Stefan88

I somehow doubt that there are HMRC agents prowling RMWeb looking for an expat to sell a couple hundred quids worth of model railway stuff and sneak it over the border, waiting at the airport dressed in trench coats and fedoras to pull them over in to the customs area and demand £40 VAT. Why should a foreign seller bother to collect VAT for a foreign country that has no tax jurisdiction over them? Whether a private individual or a business HMRCs policy is laughable and they're extremely fortunate ebay and amazon agreed to collect VAT for them. I can only guess that the £135 rule came in as a compromise for Royal Mail, Parcel Force and all the other courier firms due to the sheer volume of incoming parcels that would need to be checked, charged for and cleared, everything would grind to even more of a halt and a huge amount more warehouse space would be required.

Thanks for that, I have been tempted to order stuff from them a few times previously but they refuse to give a postage quote until after placing an order which has put me off, and at that rate they can forget it! I once bought some stuff from Norway and the tracking number was useless - it basically disappeared for 3 weeks until I got a letter from Parcel Force to pay the VAT and handling fee to release it from customs.

Looks like Zimo offer similar but simpler ~ http://www.zimo.at/web2010/products/decodergrosszubneu.htm

Either of these ESU adapters should be what the OP is after: https://www.esu.eu/produkte/zubehoer/adapterplatinen/adapterplatine-loksoundlokpilot-l/ https://www.esu.eu/produkte/zubehoer/adapterplatinen/adapterplatine-mit-stiftleiste/

Zimo have been prioritising chips for sound decoders, and of these prioritising for manufacturers like Roco and Hornbys European brands. Hardly surprising as sound decoders retail for a lot more, and manufacturers bulk order huge quantities. I have noticed lately that some of the German shops have started getting fresh stocks of some non-sound decoders. Strangely though I've not had any issues sourcing any ESU decoders, with the exception of the 21 pin NEM 660 Loksound 5 that seems to be much more popular than the other versions.

There are several, but the one I use is called MyGermany. You create an account (if I recall pay a nominal €1 one off fee), get given a German postal address (usually your full name followed by their business address) and then send all purchases you wish to that address. You then enter the order details as expected deliveries, either as a drop shipment (i.e. something to have sent straight on to yourself) or a normal shipment. For the latter, once you have received all the orders you wish to combine you then select all these orders and request a consolidation, once they have boxed everything up together you can select the required delivery service and have it sent to you in the UK. You get 60 days free storage for each order, after that it is €1 per day per order if I recall. Pre-brexit nonsense I used to combine between 10-20 orders in to a single shipment costing around €40-60 depending on weight and extra insurance. With each order having around €7 domestic postage instead of €18 international (or in some cases free domestic postage) it quickly saved an awful lot of money in postage over 4 years. But now the VAT rules apply so I've kept the orders a lot lower to keep it below the VAT threshold. Example, last consolidation was 5 orders and the combined shipping was €18. Currently I have 3 separate orders sat with them, a Liliput DMU, a nice tram and an LS Models coach, all ebay auction wins that otherwise would have had €18 postage each and VAT added or not sent at all as seller doesn't send to GB. I'll probably add some spare parts from Piko to this and then have it shipped over, likely to cost €18 with DHL. A few other points to mention about all this, firstly you specify the value of each order (so for example an LS Models DB 101 could be worth €10...), however if it arrives before you have entered it or they enter it as the parcel details don't match what you have entered they will put it in themselves and usually put in a low value (my Liliput DMU was entered as €10 as they put it in when the sender address didn't match what I had put in). If an invoice is included by the seller then they will put in the order total (incl. postage), hence a faulty Liliput DB 110 was put in as €59 instead of the €52 I had put without postage. Another one, some of the delivery services already come with insurance included but this isn't made clear. DHL for example already include insurance up to €500, so no need to buy the extra it offers when you put in the value (thus paying say €18 instead of €38).

