DutyDruid

Or, if you're a tea drinker, a cup of liquid almost but not quite entirely unlike tea... (with due apologies to Douglas Adams)

As someone has pointed out, that press release about the tier system was issued a long time after it was actually introduced because people were starting to ask questions about the sort of thing that is the topic of discussion in this thread. I grant you that the centenary stuff might not have been the best example to have quoted because a heap of other rules applied to that particular line as well, but the general principles being discussed here were in force way before that press release hit the streets.

That pretty much sums up where I was coming from with my original comment. The reason I latched onto the Centenary stuff as a particular issue with this was that I had particularly remembered one friend who used to use one of the shops I mentioned for Hornby and the other one for Bachmann. It was his chosen Hornby shop that got kicked out of Tier 1 when it changed hands on the grounds that it was "A New Account" and he then had to scrabble around trying to find the things he wanted because the "other" shop which was still in tier 1 had been up-front with their regular Hornby collectors and had amicably decided who was going to get what.

Which is why I would never invest money in a model shop. No names, no pack drill. I have heard tell that a couple of years ago the owner of a model shop retired and sold the long established business to a reliable soul who had worked for him. Hornby's response was "new account, dropped to tier 2" which meant that the shop was unable to access all the glitzy stuff for the Centenary. Net result: everyone went 5 miles up the road to another shop and the supposedly new business nearly bit the big one. What a way to encourage your retailers?

If it were me Andy, I would now be having stern words with whatever piece of Hornby it is that does press relations "seeking clarification as to what time the embargo actually ends" (read as "bludgeoning them with a big pointy stick") - but then I did study at the richard Nixon School of Diplomacy; motto: why appease if you can escalate".

Interesting, I wonder if we can crash YouTube as well as the Hornby site...

My downfall experience with that was the motor housings on T9s. The score was 2 x BR and 3 x SR. All 5 failed, 2 of the SR ones fresh out of the box for first exhibition outings with a layout and the motors just sat there and span. Peter's Spares did very well out of me that year...

I think that's a given John

Volvo XC60. I do a lot of towing for a summer job and I reckon I get a good 10% better mpg with Ultimate, plus the burn is a lot hotter so I don't get any DPF problems. At one point the boss would only allow me to fill up with his fuel card at a supermarket (no high grade diesel) and got very annoyed when I screwed his budgeting because my actual expenses for known jobs went up rather than down. Dragging it back on topic, I know of one club who ask for fuel receipts for their exhibition and if offered a receipt for high grade fuel refuse to pay it. Their treasurer got really upset with me when I said if they wanted to do it that way I would run my tank to nearly empty and then fill up with cheap fuel and that the expenses bill would go up by x-amount. Fortunately the EMS read out in the XC is good enough to allow me to provide reliable data to back the claim up.

Just to prove it... And yes, if @AY Mod can fix it an "ouch" button and a "groan" button would be really useful

Hey! Slightly OT, but I just splashed out for my first £100+ fill of diesel. This time last year I thought that was impossibly insane too...

When Britt Alcroft held the franchise she would do the same - licence in perpetuity - for the likes of a model railway club with a TTE layout; her logic was that it promoted brand awareness, effectively free advertising. The next owner of the brand - won't name them - took a totally different approach. They quoted me £300 a DAY (2-day show £600) to brand our kids layout as TTE. When I pointed out that any money we took went straight into the Air Ambulance collecting box and that in an exhibition season we typically "donated" about £150 the response was that it wasn't their fault that I wasn't running my business profitably. Hence we don't have a TTE layout, we HAD a Children's layout.

Hang on, hasn't that happened once already? Didn't it all go wrong and SK was brought back to sort it out?

True, I had forgotten that aspect of it. Couldn't get away with it today though, I'm sure VAT would be applied.

