HonestTom

Thanks! I was inspired by Chris Walas, who uses all sorts of unlikely household items in his steampunk models. Party whistles and wine glasses for funnels, doll eyes for rivets, he even turned an iron into a weird locomotive.

I thank you. The crown is a candle holder for a birthday cake. The box-shaped tank or whatever I decide it is, is my solution to the chunky motor. I’m planning other engines in future, so will aim for something less obvious then.

I thank you. The crown is a candle holder for a birthday cake. The box-shaped tank or whatever I decide it is, is my solution to the chunky motor. I’m planning other engines in future, so will aim for something less obvious then.

I’ve been doing something similar, albeit in Gn15. It’s 50% steampunk, 50% Emett.

All this talk of the superiority Kings and the President is all a little controversial for my taste. What if you’re not a GWR fan?

I can’t believe people are complaining about the shortcomings of a wagon that hasn’t come out yet...

It’s not so much that Hornby made a conscious choice to base their Thomas characters on real locomotives as they used already-existing tooling to save money.

Oh sweet, I'd resigned myself to having to wait until summer. Time to dig out my rake of PLA wagons.

Maybe it was a repatriated product of the North British works?

It's a good choice of locomotive to produce, and I'm not at all surprised that someone picked this prototype up. Unlike most of the RTR 009 engines we've had so far, this has the advantage of a strong nostalgia factor - how many young holidaymakers would have encountered these on trips to Wales? If someone produced coaches as well, I could see it inspiring a whole raft of Aberystwyth-inspired layouts.

Those prices on the Bachmann website seem somewhat excessive. Even considering the licence fee, £75 for a basic 0-4-0 with detail on a par with Hornby's Railroad 0-4-0s is seriously pushing it. Not to mention £50 for the express coaches, which are repainted Mainline Period 1 coaches that typically sell for £5-£8 second-hand.

I personally find Monty's figures very characterful. I also like Andrew Stadden's for the Victorian/Edwardian era. The old Dapol ones are, IMO, quite underrated - a decent repaint will give you a model that stands comparison with the likes of Stadden and Monty's. But in general I prefer to mix and match - cheapo figures from China, suitably repainted, are fine for populating carriages, crowd scenes and anywhere else where people won't be looking too hard at each individual person.

Ah, hence, I assume, the fact that we're not getting a pre-Grouping version of the J26.

I'd be in the market for two. The GER one for my Hazzard Works pre-Grouping micro and the BR one for my planned London Docklands layout. For the Docklands, you can't get enough ex-LNER vans.

I feel that Hornby could, if this range takes off, explore the crossover potential with their main range. I can see the colourful and elaborate liveries of the pre-Grouping era really appealing to the steampunk market.

I've been playing for some time with the idea of a Volk's Electric Railway-style line. I have some kits for the trams, but I could definitely see that coach working as a trailer... Hmmm...

Steampunk Willie has enjoyed some progress this evening. The cab interior, such as it is, and the tender are still to do. I'm a fan of Chris Walas' large scale modelling, and in particular the way he manages to create such wonderful models using basic household bits and pieces. To that end, the components of Steampunk Willie mostly came from the pound shop and junk I had lying around. Aside from the Hornby chassis and the styrene, the components were: Smokebox - the top of a glue stick Funnel - part of a mechanical pencil tube Chimney crown - birthday candle holder Pipes - paper clips Dome - one of those googly eyes Weight - washers from an assorted pack Safety valve cover - push pin, minus the pin Rivets - decorative jewel stickers There's still a lot more to add, of course. Steampunk Willie is very much supposed to be a thrown-together loco. The locomotive was built by CME and part-time plumber Dai Pritchard, whose engineering philosophy is that "it's mostly plumbing when you get down to it."

Possible reasons given already on this thread: - To maintain the Bassett-Lowke trade mark - Because using the Hornby name might be seen as indicating the range is purely for railway modellers, and Hornby seeks new markets - Like Corgi, Airfix, Humbrol, Scalextric etc, it's not quite the same arena as Hornby's model railways, though there is crossover. - Because they fear diluting the Hornby name by attaching it to something not aimed at the traditional market I don't really know what else to say, and unless someone from Hornby comes forward and gives the actual reason, I don't know where we go from here with this question. I feel like you won't be satisfied with anything other than "You're right, there is no reason, it's stupid and Hornby should fire their marketing department forthwith."

I thought it had possibilities for 009. I did try to buy one on eBay, but the seller started being dodgy, so I cancelled the order.

I like it. To me, it has the look of an old Victorian brake van that's been much-modified over its lifetime, no doubt waiting for some railway historian to spot its pedigree...

Something like this?

I thank you - Jago Hazzard is my secret identity on YouTube! I was thinking of doing a video going into the conversion in more detail, possibly looking into other improvements (e.g. brake coach conversion).

Having been following the thread on Hornby’s steampunk range, I thought I’d dip my toe in the genre with a spare 0-4-0 chassis, some styrene and whatever I could find lying around. I call this engine Steampunk Willie. It's a long way from finished, but I was surprised by how easy it is to work with styrene sheet. In many ways, this is a test bed for future scratchbuilding. The basic shape is very simple, but it's going to be covered in various bits and pieces to make it look a little more interesting and Emett-esque.

And there are plenty of games that aren't Games Workshop. Board and roleplaying games in general seem to have become more mainstream in recent years, so I think it's definitely a market worth exploring. Given the aforementioned tie-in with Warlord Games, it could be something they're planning to look into seriously.

I agree with this. Consistency across the board gives a better result, IMO, than a layout that does one aspect really well and then falls down on another. It's like how an Impressionist painting feels real despite a lack of detail, but would look weird if one aspect was photorealistic. There are a lot of older layouts that really impress me, even though they are outclassed by more modern offerings, because I like the modeller's style.