Mad Carew Too

Well, like it or not, the steps in the new pictures are misaligned, and, I'm afraid, I too found the effect comic!

I am sure it was a simple mistake, easily rectified, and irrelevant to whatever accuracy merits or demerits the models might have upon release, but I am bound to agree with the point that it is probably best to check these things before posting point of sale pictures intended to entice!

An interesting link was posted to a critique on the Model rail forum.  I followed it.  I note the author has been "rubbished" as a result, but I also note that, if you strip away his negative tone, a number of accuracy points are raised.  These may or may not hold water, and they may or may not have been amended by Graham Muz and his team in the intervening period.  What I don't think does us credit is to discredit the points raised by attacking the man who posted them, instead of having an answer to these points.

It is really not good enough, I feel, to dismiss every query or concern over accuracy as negative whinging, rather than deal with the points, and, here, I fear that distrust of Mr Swain's motives has led people to dismiss his points out of hand.  They may, or may not, have some merit. 

Again, and we had all this over Oxford's Dean Goods, people need to be a bit more honest.  It seems odd, to me, that there should be so much resistance to feedback that is concerned with ensuring that a RTR release is as accurate as it reasonably can be, and that avoidable and unnecessary mistakes are avoided.  Logically, it seems to me, that to object to such feedback, one must be of the view that "wow, that's so pretty, and, if it's pretty enough, the accuracy can hang!".  Well, that is certainly a point of view, and I respect that.  What I don't see is much respect for the view that holds "hang on, chaps, if we could just avoid this inaccuracy or that, this good model could be a great one".  Sadly, I don't see much respect on RMWeb for the people who hold that view, either.

Not for the first time I express the wish that temperatures do not rise.  

Great work on those country folk.  Nicely toned, showing that less is more where colour is concerned. 

Pondering on your Indian sowars.  I don't know the regiment concerned, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the artist of the Camp advert had taken inspiration fro this picture, which, I believe shows troops in the earlier - Tell El Kebir - campaign of 1882 against the Egyptians, which you mention.

Thus we circle round to entraining cavalry.

 

Eventually.

 

By way of titles for General Managers.

 

Bill King's GERS Journal article (quoted above) said that knighthoods were rare for General Managers.  Might he be understood to mean "at the time"?  William Birt was knighted in 1897. Picking up on Poggy's point, how many of the knights mentioned were knighted later, and for how many of these might war service have been a factor? 

 

By the way, Gooch, I would say, is an exceptional case.

 

Funnily enough, in the same Journal edition as the Birt article is an article on the GE's role in the mobilisation of 1914.  This has some details of the "sort of committee of railway managers that worked on the strategic organisation plans for the railways in the event of war".  And, yes, the work was voluntary, and so, may have been recognised by the honours system.

 

War planning started at an early period, and really picks up at the time we were nervous of French invasion and the Volunteer Rifle movement was in full swing.  In January 1865 the Engineers and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps (ERVS)  was formed, and, by 1866 there was a 311-page time-table for special troop trains to show for it.  By 1905, annual revisions were instituted, and in November 1912 the general managers of leading railway companies were asked to form the Railway Executive Committee under the President of the Board of Trade.  

 

As to military rank, the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907 (we came across this earlier as the legislation that created the Territorial Army into which the Yeomanry and Rifle Volunteers were subsumed) provided for the ERVS to became part of the TA as the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps and, accordingly, military rank was conferred upon the senior railway staff involved (Lt. Cols and Majors).

 

The practical application takes us back to the question I raised earlier about cavalry entraining horses in cattle wagons.  The article gives many examples of GE military trains in 1914.  Numbers of horses are given, expressed to be moved by "x cattle wagons and Y brakes" (generally 2 brakes).  It is not clear from the article whether some horses were accommodated in the brakes, but it strikes me as highly unlikely that horses were put in passenger brake vans.  For one thing, I imagine that there would be plenty of kit to accommodate in the baggage compartments, such as the tack, and for another, I don't suppose the GE wanted to be left mucking out baggage compartments!.

