64F

If you use the website and select the scale, then order "new to old" the new announcements come up first. I agree a new announcements page would be useful though.

In my teenage spotting days at Drem circa 1988-91 it was relatively rare to see a 26. They occasionally showed up in lieu of a 47 (usually 47017 or later 47210) on the Millerhill-Oxwellmains cement trips, but other than that they tended not to venture south of Blindwells Opencast on the ECML during that period. Obviously engineering trains would be an exception.

I remember seeing that going to visit my Gran, and getting my parents to stop so I could photograph it (luckily I had my camera, unluckily I was a rotten photographer and the camera was awful...) It was 26029 which came a cropper on the catch points running down on the Grantshouse up loop with an electrification train, and was withdrawn as a result: http://www.scot-rail.co.uk/photo/scaled/3899/ Class 31s in Edinburgh were as rare as 26s in Newcastle, if not more so. I only ever saw one, delivering a HST power car at Craigentinny and immediately heading south light engine.

Artists impressions are on Oxford's website - I hadn't found them earlier. The Duple Britannia looks to be a 1959-60 front entrance type. The Maestro is evidently an accident victim repaired on the cheap... I really hope they sort out the mismatched bumpers before production.

Hooray a Meastro! Hope its a plain vanilla Austin one not an MG Turbo! The Duple Britannia changed quite a bit in appearance over its life (1956-62), and centre-entrance ones looked very different from the front-entrance models. Was there any more specific info about what style they are doing? Edit - oops, should have updated the stream for new comments before posting! Yes, those bumpers sound weird.

Interesting. On checking the website I see that there is no link to the page with the OO Consett wagons on it, but a Google search takes you direct to the ordering page. Maybe it is a mistake and they meant to take it down completely, but I got the normal confirmation email. Maybe I will email them to check that they will be able to fulfil the order.

I know that the direct order book is supposedly closed, but nevertheless I managed to pre-order these direct from KR a week ago.

That's my take on it too - it would be interesting to hear a trade perspective but I question whether model car collectors are really all that significant a share of the market when looking specifically at 1/76 scale. I know there is a collector following for 1/87 cars, at least for the finely detailed German plastic ones, but even the best diecast cars are pretty crude at such small scales and I'd assume that the vast majority of Oxford's 1/76 cars are sold to railway modelers or 1/76 bus/lorry collectors. If you compare Oxford's 1/76 and 1/43 ranges there is a clear difference in emphasis, with the 1/43 stuff being far more exotic and clearly aimed more towards car collectors. Of course many layouts involve an idealised version of reality and many collections overrepresent the exotic/interesting, which applies to scenic items like cars just as much as it does to rolling stock. However I don't suppose Hornby expect many customers to buy multiples of the W1/Duke of Gloucester/Cock o' the North/Rocket so these are priced to recover tooling costs and turn a profit in the first sales run. Oxford Diecast on the other hand certainly does want people to keep coming back for another car and they presumably expect the tooling to keep on earning for many years. For that reason I can't help but think an Austin Maestro will always be a better investment than an Aston Martin when it comes to 1/76 castings. At the larger scales obviously the reverse applies.

Mine too. A case in point, Oxford's Ford Sierra Cosworth. A bread and butter Sapphire would have been infinitely more useful, could have been sold in more colour variations and I suspect the individual releases would sell better as people would buy multiples. Oxford to their credit are much better than some other manufacturers at avoiding too much exotica, but their 1980s cars are disappointingly upmarket. On that subject, the painted-on silver sunroof is a customer option which I for one would be happy to forgo on future releases of the Vauxhall Cavalier...

