adb968008

Yes but why bother pre-ordering at all ? Theres no advantage, only potential to lose. its not as if were looking at hot cakes, and the oven is full of cakes, indeed the neighbours oven is too, even the butcher and delivery driver are making hot cakes… theres hot cakes everywhere… but the oven isnt dinging… the crowd is growing and the risk of walking away increases. All to often after a month or two they go cold anyway. I dont need to put a deposit on a hot cake in those circumstances, and rely on regulations to refund me.. I dont need that hassle as I can sit back and watch the bakers and patisseries slug it out, go for the cherries first then pick the best of the rest once you can see how good they are, leave the donuts for the end. Asking consumers for deposits is blaming the wrong person for the underlying problem. The industry can do it if it wants, but it simply pushes my wallet further away.. i’ll only put deposits on Cherries and theres not many Cherries, but too many cakes, thats the problem, and thats not the consumers fault.

Thats been true since Bluebell and Talyllyn railway opened. The hobby didnt stop in 1968. It didnt stop in 1997 either.

Looking over pre-orders of Bachmann locos over £200…. It seems its only yesterdays stuff it applies to (25,03, Jinty) 31’s, A1, 5XP, 44,45,46 etc all are not asking for a deposit. It could be a mistake, or it could be a change of policy, but that its happened means its in front of someones mind. Any good salesman will tell you a sale isnt a sale until you get the payment. But creating the right conditions for a sale is vital to building a pipeline, which will always attrite some potential before closing the sale. Forcing a buyer to commit is a negative solution but not one for the actual problem. The biggest killer of sales is time. There has been several posters mentioning pruning back pre-orders this year (myself included) as theres a mountain of stuff coming in the horizon coming, and prices, timescales and quality haven't been clear… (My personal pipeline was reduced by 2/3rds.. of a 5 figure sum), and I believe I was being responsible by not waiting for it to arrive first before canceling. It is imo wreckless to have that kind of pre-order pile without line of site for managing it. Worse is to wait it until arrival, and panic cancel on the loading dock. Ive also been ultra conservative pre-ordering anything new, even when seeing a painted EP. Line of sight metrics, are timescales, price and quality. Thats not to say the sale is lost, its deferred, as I am still happy to buy when I have line of sight to it. This has been an issue with my preferred retailer, who is very flexible on pre-orders, but not strong on holding stock, so regretfully I had to move my actual purchases to one who does. Putting a deposit in place wont make much difference, as the underlying factors of prices, timescales and quality are not clear, though confidence in Bachmanns quality is somewhat better than others, its the “others” that have the potential to overload ones credit card if it lands on the same day. This is the industries problem to solve. Very little sells out in advance, so pre-ordering is more of a disadvantage to the consumer. After 6 - 8 weeks post delivery the outlook is better as all three metrics of price, quality and timescale are known and is the future trajectories of them. So putting a deposit on mundane models isnt really going to benefit the retailer, indeed it probably is a disadvantage, as it simply makes it easier for the consumer to decide to wait it out, or go elsewhere. Further this action only give me more confidence that my approach to preorders was the right choice, because if everything was rude health, why change it ? With the 25 and 31 I like what I see, and i’m ok with the price, but I dont have line of sight, I still dont know when stuff will land… if they land same day as the mk2c and class 66 the 31/25 they will fall to 3rd and 4th place, potentially further if the cl 104, class 142 arrived.. then there is the 02, 18,37,47,50,55, 59,60,88,89,93, 175,180, Hunslet, 4DD, Clayton, RSH, 45xx,3150, 14xx, Par twins, Drummond it just keeps going.. I cant help thinking that with finite capacity in China, inflation has result by making smaller batches. This in turn means a container from china will have more different locos to fill the void from volume, and thus when it lands here you get a big drop of different classes all at once… in short, a bubble has been created, its not transparent and some buyers are committing upfront less, others cancel at arrival as its too much, adding a deposit is only useful when items are of limited availability and demand is high… 88,89,41 etc meet that bar, pretty much everything else does not and theres a huge amount of it somewhere out on the horizon, timescale unknown.