 

On this basis, I have simply divided the horses conveyed per train by the number of cattle wagons utilised in order to determine the average number of horses per cattle wagon (given in parenthesis):

 

- 112 horses in 16 cattle wagons (7)

- 85 horses in 12 cattle wagons (7)

- 55 horses in 8 cattle wagons (6.8)

- 100 horses in 14 cattle wagons (7.14), in two trains

- 140 horses in 20 cattle wagons (7)

- 9 Officer's chargers in 3 horse boxes (3), and 84 troop horses in 12 cattle wagons (7) (cavalry)

- 6 Officer's chargers in 2 horse boxes (3), and 86 troop horses in 13 cattle wagons (6.6) (cavalry)    

- 144 horses in 21 cattle wagons (6.8) (horse artillery)

 

Now, it is possible, I suppose, that for peace-time manoeuvres the horses were not packed so tight, but these trains were planned in advance, so peace-time planners clearly had no problem with this number of beasts per vehicle.

 

So, now we know, 7 troop horses per cattle wagon.

 

If we assume a single peace-time Yeomanry Troop travelling in its own train, either because it needs to concentrate for training or because it is at CA for Royal escort duty, we can assume no more than 20 ORs (full establishment of a regular cavalry troop being 30), and, thus, 1 horse box (officer's charger) and 3 cattle wagons.  In terms of carriages, you might get away with a single composite, say 2 Third Class compartments, perhaps SNCOs & WOs in a Second Class compartment and a First Class compartment for the officer(s).

 

I would suggest a formation thus:

 

GE Locomotive (No.1 Class/T26 or Y14 (passenger braked)) / GE Brake Composite (6-wheel) or Brake Third and Composite (4-wheel) / GE Horse Box / GE Cattle Wagon / GE Cattle Wagon / GE Cattle Wagon / GE Full Brake

 

Problem solved!

Of course, this gets me thinking of how cavalry was conveyed by Indian Broad Gauge.

Fascinating stuff!

Indeed fascinating stuff.  I note the similarity between the German coach at Usambara and the British Ugandan railway coaches to the turn of the century Indian stock I have been looking at, though quit a difference in gauge.

Great work on the WN 4-wheelers.

While I wish any project well . I shudder to think of the business outcomes that could result. Oh and when the lawyers tell you shareholders agreements are neccessary , I shudder again. I've successfully been involved in two startups and when you have to bang a shareholders agreement on the table and or enforce it in the courts, the business will be long dead. Private people , especially in a hobby business will quite happily shout " sue me " and continue to be difficult

 

I personally think there is too much emphasis on the acquiring of moulds , the talk about injection moulding machines. The world is full of contract manufactures , people who , like , actually know how to run these things. It really matter not that it's produced in Bombay or Bognor in reality. The issue isn't Brexit or anything else , the U.K. Along with the developed world , simply isn't the place to make cheap stuff in a lockup , it's a place to make high quality dear stuff.

 

If people can source capital within their group, surely the key is to commission new CAD , commission tooling and simply reissue some of these designs to modern standards . An example is what happened in recent years in Irish outline 00 modelling , where a whole host of small suppliers now exist , both new rtr locos , new finescale rtr wagons , along side etched kits , resin etc, all serving a very niche market indeed all at the premium end of the market ( there's not a 15 quid wagon to be seen )

 

Hence my view that the idea of buying life expired moulds , and loading them into , life expired 2nd hand machines, seems utterly daft to me. It's in effect repeating exactly what CC tried ( what did Einstein say about insanity )

 

Money men should stick to providing money , use it to fund the creation and production of new detailed kits , if it doesn't stack up , it doesn't stack up.

 

Distribution into bricks and mortar establishments is old hat. The world has gone online, nor can you easily have both distributions strategies , as Hornby found out. Today a kit business should have a good website , modern payment. Processes , auto email updates, shipping updates etc. Etc. , all doable for reasonable money. Keep the retail margin in the production unit. Forget about retailer distribution. ( because you will give away 30-50'% of your margin and you will generate horrible channel conflict )

 

The issue is to prevent the disappearance of kits , not neccessaryily the maintenance of old moulds and machine run by some lad that will work in a lockup for tuppemce.

 

Do it right, sell them at the expensive end of the market , the evidence is there are plenty that will pay.

Whereas, I would never go into business with anyone who refused to enter into a shareholder agreement!

Lawyers are a symptom of human nature, not the cause of the problems.  In my experience very often the sensible and mature arrangements lawyers pen can avoid conflict, bullying or exploitation.

Good governance and a proper basis of agreement is not a sign of weakness or symptom of failure.  

