Bilbo

Modern Locomotives Illustrated N0 219. I think the newly painted one photographed can't be described as anything other than green. Most of the other colour photographs appear to be green but there is more weathering in them.However there is at least one that could be black although it was not newly painted or new.

Heljan seemed to do ok out of Falcon, Kestrel and Lion which were one off prototypes so this one might succeed as there is/was? a market for these unusual locos. The collector in me says I would buy it and I would certainly be interested in GT3. Perhaps though things have moved on economically.

Holt Model Railways is your best bet, although their web site doesn't appear to be working at the moment(useful for checking what they stock) . Voyles on the Trostre estate is good , don't be misled by the fact it also seems to be a TV shop, theres plenty of stock but he doesn't have a website. R&R in the City Centre(an arcade) is only open Friday and Saturday for Model Railways(which are upstairs) and then limited hours. A Trip to Cardiff will give you Lord & Butler and they have a really good shop plus Antics in the City Centre.

Terrible to keep flat when you are counting them.

Read the papers, the last one was put down recently. HRH is corgiless.

Best one today was "Do you get any nuisance calls because we can help you block them". Yes said I ,I am having one now !!.Goodbye.

What was the TMC new tooling announcement, I seem to have missed it.

Class 180

I thought he was revising his strategy from things he had said previously.Its a real shame as they were great to deal with and extremely helpful. He doesn't say he has plans to sell the business but I really hope he does have that in mind because it will be a massive loss if it just disappears.

The catalogues this year are much thinner than previous years and are labelled 2017/18 which is departure for Hornby. Makes me think they may announce more later in the year. There was some Lima stuff on the website when I looked but they haven't issued a catalogue for some years now. The have also included Arnold TT in the same catalogue as Arnold N.

Any Hornby digital starter set is likely to have the Select Controller and that has been proven to have severe limitations. I did read that you can only programme up to 59 not 99 but that may have changed.

They are on the Hornby website and available through Faversham Models(no connection) They seem quite reasonably priced as well so I suspect they are smaller(page numbers) than previous years. They are also advertised as 2017/18 for all 4 available. Arnold, Jouef, Electrotren and Rivarossi. No Arnold TT this year and no Lima.

Sounds as if Kohler has got his grubby little hands on it. The initial information promised so much and now it is just slightly revamped version of what it used to be. I think i'll stick with Bachmann for this one.

Here is the link http://shop.keypublishing.com/product/View/productCode/HM18BUNDLE/Hornby%202018%20Catalogue%20BUNDLE

Have just emailed them orders@keypublishing.com

It should say in any service sheet that came with the Bubble Car. A quick check online says that it needs a 21 pin decoder and the one you have should fit. You will need to remove a blanking plate to enable you to fit the decoder.

Now that would get me buying again. I have the white metal kit but a couple(or more) of ready to run Mumbles Trains would be fantastic.I can relive the days of the old shake rattle and roll from Rutland St to Oystermouth.

I've just tried the website and it appears not to work. This seems to be a more frequent occurrence recently.

I suppose then that if it's good enough for Hornby to have in the past undercut their dealers by selling online cheaply it's also OK for BRM to undercut their regular newsagents with deals like this. I can't imagine that any BRM journos have ever criticised Hornby for doing such a thing ? Have they ?

I beg to differ it was widely publicised at the time that the aim was to save on paint whilst using a non corrosible material to build the buses. What you say may also be correct but that was not the stated reason at the time or since.

Very interesting to me as I know that part of Swansea quite well. Note from the commentary that they closed the line just as a whole lot of new housing estates were being built that could have provided passengers. I wonder why they had a silver bus in 1964. It was a trial , made in Aluminium apparently so they could save on Paint.

Simonian Quay was definitely there but not perhaps quite in the location on the plan. Carmarthen Junction which I looked for didn't look like or match the size of the described layout. The one layout where it should have been had a For Sale sign on it and looked much smaller than the size given in the guide.

I think Petite properties and one other were missing according to a notice near the entrance. I suppose that it depends what you want with traders/box shifters. I didn't go to buy much(I've more or less given up) but the more specialist small ones would be very welcome. Don't want to start any speculation LOL but there were not any Oxford Mark 3 samples on their stand . The buildings looked good though.

There are 2 things that strike me in this. The first is that Lyndon Davies was originally part of the original Corgi setup in Swansea so he knows that market inside out, they also had a previous relationship with Hornby as they produced the Scale Autos when Skaledale first came out.. The other is that Oxford have their own dedicated plant in China which according to Lyndon(when Oxford Rail first started) had produced Model Railway stuff for other companies. There is no evidence that this was ever for Hornby but it could be that in the future they would(under Hornby control) have access to the production facilities at the Oxford factory.

I use it on an iMac and Macbook pro and its fine. It's worth joining the JMRI user group on Yahoo. Crosland on here is the Sprog expert as I think he is the supplier so you can pick his brains and he is extremely helpful.