I have found that most German shops (certainly all the ones I've been looking at that are still willing to send to the UK) are deducting the VAT, Austrian ones too. A couple of Dutch shops refused, so I immediately added them to my 'ignore' list, and a Swedish place will deduct it but won't give postage quotes until you order. Modellbahn Union, Schmidt-Wissen and Lippe are the cheapest on shipping in that order, the former with UPS and Schmidt with DHL (delivered by Parcelforce). There are then several more that still charge reasonable rates (i.e. between €13-18) such as Modellbahn Kramm, Menzels Lokschuppen, Hünerbein, Gütersloh. The freight forwarder I used to use extensively before the brexit nonsense came in to force haven't changed their prices, I can send stuff from them in Germany from €18, both drop shipment - i.e. send something to them and they send it directly on to me, or combined shipments. I have done both a few times now with ebay purchases where I didn't want to pay VAT on second hand goods and/or items costing less than international postage as well as from sellers that didn't want to post to the UK. And as long as the seller hasn't included an invoice, you can specify the value to the forwarder. Re. times, the slowest I've had was a coach from Italy sent with UPS - it was sat in their warehouse for 3 weeks! Total delivery time 3 and a half weeks all in, for something worth €40. A loco I bought from another seller in Italy at the same time also sent by UPS and that took a little over 2 weeks to arrive. They are however by far the cheapest way of getting anything out of Italy (don't pay more than €18). Austria is still on the pricier side of things and I now very rarely buy mail order from there. Memoba used to charge €11, then after the rules changes they doubled it pretty quickly after lots of UK orders below the VAT threshold, and then upped it again to €33! Going by their postage tables its cheaper to send it to the Falklands than to blighty! So I've completely stopped ordering from them. Modellbahn Diskont do it for €23.50 so I've ordered from them a few times as and when they had stuff I wanted on offer that I couldn't get anywhere else. Another point I discovered recently is that anything classed as 'dangerous goods' can no longer be sent to the UK. I bought 5 small tins of enamel paint from Elita in Germany thinking I could bundle these in with a few other orders at my freight forwarder. These are high quality RAL paints that you can't get in the UK, and they won't send them here either. It was only when they arrived at my freight forwarder that I discovered they can't be sent to the UK at all as they are flammable and therefore 'dangerous goods'. Only option is to return to sender at cost (would cost nearly the same as the order total) or to send to my mother in Austria (again they only offered a ridiculous courier amount that equalled the order total). Not sure what I'll do with this one. This seems to have been a more recent addition to the post-brexit nonsense as I was still able to get the paints sent to me in 2021. Its not all bad though, getting new sound decoders for between £65-75 a pop certainly beats paying UK prices for blank decoders! Even with VAT someone is making a killing there with their monopolies on the UK distribution of these!

Roco have been making a very decent one for over 14 years. Motor is in the tender, drives the last two axles in the tender and the 4th row driving wheels in the loco via a cardan shaft (and then the other 4 rows via the coupling rods). Definitely the best on the market in both detail and function. Märklin/Trix have done a new one (at least a 42 anyway) thats almost as good, but it is more expensive and you are forced to buy their rubbish sound decoders with it.

Thanks, but the checkbox was already selected and has been on every upload I've done. A quick read of the first 30 CV's suggests nothing has changed. Another upload of the settings I saved yesterday has restored it to behaving correctly again for now.

Zimo have had big problems sourcing microchips lately and have had to resort to using different types than they otherwise would (and reworking the PCBs to accommodate these), I wonder whether this could be related. The only issues I've had with my MS decoders has been the sound loading - several of them required many attempts to get the sound loaded as it kept breaking off saying there was an error. One of them didn't even work fresh out of the box and needed a few goes uploading the latest firmware using the powercycle feature to force it through as everything else was suggesting the decoder was dead. I got all of them working and loaded in the end and haven't had any issues thereafter. These were all MS450P22, MS440 & MS580s, so no wired versions.

After a few hours just sat on the track with the power off the 4020 EMU has reverted back to shooting off like a rocket and stopping like a Formula 1 car, completely out of sync with the sounds, so I've requested a decoder settings file from the sound supplier. Again, latest firmware has been loaded to the decoder. CV8=8 reset doesn't change anything other than the address.

