DutyDruid

25 minutes ago, Dominion said:

Lots of the wagons you mention will have Nem pockets.
I use number 18s in those instead of fitting kadee draft boxes.

Agree with Dominion's approach rather than using #5s and draft boxes.

The only caution is that Bachmann had a nasty habit of using "cranked" tension lock couplings on some of their wagons.  These don't lend themselves to easy plug & play conversion, it is possible and if you look back through this topic you will see how I did it for my Bachmann Standard 4 Tank but I have a nasty feeling the parts I used are no longer available.

50 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Tool it the same way the locos are, different noses, roof panels, side panels etc.,.. modular.

The very mk1 design itself was modular, what made it so flexible.

Traditional model manufacturers have just made one size fits all toolings.

Absolutely!

Was I the only person to build a DC Kits EMU?  That was how they did it.  If I remember correctly, a 3H was made up of 6 different side panels and EPB/HAP/SUB models would be equally easy to construct because they could use the same common components for the bulk of the coach sides, only needing "special" parts for the different motor coaches and driving trailers - there was a lot of "re-use design" across different classes in real life and a cunning manufacturer could easily do the same thing in the model world.

Interestingly, there's a thread running on SREMG at the moment about Hampshire Units turning up on Castleman's Corkscrew when they were "new" and someone has posted a link to a youtube video from Everard Junction where he cuts and shuts a Bachmann EPB to make a centre coach for a 2H.  I have to say it's not quite the way I would have done it but it shows just how easily a bit of cunning design could open up the whole area of stuff that has never been commercially modelled before.  

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

Please do, the bigger variant was the base for a ton of EMUs… I mean quite a lot

I'm not totally sure about that in the sense that if I were to take one of the said Open Seconds and put it in between the DBMS and DTC of my Bachmann 2H it would look very much out of place because it strikes me it is of much better quality than the two Bachmann coaches.  Ditto making their 2 car EMU up to a 4 car.

Now, if Accurascale were to look at filling in the missing classes in the Mk 1 Suburban based EMUs...

2 hours ago, Accurascale Fran said:

However, if our first batch of Mark 1 subs is a successful seller, then you never know, we might be encouraged to tool up the bigger variant in time

Hope you will do the Longmoor Military Railway versions of the short ones first though...

11 hours ago, DutyDruid said:

Agree with John, BOMO West use them and I think Charlie Bishop of Chadwick Model Railway did a piece about the layout including these devices on his YouTube channel.  That might be a good starting point for you.

Here, set to where they talk about the Preci gadget: 

4 hours ago, Tallpaul69 said:

Has anyone tried using a Loco mounted actuator marketed by Precimodels.com?

Not personally, but it's on the radar for when I eventually get to go DCC (see previous post re buying two ex-Fareham Club layouts)

2 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

However, the builders of the Bournemouth West layout used them to good effect on their station pilots so they do stand up to exhibition use. There might be something about it on their thread but it's quite a big one so again, what you are looking for may take a while to find (if it's there at all).

Agree with John, BOMO West use them and I think Charlie Bishop of Chadwick Model Railway did a piece about the layout including these devices on his YouTube channel.  That might be a good starting point for you.

Elliott

48 minutes ago, john new said:

Can you not just have two converter wagons so the in between block of stock is either kadees or t/ls? (Reverse the pair to suit)

Hi John.

That's more or less what I do anyway, I tend to run sets of 3 wagons with James Train Parts 3D printed instanters in the middle and Kadees at the outer ends of each set.  The problem WAS the other operators who didn't want to explore the possibilities that coupling swaps had to offer in terms of hands free shunting and so on.  However, that problem has gone away because (drum roll) I've moved to the West Country and in doing so I bought both Nictun Borrud and Soberton from the Fareham Club, so what happens now is largely my decision...

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

it does puts the website ahead of retailer discounts, and your infront of the queue (often before retailers) when it comes to delivery.

Declaration of interest: Until the Zombie Apocalypse struck I regularly did stints behind the counter in my local model shop and feel I was pretty much up to speed on the rights, wrongs and rules viz a vie discounting simply because of the regular stream of people coming in and asking me to knock a bit off their bill when the boss wasn't looking.

