Wheatley

What do you suggest to make inside bearings run like pinpoints then ? Plain bearings drag, that's how it goes. Or if you reduce the bearing surface they wear. You could use ball races but that would shove the price up rapidly.

Peco is moulded with the rail in situ, C&L is rail threaded on to separate track bases so grips the rail a little tighter because the chair itself is in tension. That's also the reason the C&L sleepers eventually lift in the middle if you don't glue every single one down, whereas Streamline will stay flat with just the odd pin in it*. If you intend to sell it in the quantities Peco do then hand finishing is prohibitively expensive, length for length C&L is 45% dearer than Streamline. *(Yes I'm aware that's not recommended practice with flexi but it does stay flat.)

Not at all, thanks. My Impetus Hudswell Clarke may yet get built while you plough through that lot.

So with the Well Tanks and O2s old news, and J94s flying off the shelves, is there any progress on the 17, 23, Hudswell Clarke or any of the N and O stuff ? You mentioned way back when that these were dependant on the J94s selling to generate funding.

If the whole train is first class, 250 diners is only 5 and a bit TFOs, or 4 TFOs and a couple of TRUKs with seating at one end. Plus support coach plus generator/water/whatever coach is still only 8 vehicles.

Could be, although only those in the vestibule would be able to hear if the saloon door was shut. The hopper windows are available though Railpart as a spare for 15Xs (pretty sure at least one of the Mk3-derived 15X designs has the same sized windows) and swapping them out is a straightforward job. I don't know, I'm intrigued to see what it looks like too.

Hopper windows then. You can hear, but you can't stick your head out.

The SLW 24 wouldn't have got half as much stick (not just on here but on S4um) if one of its supporters hadn't been quite so vocal in insisting that it was The Best Thing Ever because he said so, and then trying to shout down anyone who disagreed. If you tell people they should accept something is perfect, they'll damn well find a part of it that isn't. It's like the kid at school who insists his dad has ten Harleys in the garage - open season.

But still on public display

I think Oxford's 'errors' on all their railway releases aren't errors at all, I think it's a deliberate policy. Tool up a model to modern standards of detail in terms of definition and sharpness of mouldings, get it 80% there in terms of accuracy, then churn it out ad nauseum in as many different liveries as possible at a very competitive pricepoint to the 95% of the market that don't care whether one of the sides is on back to front. Think about it - why spend several thousand pounds in extra tooling to do the cattle wagon properly when most of the market are very happy with it because you can't see both sides at the same time, and the others have already built the Parkside kit. This is exactly how their car ranges work - one basic tooling with as many different liveries as possible. The rest of your post sounds like the standard D&E modellers' grumble about Hornby. Their new steam era releases are exceptional, but you ignore these because they haven't moved on in D&E terms since their superlative Class 60 and HST (does the 71 count or is that not modern enough ?) Elsewhere Bachmann have grudgingly retooled their 40, and even Heljan, champions of the D&E scene, seem to be churning over their existing catalogue and not falling over themselves to add anything new after none of you bought their 86. (Although they have released a rather nice range of railbusses). Rapido and Realtrack, meanwhile, have precisely one class each in their respective catalogues. In short, if you're expecting Oxford to corner the market with a "highly detailed coach that is highly detailed, accurate, and with many small parts fitted" I think you might be disappointed. Expect their 1976 TS to be exactly the same moulding as the 2016 version when it appears. Several of Hornby's steam releases have sold out in weeks, some versions of the Peckett are sold out to pre-orders before it even goes into production. Maybe, just maybe, the D&E market isn't actually as big as the D&E market would have us believe it is ?

Doesn't help when the design of one such recent release has most of the ballast weight aft of the rear coupled axle. 0-4-4s are tricky enough to weight effectively without making it harder than it needs to be.