At  the moment I am simply wishing that the GW Toad will be accurate and issue free to an extent yet to be achieved with Oxford's steam-age releases.  If they get that right, and I hope they will, then I might trust them with my hopes and dreams!

Interesting topic, I do agree that a little 0-6-0 tank such as the one in the film couldnt travel the distance of the 'Karachi run', but if she had been built as one of the broad gauge 0-4-2 engines you refer to, it seems more plausable to me, this is not unknown, after all I recall a diminutive 0-4-0 saddle tank which started life as a gallant 0-6-0 tender engine with 6'4" wheels!

I think we have to accept that "Victoria" is pure, improbable, fiction.

The more I look into this, the more improbable the whole film becomes.  Yes, a major and widespread tribal rising is a possible scenario, it happened in 1897, but it is the block houses and frontier forts in the passes that were attacked.  The idea that a major garrison town, set back some distance from the frontier, would be attacked is improbable.  Some tribal cavalry made a demonstration before the walls of one such town in 1897, but were promptly chased off.

Although narrow gauge railways were built after the last major tribal conflagration, to aid communication with some of the frontier posts, nothing like the Haserabad set up in the film, notionally part of the NWR's Broad Gauge network, was seen within Jezail range of the frontier.

Given that, I am thinking of a garrison town setting that is not the end of the line, as Haserabad was in the film, but some distance away.  I see it as somewhat like Quetta, perhaps with elements of Kohat and other garrison towns.

If possible, and space permits, my "Haserabad" would be the centre of a highly fictionalised NWF scenario, which compresses 100s of miles to present the journey from the frontier to rather less potentially turbulent lands. 

In one direction the double-track line climbs from Haserabad to a fortified tunnel, the other side of which is a ravine, with blockhouse, leading to the fortified terminal station.  The inspiration is the Bolan Pass.  Ideally I would have a station, based on Shela Bagh hard by the grand southern portal, based on the Khojak Tunnel.  On the other side the ravine would lead to the terminal station, on the Afghan border.  This would be something like Sanzal/Chaman, with a prominent blockhouse.

In the other direction, the line travels across the great Indus River via a version of Attock Bridge.

As if all this was not (over) ambitious enough, an alternative, single-track, route to Haserabad from the south would be provided, dramatically blast into the cliffs and crossing a ravine, like Chappa Rift. 

So the next challenge would be condensing this into a practical plan, without axing too much along the way....  

Painted the 1/87 (HO) and 1/100 scale figures for the rear of the village scene.

 

The idea is to have them a little more bleached than the full size figures nearer the front, and, indeed, for the 1/100 figures to be a little more so than the HO.  We shall see how they look in situ in due course.

They turned out well.  Very subtle.

Where are you going to put them?

Well, in the New Year I have to man-up and build some track, soldering FB to copperclad sleepers.  I am dreading tackling the points.

 

Far as I can see, you face much the same task, save that you will have 2 fairly minor (!), complications; you need a couple of 22mm track gauges and you will need to cut your own sleepers to length. 

 

Let's challenge each other to get cracking on some track next year!

Challenge accepted!

Off to put my Scotch and Rye down and lie down ... see you on the permanent way!

Only just noticed this thread, so apologies for commenting late.

 

Seems to me that the 'challenge' of a narrow gauge layout is just about the same level as the broad gauge one. My suggestion is that you would be best to stick with the original concept, but do a few little things to build up your confidence first. Split the problem down into component parts and concentrate on one or two at a time. This will make the challenge far less daunting. Track building would be a good place to start - have a go at soldering a short length of flat-bottomed track - and convert a wagon to run along it, for example.

 

Axle rod is available from several suppliers including Ultrascale and (in tube form) Eileen's Emporium. Just cut it to length. I think Alan Gibson will supply wheels with 21mm gauge axles if you ask.

 

If you are likely to take some time researching the stock for your model, why not try something a little more modern to start with. A small early railcar, for example. The scenery etc. wouldn't change a lot over the years, so you could actually run the layout in more than one period without any great problem. With a railcar, you could use something like a High Level motor bogie, which would be easy to assemble and very reliable. You could quickly get something running that way.

 

It is all too easy to spend a lot of time procrastinating or pretending that something else will be better to build in the short term. Stick with your original idea, which is very good - and it will all come together sooner or later. There may be a steep learning curve to start with, but we all go through that. There are loads of people on here who can help and advise as you go along.