The practical upshot is that both Bachmann and Hornby have fairly stringent rules about what a retailer can do by ways of discount.   What you had described earlier in that post:

3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

I just looked it up,..

 

heres the sale price..

10% discount applied.

 

3434 points earned, worth £34.34 credit, applied 14 days later to spend at will.

(Sale price of £381.49 discounted by 10% to £343.34, plus a points "cash back" worth £34.34) equates to nigh on a 20% discount and actually blows Hornby's own rules about discounting that they impose on their retailers out of the water.  More, I've heard on the grapevine that they have used this "over discounting" rule to bump offending traders out of Tier One which - if you understand how their tier system works - effectively hobbles that retailer from serving his customer base effectively.  

No, I'm drawn back to the conversation of a couple of days ago, they are actively trying to **** off their retailers and are testing the water with a view to moving themselves exclusively online at some point in the not too distant future.

Elliott

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

I'm so EXCITED!!!!!

 

53 minutes ago, PeterStiles said:

 

And you just can't hide it...

 

He's just seen a Wowcher deal!

Now, there's a thought...

3 hours ago, Pmorgancym said:

Would they reduce the mrsp or would they just reap more profit???

That's a whole different argument, we would hope that the MRSP would come down to match the new costs of selling their products but the reality of "Shareholders" would probably be pushing in completely the opposite direction.  The unfathomable question is who will win out over the other.

2 hours ago, rob D2 said:

Talking of Hornby logistics in the same breath as Amazon , you are talking a mouse against a mountain in size .

 

Our local DSN ( amazon distribution ) easily does 50000 packages a day 

Thanks for that snippet rob D2.  I know very little of the actual volumes involved with Amazon's logistics, but what I do know is that they are very keen to recruit ex-military logisticians to manage the process because they tend to be able to cope with the mindset of getting the job done.

6 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Hornby just hasn't got the warehousing capacity to sell everything online only. They would need a warehouse the size of an average Amazon hub and employ about 1000 people and skilled pickers don't work for minimum wage.

And that's exactly the point Jason, they already have a Hornby Store on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Hornby/page/42AC0C70-1D10-41C5-99F4-64CEA8B4928A?ref_=ast_bln

At the moment it looks like the "fulfillment" is still with Hornby but it wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility for a "Fulfilled by Amazon" flag to replace that one; from there the sky's the limit on how far this could go.

Unfortunately I spent too much of my working life pushing back against the "Outsourcing is best" mindset of our Government's Bean Counters and from bitter experience I know exactly how their argument goes.  I wouldn't mind betting that Hornby's accountants are already actively pursuing the possibility of outsourcing their entire sales operation to the people you quoted - Amazon - and are probably having a fairly detailed conversation with them about how it could be made to work.  I hear on the grapevine that they have already "sacked or otherwise redeployed" their reps and in the eyes of a bean counter only having to deal with one retailer rather than the hundreds (thousands?) of model shops in this country means the back office staff could be reduced as well.  It would also save them from having to deal with the squabbling of "Why's he a Tier 1 Retailer while I'm only in Tier 3?".  From the economic point of view, the margin that Amazon would be looking to reap would be less than the margin a small business would need to survive so the RRP could be suitably reduced.  The containers arriving from "wherever" would simply be diverted to that Amazon hub you mentioned and Hornby wouldn't even have to employ the people needed to strip them because Amazon would already have teams on hand to strip and stow everything that arrived.  Dealing with "peak demand" would no longer be "their" (i.e. Hornby's) problem either, it would be Amazon's and from there we can set off on the moral discussion about the gig economy which is rife in that sector of "retail".

No, It's a completely different model of retail from the one we are used to as a hobby, but I can quite see the thinking that must be going on in the background.  Whether it will be for the best for the hobby or an unmitigated disaster for Hornby only time will tell.

Elliott

6 minutes ago, BMacdermott said:

The S-160 has been in The Top 50 since 2013.

With the reboot of the Railway Children franchise last year and me with a wartime SR layout in build I'm hoping this could be the year...

