DougN

Enjoying watching, Paul. Making me want to do some modelling more regularly... Work gets in the way of so much good modelling time.

These finished examples look brilliant. I usually dont do pre orders however as these are so good I am willing to throw caution to the wind and place the order. I will now have a trains worth of 9 hoppers. I should probably get some NER ones to mix in...but I will stick with LNER triples at the moment! Interestingly I am more excited about these wagons more than the coronation sets or the new locos coming!

The only item I have for the 2024 catalogue, is the 2 new LNER A4's which were shown in the 2023, being Commonwealth of Australia and Empire of India the later only just being released in December 2023 and the former only making it in 2024 generally. Only Empire of India is shown in the 2024 catalogue. So either some one at the publishers were fed incomplete information or they expected Commonwealth of Australia to sell out very very quickly! I might point out that the new Empire of India is a lovely loco and runs beautifully. My CofA is the old issue but is still a good runner.

My experience of the system is quite good. Probably helped by reading the entirety of this thread before even starting the install. I have installed the new 21Pin decoder in a Empire of India A4. I wasnt really happy with the speaker or its enclosures for this install. The suger cube is a good unit (i have similar speakers in a Bachmann V2 and G5) but the A4 has a 28mm round set up from new. So a 28mm enclosure would have been useful (Hornby I hope your listening!) for the sugar cube. After chating to SRman who had quite a collection of speaker and said to try one of his spare 28mm. I did so however as I think it was a ESU item this is over thickness for the recess and the weight. After using a dremel to remove a ridge from the chassis to drop the speaker lower. I had to modify the weight to allow further height for the speaker... more cutting and comparing for the weight. In the end this worked nicely with the weight sitting down on the speaker back and the body fitting back tight again. One thing doing this is there is 2 foamy packers on each side of the weight which should be removed and reinstalled once all the cutting was completed! I lost at least one of mine! The speaker wires were connected to the S pads on the 21Pin circuit board This has resulted in a good sound production with a good volume. The sound file for the A4 needs a little bit of work to improve it I think.

I feel for all the people at hattons. The loss of a job, friendships workmates and constant location. Over the last 30 odd years I have been buying model railways from Hattons and the much missed Mainly Trains. Hattons has been the go too from Australian British outline modellers for years. The service and range second to none. I had heard years ago if it wasn't for the Australian sales the business would have been a lot worse off at that time, in one of the many economic down turns. I am saddened to hear the decision was partially contributed too by the Australian GST collection. I thought this had been well and truly killed off due to the relatively small scale numbers of model railways. ( For the record, all imports into Australia less than $1000Aud are GST exempt. The exceptions are any thing from eBay and I think Amazon but these sales would total in the millions.) I will miss my daily review of the pre-owned email.

My guess is we will see Dominion of New Zealand come out to match Commonwealth of Australia and Empire of India. I do wonder if they will do Union of South Africa and Dominion of Canada as these both seem to be offlimits due to the great gathering limited edition sets. However both would be lovely in their coronation liveries. Still wondering if they will upgrade the D49. As it is a legacy model of Hornby's dating all the way back to O gauge sets. The current 1970's really needs to be brought into the 2020's they already have the tender for the group standard versions. The grouping tenders could be made up from spares... Such as the Q6. But the others would leave to the modellers to chase around Bachmann for the GCR types.

I picked up one of the A4's from this issue. I really didn't like the gloss which I thought made it look plasticy. So after a clean down (don't use IPA on the bodies as the gloss produces a white bloom which is hard to get rid of) I used Tamiya satin gloss varnish spray pack over the main parts of the body and Matt on the tender top coal area and the cab roof. I am now quite happy with how Woodcock now looks.

Thanks K. I do agree the driver and fireman is a nice touch. I look forward to detailing it all up! Along with a photo of the other 2 coronation locos I have. Just have to wait 3 weeks while I holiday in the UK. 😀

I did end up getting Empire of India it ran nicely at monk bar models. I look forward to getting it all the way home for a decent run and be able to install the Hornby sound chip. Has any one had one of the new A4's apart. The guys at Monk bar said it has firebox glow and a speaker already fitted. I am not sure this is right, it also doesn't bother me if not. Though it would be great if it was as good as Bachmanns G5 which I still think is one of the best sound and fire box I have seen.

Don't forget Dominion of New Zealand! I will have to get a set of these coaches as I seem to still have the addiction to A4's..I already have Dominion of Canada and Commonwealth of Australia, I'm in York at the moment and considering getting Empire of India... That would make 16 A4's...all in LNER liveries. I picked up the latest Irwell press books on the A4's and A1/A3's wonderful photos from the NRM. Including the coronation sets.

Oh goody... I may be able to pick one up before I come home... hopefully one of the many WH's I will pass will have one I can get my mits on for the flight home....

Thanks Paul, This is where I had searched out most of the information to start with.... I should probably have another go at building the station building. I know that most buildings are a lot larger than expected when built to scale... its my day job converting them from a architects drawing to some thing on site! I will dig all the information out again and start with a scale drawing... that will have to wait for the new year. In the mean time I will watch your progress.

