Wickham Green too

To be a contender for the biggest seller it only has to be on sale this year - not necessarily on the shelves / layouts ! 😕

Ah - but the Dia.1/108 announcement may be just round the corner ! 😁

According to my maffs 153 + 153 = 155 ....... though I'm sure that's been mentioned further back in this thread - or was it a similar one elsewhere ??!?

So it should be easy to remove the side feed from the model, plug any remaining hole and and disguise with a dab of matching paint. ( There is, of course, the possibility that 1741 gained a side feed boiler before a repaint into black .... but until evidence emerges, we can stick with top feed ! )

... a rare sighting ! ...... clearly there was an effort to get rid of that 'blemish' and they mush have been trimmed flush and welded up ( and new dome covers provided ) long before the war.

.... or 'some parts believed pasted on a railway bothy wall at unknown location' ... 😀

I think you'll find the Buckjumpers to be contemporaries of the T3s and rather more numerous, widespread and long lived ..... Accurascale would be sensible to assess sales of one pre-grouping type before committing to a second.

Again, a word of caution ....... I'm not aware of any former top feed D1 or E1 where the top feed flange is visible - as per 1749 model. What we perceive to be the 'dome' is only a thin cover which - normally, at least - hides the blanked-off flange. Any pugging of holes in the dome or boiler side should be easily disguised with matching Precision Paint or similar ............ if nobody takes the plunge into some real modelling (!) the market's going to be flooded with returned 1741s ( and, on what grounds would they be returned when they've been supplied as illustrated ??!? ).

Don't be so hasty - all top feed boilers were modified to side feed over time so it's PROBABLY the top feed which is wrong ..... a contemporary photo is needed !

... so could be left open for a breeze in sweltering weather : you'd get unbelieving comments if you did that on a model ! 😊

According to Bradley, 1502 received a new set of frames* in 1938 and these had the visible deep section below the smokebox extended forward to incorporate lifting holes before angling down to the buffer beam - Rails are NOT offering this locomotive. Could the models' alleged difference refer to the presence or absence of cylinder bypass valves ( I guess that's what they were ) conspicuous above the bogie on early photos - these seem to have been removed shortly after the 1927 rebuilds were done, leaving a couple of short stubs : needless to say they were always in shadow so their exact form is less than clear. * Two further sets of these frames were built at the time but were not used complete : bits were used to patch 1246, 1487 & 1545 during the war but seemingly not the conspicuous front ends.

After eighteen years, it'll be impossible to find those in the jungle ! ☹️

My reading of John Harvey's 'Southern Style - After Nationalisation' suggests that 31487 retained 'SOUTHERN' on the tender when renumbered in June 1948 - and the only D1s listed as gaining 'BRITISH RAILWAYS' in 'sunshine style' were s1735 ( February ), 31246* ( May ), 31470, ( April ) & 31743 ( July ) ....... I've asked John if he still believes those details to be correct or whether differing information on 31487 has come to light since publication. * yes, that loco again !

I'd love to know what Sir David thought of the matter !

Ah - but is it Dapol's error or a faithful rendition of an error by Ashford ?

May have been all that were left at the time - apart from 4721's companion that day : -

They were probably only removed when they got in the way !

Looking at the Rails website - that would appear to be 1741 ............... yes, it's an error nobody seems to have spotted ! The E1s started out with top feed but for some reason the D1s were given side feed ... needless to say some boilers got interchanged but all were eventually equipped with side feed. No locomotive of any type on any railway ever had top AND side feed - apart from some obscure specimen that someone will now point out ! ☹️

Doesn't seem to be listed on http://www.cs.rhrp.org.uk/se/results.asp !

Of course the scanning barriers don't collect the ticket once used so the long extinct 'USED TICKETS' bins ought to make a comeback !!?!

Bournemouth return ticket bought from an old fashioned ticket office at Winchester a couple of weeks ago was a new-fangled floppy thing about three times the size of a credit card and with something that looks like a teabag instead of a magnetic strip !

A selection from the last fortnight or so - mainly preservation : - Winchester , Corfe & Wareham : 3/6/23 Midsomer Norton South : 5/6/23 Cranmore : 7/6/23 Chelfham : 10/6/23 Minehead : 11/6/23 Exeter : 12/6/23

What I guess you're referring to as 'current type' ( credit card size ) seems to be rapidly on the way out in turn !

Southern Covcars ran with absolutely everything in vacuum-brake days until four-wheelers were - eventually - banned in passenger-carrying trains*. According to the 1960 General Appendage there were restriction on where vehicles with a wheelbase less than 15' could be marshalled in a train, but these do not, of course, apply to any of the Southern-built Passenger Vans. * That was many years before someone thought of Pacers !

According to Mike King, the sliding door is the only 'trifling' difference ............ of course these are twin lavvy vent coaches so make sure you choose appropriate Dia 2102s to renumber. Looks like Dia 2110s ran in pairs for as long as Maunsell coaches ran in fixed sets : initially either end of three-set 203, four-sets241-7 and five-sets 327-30 though the number of intermediate vehicles could vary over the years.