nightstar.train

It’s a great shame that Bachmann and Heljan have both developed the same model at the same time. Is the market for these large enough to sustain two models? Or will we see a lot of both in the bargain bins? Bachmann/EFE do have the advantage I feel. For once they’re cheaper than the rival, and are producing the coaches singly, whereas with Heljan you have to buy a 3 pack.

My DCC ready Carl Havilland didn't come with the card. Luckily I have a sound fitted Spirit of the Lakes which does have the card.

It's a 3% reward (3 points for every £1 spent), so buy 34 locos and get one free!

They look fantastic and aren’t helping me decide which livery to get. In fact it’s made it harder. I’d never considered executive livery, but it looks phenomenal and now I am.

I REALLY like the maroon one. I wonder how easy it’ll be to remove the lettering at the top?

Looking forward to getting mine too. I unexpectedly got Carl de Havilland out of the first batch. I was planning to eBay it and make a few pennies to fund all my pre-orders, but they're so good I'm keeping it and fitting it with sound. Life-hack for those fitting sound to non sound models. If you go here: https://www.accurascale.com/collections/british-rail-class-92 you can get an Accurathrash speaker for your 37, and it comes with a FREE class 92! Bargain!

Massive thanks to the driver of this loco who gave me and my lad a cab ride up and down the platform. It’s my boys favourite engine class so he was absolutely thrilled. (I was more thrilled by the class 37s thrashing up the hill 😃)

I had a ride behind a class 37 today at the Bo’ness spring diesel gala. They were giving it a right good thrash up the hill. Anyway having listened to that all day, and my Accurascale 37 I can safely say agree with you. The Accurascale 37 does sound amazing and just like the real one. Although smells a hell of a lot nicer. If they invent DCC Smell to go with DCC Sound I’ll definitely be out.

There are indeed. http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/Prototype.html Scroll down to freight diagram books and there's one of British Railways - International Ferry Vehicles Diagrams E425 to E659. Unfortunately like most diagram books it's a bit basic, and there's no top down view. Having a look on Paul Bartlett's site here https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/maltsterspolybulk I really can't tell. I think I'd lean towards there being no taper, but I can't be certain.

The Bachmann release is 08800, I think Holby Railway has made a typo (twice).

I've had a thought. Gordon Highlander comes in a purple box, the Caley sleeper class 92 exclusive in a blue box. The NR class 37 will be in a yellow box. I presume the EWS class 31 will be in a red box, and the HNRC class 37 in an orange box. And then Edward Elgar in a green box and we've made an Accurascale exclusive rainbow! There should be a special award on your website for the suckers loyal customers who buy them all.

That will clash nicely with the Gordon Highlander box! Will the Locomotion models D6700 be in a fancy box as well? I am a bit of a sucker for a fancy box.

Yes! And at the same time noooo. My wife might get suspicious, it's not easy to hide an Accurascale loco box. Much easier to smuggle in a Bachmann 009 loco than the 3 37s I still have on order. Will the Network Rail exclusive be in a bright yellow box? That'll be even harder to hide!

Just the one announced so far in classic green/yellow: https://www.accurascale.com/collections/class-66/products/class-66-freightliner-green-yellow-66507-dcc-sound-fitted

I wonder if Bachmann could make them for a price that people would buy at? Bachmann seem to have much higher production costs than a lot of other manufacturers. They have recently done a run of their auto ballasters and IPA car transporters. When they made these they said that production costs were too high for wagons with many parts and so they could only produce them as a collector's club model as they could save the retailer profit margin. Make of that what you will. They're not cheap though!! Auto ballasters are £94.95 and the IPA are £149.95 for a twin. So I doubt they'll make more Polybulks, or if they do you'll need a second mortgage to buy a rake.

I think 2006 is a few years before the DBSOs started being used by Network Rail. (As an aside Network Rail call them Remote Train Operating Vehicles). At that time one of the UTU sets was still formed up with the Class 101 power cars as seen here: This photo shows a right mix of liveries, NR yellow, Serco red/grey and Railtrack blue/green, top and tailed by DRS 37s, roughly the formation you've outlined above. By the end of the decade (2009/10) though it had changed and a fairly fixed formation for the UTU was Class 31, Mk 2E/F, UTU coach, RTOV with generator.

