Hroth

I never thought to ask "why" the picking list was so slow for my recent order. Yes, I ordered over the weekend so it ended up in the "Monday Morning" heap of things to do. And didn't get done. I suppose the best thing to do is order Tuesday or Wednesday on the premis that the hump will have been dealt with and it'll get picked and packed before Friday. Of course, some bright spark in Management will then discover "No-one Orders On A Weekend" and we'll never get a decent service again. Its not as if its convenient to get to the "shop" either - it might end up that the move to Montague Road was a bit of a mistake.

Seeing that Oxford Rail (on the basis of two models) are nibbling around the edges of pre-grouping locomotives in a clockwise manner, perhaps we might expect more of the same. As we've had locos from the Southern Family and the Great Western family, perhaps the North Western will get a look in. Given that Oxford haven't yet repeated a wheel arrangement, perhaps this time we might get a Jumbo 2-4-0 (sorry, "Improved Precedent"!) or a George the Fifth 4-4-0. If we don't get a Jumbo, then when the clock moves to the East, there might be a T26/E4 in prospect. But back to the LNWR, a woefully unrepresented railway, even compared to Scottish prototypes! The LNWR had a multiplicity of Really Useful Engines from the reigns of Webb, Whale, Bowen Cook and Beames. Its about time someone took up that loose ball and ran with it! And no livery problems either - they were all painted black! Looking through the list of LNWR locos on Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotives_of_the_London_and_North_Western_Railway ) I spotted Whale's "Square Saddle Tank", a rebuild of a Coal(tender) loco, a chunky robust looking loco, with a lot more character than a Derby "Jinty". We need more SSTs!

On the other hand, seeing as Oxford have gone quiet about progress towards delivery for the Belpair Dean Goods after the comments about the shape of the firebox, angle of handrail stanchions and so on, it could be that these matters are being rectified prior to production. Then again....

Which is a major consideration - even "boxshifters" can't do a Bachmann autocoach for much less than £60, a price which gets perilously close to some actual modern production locos! Admittedly if you want an up to date 14xx to go with the Bachmann, that'll cost you just shy of £100 for the Hattons commission, so new detailed stock for a WR branch line will cost about £160. Shopping around for recent Hornby examples will get the equivalent for £60 or less and unless you want DCC or subject your trains to the merciless glare of the camera lens or the equally penetrating and implacable minds eye, then justification for the more expensive options becomes moot. And, as has been mentioned above, with a Hawksworth autocoach, you're stuck with post-war, while the Airfix/Hornby Collet will take you from the mid-30s to the end of steam. Personally, I could convince myself on a new loco, but the mind revolts at the price of some modern RTR coaching stock!

Or that the "heatwave" had buckled the tracks and derailed their train of thought......

A little confusing, no doubt. However, given the rate at which Bachmann progress models through the production cycle, its possible that changes are only made to the Hattons barchart when the manufacturer says "Here's an Engineering Sample!" or whatever, so the estimated price only gets changed at that point if the manufacturer previously hoiked it upwards. If you've decided to pre-order, the ruling price will be VERY clearly stated! What would ne nice would be the inclusion of the "estimated" stocking date as displayed on the model page. For example, Oxford Rails Dean Goods (OR76DG001), proposed arrival window is quoted as July-September 2016. We're pretty much half-way through September and Oxford are being pretty coy as to when the model will break cover and Hattons only indicate it as "Decorated Samples". I should imagine that by now its going to be late November at least, but it would be helpful if the date is included on the chart, rather than having to go to the model page to check up! But it would be fun to observe the slippage. Remember when the Wickham trolley was due in 2014 at half the current price?

A very nice version of the D16/3 - it almost had me reaching for my mouse to order one, but there's a Peckett and a B12 already on the books, so I'm afraid I'll have to restrain myself!

Probably Mrs Trellis (of North Wales) on her holidays!

Yes I know the picture exhibits telephoto compression, but The Real Thing looks more like a Triang R20, and 37611 looks like it got dropped on its nose! Hat, coat, offski!!!

I usually do, but it seems that for large box sets, Royal Mail is not an option.

My order arrived this afternoon, just as I was about to go out. As it was a rather large box in its own right (Hornby R1184, Western Express), I was interested to observe the packaging. This consisted of a well secured layer of bubblewrap, encased within a stout corrugated cardboard shell, neatly wrapped in brown paper secured with sellotape. Despite its journey to Birmingham and back, the wrapping was unmarked and the contents, once released, unharmed. After hurriedly putting a couple of lengths of track together I tested the loco using an old Bachmann dcc controller from the Class 25 freight set and declare myself completely satisfied! From R1184, the loco will go into use, the coaches will go behind "Manston" and the eLink kit will remain a curiosity in the box... I suppose I'd better get out now, or I'll be late!

Ohhhhh.... Don't say things like that! (Yes, its not really important in the scale of things, but annoying nontheless!!!)