There is an age gap between 7-8 and 25+ that I was referring to. I believe Steampunk didnt work in part because it failed to recognise passing off really cheap toy trains to a teenager wouldn't work. its almost insulting to think passing off a 27 as “here you go young adult this is a modern train for you”, when no ones seen one on the mainline younger than middle age, indeed I may well have been one of the youngest of a handful to have witnessed what may be the last 27 under its own power on the mainline (D5394) back in 1990, 34 years ago… and passing it off to me wouldnt work either. I suspect the future of the hobby lies in n gauge, as thats the scale thats getting todays contemporary railway in miniature, and its cheaper than 00.

True, but i’m not convinced ipad, iphone wielding enthusiasts on the end of a London Termini platform would have an urge for a green class 26 off a 30 year old tooling either. Lima was stuff of our youth, because it was contemporary, infront off us, and cheap. Not just because it was cheap. A Railroad Electrostar I could imagine being very popular with the youth today, but rmwebbers, and chinese factories wouldnt like it.

Conversely telling people you had a bad experience doesnt help those who have had a good experience. But people don't like dwelling on good experiences, even if there maybe underlying reasons that made the experience good, that those having a bad one may have missed… like.. Communication is a two way thing. Seeing red is often a one way thing.

You wait 6 years and three preserved ones arrive at once.

Dont forget Wrong loco on the wrong route 5043 has drawn out a few sniffies in its adventures, especially in the north. and An industrial You definitely get sniffies on preserved railways about this.

6023 was all set to go mainline… in ticket overhauled, ready for trials. Many good people did not live to see it happen, others walked away after doing the work. Its one thing to overhaul a loco, run a mainline ticket and retire it off the mainline, saying its too hard, expensive etc having had a decade or too to enjoy it… To giving 30 years of your life with the same aim, and literally giving up at the gates, in steam, several times and letting the naysayers have it. I think you need more research. The others you mention all left the mainline decades ago, I could have added many in the 2000’s too… 7812, 42968, 76079 but the point your missing is they came and went, and most are under overhaul still. 6023 came, but didnt get out of the gates, and spent a good five years or so waiting… it was supposed to go mainline… had it arrived a few years earlier in a better landscape it would have happened, same too for 4079.. but that wasnt ready before the decision was taken to abandon it, unlike 6023… will of people saying No, for different reasons, ultimately went against it. Compare it to say to 35006 which was overhauled for preservation only. Thing is in the last decade a large number of loco owners have taken the “fun whilst it lasted” decision and decieded its too hard, expensive to continue. There was a peak, and since a decline, and now were close to back at 1990’s levels of locos with a slide back to 1980’s looking quite likely. I dont think any mainline steam has ever truly been profitable, as the more you run it the unexpected bigger the bills & repairs get. I dont believe wcrc and lsl are exempt from math that either, its just one found a subsidiary set of activities to make it work, the other started with a very big sack of cash and is ok with it spending it, just remember LSL wasnt the first bag of money for mainline preservation in Crewe, and look how that ended. Enjoy it whilst you can… ive watched steam fade all over the world, I see the same thing happening here.

FO looks like a winner. I’m glad that attention is being paid to making them fit existing rakes. Having to replace a whole rake because of height, width or livery match wouldnt be on my cards. Indication of the BSOT being on the cards. Modern ones to come, a rake of intercity swallow white roof stock would be very nice and i can finally put my Replica ones to bed. WCRC FO is the big gap for me. Keen to see the new bogies and how they compare, if these are a big improvement I wonder if they would sell them for upgrading existing stock.

The definitive rat resource… https://www.derbysulzers.com/Pic.html and 25242 specifically https://www.derbysulzers.com/25242.html

for £400 you can now get the missing LNER power cars for the glut of 3 rakes of LNER mk3, only thing is 1 of those power cars is a duplicate number of a prior release (NRM power car), but as it ran for only a couple of weeks before withdrawal, stripped of vinyls. This was certainly the oddest choice. The natural one being EMR cars, in LNER livery. I have to wonder what drove that decision ? mk4’s.. well tbh I think it was just a bad choice to do an APT, Class 91 and mk4’s at all, if they had a chance it was the quality of them that let them down… the mk4’s I decided to keep / upgrade my railroad ones as they were imo better, so I just bought the 91 and DVT instead as the paint matched. The only Lima locos theyve not regurgitated is 09,26,26,27, 50, 52, 60 in railroad, what makes you think these would be popular ? Everything else has been done, in some cases well overdone. who do you think would buy them ?