Just to throw something else into the mixture, and harking back to several things said further up this thread about the following: Why US outline is cheaper producing models for the end user to assemble for himself Level of detail Talking to friends in the last few days, apparently several decades back it wasn't unknown for US firms to do the same. Apparently you could buy cleaned up mouldings from the likes of Athern and assemble your own sets of freight cars for a fraction of the cost of the finished cars because the end user was doing the final stage of the production process. IMPORTANT: I have no practical experience, just repeating what I was told. Back before the Old King died (i.e. when I was a teenager) I had a couple of Triang-Hornby CKD models. CKD I hear you ask! Completely Knocked Down. Possibly Triang got the idea from the likes of the US producers who used to do this"kit form" production. The one I remember most was assembling the EM2 Electra kit where - iirc - I had to do everything including fitting the rather delicate copper (or were they brass) strips onto the moulding of the motor bogie. There were also a lot of the old Mk1 coaches in the mix, I'm sure others will remember what else there was in the range. And there we were saying "models that the end user gets to put together". There's nothing new under the sun. That said, having had to strip a couple of Hornby's Maunsell 48' rebuilds to fit working tail lights (and a Bachmann Pill Box brake van too) I somehow question the wisdom of trying that trick with today's models. I think some of the moulded tabs wouldn't last long in the hands of some less experienced and capable modellers and given an already dodgy approach to customer satisfaction as has also been mentioned here it might not end well if they tried.

Gulp! That reminds me of that appalling interview that the Lima CEO did shortly before they bit the big one. Challenged about the "useless" pancake motors Lima were using and the fact that there was a flourishing trade in fitting CD player motors in their place his response was "...but we're building models for display cases, why do we need to fit decent motors..."

I lived there for a while in the early 90, did numerous home layout tours and became a regular operator on a basement N Gauge layout. I catalogued some of my experiences in a blog to keep other Club members entertained during Lockdown 1.0. Blog can be found here It is indeed a fascinatingly different world to the one we are used to in this country but the above is a pretty good description of one of those layouts. I'd like to say "hold my beer and watch" but the reality is that you just couldn't do it in the footprint of a Brit house and the concept of operations that the Yanks use is so radically different from ours that I would be very surprised if any self respecting American would want to depart from what they currently do to embrace the UK approach to operation. The US way is for a driver to pick up a train in a classification year (read as fiddle yard) and drive it through a series of "industries" dropping off and picking up cars (trucks) as they go and ducking when the despatcher sends a passenger train to make them clear the running line. All this not timetable driven, rather it's driven by a traffic generator programme like Wagonflow. The closest I've come to it in the UK is on a big clockwork tinplate layout that expects to be at Warley the next time it happens. There we "rehearse" by renting a community centre hall for a weekend but the principle difference is that the operators are "signalmen" sending trains between stations rather than drivers taking a train the whole length of the layout. Trying to adopt the US approach on a UK layout would need both drivers AND signalmen - a big ask to get enough manpower to turn to to make a layout with say 5 towns on it work. Johnster's second point has gotten me thinking, obviously I knew that the US market is very different (and very much cheaper) than the UK market - or at least it was back then - but I had never given much thought as to why, simply writing it off to Rip-off Britain (I worked in IT so was quite used to the price differentials in PCs and so on). But you're right Sir, the average US layout (even a small one) does indeed have high tens of locomotives and high hundreds of freight cars all belonging to the layout owner so it is in the best interest of the manufacturers to keep the prices as low as possible to fuel that market. Question: what could we do to that would drive that sort of market in the UK? Sadly, I fear not a lot...

I responded "funny" to this but the the reality of the complex and convoluted relationship between Kader (Bachmann's parent company), was it Sander Kan (Hornby's outsourced production company in China) and Hornby themselves it's a bit like the opening credits of Stingray - Anything could happen in the next half hour...