Reviving a truly ancient topic in case anyone is currently searching for these and isn't aware of Rapido's forthcoming 1980-85 Chevrolet Impala/Caprice range in H0. They look like beautiful little models (but are priced accordingly...). Decent H0 North American cars always seem to be limited editions and I find that they sometimes sell out quickly, so I've pre-ordered mine. It really surprises me how difficult it is to get H0 North American cars, given that railroad modelling is a sizeable hobby and that the USA in particular is so car-orientated. You would think that there would be a decent market for them from model car collectors too. The Germans are spoiled for choice with H0 cars and recently we do reasonably well in the UK thanks to Oxford (albeit certain eras are better covered than others), so its odd that North America is so poorly served. The Oxford H0 cars are good value for money but most are a little early for my era, and perhaps exotic/sporty cars are over-represented compared to the bread and butter high-volume models that are more useful on a layout. The same applies to H0 buses - Iconic Replicas do some rather nice ones but they are also quite expensive and not easy to get hold of in the UK. They seem to like doing limited runs of just 504 models, even for Greyhound and Trailways liveries that I would have expected to be particularly collectable.

If Hornby have just fallen out with Hattons over some trading issue then that is annoying for those of us who have had our pre-orders cancelled, but ultimately a private business matter affecting one trader. However, if they have indeed introduced a tier system that restricts supply to a small number of (undeclared to the customers) favourite dealers at the expense of a swathe of other retailers including many of the struggling smaller shops, then I think that would be very bad for the hobby and, in the long term, for Hornby themselves. It would also be pretty disgraceful to do this mid-year and retrospectively, when many of their most loyal customers have had pre-orders in since January (or indeed January 2020) and now have to search around for a new supplier whilst hoping that the one we pick is one of the lucky few who are actually going to get the supplies they need. Surely the time to announce big changes to how they allocate products would be prior to an annual range announcement, rather than pulling the rug out mid-year on items that have been on order for up to 18 months. There will be plenty of people who decide not to renew their pre-orders at all.

If you do go down the black window route I suggest doing one window at a time, painting from the inside where as possible, and immediately wiping a scalpel around the edges on the outside in order to get a nice clean line and remove any overpainting. Small spots of stray paint should come off with a scalpel once it dries, but getting a neat edge is best done while it's wet.

Absolutely - some of these diecasts are transformed by a little bit of detailing to correct light shapes, trim etc. - the Oxford Ford Sierra Sapphire for example looks pretty poor out of the box but scrubs up into a really nice model with some work. If you are minded to detail them you can't go wrong with the usual trick of disassembling them and painting the body colour "window ledges" and wheel-arches matt black to disguise the thickness of the diecast and the lack of flush glazing on the sides, followed by a very light spray of matt varnish to take the shine off before reassembly. Personally I also repaint light coloured interiors like that on the Capri a darker colour too, along with any model-specific detailing. The Escort and the Rover particularly benefit from this treatment - I am not sure why Oxford give the Escort a rubber window gasket around the rear passenger windows but not the door windows, and the effect is further undermined by the "gasket" being several scale inches from the glazing, which on a white car it is especially noticable. The Rover P6 looks rather "fat" because of the extra thickness around the windows added to the prototypically rotund bodyside, but the black paint trick sorts that out.

They are on their way too, I've had the email from Merseyside.

60512 "Steady Aim" certainly ran on the Waverley Route later in its life as it spent most of 1963 at St Margarets before moving to Polmadie for its last 18 months, though of course it had the late crest by that point. During its early crest period it was a York engine so would have visited Edinburgh now and again - there is a picture of it in Roger Siviter's "Waverley: Portrait of a Famous Route" heading a Carlisle-Edinburgh stopper in April 1961 when it was still based at York. 60523 "Sun Castle" was an ER engine so not likely to have visited Scotland often, though that very subject was discussed in this thread: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/60827-haymarket-64b/page/38/