Hattons are using Interlink Express for one of their delivery couriers. My order (placed on the 27th August but only packed and dispatched on the 2nd September...) has travelled to Birmingham and back, and won't be with me until Monday! 03 Sep 2016 06:12 Liverpool Your parcel has arrived at our Liverpool depot 02 Sep 2016 22:55 Hub 2 - Bham We have your parcel, and it's on its way to our Liverpool depot 02 Sep 2016 16:53 Warrington We have your parcel and it's on its way to you I can understand that local depot-depot transfers aren't considered under the couriers transfer methodology but it's still eye-watering that they have to truck it all the way to a hub in the midlands to sort it back to a delivery depot within spitting distance of the receiving depot! Arghhhh!!!! Perhaps I should have forked out for the Mersey Tunnel and done a round trip in the car......

Very pretty - I'm just so thankful that I don't have an unreasoning desire to NEED one! There was just one teeny weeny, unrealistic aspect to the running sample. When power was applied, it didn't slip..... Lunchtime already?

I've stuff that was delivered months ago and are still marked as on the picking list. Sometimes software just doesn't want to know... Mostly Hattons are good at shipping stuff, and if you have a chat (on-line or on the phone) they can try to expedite slow items or at least confirm that they're progressing through the system. The Bank Holiday weekend doesn't help things and I don't begrudge staff taking holidays and things consequently moving at a slower pace, considering the sterling effort they put in the rest of the year!

Placed an order for Hornby R1184 Western Express on Sunday morning, before the shop opened for normal Sunday trading, and after the usual confirmatory emails I saw the status had been set to "ADDED TO PICKING LIST xxx", where its been ever since. One assumes that staff levels are reduced over the holiday period! On another note, I was browsing the Hornby Bargains and saw that R3458TTS, the Fowler 2P 4-4-0 was being offered at the "bargain" price of £114, though thats not so much a bargain as the TTS Hall 4-6-0 in the R1184 set for £125 where you get the loco plus 3 Pullman carriages, a 3rd radius oval and siding, and an elink controller and software! Of course, if you need an BR early crest 2P 4-4-0 then a GWR Hall isn't going to be much use to you......

Not knowing that much about boiler safety margins as indicated on locomotive steam pressure gauges, what pressure the safety valves were/are actually set to and how difficult it is to maintain a particular pressure, I'd hazard a guess that blowing off steam while in the station (expecially a terminus) was frowned upon and so the fireman maintained the steam pressure at a good working value for starting purposes and that a build up to full pressure would be relatively easy to achieve. Of course, if the terminus/station has an immediate incline upon starting, then the margin between keeping the engine quiet and having enough power for a vicious bit of climbing might be a bit tight! (waves hands about in a convincing manner)

Whilst browsing around the Hornby website, I took a nostalgic look at the Club models - all the old favourites, all marked "Sold Out"*, and the Join page ( http://www.Hornby.com/uk-en/Hornby-club-holdingpage ) claims that, like Arnie, they'll be Back. There is a phone number for renewals and an email address for updates, though with no club models on offer and only a quarterly 56 page mag and a 10% discount as an incentive to join, there's little temptation! OTOH, the Airfix, Corgi and Scalextric clubs are still in full operation, so one wonders what the difficulty with the Hornby offer is. Perhaps there's an ongoing corporate cost/benefit analysis on "club model vs £20 voucher across the range"? *Though several are still available at Hattons for considerable discounts...

Given the right conditions, any loco can be persuaded to slip. Even GWR Kings, though the GWR mainly slipped coaches! But Bulleid pacifics (both MN and WC/BoB) were masters of the slip. In the sense that they were very prone to doing so..... (Don't take my word for it, have a look at 21C 6 in London Terminus, post #626 above, at 13:55 onwards!)

No need to run off - I've nothing against bathtubs, wedges or spamcans - in fact I had a jolly nice ride behind 35006 on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway the other day! Of course, it performed very nicely on a former GWR route.... edit for fusshishmusshin spelin...

As I understand the GWR "streamlining" thing, Collet realised that head-on drag reduction was largely negated by the effect of lateral drag from the effect of wind on the side of a long train. It would be interesting to see comparative tests of all the "streamlining" styles in a wind tunnel, head on and with side drag. Another thought. Gresley streamlined a couple of Sandringham 4-6-0s for prestiege East Anglian services. The poor things looked like cut-down A4s, and it was all a short-lived publicity stunt anyway! I'm trying to think of what a Castle or a King, dolled up in any of the contempoary streamlining styles, would look like and the mind just revolts...

Nahhhhh.... The time to start worrying is if you wake up in the morning, glowing like a Ready brek kid!

Whilst its nice to see how popular "Dodo" is (in terms of exceeding Hattons pre-order allocation), other suppliers still have the little darling on offer, one even cheaper than the Hattons offer! I was in two minds about whether to acquire a companion to the H&P Peckett I pre-ordered, but I decided to restrain myself... And I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that any fallout over Hinkley Point C (and BREXIT in general) doesn't impact on Hornby.

When I visited Beamish, I missed the Elephant, but I had a ride behind Locomotion No 1. I wonder if any model railway manufacturer would have a go at a set of working "Pockerly" locomotives. Whilst The Elephant and Puffing Billy were one-offs, there were a number of Locomotion type locos on the S&D so more than one wouldn't look out of place on a layout...

Not going to happen. Nope! No sirree!!!!