FJ1701

Perhaps they should start employing us to do their quality control! Or instead Hornby should start printing this on their boxes: “We produce the model, you do the quality control. Hornby trains, always a surprise in the box!” Joking aside, this should be considered a serious matter by all manufacturers big or small. When the consumer receives their product, it should be 100% complete. Not 98% or 99%, 100%. We shouldn’t have to wait for refunds and replacements which is both time consuming and irritating, the product reflects the company’s image so this can damage their reputation, just look at Dapol, Incorrect circuit boards on the 73, wonky livery on the 68 and now some cad obscurities with the prairie. Now take that example with a pinch of salt, we all know if these problems arise, companies will rectify any known issues but it shouldn’t happen to this amount of people. Cheers

Maybe! Only time will tell and I'm itching to know if us modern era modellers might be in for a surprise (probably not).

I dare say I'm already quite a few pages behind on this discovery so apologies but anyway, here we go! Below is a painting by Malcom Root depicting a Lord Nelson class locomotive pulling a rake of night ferry coaches. Now is this to say we might be receiving some night ferry coaches or is it just front cover art. Some may recognise that this is in-fact the same front cover as seen on the 2018 catalogue, so perhaps we are just being misled or they are saving some pennies. Who knows. Southern Railway Lord Nelson class 4 -6 -0 No. 855 'Robert Blake' is seen in Folkestone Warren with the up Night Ferry circa 1938 - Malcom Root If we do receive these CIWL F Type Sleeping coaches, I'm sure they'll be sold as a set of three. These however have already been produced by LS Models so it will be interesting to see if we will actually get them. My personal opinion is no due to Hornbys current situation, such a specific set of coaches may not prove cost effective. Cheers Rory

I've just been looking through some old southern region books and came across some locomotives that might be of interest. The LSWR T1 or LSWR class A12 locomotives seem quite interesting, perhaps not viable to produce but thought it was worth mentioning. I'm sure the Q class has been mentioned numerous times and the C2x, well I think we can just leave that one to Bachmann.

Ah yes, Hattons. Well they could perhaps lower the price or just reduce production but as you said they rarely do so I guess all we can do is sit and wait.

Speculating the Bachmann 2019 range is quite difficult with regard to their current situation. Personally, I'm not particularly sure how many models will be announced for the 2019 range when there are still backdated models with unknown release dates. For me however, I feel the class 66 will take a back seat to make way for the Rails version, a lower price point will make it more appealing than it's high priced rival so it could still be produced, just in small quantities. The issue with the current market is the well known void of modern image models. Now "modern image" is a very broad term so I'm suggesting post 2005, units which still run in the current era but may have also been used in the BR days. We have a variety of EMU's and DMU's available however there still isn't a large enough offering. What we are lacking on our layouts is a third rail suburban commuter which is small enough in size for Bachmann to produce but with a large amount of liveries available to make the model profitable. To connect the dots between the different operating companies so our layouts don't look so random. The British Rail class 313, 455 or 456 come to mind and would suit most layouts operating in the southern area. Cheers, Rory.

Well it's been a good week. The layout has progressed well with some semi scratch building on the station canopy, it's coming along well with some experimentation and persistence, I have achieved a good result. Pictures below show my progress: So after rummaging around on that well known auction site, I came across this selection of Hornby canopies which have been glued together and detailed in a way which gives them a steel girder structure under the canopy for realistic effect. It needed some work so a small project began to upgrade and transform the canopy into something more suitable for the layouts era and setting. I thought I would take advantage of the wonderful weather by using this time to let the paint dry on my improved platform canopies. Here you can see the new configuration for the plastic canopies, they have been glued using simple PVA and painted with white enamel spray paint from my local hardware store. Before I glued both components together, I popped the plastic skylights or windows back into place, something I forgot to do earlier on so I had to re glue the whole thing. The girder structure is more visible in this picture however what you might not be able to tell is the vertical supports have actually been constructed from the metal Hornby platform canopy supports which have a good amount of detail. They're quite cheap on ebay so I would recommend picking some up. And here is the finished product, a fully painted platform canopy complete with a realistic steel support structure. Although it's quite short, it will form part of the stations covered area for pedestrians and customers waiting to board trains. It needs some small refinements such as paint to give the station a southern region identity and feel but apart from that, I'm quite pleased with the result. Finally, I will finish with a new addition to the layout, a Bachmann class 108 DMU seen in Network South East livery has joined the fleet. Although these units never worked in the Fareham and Portmsouth area to my knowledge, I couldn't resist it when I saw it was being sold for only £40! This model is in near new condition, I'm not keen on having to use two decoders to get it running but it works a treat. Cheers Rory