I'm glad a bit of 9963SF lives on on such an historic sister. The point about Stark's green is that it was exactly the same colour as the pre-1965 Scottish Omnibuses/SMT's green. For many years before Stark's was taken over by Scottish Omnibuses in 1964 a proportion of the fleet was painted in SMT light green and cream colours (albeit of a different layout with a higher proportion of cream) and carried SMT fleetnames in order to operate the jointly-operated Edinburgh to Dunbar service (itself part of the Edinburgh-Berwick-Newcastle group of services which were joint with United Automobile). After the takeover Scottish Omnibuses retained the Stark's name and livery layout for vehicles based at Dunbar until 1978. From 1965 the parent fleet stopped using that shade of green and instead used the darker "Lothian Green" shade instead, but the Stark's vehicles continued to carry their unique variant of the older SMT light green and cream until the new SBG corporate identity with the saltire logo took over. 9963SF was never a Stark's vehicle because it was built specifically for Scottish Omnibuses (albeit in lieu of a Bridgemaster ordered by Baxter's) in 1963, a year before Scottish Omnibuses took over Stark's, so it could not have been built in Stark's livery (which was, in any event, actually SMT livery anyway if that makes sense!). Round about that time the parent fleet was undergoing a bit of an identity crisis with many vehicles still carrying the old "SMT" names, a few (mainly coaches) "Scottish Omnibuses", then briefly "Scottish" was favoured before "Eastern Scottish" was settled upon. Therefore it seems odd if 9963SF had Eastern Scottish fleetnames in its delivery shot but then reverted to the earlier Scottish in service, but it was a fairly confusing period.

9963SF was the only AEC Renown in the Scottish Bus Group. When Scottish Omnibuses took over Baxter's of Airdrie in 1963 there were two AEC Bridgemasters on order, but AEC was keen to demonstrate the new Renown to SBG so a swap was arranged. At the time of its delivery at the end of 1963 Scottish Omnibuses had already dropped the traditional "SMT" fleetname and was using the shortlived "Scottish" name as depicted on the model, but by 1965 they had switched to "Eastern Scottish" with a darker green livery. (Light green was the SMT main fleet livery prior to 1965 and a version of it continued to be used for vehicles painted in Stark's of Dunbar colours until the late '70s, but Starks never had any 'deckers). Therefore, the precise period for this would be from December 1963 until its first repaint - I'd guess about 1965/66. There is a picture of it in dark green in 1967, and as already noted it was transferred to Highland Omnibuses in the 1973.

Could it be a pigeon train? I've seen pictures of some of quite impressive length and I seem to recall reading about pigeons being released at Riccarton Junction.

I suppose that makes sense, I've just never seen a picture of one on a coaching stock train before. C headcode and with a remarkably long and homogeneous rake of vans - so maybe a newspaper train diverted off the WCML? If it was taken on the same day as the shot of D5314 at the same place then WCML diversions would explain the need to shunt a passenger train.

For information about modern passenger train formations throughout central Europe I'd recommend vagonWEB - it has all sorts of useful information about train compositions over time and you can search for particular coach types to find what sorts of trains they are/were used in. For anyone wanting to model prototypical train formations it is a fantastic resource.

That's an interesting train, can anyone suggest what it is? Are those all vans, and why the brake tender?

A Gateshead A4 was it...?

Returning to the appearance of the Thompson pacifics, I think the rebuilt Great Northern was a handsome locomotive in its short-lived initial state with the Thompson cab. The curve of the running board under the cab was more in keeping with that at the front of the locomotive, and the bottom of the firebox below the running board provided a visual balance for the ugly exposed frames over the front bogie. Obviously it was not as graceful as the Gresley original, but it had a powerful, modern appearance. Reverting to the Gresley-style firebox and cab produced a visual disharmony between the utilitarian front and the flowing lines of the rear which spoiled the appearance of all the Thompson pacifics IMHO. That said, I look forward to my Steady Aim.

Further Googling reveals that bananas were being imported at Greenock (where there was a "banana discharge plant" at James Watt Dock until September 1964, seeing a brief final use during 1965 when Avonmouth dockers were on strike) and the rmweb topic "Banana/Fruit Traffic 40's/50's/60's" mentions Glasgow as one of the ports handling bananas, so maybe the Scottish banana traffic was more local in nature. The Geest ripery at Plains was served by the LNER so I imagine that the GER style vans would have been used. In addition to Geest, Fyffes had a big ripery at Garrion Bridge which opened c.1960s (not rail served, but presumably it replaced somewhere else that was).

Certainly there were banana ripening facilities in Scotland - Geest used to have one at Plains which was rail served. My guess (it is no more than that) would be that the vans worked north in ordinary express goods trains rather than unit trains. I'd also assume that by BR days the different types of banana van were so mixed that any type could show up.