PJT

The cab's different between a 76000 and a 77000 too. I agree the running gear of the Bachmann 76000 or 82000 looks close enough to use (though I also agree about the lack of space inside the 77000 boiler/firebox for the 76000 chassis casting and motor) and the BR2 tender of the 76000 would be fine, but above the chassis, the more you look the more differences there are. I don't know if two came down south. If they did, the other would most likely have been 77011 which, like 77014, spent from 1964 to 1966 shedded at Northwich on the CLC - another little stray away from the traditional haunts of the class in the North East and Scotland. At least the Northwich pair widen the geographical possibilities of a 77000 model a little bit more, don't they? Or am I clutching at straws here? Of course, there's a perfectly acceptable DJH kit for a 77000 (though I never thought DJH nailed the BR2 tender shape). Getting us back back on 'Hornby wishlist' topic, in my opinion, Hornby made a lovely job of the 75000 4MT (gear meshing problems on the early ones aside) and I reckon they'd do the same for the 77000 too, despite Bachmann being initially the more obvious candidate for making one. Pete T.

Almost right, except 77014 which came down south towards the end of Southern Region steam and made itself into a very popular celebrity working out of Guildford Shed (one of those workings being the last official steam working on the SR). I feel certain a model of 77014 would sell like hot cakes - probably more than making up for the geographically limited desirability of the other members of the class. However, once that trump card has been played it couldn't be played again, could it, unless something like a weathered version followed a year or two later. Pete T.

Definitely, especially for a train originally envisaged only as a stopgap prior to electrification. ... or is more comfortable for the passengers. Pete T.

I'm another very satisfied reader of this series, with no connection. The second volume, 'Somerset & Dorset' is very good too, while the third, 'Southern Medley' (which I've just finished today) features Mike King's hugely informative caption writing. This volume also includes some wonderful images of everyday details of the past railway scene that are too often overlooked by photographers and publishers but are so coveted by us modellers. Pete T.

For exactly the same reason, that photo put a big smile on my face too! Pete T. P.S. I know, I know, it shouldn't look right at all in BR Blue... but it just does.

As I understand it, no he didn't. He just enjoyed collecting the kits, which were floor to ceiling in some rooms and the hall around his house. Each to his own, I suppose... but I struggle to see the point as well (however, I am of course very grateful for second chances to buy some of the no-longer-available products!). Andrew of W M Collectables described to me how the collector had been so scrupulous he'd gone through each kit after he'd bought them to check every piece was present and correct - if anything was missing or damaged, he contacted the kit manufacturer and got replacement parts sent to him. In the kits I bought are hand written notes from the collector verifying that the kits were complete or, if he'd had to ask for replacement parts, the full details of what he'd done. Just remembered - on Andrew's stand at Sandown Park, there were a large number of old D & S coach kits from the collection, too... Pete T.

It was indeed W M Collectables and he (Andrew) has a website: www.wmcollectables.co.uk where you can find his other contact details. However, before you rush there to see what he's got, he's primarily an earlier RTR specialist (Triang TT & OO, Hornby Dublo, Trix, Hornby, Wrenn, etc. and that's what is listed on his website - you won't find a list of the kits he's got; not yet anyway. He takes the kits (they're the collection of one owner, mostly unbuilt but kept scrupulously complete and in brilliant condition - and there's loads and loads of them) to shows, the next ones being Newton Abbot Racecourse next weekend and Peterborough the weekend after. Other shows he's due to attend are on his website. If you're interested and can get to see him at a show, that's probably the best way to start. I last met Andrew the weekend before last at the Sandown Park Toy Fair. I've bought a few bits of RTR from him on previous occasions and was very surprised - delighted - to see his stand bulging with kits this time. He explained about the huge collection he'd bought and I duly bought two unbuilt DJH kits from him (a B16 and a Urie S15) and a 3/4 completed SE Finecast SR Class W. He has a huge number of loco kits from the collection to sort through and sell, many of which are no longer available. He also has, from the same collection, a more limited number (still quite a few though!) of completed kit-built locos, some finished much better than others. Just as excitingly, he has a huge number of unused/unopened rolling stock kits too, again many of which are no longer available from the manufacturer. I'm buying some Ian Kirk carriage kits from him, too. I'd say to be patient with him though. It's a really vast collection of kits he's got to work through, organise and list and he's only part of the way through the job so he doesn't yet know exactly what he has, altogether. From what I saw at Sandown Park, he does have some really lovely kits in genuinely as-new condition - kits that I'm sure most of us thought we'd never see again. Usual disclaimer - I have no connection to Andrew other than being an occasional and very satisfied customer. Pete T.

Great news. The little chap will not be disappointed! By the way, I've bought quite a bit from S & J over the years and I'd thoroughly recommend them, too. And I know it's only a silly little detail, but it kind of means a lot: packages from them are really easy to spot in the post because, like most things S & J do, they're so neatly and securely done. Pete T.