Hi Chris, thanks for the comment. As I’ve change the orientation of the back scenes, the stone walls no longer serve a clear purpose as the beach is out of view. Because of this, I’ve decided to instead build a simple embankment across the back of the railway where the stone wall is currently situated to soften the area and put the beach idea on the back burner for now. As you said, the stone wall wouldn’t be very prototypical for protecting a railway such as this and proper sea defences would be needed. I may come back to this idea In the future but for now, I’m focusing on the track and station area to get that finished. Cheers Rory

Well it's been a few months since I last posted and for good reason, This hot weather is just wonderful! How do I start, well since I last updated you all, I though I had found the perfect track configuration blah blah blah... Two months have past and the layout has since changed, progress has been made even if I have taken a few steps back. The track plan has been reverted to its original form which was perfect and I'm not particularly sure why I changed it however this has allowed me to focus on other areas of the layout such as completing the dropper wires and the switch board. The little time I've had off work has given me time to reconsider what I want the layout to represent and how I want it to operate. Since I have discarded the L-shaped design to allow for a longer staging yard, the current fiddle yard can only hold a maximum of three carriages so two and three car DMU/EMU's were ideal for my situation along with the rare locomotive hauled train which wouldn't look very realistic with only two carriages but hey ho, it's my layout. The new fiddle yard follows the original design where one third of the whole board is fiddle yard and the other two are scenic sections giving me enough space to have operational interest whilst still being able to run three car dmu's. The layout will still be set in the late 80's as described in the introduction and will feature appropriate rolling stock for that era. Below are a series of images showing my progress over the course of the past few days: So here is the layout in its revised form. I have simply switched the back boards around, reverted the track back to its original design and given the whole thing a lick of paint. Unfortunately I didn't have any matte black paint available for the fascia however grey seems to work fine and still draws your attention to the layout. The change in orientation has actually improved the layouts perception of size and has freed up space towards the front of the boards for more scenery. Here you can get a better view of the station throat and how the tracks disappear into the fiddle yard. I may put a road in the foreground instead of buildings to ensure I don't obstruct the view of the railway. The bottom left is a branch which spurs off the station and will eventually disappear into the back scene. The fiddle yard has the capacity for three carriages on each track so the layout will primarily be operated with two and three car multiple units. I still need to add the track for one of the mainlines and the branch line. I used this weather resistant grey matte paint to seal the wood and it gives it a nice uniform look, It's certainly an improvement over plain ply wood and seems to make a large difference. Just to give you an idea of where the signal box will be situated. Thankyou and I hope you have all enjoyed this long awaited update, I will try and do them more frequently in the future, many thanks. Rory

Looking great so far. It's a shame Springburn sidings is over but out with the old and in with the new, in your case an exciting new layout. I was wondering, are those fabulous warehouses scratch built because i'm in need for some just like it. Maybe you can sell them cheers Rory

I haven't played golf yet but I guess it's a good way to start retirement early

When you’re looking at the track plan, it’s easy to say as an observer that there’s too much track however it depends what you want to achieve. It doesn’t have to be prototypical but should echo the operations of a real depots to give the layout meaning. Personally I would reconsider the amount of point work and simplify the design in a way which encourages more operations.

A pub quiz on railway trivia, sounds enticing lol. Anyway you might of been able to tell that I’ve been looking through your West Sands thread again, once again taking inspiration to change the name of the layout. As for the electrification, there are images of the third rail already in situe at Fareham in 1989 probably when they were still building it however I’m not too bothered as the era of the layout ranges from 1988 to around 1990. One of the reasons why I changed its name. Cheers

This service will now terminate at Titchfield Haven, please change. Yeah so I decided to change the name to something I felt represented the area better for where the layout is located which is still on the coast of hill head but adjacent to the Titchfield Haven nature reserve. I keep changing my mind but we all do I suppose, cheers. Rory

How about a 3H Thumper, now that would be nice! Its a shame Bachmann never released a Blue/Grey version due to the 2 car not carrying that livery but I'm sure a 3 car variant would sell like hot cakes. Cheers Rory