Thank you for showing interest in this stalled project, and for those words of advice and encouragement; both are very important to me. 

I think you are quite right in everything you say and I feel quite inspired having read it.

Merry Christmas!

After previous issues I'm now left to wonder if you are trolling?

Nah, that's not trolling.

That's trolling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaqC5FnvAEc

The 14XX, good though I am sure it is, has stuttered into life with a couple of issues.  Fair enough to hope the vastly more complex King will have a smoother ride and be a better product, and not be abandoned in the attempt.  It does, after all, have to top an excellent Hornby version, and that is quite a hill to climb.  I would be amazed if there have not been some concerns or even second thoughts along the way.  But there we are.   

The only "issue" I can see is the discourtesy repeatedly extended to anyone who makes constructive criticism of a large manufacturer's or retailer's product. 

I would hate to see a grumpy but vocal minority drive this site from a credible source of prototype information and useful assessment of RTR output to a vapid shop window. It seems to me that there are clearly certain people who now are 'gunning' for Edwardian and will leap on pretty much everything he posts, and, frankly, I question the tone from the top on that score.  We all make the odd ill-judged comment, but generally his posts appear to be measured, constructive and well-informed, or, acknowledge the limits of his knowledge. He has consistently posted from a pro-manufacturer standpoint, too.  I admire him for sticking to his principles in the face of some pretty unattractive behaviour and trying to bring informed debate to RTR topics.  I know that helps me. I also know of a number of people who are reluctant to contribute such information or constructive criticism because they know they will get shouted down, and a number who have simply moved on because of it.  I think the site is/will be the poorer for this, and I dislike the site operates to impose conformity on some issues.

There, that's enough of this.  Things seem to have been patched up for now, and that is good.  It is, after all, the season of peace and goodwill. I hope people resist the temptation to put down fellows members when the New Year rolls round. Grown men have better things to do than argue about trains!  One of the things that attracted me to RMWeb is that it was a friendly site.  Let's not lose that or see it qualified as friendly only to those who toe the line, whatever the line is.

So I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

And remember ... none of this is really worth losing our tempers over .....

Best wishes to all.

I have been thinking of an Indian-based model railway (just thinking - no more than that so far!).   For scale my inclination is 4 mm due to availability of figures, although 3 mm fits the gauges better (16.5 mm = 5'6", 9 mm = metre approx, 6.5 mm = 2'6" approx).    S scale (1:64) is another possibility - so 16.5 mm is approx metre gauge, and 12 mm is narrow gauge- and could 1.72 figures be used?  

 

For 4 mm, I am thinking of 9 mm narrow gauge.   There were some of these lines on the northwest frontier.   Have a look at Red Box model soldiers in 1:72 - both British colonial and Afghan warriors.   There are a couple of possibilities for outside frame chassis  - Rocco HOe 0-6-0 and Graham Farish 08 class diesel shunter with cylinders and motion available from RT models, or for smaller 0-4-0, Minitrains F&C.   I recommend joining the 009 Society where a number of members have built models of colonial lines. Charlie Insley exhibited his Fort Whiting at Warley this year.  

 

Good luck,    

 

Edward

Thank you!

I, too, feel much more comfortable modelling in 4mm.

S is a 3/16th to 1 foot.  This is a little shy of 5mm to 1 foot.  I suspect that will be too large for most nominally 1/72nd figures.  The S Gauge Society suggests that 28mm wargames figures are suitable (http://www.s-scale.org.uk/figures.htm).  If so, these will be very noticeably bigger than 1/72nd.  This is a minefield, however, as the nominal scale expressed in millimetres (which refers to the distance from the sole of the foot to the eyes, and not to the overall height of the figure) can be misleading as there is plenty of "scale creep" in the wargames world. 

For 4mm, quite a few nominally 1/76 figures are too tall.  Edwardian explored this at some point on his Castle Aching topic, comparing Mike Pett figures with Dapol and Staddens,the latter being scrupulously to scale.

Some nominally 1/72 figures can be more like 1/76, e.g. some of the older Airfix military figure sets, though the trend is towards being taller than the nominal scale.