If you go to flickr.com and search for "scottish sleeper 1999" etc then you'll find quite a few photos of various trains. Most of the pictures are taken in the highlands so might not be useful for you for the English end of things. Not sure of the exact details of the motorail services but they seem to have ended sometime in 1994/5. But a typical formation of the Fort William portion was NHA-RLO-SLE-SLEP, although in summer this could rise to 4 sleepers. Also during this time there was a shrinking of the sleeper services and forming into the 2 ex-Euston trains as we have today. At the start of the 90s the Inverness sleeper was a separate service and could load to 16 coaches, including Motorail GUVs. There was also the cross country sleeper Edinburgh-Plymouth that ended in 1995 (I think). That was typically BG-4 x SLE/P-RFO-BG. You should join the https://brcoachingstock.groups.io/ message board. Some very knowledgeable people over there who can give chapter and verse far better than I can!

I wonder why on Earth they thought a bundle was the way to sell these? Obviously they have a couple of hundred in the fictional liveries to get rid of. But why bundle them instead of just a normal sale? I can’t imagine someone wanting both fictions liveries. And you’re not even getting a particular good discount with the bundles either, only 10%. To me it smacks of them having a looming bill they can’t pay so they’re desperately trying to shift some stock, but can’t afford to discount it too heavily. I hope I’m wrong on that, but that’s how I see it.

I'd also like the massive Grainflow wagons and Scottish Malt Distillers wagons. Annoyingly they're built to a few different diagrams so would need a lot of different tooling. Sort of thing that Accurascale like doing though. https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/maltsterspolybulk https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/grainflowpolybulk

I bought a TfW rake of these over the weekend and have been fiddling with the DVT. It's good having the day and night lights as options, but very disappointing that they're not switchable under DCC. For a model at this price point they really should be. So I've added them myself. Using the excellent wiring diagram provided by @SForrest10 a few pages back I've made the following modification. I've removed the switch in the bottom of the DVT. Then added wires from the switch terminals to the pins on the 21MTC connector. Aux 1 to the day light and Aux 2 to the night. Adding the wires from the switch terminals preserves the resistors etc that are wired to the LEDs. Chucked a chip in to test and it works! DVT with just the marker lights on: And with all the lights on: I'm going to order a Lokpilot 5 FX chip I think. Ideally I want it setup as F0 day lights on, and F1 (with F0) switches to nights mode. F2 cab lights and F3 just marker lights. This is a bit advanced for the Rails Connect chip I was using to test, so a Lokpilot will be ordered.

Will this update fix the problem of the spirax valves not working and the lights being on the wrong function compared to what's listed on the card? And will it apply to the sound decoders you're offering after market? And are they still on track for tomorrow as the website says? (Sorry for all the questions)

I got my first HM7000 sound decoder today to have a bit of an experiment with. Setting it up was absolutely flawless, which was a welcome surprise. I updated the firmware, then loaded the sound profile and motor profile first time no problems. I'll be using this for a Bachmann 08 and it sounds pretty good. Must say overall my impression is very favourable. My only downside is that there is not yet a profile for them in JMRI DecoderPro, so I can't add and control them from that yet.

Rapido announced it first, but it seems Sonic were already well advanced with theirs when Rapido announced. So Sonic decided to keep quiet until theirs were literally arriving into retailers warehouses.

Kicking myself now. I uhmed and ahhed for too long and missed out on 92032 again. Oh well, I did pickup 92001 in the gorgeous EWS livery.

I think usually the way it happens is you claim against whoever immediately hit you. I was in a crash once where I'd just parked and a British Gas van hit the parked car in front of me and pushed it into me. I claimed against that car, and that car claimed double against British gas. So unless Alley's insurers step up and just say "all claims to us, we'll take care of it", it's going to be a hell of a mess of claims and counter claims.