Ok, have to add my two penn'orth... Based on my items recently completed: 4COR (I managed to get a friend to sort out my Phoenix kit just before lockdown) Based on things currently cluttering my workbench: A revision of the Railroad 33 pre-fitted with an Orbit Track Cleaner - remember them? The SR Maunsell TPO and Stowage Van - I've just acquired the Phoenix kits for these 2 coaches. A Bulleid/Raworth CC1/CC2/CC3 Booster Loco (electric) - likewise a recent acquisition of a badly started CC3 kit (that's the original Class 70 in new money) Things further up the thread that have caught my eye: S160 Maunsell Z New multiple units 4CIG/4BIG - Should be in the previous list as I have a Southern Pride kit to build I've recently rekindled my relationship with the Withered Arm and some WR 1st generation DMMUs would get my attention Things that I think have been neglected for far too long Mk1s in maroon with Western Region numbers - I've only ever seen the Model Rail "specials" they did some years back, not all WR coaches were Chocolate and Cream. Interesting thoughts here as always, here's looking forward to the announcement which I will look at a couple of days after the internet has recovered from the initial onslaught... Elliott

I am helping the widow of a friend dispose of his collection of bit and I have been given a DC Kits Class 71 kit which appears to be complete apart from its instructions. I have emailed DC Kits and it seems that the master for the instructions were lost in a computer crash a long time ago. Does anyone have a copy of the instructions needed to build the kit? The state and quality of the resin body is pretty good and it seems a shame to skip the kit for the lack of a decent set of instructions. Please PM me if you can help. TIA Elliott

Morning Jon You would be surprised what is available these days. We have a couple of 0-9 and 0-16.5 modellers in the Fareham Club so I get exposed to quite a lot of this stuff, plus as a Southern modeller I have taken a lot of interest in the kit EMU scene and there are a lot of 10' wheelbase motor bogies available that can be/already come DCC chipped and are sufficiently "low profile" that they will fit under the floor of an ordinary coach - so fitting them under the floor of a wagon shouldn't be an issue. Spud, Tenshodo and Black Beetle are names that readily spring to mind. If you have a DCC'ed 5-plank in each cut of wagons then the issue becomes how you synchronise the movement of the wagon and the NG loco. The way we chewed over doing it was to consist the wagon in the cut and the narrow gauge loco so that as the loco moved backwards the wagon cut moved forward into the siding. BUT the trick was going to be in how you DCC'ed the NG loco - which I am sure you will agree would be near-on impossible with that kit. The secret was that the line would almost certainly be operated "one engine in steam" which meant that there could only ever be one loco in the NG exchange siding at a time. The plan we hatched was to DCC the NG track, not the loco(s). Does that make sense? You fit a chip under the baseboard that feeds the entire NG complex and - let's say that chip's address is 003 - you drive loco 003 to control any movement on the NG sidings but when you want to do the hawser shunt you consist 003 and - let's say - loco 100 which is the first cut of three minerals and then perform the move. If you wanted to be really gucci you would also have a motor that you consist into the mix that caused the hawser to move at the same time. What you need to know about me is that I "plan" from an exhibition point of view so: The screen/flip card/whatever that tells the punter what is going on would announce that the NG loco is now using the hawser to move the empties on the upper level. The punter would see the NG loco, the hawser and the cut of 3 wagons all moving in a synchronised way and would register that fact, The fact that neither the loco nor the wagons are physically attached to the hawser is largely irrelevant because the brain will fill in the gaps and see what it wants (or expects) to see. Have you ever come across wire fencing on an N Gauge layout? Our usual "method" for that is to plant small square posts (usually welding rod) in a straight line - and that's it, no wires; the eye simply fills in the missing details for you which in this case means that the punter's eye will "think" it can see the 1" diameter strops that attach the loco and wagons to the hawser. After all, 1" strop scales down to 0.3mm - that's little more than one strand of a 16/2 wire... Hope that's given you more food for thought. Elliott