London victoria however has p2, and set paths, at 073x and 084x that were available daily for mainline steam to use. It has paths almost hourly until noon invariably used by Belmond and Northern Belle. The Dorset Coast Express I dont recall stopping at Appleby however.

Do you really think 6023’s transformation from this.. with hundreds of thousands of pounds, thousands of man hours, volunteer efforts and good will, including what was considered impossible in 1985, of casting a new driving wheel to this… was solely done to trundle up and down Didcots track ? It was a perfect storm of failure that 6023’s preservations dream was never realised, and I doubt will ever be. it was even sized with chimney, bonnet and cab roofs for mainline and preserved line use. 4079 is another failed promise, but that one never made it to the starting gate before giving up.. 6023 did but was blocked on every turn. if one loco sums up how the golden years started to fade, 6023 was it. (You may note i did not include 6024 in my original post, as it already exited before the end of the beginning). 6023 was destined to perform a duty it was denied to do.

It depends what you mean by support. I have a feeling 2007-2012 were mainline steams golden years. London can support more tours than it has, but it was neglected as a market. The DCE to Swanage and Weymouth 3 x a week was onto something, just as an example. Wcrc were looking at putting a turntable in Weymouth. I also recall plans for a return to Stratford upon avon, and Oxford as a tourist product from Londom, and regular steam to Kyle from Inverness. This wasnt down to lack of demand. The decline started after Wootton Bassett, its never recovered. Its becoming is more about a higher end business model, rather than an enthusiast support base. The locos are the casualties and the tour market for the exclusive, as the costs have risen not because demand fell. At some point mainline steam will be a once in a lifetime opportunity ss it becomes too expensive. Saturday May 11th puts three steam locos into the Capital on three different tours (Actually 4 tours if you count 86259 on the CME) , enjoy it whilst it lasts, as its gone from a routine summer event, to an almost biennial, indeed I am approaching as most likely the last time 4 tours trapse London in the same day… 5 when the 33 comes on Sunday.. Enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Hornbys 25/1 releases in painted green/ blue, in early 1990’s was a really nice model for its day.

Some locked in early, at £185+ p&p so maybe sitting pretty on the slw one. But the argument for the 25/1 is compelling.

I spy D7672 as finished in service.. again. Thats 3 times its been modelled in as many years.

Not enough locos either… You cannot run a 2 train a day set up 7 days a week with 2 locos….. they need washouts, maintenance etc. WCRC is out of AB locos…, and WHL ops specifically states only 4 types of steam loco can be used… B1, K1, Black 5 and 8f. if they move 44871 north, they are down to just 34067 in the south. 60007’s owners could be cashing in right now if they hadnt gone to LSL. Theres not much options on the table either.. 60163 coming back, other AB locos like 6201, 6233, 60009, 71000 are long gone, 60103 under guard. tbh it smells like the beginning middle of the end to me. I dont see how wcrc going to have a viable railtour business at the size / number of employees it has with just 2 rakes of stock long term and I cant see how the Jacobite survives next year, under a new wcrc contract. Whats happened by stealth over the last decade is the slow retreat of preserved steam locos also.. 4936/53/6023/9466/30777/31806/6201/6233/45305/45690/60009/61264/61994/62005/70013/71000/76084 have all dropped by the wayside, pretty much only 60163, 35028 and 45596 which are still independent and not aligned to LSL. VT is a closed shop for its own. having 35018, 45699, 46115, 44932, 48151 sitting around wasting their overhaul costs sitting around cant be cheap either.. then theres 34016, 44767 and 45110 hiding in there somewhere. it could be wcrc is simply seeing the end of the ride coming, started looking for a hill to die on, and ORR is the one theyve picked.

Just an observation… its been 13 days, 16 pages since last time we saw a picture from a purchaser of this model (not a youtube review). Even then its only 2 confirmed sightings, and both are on page 28. The thread has had 98k views. Compare to the 2MT which turned up on page 25 of its thread, and had 20 different purchasers images over the next 16 pages, which has had over 125k views. This feels a little underwhelming for a brand new tooled model of a very popular prototype… Is anyone excited by a new Black 5 ?