Changes afoot once again! Well then, what have I done now? Well I kept looking at the curve running into the fiddle yard and just thought it wasn't really good enough and how the station would have operated. I then continued to the change the track plan and it's clear from the pictures how much the curve has Well here is the new change cementing the track plan as I no longer feel the need to change it. Before, the track configuration didn't really make sense with two tracks converging into one and due to the three-way point and double slip which allowed the top line to access any part of the station, the bottom line was left redundant. This gave way to implementing the bottom line into a catch point to act as an emergency run off before returning onto the mainline. I have then changed the siding in the forefront and connected it to the mainline to allow shuttle services out of platform one (at the front) without interfering with the bulk of the operations in the main station area. To ensure consistency in the track spacing, I have re-spaced the ties on the new pieces of track. The spacing on the points however have been unaltered to ensure the fragile parts do not brake. The buffers is the middle not only act as an emergency catch point, but also provides an explanation to why the double slip point has been left in place instead of being removed, the simplest explanation is it's too expensive so BR just decided to leave it in place. What might be of interest to some is how the station operates and the different services that will pass through the station. The image below depicts the platforms from a birds eye view showing how certain services are allocated to certain platforms to ensure a regular timetable. Most services will be made up by either two or three car DMU's however there will be occasional appearances from four car EMU's for services running to Portsmouth as show is the diagram below. Some of the services running through Fareham in the late 80's were long distance loco hauled trains which would not have reached small destinations such as Hill Head, however connecting services in the form of a two car DMU from Hill Head to Fareham would have been prototypical. As explained earlier, Platform 1 has two routes running into the platform ensuring it doesn't interfere with other mainline services for example which require moving around. The majority of these platforms have the capacity for four coaches but most can comfortably hold three. The layout is progressing slowly mostly because of the changes in the track configuration but I'm very pleased with the outcome. Any feedback of the station operations would be much appreciated, cheers. Rory

Yes from a closer inspection, it seems it's just the weak lighting at both ends which are too dim compared to the centre coaches. Many thanks Rory

My Bachmann cep is DCC Fitted and works perfectly however I have the same issue where the lights only work on the inner two coaches. The two outer cars being the power and trailer do not have working interior lights, only headcodes. Any help would be appreciated, cheers Rory

Personally I think this year is an opportunity for Bachmann to become the "British brand leader of 00 model railways", a title only associated with the well known "house hold" name Hornby. But with Hornby in financial and supposedly manufacturing difficulties along with pressure from smaller retailers such as Hattons, Dapol and Rails, Bachmann should broaden their market, lower their prices and at least try solve the drought of models if you will that we are currently experiencing. The market is changing and we're in a new era of highly detailed commissioned models that threaten the big players. Rory

Perhaps we are lacking foresight as Dr Beeching once did and fail to see what the future may bring, maybe Hornby have commenced production on a selection of high quality models which will be released early next year and we are just being taken for a ride. Who knows however what I can say is, today was an absolute disgrace. Is Hornby really stuck in 1982! We are in 2018 for goodness sake and whatever their financial situation may be, it's certainly not right to mislead the modelling community by saying "29 surprises" when they go on to release a product page of old Triang bridges and plastic moulds being sold for absurd prices. Yes the new Pecket liveries were a good idea and so was the Blue Coronation but come on Hornby, you are losing your customers! Dapol is here to stay, Hattons is here to stay, Rails exclusives are here to stay. Hornby you have new competition, so stay fresh, bring new ideas to the table otherwise you will go bankrupt. Many thanks, Rory

Finally a company who actually respects the price of a digitally fitted chip. £15 for a DCC Fitted variant is very reasonable and others should follow suit, charging £25-£30 for a DCC chip is just ridiculous so take note, you know who you are. Cheers and I can't wait for this! Rory

That sounds great, as for using code 100 track you could always space out the sleepers to give the track a more prototypical look. It may be time consuming but it's worth it. I used to use the set-track measurements but found 90 degree curves to be unrealistic in some circumstances so opted for the more prototypical way of just laying the track and letting the curve flow, although set-track is a space saver, it should be used sparsely to avoid similarities when looking at your layout as a viewer/operator so it's something to consider, thanks. Rory

Hi Ian, Looking good, do you have any pictures of the current setup i.e have you built any benchwork? The era you've chosen is great and will give you a large scope on the operations you can replicate however with the majority of your stock being Lima or from the 80's, I'm curious about the code of track you have chosen. From the 3D rendition of the layout, we can clearly see what you plan to achieve however I'm not sure about the radius you have chosen for the curve next to the window, I would personally do one continuous curve from the station throat to the Leicester line junction instead of the straight track in between the curves. Of course that's only a track plan so it will probably be different in its real form. Looking at the station, I see there are two lines adjacent to the platforms, are these for locomotive stabling and stock? Looking forward to new updates, cheers. Rory