Where does that leave us?  Well I am pretty relaxed at the prospect of using 1/72nd figures for 4mm.  For the military side of the North West Frontier, I would be cautious about the Red Box, as their colonial era figures are very crude.  For Pathan tribesmen, the best set is the Esci 'Muslim Warriors', though I think they are out of production and most of the set are for the Sudan! 

For British and Indian Army, I would recommend HaT Industrie figures.  Though they don't do any British Infantry, the majority of infantry in any formation were Indian.  Edwardian and I have both swapped heads with the WW1 Indian infantry, which, are another option for the 1900s, and, again, in his Castle Aching topic, he posted comparison shots including the HaT WW1 figures.  I think he posted a comparison shot of one of these 1/72 plastic figures with Stadden's 1/76 Edwardian civilians, which might be a useful comparison for you?.

For 1/72 wargames figures, see http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/PeriodList.aspx?period=34 and http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=2015

I am inclining to a mini-project in 4mm, based on metre gauge in Rajasthan, rather than NWF, and using 12mm track, even though not a perfect match.  I have not yet looked into narrow gauge. 

My main aim remains Indian Broad Gauge, but I remain daunted and short on sufficient prototype information for the period.

Best of luck with your endeavours!

... or the opportunity to do a little modelling ? How hard can a box with knobs on be?

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

Well, apparently, harder than you'd think!

Alternatively, leave as is and super-detail the track with Geoscenics Ash600, 200g for £10: http://www.geoscenics.co.uk/railway.html

This proves something I have long suspected, people will "like" any pretty picture.  Uncritically.

 

We appear to be near release.  It is clear from these pictures that there are outstanding issues.

 

- The ashpan.  Where is it?  It has been mentioned several times.  Why have we had no response from Hattons?

 

We are told simply that 1466 has been carefully measured.  Does it not have an ashpan?  I think that most steam locomotives tend to need one.  Where is yours?

 

The issue of liveries has not really been addressed:

 

- Given that the pre-war liveries appear to pre-date the physical changes that the tooling represents, can Hattons show us the evidence they have of their tooling matching all the livery/identity options announced?

 

- Can Hattons give the dates for these versions?  It is all very well saying, "we did not  tool for 'as built' because one tooling can support all liveries", but it does not follow that the chosen tooling can support the dates those liveries were applied!  

 

If the tooling represents physical changes made in, say, 1942, the model is no more capable of representing an earlier period just because it wears an earlier livery that it may, or may not, still have been wearing in 1942.

 

- It is frankly disingenuous to dismiss the 'as built' condition as "every minor variation".  Is it not much more likely that the curious and apparent miss-match of early livery and late condition that Hattons has chosen to model is a "minor variation"?

 

- What about the handrails on the cab?  The rail should end at the knob, not stick through it.  Obvious from the photographs. Perhaps this can/will be fixed, but given the imminence of the release, perhaps we can ask for an assurance that it will be?

Well, it is a pity that Fat Lieutenant's style might have detracted from his message, because, I, too, thought they were reasonable points.

There is no need to inflame the highly inflammable "pro" lobby, not least because the cold water buckets seldom seem to be emptied in their direction. 

Really, Season of Good Will, guys.

I gather that these are the production models, so, much as I am surprised to find that the production model omits the ash-pan and has those untidy hand-rails, it seems that it is what it is. 

As Andy Y and Edwardian said, people will or will not buy this model, no doubt having considered their needs and the various pros and cons of the finished product.  What I find disappointing is the militant tendency to rubbish the quite sensible queries raised about the model; reasoned critique should not cause others to kick off.  As tomparryharry said "Kicking off on here makes us look like a bunch of yokels".  

So, it is what it is.

Buy or don't buy.

But, let's not be rude to one another about it.

There has been mention of missed opportunity on many occasions in this thread. I run a business and the word opportunity is very misunderstood. If we make an investment there are different types of opportunity: to express them simply:

• To make a profit;
• To break even;
• To make a loss.

 

An opportunity is not necessarily a good one - it may be bad. Hattons are in procession of the information of what sells and what does not - perhaps they are able to look at their history of what sells and decide that an as built loco would fall into either of the last two categories. If that is the case then it is unlikely that they would invest: breaking even is a very risky decision. If the first case applied I am sure they would have gone for it.

 

I say this as somebody that would have bought an original loco, but I am fully respectful of their decision not to do so.

 

As an aside: a 517 would be lovely.