Israel.. everyone is armed. Got on a train, this little old granny sat down, put her bags to the floor and leaned her rifle against the side of the carriage!, no one even noticed but me… younger ones, t-shirt, jeans, backpack and assault rifle..sure.

Selling Flying Scotsman tat I think would be an interesting episode of The Apprentice…. I can see it now… Alan Sugar voice… ”The national railway museum needs your help. You have been brought in to help sell a range of steam engine branded products. Each team will pick one locomotive theme. Either the world famous Flying Scotsman, or world record holding Mallard. Your task is to find buyers for all this clobber. The team that sells the most at the highest profit wins. At least one of you will get fired. Off you go”. Que loads of excited teeth whitened plastic grin smiles of fake excitement to the task. One estate agent looking candidate says he runs a hair dressers and is good at selling, so wants to be PM. Another one confesses to having never been on a train, someone from Belfast claims their dad drove it in Ireland, so should be the project manager too. They take a vote on it and the hair dresser wins. Next is followed by dismay when they see the range of tat on offer, including mouse pads, shower heads and a Scotsman toilet seat. Discussion on finding the most expensive item, a gold plated £500 scotsman to try and flog, but failing to recognise its a profit task when they drop it and only get £50 for the remains. The Mallard team dont do much better, first trying to flog Mallard soft toys at a Duck sanctuary, before going to Crewe and impress train enthusiasts, where they find a hardened 70 year old guy who likes LMS through and through and kindly advises them to stick their Duck up their a-la orange. Back in the board room, a range of tat is on the desk, where Alan asks if they got steamed up, and how they chose their choo choos. Karen makes some quip about her Crewe Alex days and how making a transfer might have been better. Alan reveals he’s a secret enthusiast, bought the £50 Scotsman, fixed it up on his yacht and sold it to his mate for £500 thus winning the task himself and fires the lot of them.

My late fathers, from c1948/9. Well used, I recall trying to melt some chocolate on the cab and eating in the late 1970’s… strange child I was… motor still turns, not bad for c75 years old. I reckon fitting this with DCC is easier than converting it from 3 rail to 2 rail back in the 1970’s. I also reckon it’ll pull more than either 9f above or the new Black 5.

The late David Randles site maintained a list of approved rakes, uksteam.info it lists every tour, operator, loco, date, times and set numbers it also lists coach numbers, set numbers and liveries as used on each railtour, this is probably the most authoritative record you will find. chose your year, chose “coaching stock” link which takes you to the explanation at the bottom of the page. Heres 2000… http://uksteam.info/tours/trs00.htm and 2000’s rakes.. http://uksteam.info/tours/trs00.htm#chs you can go forwards/backwards from 1996 to 2019. For example DateRouteBookings Sat 01-Jan THE MILLENNIUM SCOTSMAN [CANCELLED] Kings Cross-Edinburgh (BN93) 4472: Edinburgh-Kings Cross BN93 was (BN93)Rail Charter Services BR Mk 1 set "The Pride of the Nation" LNWR Black/Light blue livery (Air brake only) FO: 3097,3120/21/41/46/47/49 BCK: 21269 RBR: 1680/98 Very nice guy was David, passionate about updating this site relied on by thousands of enthusiasts…updated it several times weekly in between duties at the WSR/6024 which he also supported, as well as to be seen at many galas and railtours.

Its funny how some are harking back for the return of what some used to call “satans cable”.. the jst from tender to loco. Whilst the past has a habit of becoming nostalgic.. the ability for 1 wire to unhinge from that jst, making it useless and needed extensive dismantling and soldering, or the jst male pulling out the female off the circuit board and becoming ugly with it has not diminished over time. i suspect why the jst has gone isnt Hornby benevolence, but that the number of wires needed has exceeded what a jst is practical for.. I count a minimum of 8… 2 each for track feed, leds, smoke and motor… the Bachmann 9f above only needs 4.. Track Feed and Motor… it was only a decade ago we needed just 2.. track feed as everything else was under the boiler.