Bit late but my experience is that there is not a huge demand for it, I picked up a huge amount of decent OO stuff on the cheap on German ebay a few years ago (before all the post-brexit VAT nonsense came in to force) and sold it on in the UK at a healthy profit. Some examples were various coaches such as Hornby Pullmans (the newer ones with interior lighting), Hornby LNER Teak (newer ones with NEM coupler mechs) and Bachmann Thompson LMS coaches for between €10-20 each, Hornby Northumbrian loco and coach set for €52, Bachmann A2 Peppercorn for €52, Dapol LMS 10001 for €66 (pre Bachmann release). Some others that were keepers included a Bachmann class 85 for €55 and 350 Silverlink EMU for €111. You will probably be able to shift it over there but you'd get a pittance for it. If you can't shift it before moving, perhaps list stuff on forums & UK ebay just before any visits back to the UK and take it with you in your luggage. I did this with some surplus Austrian models the last time I visited my Mum in Vienna and made myself over €600 spending money, and have drawn up a list of stock to take with me the next time if it doesn't sell over here.

For a while Roco did some wagons without the NEM sockets fitted, but there were packs to retrofit the sockets and mechanisms. https://www.roco.cc/rde/produkte/zubehor/sonstiges/40343-nachrustkinematik-fur-kurzere-h0-wagenmodelle.html https://www.roco.cc/rde/produkte/zubehor/sonstiges/40344-nachrustkinematik-fur-langere-h0-wagenmodelle.html https://www.roco.cc/rde/produkte/zubehor/sonstiges/40326-kurzkupplung-nachrustsatz.html The first two used to be available in pairs, not sure which you'd need without looking in to it more but I would guess the first one for shorter wagons. They are just plug and play and locate on the two round mounting lugs on the underside of the wagon at each end.

Wondering whether anyone else has come across this now that it has happened to a second LS 5 of mine. First was an Austrian Cityjet EMU that had an LS 5 factory fitted and a (vastly) better sound project from LeoSoundLab uploaded. Bought very cheap on ebay, but issues were that the sounds were all over the place (for example multiple sounds on a single F-key like say horn and door closing) and motor sounds didn't match what the EMU was doing, plus it only ran very slowly. I managed to get a decoder settings file from LeoSoundLab that rectified all of this and it ran perfectly with all the sounds behaving as they should. After a few months not being run it was back to being all over the place, again a quick load of the settings file with the Lokprogrammer resolved it, again. Dodgy decoder perhaps I thought, firmware had been updated etc. Now after a couple of months out of use the same issue has struck another of my models, this time another Austrian EMU (class 4020). This was one I upgraded to sound myself, bought a brand new LS 5 decoder from a shop in Germany who loaded it with a LeoSoundLab project and had been working perfectly for 2+ years. It is coupled to a second dummy unit fitted with a LS 5 Fx (function sound decoder) also running the same sound project but loaded myself having bought a Lokprogrammer in the mean time. So as well as shooting off rapidly rather than the prototypical acceleration it had previously, the sounds were out of sync between the decoders (the dummy still playing sound correctly). I didn't have a settings file for this one, and it wouldn't let me write the settings from the dummy as these are written for a LS 5 Fx decoder and this is apparently incompatible with a regular LS 5. So with the software opened twice, the Fx project loaded in one and the faulty decoder in the other, I manually copied all the settings and CVs from one to the other. Only flaw with this is that it didn't run any more presumably as some of the CVs I changed put all motor function to 0 being a function decoder, so to fix that I simply copied all the motor settings from the Cityjet settings file. This got it working again with all the sounds in sync, acceleration and top speed might not be right (Cityjet built in 2016 with Vmax 160km/h vs. class 4020 built in 1979 with Vmax 120km/h) but at least it all works properly again. I will be asking for a settings file for this one too in due course but saved the modified settings as a project file to save any future data entry. These two models are the 'oldest' LS5s in my fleet, I have another 4 that are still behaving themselves and haven't been touched since buying/loading. Naturally no issues at all with all my Zimo decoders, or my LS 4s. Has anyone else come across this issue with Loksound 5 decoders? Settings changing by themselves during periods of disuse. I haven't been able to find anything on this in English or German.