 

Roy

Fair enough points, and important to make them.  Generally, yes, one would respect the decision.

I wonder, though, because Hattons evidently felt that models in the 1932-1934 and 1935-1942 liveries would sell.  It is the suspicion that they may have calculated that enough sales to pre-war orientated modellers would nevertheless ensue, either through ignorance or deliberate compromise blindness on behalf of modellers (not that I would criticise any modeller's decision to buy one and run on a pre-war layout, it's a personal choice).

A 517 would be lovely!

While I wouldn't have used an inflammatory word like "bilge", most of the unattractive language here, I have begun to notice, tends to travel to, not from, those not uncritically overjoyed by whatever the RTR manufacturers hand down from, as it were, on high.

It is also noticeable how people here clearly feel they have licence to indulge in some of the choicer language and in a kind of low-level bullying, when it's pro-manufacturer.

Well, I would say that, wouldn't I, because I agree that it is a shame that we do not have the tooling to match the pre-war liveries. There are, as Fat Lieutenant observed, a reasonable number of pre-war GW branch line or branch junction layouts around, so "as built" is hardly an obscure choice for this prototype.  There is, perhaps, a touch of opportunism in selling the later condition body in early liveries, even if, for a handful of cases, this might have been prototypical. 

It is undoubtedly a missed opportunity.

I wouldn’t worry.  On the Locomotion Dean Goods topic, having stifled any further critical input, they’ve been reduced to discussing something called a “Clan”, so we are scoring relatively high on the Relevancometer.

You're out of date there, they're on to the Third Reich now.

Honestly, some people have no sense of irony!

Anyway, I, too have contemplating Mikkel's picture.  I was thinking, as I suspect were you, 'that right hand chassis looks as if it could fit under a small wheeled Victorian tender engine"

I wouldn’t worry.  On the Locomotion Dean Goods topic, having stifled any further critical input, they’ve been reduced to discussing something called a “Clan”, so we are scoring relatively high on the Relevancometer.

I have a strange sense of deja vu

Buying as a basis for conversion is one thing.  Buying this under the delusion that this model is fit for purpose as a DG OOB is quite another!

At least anyone who troubles to look up comments about this release will be forewarned.

Let us hope the various issues identified will be corrected.  Got to ditch that dodgy cab, I reckon.

 

Or to look on the bright side, the Oxford Rail model may not be exactly correct for any single specific loco at any given time ... but it's nearly right for all of them, all the time!

 

 

I fear you would have us live in a fool's paradise -  these models are nowhere near close enough to portray any class member accurately.  Too many basic mistakes and inconsistency.  Even better documented than climate change, I should think, and, yet, there are still deniers!

Most certainly not, the washouts would have to be raised. but the knob can have an offset base, on the stub side, that fits the hole, with the skirt covering the gap. The offset peg only has to locate the knob, and any slight misfit, could be sealed with an acrylic filler that will not harm the paint. It would level the handrail where it is, and require new washouts to be fitted.

 

In case you cannot follow the idea of the cranked knob, the drawing shows the idea, which I used to completely correct the Hornby examples, but seems beyond their designers to grasp. The top of the knob remains exactly as normal, no crank or bend.

 

Cranked over handrail knob.jpg

 

For home production, grasp the knob in a pin chuck, and saw off the stub, then align the hole with the base to be able to drill a hole in the are at 90 deg to the wire. Drill out with a .5 mm drill and solder in a new stub.

 

For a CNC lathe or machine centre it is done by offset centre as usual.

 

It might be possible to drill out the washouts and plug, and just paint the tiny top area, which would be hidden by the wire somewhat, and just drill and fit new washout castings on the correct line.

 

Stephen

Great idea, provided Oxford supply a free lathe with every Dean Goods.

Might be cheaper for them than retooling from scratch!

That 4mm Dean Goods is the bee's knees from normal viewing distances

That's right "from half a mile away with one eye closed"!

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

I cannot possibly justify a blue locomotive based in Reading, so must not buy one!  

[Repeat until convinced]

Well done, Hornby, well done!

An attractive design, and a genuine pre-Grouping release in the most opulent of the gorgeous liveries of the day.  I will be unable to resist.  No. 308, here I come!

Thank you, Hornby, thank you.

I'll admit to being excited at the possibility of one in LBSC umber livery!

I could be converted.

Frankly, I'd succumb.