before Christmas where I could buy their TT:120 items locally but I have not received a reply yet. I don't think Peco is as excited about TT:120 as Hornby is but I am not sure how reliable my source of information is. I wonder how long it will be before Peco has a TT:120 layout in Pecorama.

I am sorry that I do not know why they were not keen on TT:120. Some traders were not happy about Hornby selling 00 gauge items for less than the traders have bought them for. I have only spoken to a few traders but some have said that the Tri-ang venture into TT was not successful so the Hornby venture will probably be unsuccessful as well. They may change their minds when they see Hornby TT:120 layouts running.

Apart from the 'Scotsman' set Hornby have not produced any big ticket items yet in TT:120 but you may like to see the progress on my layout from what is available and to take head of a couple of tips: 1) make sure that the tables you use are level before laying the track 2) measure the door area of your hatchback if you have one and not the width of the floor area before cutting your baseboard as the door area can be narrower

The traders at our meeting at Winterborne Kingston were not enthusiastic about our TT:120 layout. I was not referring to traders throughout the Country.

As Hornby has sold out of the 'Scotsman' set the company does not need to send any out for review. From what I have seen on videos it looks like a good model apart from rogue models of the engine that have appeared with a 'Flying Scotsman' tender or no wheels on the pony truck. No other locomotives have come out yet but I would be interested to read about them in the magazines when they appear.

If you want a review of coarse scale O gauge you need to ask the person who owns one, I have got an Ace Q class 0-6-0 and it is brilliant. It has got the weight and feel of the real thing. I can leave it running all day with 48 Hornby goods wagons. I bought it for around £250 which was about double the price of an 00 gauge goods locomotive at the time but the model owes me nothing and has given me and lots of other people lots of pleasure. Perhaps the magazine reviewers need to use 0 gauge coarse scale models as a yardstick. Most of the 00 gauge locomotives look nice but most are not as robust as traditionally built coarse scale 0 gauge.

I expect Hornby will come round to the Southern after they have made the GWR models. Meanwhile the Tri-ang TT models ran very well on the Hornby TT:120 track as you can see in this picture of 'Clan Line' with some maroon coaches. Our Peco TT:120 track is not wired up yet but the rolling stock ran on that as well. I doubt if they will run through the points but we are going to hand build some points for the Tri-ang rolling stock. As you can imagine the traders were not very enthusiastic about Hornby's venture into TT:120.

ok. If a manufacturer made a model of 'Eddystone' which was less well engineered than a Hornby Dublo West Country and charged £250 I expect any magazine would give a glowing review and make no comment about the price. I enclose a picture of a Hornby Dublo 'Barnstaple' that I have ruined its second hand value by renaming it 'Eddystone' which has run on the Swanage Railway that I am modelling.

No offence taken. I don't know much about LMS and LNER Pacifics but I found out out too late that I cannot do this with Southern Pacific locomotive because each one is different. I renamed about five and then found out they had different cabs and tenders. At a meeting with Simon Kohler at Wimborne we did suggest that he produced unnamed locomotives but he said words to the effect that if you have seen the mess people made with locomotives when Hornby did supply three alternative names he would not want to do this. No-one made my favourite A4 'Golden Shuttle' in LNER blue so I bought some nameplates and transfers and then Hornby bought out their 'Golden Shuttle' in the Railroad range which I bought a few years ago for around £70. As the prototype did not have much lining this model looks as good to me as a main range model. Trying to get back to topic in a review of all that years models the Railroad A4 had a better review than the more expensive Bachmann A4 so that is an example of a good independent review. Incidentally I have been struggling to write this as there is a huge advertisement of a model locomotive blocking half my screen.

A well known YouTuber did mention the high price of a new version of the Ivatt 2-6-2T. I wonder how many magazine reviews will comment about the high prices that Hornby will charge for 'City of London' and 'Golden Fleece' when they come out. The standard response here is you don't have to buy them if you cannot afford them. The problem is that if you want a specific Princess Coronation or A4 there is no alternative yet but to pre-order them from Hornby. I wonder if a smaller manufacturer will produce better quality models at a lower price as it has done with diesels.

If I have identified him correctly he has drawn my attention to production faults In models that the magazine reviews I have read have not. Examples are the 00 gauge Bachmann N class derailing at the slightest provocation and the H class motor burning out after it has run in. Both products have been repaired for me by the manufacturers free of charge. I returned the N class way outside the guarantee period because I thought the fault was caused by my poor tracklaying. I am more interested in running my models than counting rivets and most of the new models are accurate representations of the prototype. I also agree with the YouTuber about the excessive prices for certain models whereas the magazines do not seem to comment about this aspect. For instance the production costs of a TT:120 4-6-2 are probably much the same as an 00 gauge model yet the 00 gauge models are considerably more expensive especially if they are 'Hornby Dublo' models

The Hornby R6911 LSWR Bauxite Brake van reviews seem to be examples of a bias towards manufacturers. As far as I am aware the LSWR never painted their brake vans bauxite. I am sure the magazine editors know more about LSWR brake vans than I do yet the Railway Modeller was the only magazine that mentioned the error in the livery in passing. The only way a purchaser can correct the error is to strip down the paint and repaint the model in the correct livery and re-letter it. Soon afterwards Hornby issued the same brake van in more or less the correct chocolate brown livery. It looks like Hornby are finding it difficult to sell the bauxite brown models because they are still in their catalogue and probably in their Christmas sale. Anyone reading the reviews in most magazines would be none the wiser as to whether the brake vans were in the correct livery.

I used track screws supplied by Alan S Robinson for my 00 and N gauge layouts. These are much better than track pins and you can easily remove the track by unscrewing the screws. I had a few problems with my Hornby TT order today but I got there in the end

R3834 A2 4-6-2 'Steady Aim' list price £229.99 now £160 Hattons R3855x 4-6-2 'Queen Maud' list price £254. 49 now £178 at Hornby. I am not risking waiting 12 months after 'City of London' and 'Golden Fleece' appear but one of these may turn into a bargain then.

I think goods and mixed traffic engines are likely to appeal to smaller manufacturers than Hornby. One item included in the polls is the SR N class. There was a manufacturing fault in the Bachmann 00 version which caused it to derail at the slightest provocation as you can see in Sam's Trains video so my examples are expensive paperweights. In contrast their Graham Farish version runs beautifully. There is a shortage of mixed traffic engines for the Southern Region for cross country trains. Both the N and U classes would fill this gap,

I have noticed that there are a lot of brake vans in Hornby's winter sale which may account for why manufacturers are reluctant to make brake vans. You only need one brake van per train whereas you can have as many other wagons as you like so perhaps manufacturers do not make a profit out of brake vans. I had to wait about forty years before anyone made a Southern region brake van. The S&DJR may have used LMS brake vans in the 1920s. I don't know much about the S&DJR but I wonder if I could repaint an LMS brake van in S&DJR livery as a stop gap measure.

Very interesting results. It looks like my S&DR goods train is going to have to manage without a brake van unless I build a kit. I am modelling the Swanage Railway. The U and Q classes would fit a significant gap in my motive power for the passenger service to Basingstoke and the goods service respectively. I have made some kits with varying degrees of success. I have got an Ace Trains 0 gauge coarse scale Q class with a number that ran on the Swanage Railway and this has been a huge success. It is one of those model engines that you can put 48 wagons behind and leave running all day. You don't need to be a rivet counter when you own something that has the weight and feel of a real engine because it is a real engine. If it has sold out in 0 gauge it should be a success in 00 gauge especially if it has a good motor and a metal body.