Andy W

That might be DPD's system rather than Hornby's. Last month I had a similar email but in my case the delivery had already happened three days earlier - and the supplier wasn't Hornby.

Gravity shunting of passenger stock certainly lasted until 1966, as this was the standard method at Cowes (Isle of Wight).

Maybe if there are still some of the dodgy electrical components in the parts bin, a rerun of the GW version for the shop at the National Space Centre? The water tank looks a bit like an early space capsule anyway, and the orbital capability when run on 16v might appeal.

Bachmann have had a tradition of renaming models of retail businesses after staff members, as in this case.

The prototype of the Bachmann Art Deco style low relief cinema is in Loughborough, nowadays branded as Odeon, though it has had other names...

Especially worrying for the BR Unlined Black version.

Begs the question slightly about what small correction to the livery would be necessary on all six livery variations offered? Numberplate printed upside down? Buffer beam not red?. Very little else in common to all six versions. Probably actually affects just one variant but not economic to ship the others separately. Still, full marks to Dapol for spotting it and having it corrected.

Well there are problems with etched smokebox door number plates. The suppliers sell them with a black background and bare metal numbers, The real numberplates had a black background (except in a few cases where Scottish locos appeared with the regional light blue background) but the numbers themselves were invariably white. So anyone buying an etched smokebox numberplate has to find a way of painting them so that the numbers are white but the background remains black. There are a few ways that appear in RMWeb searches, but none of them really work well for me, maybe someone has a foolproof way. Why were the real numbers painted white - simple, the numbers were cast iron, if they weren't painted, they'd rust. Same applies to the cabside number plates on some GW pannier tanks, though not all - a minefield!

Sure was, though to be fair the LBSCR did have running powers in from Peasmarsh Jct off its branch from Christs Hospital. It was the SER/SECR that had a much bigger presence (not as big as the LSWR), also using running powers, because their Redhill-Reading line was much more important in the general scheme of things, and of course still exists.

The Porthole designs only appeared postwar, only a few even ran for the LMS, the vast majority were delivered to British Railways, because materials and labour shortages delayed construction, quite apart from delivery deliberately being phased over several years. Crimson and cream was BR's first livery, the ones delivered to the LMS would be in (LMS) maroon, not to be confused with BR's version of maroon which appeared on coaches of this type repainted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The numbers beginning and ending M are a dead giveaway, the first M means the coach is allocated to BR London Midland region, the last M means it is to an LMS design. The first M could and did change if the coach was transferred to another region, the last never did. in LMS days they didn't use the letters at all. The LNER worked in the same way with their final coach designs (Thompson stock) and again most was delivered new to BR, in crimson and cream, but this time using the letter E as the prefix and suffix. As with the M-suffix stock, if allocation changed, so did the first letter(s) - for example coaches allocated to Scotland had the SC prefix You might have seen locos in LMS or LNER livery pulling crimson and cream coaches if you were around in 1948-1952 - it took a while to repaint all the locos, the express passenger ones tended to run up high mileages and got painted most frequently though. If you have coaches with a number starting M or W etc but no suffix letter, these were built to BR's own designs, initially Mark One, first deliveries from 1951 onwards though not all the types appeared at the same time, they were still coming up with new types into the very early 1960s.

I have one, thanks to Kernow for the very prompt delivery, and will be trying it out in a Grange this week. Slightly worried by the box, which has an end label saying Hall/Harry Potter. I was afraid some of the sounds would include spells being cast and owls hooting. Luckily the list of available sounds is entirely normal for a GWR loco. Edited to add: Having removed the body, I find that my particular Grange would require an amount of modification to take a TTS chip and speaker, as it is older production. On balance I think trying the chip in a different 2-cylinder GW design model might be better, if I have one which will accept the setup without alteration. Then I can get a higher-spec chip and speaker for the Grange which would justify the work of fitting it.

Agree. If they must have a 1950s/60s red bus to represent Liverpool, they could use Ribble (or at a stretch Lancashire United), but neither ever had Lodekkas. Margate was always served by East Kent, their buses were red and cream too, but guess what, they had no Lodekkas either. Goodness knows why they chose the Lodekka model, unless Corgi was already producing a run of red Lodekkas.

When built, the 117s had no corridor connections between vehicles. These were added later, and Bachmann's green offering with speed whiskers is meant to be as-built. As far as I know (please correct if wrong), any 117s that were converted to have corridor connections and were still green also gained yellow panels instead of speed whiskers. The GWSR preserved unit was acquired with corridor connections, and they have never removed them, although the unit has been returned to green livery. So strictly speaking the GWSR livery is wrong for the cpndition of the unit. By the time 117s were being painted into blue and grey, they had all been fitted with corridor connections.