On 15/12/2022 at 14:57, newbryford said:

And maybe selling it via retailers.

I've come very late to the party this year due to a house move and Open Reach deciding that they want to put us on "fibre to the house" which means I have to find a coffee bar to get reliable internet...

Talking to retailers where we lived in Hampshire and now where we live in Devon the consensus is that they want to dump their dealer network and move entirely online, and that it will take direct intervention at "deity level" to stop it happening.

Well done and thanks Brian, it looks like I stumble into the results just as you posted them and I claim the first download!

Elliott

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

We are thread-drifting, though, and this is not the best place for this discussion.  

Agree with that comment Johnster, and if I wasn't in the middle of a very messy house move I would now actually be thinking of starting either a new thread or a workshop blog. 

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I’d say that current DC RTR running quality in general is pretty good; certainly better than the bad old days of the 70s and 80s, when we had those awful pancake motors and plastic spur gears.  These things were pretty feeble, and had to run at very high rpm to develop any power with which to pull trains, resulting in the reduction gearing which introduced a lot of drag and friction, added to by the metal clips which held the spur gears in place but pressin sideways on them.   With traction tyres, Satan’s expectorant, spreading crud all over the layout and compromising pickup performance as well as denying any pickup at all on that wheel, any chance of decent, controlled slow running or smooth starts and stops was out the window before you’d started.

Suffice to say on your comments above, I stumbled across these recently: https://www.strathpefferjunction.com/Hornby-lima-ringfield-motor-upgrade-conversion-kits/ which, along with Ultrascale wheels, are a real game changer.  So far I have "updated" the pancake motor on a kit-bashed EMU for Nictun Borrud (took less than 5 minutes) and I have a Lima 33 on the bench being converted into an Orbit Track Cleaner (including putting a CD drive motor into the pancake housing).

When I get a chance a blog about the 33 will follow...

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The Southern had a few mk1 suburbans allox from new, in unlined crimson livery, but they were the longer 64' version; the seconds were 10-compartments.  They were used in 3-coach sets on the Exmouth Branch along with some spares used all over the place as strengtheners.

Agree Johnster - hence my question to Fran. 

The simplest way for me to justify putting these excellent looking models on my layout would be by way of a short rake of Longmoor based coaches - that only bends the space-time continuum "slightly"...

On 06/06/2022 at 12:04, Accurascale Fran said:

NEW ANNOUNCEMENT - Delicious Subs! Mark 1 56ft 11" Suburban Coaches in OO/4mm

 

Cheers!

 

Fran 

 Hi Fran

Although I thoroughly applaud Accurascale for taking these prototypes on, as a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Region modeller they don't really float my boat I'm afraid - UNLESS - you have plans to do the ones that migrated to Longmoor Military Railway in the 60s in either the original Olive Drab or the later LMR blue.

Is this something we can expect to see in the fullness of time?  If so, I'm in!

TIA

Elliott

16 minutes ago, McC said:

when we’re they made? Do you still have the boxes?

I do, and from memory are all less than 10 years old.  The boxes are all in "off site storage" so it may be a while before I can check.

On 06/06/2022 at 23:12, McC said:

No diecast in models for the last number of decades has used the formulation. 

I'd argue with that - and as evidence produce 5 x Hornby T9s, all of which now have Peter's Spares replacement motor housings because their chassis suffered MAZAC rot.  I gather that Cl 31s from the same era were similarly afflicted.

Elliott

On 09/04/2022 at 20:42, Jon4470 said:

The cab is tack soldered in place on each corner. To me it looks like the cab is leaning forward a bit.....the set square says not though😕

Been off grid for a while so only just getting the chance to catch up.  My take on all the photos I have seen of Barber (and with my connections with the area I have seen a few more than the published ones) is that it always looks like it is not quite "on the square", rather it always looks like it is set at some "jaunty" angle.  It must be some sort of optical illusion.

Elliott

All prefaced with the caveat that this is all "on the bench" experimentation at the moment, it has yet to be tried on a real world layout.

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Are you running your Maunsells with the covers on the gangways? It looks like it from the photo.