That's one more tank engine and as many coaches as modellers of every Scottish pre-grouping company combined can currently get RTR. But then, seeing as they've long been used to modelling for themselves I expect they'd be very happy with the others you dismissed as well. Kit and scratch building leaves you with a lot of spare transfer sheets and pre-grouping paint.

Thanks. Hadn't occurred to me you were going to China for every production run to check them as they came off the line.

Except ColinK's on the previous page, and presumably yours ? has a little card in it from Dave stating that it has been "...examined tested and approved before despatch by David Jones". I'm aware that mass manufacturing and standard quality control sampling means that the odd duffer will still get through, but Dave appeared to be promising a much higher standard than that.

Out of curiosity, given these, Les's non-runner and Redgate's noisy one, exactly what does "examined, tested and approved" involve ?

But including, possibly uniquely, the first ever and last ever built.

I stand for about that most mornings. It's much easier on a train configured for standing passengers than trying to hold onto a seat back or the edge of a bulkhead on a 156.

I don't see the problem, what's ridiculous is expecting TOCs to operate what are effectively metro systems with heavy rail stock configured for inter-urban routes, watching the passenger numbers more than double in the last twenty years without providing or even planning effectively for that, then slamming them for not getting everybody on. Frankly there are too many seats and not enough gangway. LUL's latest stock has enough seats for the off peak, and enough standing room (well, as much as possible) for the peak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_S7_and_S8_Stock#/media/File:LUL-S-Stock-interior-Original-Met-Line-Variant.jpg The same configuration would be ideal on West Yorks, Manchester and West Mids commuter routes whilst still leaving plenty of seats for the twirlies off peak. Or you could just lengthen all the trains and platforms. That's a 1.5 million pounds per vehicle and another 3/4 million for every carriage length's worth of platform extension. £2.25m for an extra 90 seats from just one station. Twenty five thousand pounds per extra seat, per station.

Leeds Northwest - 4 car 333 sets, no room at most platforms for more, 3+2 seating in all vehicles and high density doors. Mostly empty during the day, full and standing but still with empty seats in the peak. Why ? Because first of all people don't like squeezing past into the middle seats, they feel self-conscious so they stand in the vestibules once all the double seats and end seats are taken. Those going more than a couple of stops could move down but they won't because they want to get off without fighting their way out, so they stand in the vestibules. Those getting on see everyone standing in the vestibules so they assume all the seats are taken and stand in the vestibules, and we leave with the vestibules rammed, everyone holding onto the rim of the air-con vent in the roof and people left behind, and empty seats. Take the aisle seats off the 3 seater, add some straps and longitudinal handrails, make it easier to stand and move past the standees to get off, and you've added 20% capacity for no cost. Passenger behaviour on the 308s was exactly the opposite. With 6 seats facing and a door at every seating bay people sat in the middle seats at the door at which they boarded rather than move down. People won't move down a busy train to get to a seat but they will sit on it if it's there in front of them, once the seats were all taken the standees tended to migrate to the centre gangways rather than stand in the seating bays.

Print at 100%, measure a couple of long dimensions to see what they've come out at, adjust. Repeat as necessary. I've never found a printer yet, inkjet or laser, which actually printed what it said it was printing accurately enough to just use the drawing as is, and that includes some fancy all singing and dancing ones at work. Be sure to chuck out all the slightly-off-scale copies immediately as well otherwise they hang around and confuse you later.

Not surprised if that's how you talk about them in public. Oxford, Hornby, Bachmann, Dapol, Corgi and Atlas have all managed it.

It's an air defence destroyer, it's designed to pick off Backfires and ICBMs, not stooge around the North Atlantic on convoy protection. Nevertheless it does have an ASW and anti-ship capability.

Principle surface-launched anti-ship weapon is the Harpoon, carried on Type 23s.

You asked what the gun was for, you were told (not just by me) what the gun was for.

4.5" is about the same calibre as the army's 105mm gun except the shell goes a lot further. As Southernman suggests, Google "Naval Gunfire Support".