Forester

In case anyone is interested THIS is BR Green.

Why does Dapol stick with that awful BR Muddy Green? It has spoiled all their otherwise excellent recent releases. Waiting for the Accurascale Manor, thanks.

Yes please!

Dapol. Please note. I only ordered one because It's guaranteed not to come in BR Dapol Muddy Green this time....

Is this true - or was it simply difference between Ashford and Eastleigh repainting styles?

Or - one of the many other early variations of 21C1 cladding which Hornby claim to have made allowances for in the tooling. Hmmm.

Great when a plan comes together. Prices here unaffordable. Nicely matched by there's nothing I remotely need here anyway. This year I deleted both main sellers I have used for decades but no longer give satisfactory deals, in favour of a newer dealer who does. Now I can delete a producer I have used for decades in favour of new producers who are willing to fill the loco class gaps. Roll on 2022.

Yup. Alarm set for 6.50am. Computer on. Firefox updating. Back to bed. 7pm Dell computer updating 8pm update complete. Hornby website down. RMWeb overloaded. Alarm set for 10am .....

Absolutely right!

The King is particularly bad but the latest Clan is much better so there is a glimmer of hope there.

But now Hornby has also got its LN Eras 4 and 5 mixed up so maybe it's all just a New Year hangover mistake.

Gulp! R3732 Sir Walter Raleigh now due Spring 2023? When did that happen?

Having foolishly missed out on the good-looking SECR D class Hornby may back away from looking at further SR 4-4-0s, but they would be wrong to do so. The later large powerful SR 4-4-0s are far more typical and useful to SR modellers and remain a big gap in the market: L, L1, D1, E1 You only need look at the high prices paid for 00-Works L class models when they (rarely) appear on eBay to see the demand.

That interpretation of BR green is such a ghastly colour. It's not as if there were not scores of decent BR green locos in current steam out there to check it with. Such a shame.

Clan Line worked the Golden Arrow in late crest for a while - and looked brilliant.

I'm comparing it with the equally poor muddy green of the recent Dapol Churchward Mogul I purchased and had to get rid of. Looks the same to me.

Please could Dapol ditch Muddy Green and replace it with a decent Brunswick green for the BR versions.

As a kid I lived a few hundred yards from a railway station and small goods yard which was below road level so we could look down into the various trucks and locos. The loco coal in the tenders and the household coal waiting in piles in the yard for distribution was quite different. The loco coal was in large, occasionally very large lumps but often mixed with dust, whereas customers were very choosy about their household coal, which had to be in lumps between say the size of a small apple and no bigger than a grapefruit. I remember my mother checking each hundredweight bag of household coal as it was tipped into our bunker at home. Dust was her thing. If she thought there was too much dust in any sack she would demand, and get, an extra quarter sack at the end of the delivery! No such quality control on most of the railway. Stories are told of unhappy firemen ending a journey with a tender full of coal-dust. As for accurate modelling, outside the GWR, pretty much anything goes in the tender coal space..

Not heard mazak rot is accelerated by low temperatures before. Where have you seen that?

Worth mentioning there is evidence that mazak problems are often associated with, or perhaps just amplified by, excessive humidity especially in a warm environment.

More knee-jerk. No one can now post on rmweb about the cost of models or the size of the modelling community without being shouted down. OK. Your game, your rules.

You seem to be doing it right. The items you want will appear eventually. Patience is a part of the experience of modelling. At least you probably won't have to wait five years to find your pre-owned items, as some of us buying new have that long to wait for our items to come to market !

The OP is Specifically seeking "accurate" coaches and large detailed locos. The price of these items has escalated to levels unaffordable to most. Two hundred pound locos, Seventy pound coaches. These detailed items are therefore largely being purchased by a reducing band of people who can afford to buy them new. Why is this even controversial? I didn't say the whole hobby was in decline. We have Railroad and cheaper items to cater for a majority market, which may or may not be thriving. All I'm saying is many of the top end of market items the OP is seeking are not being used by the small number of purchasers able to buy them new from dealers and they then return to the market as "used," but in reality often unused, These are worth looking out for.

Dave, Is it possible for users to disable the Mailing List Pop-up? It's really obtrusive and it's irritating having to delete it and then see it re-appear. Thanks.

I understand your slightly knee-jerk reaction to my somewhat over-general phrase, Phil, but the fact (relevant to the OP question) is that more and more products are being bought by a smaller and smaller band of people (those who can actually afford them for a start!) who then don't use many of them regularly or at all. Some of us (the lucky ones who can afford it) can't resist buying the latest model whether it fits with our layouts or not, which we then sell on hardly used or unused when we've got over the excitement of a seeing/handling a previously unavailable RTR which we didn't really need. That creates a large well of top quality "used" but pristine models on the market. The OP stated he has difficulty finding new models, quoting models which have all been produced within the last few years (so not exactly Old) . We know this is because production runs are small and designed sell out before the next season's products, so anything produced over a year ago is unlikely to be available in the shops. All I'm saying to the OP is those same models are available in good numbers in pristine condition, just not in model shops.