Paul, are your buildings kits or are they scratchbuilt? I was searching around for the station building plans which I received a few but the one that I managed to build really didn't convince me once it had made it to about 80%. If they were scratch built I would love to know where you got the plans etc... or if kits the supplier as I would like a set....

I've heard it said that every rail plan that people come up with here in Melbourne takes 50 years to reach maturity to be completed... But then again the level crossing removals happened quickly... only about 10 years

In addition to the above I think BR had "lost" about half a million wagons over the year when they were doing their audits... misnumbering on both sides could account for up to 3 wagons! I know The RCH had a large number of missing wagons that may or may not turn up between accounting audits!

Jenny, I will have all the LNER liveried versions very soon.... that is 16. I must stop for a while as I will have to start renaming... A bit easy with Peregrine, and Seagull as they can be done from Mallard's as they had all the Double chimney versions, collecting enough single chimney versions would be hard work... As they make a lot less of them. Also the number of tenders that match also reduce. Considering my layout can only cope with a maximum of 2 at any time this is a bit silly...

Mine was a bit more than that from a emporium near Liverpool!... it was the A4 that started off my short term obsession.... The loco needed extra work to restore the DCC connection in the tender and rewire it! Any how.. your right the name plates are generally pretty bad. I might think about purchasing new plates for all the locos from Fox or similar. I was reading in Yeadons that the name plates were to be red backed... however all the Hornby A4's in LNER are black backed... I need to keep researching and figure this out...

Great to hear that Jenny.. 2 of yhe locos i purchased were weathered by TMC. I have seen some locos years ago weathered by them but this will be the first 2 I will own weathered by them. I have yet to really gain the skill to weather things nicely. I have recently been watching the weathering video series by Hornby Mag. Its encouraging me to have a go.

If any one is looking for A4's at the moment check out Clark Railworks, there is a good selection available... though slightly less by my recent purchase!

They have 3 less now! Thanks Jenny😃...again I have completed the locos I was looking for. I am not sure that the Dominion of Canada is a Hornby original but the weathering from TMC is nice. Dare I say what a collection. I do wonder when Hornby will complete the Coronation 5 in Blue as they have now done Com. of Australia, Dominion of Canada, with Empire of India coming in the next few months. This leaves Dominion of NZ and Union of South Africa to complete the issues. May be this is their thinking for the Coronation Carriages in the short term. I would have thought that U of Sth Africa would have been a good sale version as the loco is still in existence though I dont think they have ever re fitted in the skirts in my knowledge during preservation.

I'm with you Mick, the later post 2004 A4 is one of the best and as there is parts available to repair them as well if needed. I have a list of all the LNER liveried versions on the thread: I have gone rather nuts on chasing these down. I still think they are one of the best versions of the A4's specifically the variety of tenders for the locos (there are 3 types). then there is a couple more of the 3 with roller bearings which with a little modelling can be done.

I read in the last page or so about the problem of books from an estate. Yes i still have part of my garage full of books. It is a little issue in that we as modelers chase information and buy the books specific to our interest which feeds our thirst for specific information on a specific subject. The collection I have to dispose of is all southern region and is probably about 400kgs of books (yes it took a trailer to get it home). Previously at another BRMA convention I helped out with selling a heap of books. (only about 100kg's (6 boxes worth). The person looking after it said "look this is the BR Mk 1 coaches book its worth $100AUD" I convinced him to put every book at $5aud... we walked out with 1 box... and on top of that box was the Mk1 coaches book! So even with specific market and a cheap price things still wont sell. So back to my collection of Southern Railway books... They can wait I have other things to move on in the mean time!

I have said it before else where a D49 smaller tender loco, they have 2 major differences in the Hunt or Shire, they have a variety of LNER tenders being, Group standard Flaired and GS flat sided, then there is options to pick and choose from of GCR, NER standards which were swapped around. This would produce the information for all the rest of the LNER tender locos as the work for the tender has previously been done (nudge nudge wink!).The locos can also be done in a number of liveries, LNER lined green, Lined black, Basic black, leading to BR early and late logo in mixed traffic lined livery. They also were widely spread as "first round standard loco" Though I think Darlington did a lot of the initial design work so had a NER feel! As Brian would mention in the "wishlists" this does rate highly. Being a 4-4-0 loco it does lend its self to branchline and mixed traffic work. From my point of view it is really the last loco I really would like to see released in a new highly detailed version compared to the Railroad range from some one else!

I understand that John Brighton's view is The Hornby RTR body for the A4 is as good as you can get this even out does the Finney due to the time it would take to complete and finish it. however the chassis and under side is definitely improved with the Finney Chassis etc. Still love the look of your V2's. My time seems to be taken on other things at the moment so I don't seem to be getting any modelling done. Though I keep promising myself to get back to my 2 Finney V2's.