You could perhaps look at what was actually done when DMUs arrived - a regular interval Leamington Spa to Wellington stopper. This could have been done with your super-Prairie 2-6-4Ts in GW days since there were still locosheds at both ends. There were obviously separate overlapping traffic flows using this, but nobody went all the way because expresses overtook the stoppers during their journey. The saving is on the turnround time at Birmingham and Wolverhampton (and in the case of the DMUs, better acceleration, no water stops etc) . They wouldn't want to extend the service further towards Salop because the traffic was poor, and partly shared with LMS/LMR Stafford-Salop trains covering the same section of line north of Wellington, so the GW frequency was lower than south of Wellington.

Or even worse, take Ireland - you'd think that being an island with no trainferries and a different track gauge would make it safe from the Midland - but they went and bought one of the local companies (B&NCR) purely so they could spread Midland inspired rolling stock even wider. They never quite succeeded as the strong minded folk in Belfast seem to have insisted on retaining relatively archaic features rather than the pure gospel according to Derby, and certainly painted NCC on rolling stock rather than MR.

Memory could be fallible, but surely the WCML trains which didn't have some form of RBR used RKBs rather than RKs? Important since they did have a sizeable buffet counter, a small standing area with a pole to hold onto (necessary with state of the track at the time) and the big kitchen. I certainly remember them on Liverpool trains.

So the reviews don't criticise the shade of green?

The Calder Valley sets (Class 110) had 180hp Rolls Royce engines, which as you might expect sound different to the 150hp AEC and Leyland engines in the bulk of heritage DMUs. As others have said, the AEC and Leyland engines differ from each other as well. MetCamm built 101-lookalike units with Rolls Royce engines too, class 111. So it all depends which units you are remembering.

Surprised that nobody has mentioned that Bachmann has released several Ivatt 2MT 2-6-2T versions with a modern, conventional chassis, but the original body. There was a lot of criticism here from those who thought they should have retooled the body at the same time they retooled the chassis, but nobody has criticised the chassis itself. If the body on the split chassis version suits the standards you're modelling to, then buying one of the conventional chassis versions will probably prove cheaper than buying a defective split chassis one plus the parts needed to make it runnable. There's also the advantage that the modern version is DCC ready or DCC fitted out of the box, whereas it is quite a faff to convert the split chassis version to DCC, (though it is doable, and I've done it). Look for models in the product number series beginning 3144x, so 31440, 31441 etc.

There isn't just one right answer. For example early build Mk1s had varnished wood beading round the edge of the tables, while later builds came with aluminium beading instead. I too remember a light grey patterned formica tabletop. Black doesn't feature in my memories at all. And right at the end of the blue and grey livery, the LMR had several rakes of MK1s fitted with tabletops patterned as board game playing surfaces (chess, snakes and ladders etc) These were used on Northampton-Euston commuter services on weekdays and dated holiday or excursion work at weekends.

In the 1980s, and still today , there were hot axlebox detectors. Setting one of these off requires an inspection by train crew and potentially cutting a defective vehicle out of the train. How accurate they were is arguable. I was travelling on a passenger train halted by signals linked to a hotbox detector. The message from the detector was "hot box on axle 63". The crew, and Control, were somewhat bewildered as the train only had 56 axles, including the loco. The equivalent of RIP tracks have always existed for freight vehicles, indeed the US railroads must have got the idea from the UK in the first place, along with the idea of railroads! However, today the volume of freight traffic is much lower and there are fewer repair locations, quite often defective vehicles are taken from wherever they are lying to the nearest point with road access for maintenance crews at very slow speed, sometimes using wheelskates if bearings have failed. Bear in mind almost all UK rail freight is block trains, the concept of yards is almost gone now.

Lines did move between regions during the BR steam era, and everything Midland in Worcestershire/Gloucestershire and points south-west ended up under WR control, so as elderly motive power required overhauls, it was replaced by more modern GWR designed locos. In the North East Midlands, Midland operations ended up with either the North Eastern or Eastern Regions. Further south in the East Midlands, the LMR took over ex-LNER routes, most notably the Great Central.

This isn't totally accurate. The Great Central has been mentioned already, and has three different authorised speed limits - 25mph in normal service, 45mph for non-passenger-carrying services, with restrictions (can be mixed in with 25mph passenger services operating at the same time) and 60mph with restrictions - no other trains operating and no passengers carried. The 45mph operation in practice is only on the up line through Quorn Station, requires the foot crossing between the car park and the island platform at Quorn to be manned and closed, and is used at special events to demonstrate TPO mail pickup and set down. Preceding and succeeding trains can be passenger carrying and will run at 25mph.

As far as I know, Wolverhampton was also considered a main works and did overhauls and full repaints as necessary.

No, DCC ready doesn't only mean 8-pin sockets with Hornby. Smaller models, such as the two different Pecketts and the Ruston, have 6 pin sockets. But I'm struggling to think of a 21-pin socketed Hornby model.