Hi Jon and everyone else who has contributed to this thread. I stumbled into it quite by chance earlier today when I was trying to answer a question about "shunting practices" on the email discussion forum on something called sremg.org.uk and being somewhat familiar with Bilton Junction I was actually looking for a track diagram to illustrate the point I was making there and I discovered this thread. I am a semi regular RM Web user but not in this sort of arena. As it happens, the point I was trying to discuss in SREMG is actually what I believe is an unanswered question you have from page 6 of this thread about how the main line sidings and full coal wagons were shunted after the loco and empties had left! OK, some context. My father, Ernie Cowton, was born in 1925 and grew up in Bilton, initially down near Dragon Junction but latterly in King Edwards Drive. He was at primary school with the son of the signalman at Bilton Junction, I have the name but I probably shouldn't publish it here because of GDPR. Anyway, in his early days he spent a lot of time "hanging out" with his friend in the signal box and ultimately on the narrow gauge complex as well. He told me that he had driven at least one of the NG locos - possibly Spencer, I can't rightly remember that detail. Anyway, he left Harrogate Grammar School at the age of 14 and took up an apprenticeship at York Works but very quickly decided to volunteer at the age of 16 (1941) to join the RN where he spent almost the rest of his working life. In my youth my grandparents still lived in Bilton and we were frequent visitors there. Sadly he died in January 2018 but for some years he and I nurtured an idea that we might build a model of the Exchange Sidings at Bilton and I have done some early research into the project including getting copies of the 25" to the mile OS maps. What I am going to present is a note of a conversation he and I had several times over the years, on one occasion in the 70s actually standing on the site of the SG sidings. So, what he told me was that the loaded standard gauge wagons were brought in to the sidings - and the description Jon posted some time ago about the consist of the train chimed with what he told me. The loaded wagons were pushed into the siding that was closest to the down SG running line heading north towards the viaduct and the brakes were pinned down. This siding was inclined so that at its northern end it was very visibly above both the running lines and the outboard siding that was on the edge of the retaining wall. Shortly before he died I attended the funeral of one of his sisters and took the opportunity to visit the site (and the Gardners Arms) to see what I could see, because I knew what I was looking for I was able to make out that this, although now seriously overgrown, was still visible to me. You can sort-of make out this raised siding in this photo I took when I was in Bilton for my Aunt's funeral: So, after the SG train had departed and the Gas Works crew were ready to start unloading the SG wagons they followed the following procedure: A cut of about 3 wagons were uncoupled from the other wagons The brakes were gradually released until these wagons ran down under gravity over the scissors crossover coming to rest more or less over the coal drops These wagons were then unloaded through their floor doors through the drops into the NG hopper wagons. Once empty, the wagons were connected to a continuous steel hawser which the NG loco could also attach to on the lower level. The NG loco would then slowly drag the hawser and thus the empty SG wagons into the outboard siding. The process then repeated with the loaded NG hoppers being removed when full and fresh loaded SG wagons run down and emptied When finished the inclined siding was empty and the level siding contained a row of empty 7-plank coal wagons and the whole process could be run again with the arrival of the next train of full coal wagons and empty RECTANKS. Sadly we never got to take this plan anywhere beyond an armchair exercise and I became firmly entrenched in the LSWR/SR/BR(S) scene as well as the MRTV project, but maybe one day when I get my round tuit I could have a go... Jon, can I congratulate you on your modelling, particularly those coaches; as a weathering and painting demonstrator I am both impressed and jealous! And can I ask you a question? In the back of my mind I am sure that I have seen a diagram of one of those NG hoppers that had a bogie at one end and a single axle at the other. Am I right or am I mis-remembering something else? Unfortunately all my books are in store pending a house move so I have no ability to easily check at the moment. Well done, keep up the good work, I am now following this topic! Elliott

Oh trust me, it isn't for the want of trying...

Unfortunately John, that's my particular problem. I provide freight stock to a large exhibition layout. When I take the smaller layouts out (for example Nictun Borrud) to show I use the Kadees and we have set that layout up with electromagnetic uncoupling. When the big layout (Soberton) goes out I have to refit the tension lock couplers to be compatible with the rest of the stock on the layout. I would post links to the layouts but the Club's website is "undergoing maintenance"

Morning all Somewhere back up this thread there was a discussion about "creating" NEM pockets so that the older stock could be fitted up with push-fit kadees and we did indeed find a couple of sources of suitable materials. Well, these have just popped up on my newsfeed on another social media platform and I thought it worth sharing with this august assembly. https://www.steeldragongames.co.uk/store#!/00-Gauge/c/118269339