Better late than never but lots of brass detailing bits (including handrails) can be found here ~ http://www.krueger-modellbau.de/kmb/index.php?p=main.modell.ho.98zubehoer.2

Piko have brought out a revised Vectron with much nicer pantographs and more detailed wheels, both of which are available as spares to retrofit to older models. Presumably they are pre-emptively trying to keep it competitive (which it will) against the Roco model due for release later this year.

If you keep your eyes peeled you can pick up a Liliput StLB VL6 diesel shunter for around £50, these are very nicely detailed models with LED lighting and a 6 pin socket off the shelf. Watching the tiny con rods and counter balances moving around adds a lot of visual appeal to these titchy logos. I have several Liliput U class tank locos surplus if that fits the bill for a steam engine.

Incidentally going back to the original topic - there is bound to be a Roco version of the Czech postal wagon, be it Roco or a Czech repaint (there are a few small outfits that do/did that kind of thing). I've seen Slovak versions (ZSR) as a regular off the shelf Roco model.

A bit late but my 2p's worth. This is the standard Gbs type wagon they do in several liveries. I was fortunate enough to see an Austrian one in the flesh in a model shop to put me off for life without having to waste any money. The price is ridiculous - especially considering the Roco equivalent is in the region of 20-25 EUR and has 3D detail on the sides. But this is a legacy of when Piko cranked up their prices to Märklin levels despite the models being quite old. The classic example to me is their nice model of the Austrian Blauer Blitz DMU - a 20+ year old model they were trying to peddle for 490 EUR! I picked up a new one on sale at Scograil for £120 last year - how or why it was that cheap I don't know! Their pricing has been somewhat lowered now this year by transferring some things in to the classic range (such as said DMU) but some of their prices are still a little exorbitant, i.e. 20+ year old tanker wagons for 50+ EUR. Their new locomotives like the Austrian class 1010 and 1110 on the other hand are very competitively priced, and surpass the existing Roco models in several details and sound quality on the sound versions.

If you're not in a hurry or on a tight budget it might be worth holding out for the Roco Vectron when it comes out later this year (MRCE is one of the launch liveries I believe). For me the Piko model is let down by the pantographs and the buffer beam, not so much of a problem if you pick one up cheap but the RRP is too high for the quality IMO. It'll be interesting to see how their ÖBB 1010/1110 stacks up against the Roco models, but this is from the 'Expert' range where as the Vectron I believe is from the 'Hobby' range.

Interesting read and truly excellent OHLE. Always nice to see Austrian layouts from my heavily biased position of being half-Austrian and a big Austrian rail fan. Are the light signals from Alphamodell, Memoba or Mobasi?

This is quite an interesting thread, came across this after winning my first Czech loco on ebay the other day - a very nice H0 Bardotka from MTB for a bargain £60! Just need some nice ACME or Tillig coaches to go with it now and a sound decoder. One 'must see' that I've not seen mentioned here for anyone that ends up in Prague is a trip up the 'small Semmering' - esko line S65 from Smichov station in a class 810 railbus. Took a lot of messing around to actually find the correct station (found on my second attempt, missus was not impressed!), this line begins from a small platform surrounded by abandoned goods sheds and wasteland down the road from the actual Smichov station (follow the tram line in the out of town direction and turn right at the T-junction where the tram lines split). Lots of excellent views of the city as it climbs around 300m and crosses a couple of viaducts before heading in to the forest. One interesting feature at the top in one of the stations is a loading ramp for unloading trams from railway vehicles straight on to the tram network. Another must is the tram museum and the museum tram line 91 which runs from the museum down past the castle and through the old town - costs a whopping £1 (30CZK) per ride as does entry to the museum. En route we passed a film set, my guess is something about Heydrichs assassination (wasn't there a film about this released last year?) The technical museum is also worth a visit, quite a few Habsburg-era steam locomotives, classic triple headlight Tatra cars and aircraft from the 20's and 30's. Train tickets are generally pretty cheap, a trip to Karlstejn to visit the castle (towards the end of the S6 line) cost the equivalent of around £2 for a return ticket. Taking the Railjet to Vienna was a bit more pricey though at around £40 for a single, but in the grand scheme of things not too bad considering it was a journey of some 400km and international.