I am Sir.  Truthfully, it hadn't occurred to me to remove the gangway covers (must try harder).  I will look into that.

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

I remove them so I can join and split multi-portioned trains and that allows the use of #18 couplers, which I have also fitted to the Luggage van (I only have one also, at present). 

That's what's actually driving this for me.  Traditionally when the big layout (Soberton) goes out we run a couple of what we term "Boat Trains" - typically a Merchant Navy and 10 or 12 coaches - but I want to experiment with dividing and recombining some prototypical trains in the station.  My experience is that the #19 couplers work with the end plates fitted.  

7 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Inside sets I use Roco coupler heads (like the Hornby "alternative coupler" but shorter). I remove the metal loops and use the couplers upside down which looks much neater.

That's more or less where I was too before I discovered these James' Train Parts drawbar couplers.  What has driven me towards their use is that the fiddle yards on a couple of layouts I provide stock for have gone over to cassettes and stock boxes that hold the trains on those cassettes.  A couple of times I've had near misses with Roco style couplers parting for no adequately explained reason allowing the odd coach to run away if the cassette isn't held properly; with JTP drawbars this can't happen.

So good people, a new year having passed since the last post here I thought to share something I have just discovered.

The accepted wisdom I have always been given when using NEM Kadees is "Don't bother buying any No 17s as they are way too short for use on UK stock with buffers.  Well, I have just found an item of Hornby stock that takes No 17s - the SR Bogie Luggage Van (aka Churchill's Funeral Van).

I have recently purchased a heap of 3-D printed "Drawbar Couplers" from James' Train Parts and have now spent an entertaining evening down at the Club fitting and testing them, along with putting Kadees on the end of each set.  

I started by fitting up a Maunsell 4-set with James' No 3 couplers and Kadee No 19s which gives reasonably good close coupling both within and between sets, and allows the set to be propelled backwards through a trailing crossover of 2nd radius points.  I then turned my attention to the luggage van to go with the set, I tried No 19s and was far from satisfied with the closeness obtained, next the 18s, better but...  It can't possibly use No 17s can it?  I've got a packet here somewhere, let's try.  Surprise surprise! 

What you're looking at here is the luggage van sandwiched between the two Maunsell brake coaches, the Maunsell coaches have No 19s and they provide reasonably close coupling, the baggage van has No 17s and in a bench test on the Club test track everything seems to work.  The only thing I haven't been able to test two identical vans together - because I only have one.

Anybody want to have a play and see if they can validate my results?

3 hours ago, ThaneofFife said:

To be honest if your out of work or retired or such like then no doubt youll be sat there at 7, 8 or 10am or whatever time its meant to all kick off but I suspect many of us have jobs we have to do tomorrow so in a way its good.  Leave the big AM excitement to those who will be glued to the website for the launch and by the time me and my employed brothers have done their days work can drop in and thumb through everything over a leisurely nightcap without the slow drip feed or potential of a constantly crashing website......

One year - can't remember which - the Hornby website was still "acting up" a couple of days later.

3 hours ago, luke_stevens said:

I found the following sentence a bit of a concern:

 

"I am really excited to give strategic input as the brilliant team focuses on digital transformation and growth, to build the business for generations to come."

3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Moves into AR and VR would appeal to a younger audience and can out a lot of imagination and animated graphics into both model railways and scalextrix… I hope thats what they mean by digital transformation.

These comments remind me of something from Star Trek, the Next Generation and Voyager.

To me, getting into VR means I open the cupboard under the stairs and step inside, and find myself in a room 50' x 50' with a massive scale train set which works perfectly.  I spend the morning operating it (and some of the trains operate themselves to add to the entertainment).  When my phone pings with the message "Lunch" I say in a purposeful voice "COMPUTER - Arch" and the doorway into the hall materialises in front of me and I step back into reality for half an hour.

Anyone else want 10mg of my medicine?

5 hours ago, Vistisen said:

A year later version 3 will be released that now uses a different gauge, so that version 1 (and 2) can no longer run,

Ah!  We're going for American 00 then?

https://www.nmra.org/oo-scale-sig-page

Bet it isn't compatible with P4