There's a Frank S. Ross come up on eBay this morning at a reasonable price: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bachmann-Branch-Line-MR105-USA-Class-0-6-0T-300-FRANK-S-ROSS-LMR-BLUE-6-DCC/153729600947?hash=item23caff8db3%3Ag%3A5G4AAOSwh-Jd0oTv&LH_BIN=1 From my own experiences buying from them, I've always found the seller (AC Models of Eastleigh) to be very good. Good luck! Pete T.

I'll certainly have a go, when I get the time, probably a couple of weeks or so. That's the frustration of not being able to talk to the sellers. I imagine the ash crane and breakdown crane would have had limited sales potential, being 18.83, particularly if there was substantial work required to regauge them to the more popular EM or OO - it might even be impossible to regauge them. Pete T.

Thank you, Andy, for your kind and supportive words, also your description of how you view Maindee East, which underlines once again the depth of appreciation some people have for it. Currently I'm working on rectifying the damage to the scenery, which isn't a difficult job at all but does require patience and time. The latter I don't have as much of as I need at the moment because my self-employment is being squeezed by having to give a lot of help to an elderly family member (my own railway model is necessarily taking a back seat at the moment). But they say if you want something done, ask a busy man and bit by bit, the appearance of the layout is definitely improving. Incidentally, at this point I should mention another person who briefly was very important in saving Maindee East. One of the 'hired hands' at the auctioneers was a retired BBC props engineer who recognised the artistry of the grot and filth on the layout and only by pleading just managed to stop another member of staff from trying to clean it to brighten it up! I'm sure the damage that would have caused would have been almost beyond repair and I was very grateful to the chap who stopped the well-meaning cleaner. Having mentioned cleaning it, that's really the most time consuming bit at the moment. On top of Steffan's intentional filth (that was so nearly polished away at the auction house) there is a layer of dust and a lot of cobwebs from the layout's long-ish period in store following (and I suspect also prior to) Steffan's death. I'm using artist's soft brushes to remove the dust one small area at a time. Very slow, but very rewarding. I haven't taken any photos yet, but once it's clean and undamaged again I shall and I'll post them here. In the meantime, for those who haven't seen them yet, if you scroll back to my original post you'll find a link to the photos on the auctioneers' website which will show you what the layout looked like when I started. My plan is just to get it nicely presentable again but not working, yet - that's a whole project in itself and may be one for a future custodian or owner of Maindee East because while I have the skills I seriously doubt I'll have the time. Once it's presentable I'll start talking to people and organisations about where it can go on display. I won't contact anyone now because I feel it's likely they'd be put off by the current state of the layout. It would be unreasonable to expect any organisation to accept something that needed substantial work doing to it before it could go on display: (i) they probably wouldn't want to do it; and (ii) it might just end up with the layout going into storage again, waiting for ever for someone to have the time to restore it. My preference for a display location is a museum or organisation with the enthusiasm and experience in model railways to look after it properly. Having seen model railways displayed in town museums and similar places and even those permanently on display at preserved railways, the vast majority deteriorate quickly because the staff either aren't model railway minded people or simply don't have the time to maintain them because of more important priorities. I realise I'm talking myself into a corner that might only include AIMREC as a possible location, but we shall see when the time comes, when Maindee East has been tidied up and repaired and is ready to show people again. In the meantime I'm open to all suggestions and I'm not ruling out contacting anybody. Through studying several magazine articles and looking on-line, I'm now well aquainted with the evolution of Maindee East over time - when you get into the details, quite a bit changed over the years - and I'm now satisfied that, when you take into account all the items in the ice cream tub of broken bits I'm repairing and reinstalling as I clean each area, I have every part of every detail that featured on the layout in its latter days. Nothing is missing, thank goodness. Apart from the rolling stock. The only real downside so far is that the auctioneers have not received a response at all from the sellers of the layout following my request to be able to contact them. This means I can't find out what happened to Steffan's locos and rolling stock, or indeed the beautiful ash crane and breakdown train that were so much a part of Maindee East. Half a dozen old-ish OO gauge locos came with the layout when I bought it, clearly nothing to do with the layout at all. It's a very disappointing outcome. I don't fancy scratchbuilding another working model of an ash crane to replace Steffans! Never mind, at least the layout still exists. We so nearly didn't have that, either. Once again, thank you for your interest and enthusiasm and I look forward to being able to show some photos of a revived Maindee East in the not too distant future. Pete T.

Spot on, in all respects. As an admittedly naiive and impressionable youngster, when I first saw Heckmondwike in the flesh it looked like it had come from another planet compared to most of the other exhibition layouts I'd seen up until then (however, I certainly agree that waiting for a train to come demanded patience). Actually though, the biggest effect it had on me was to create a desire to build my own rolling stock following a couple of articles in Model Railway on 'Wagons for Heckmondwike'. I soon found that Slaters kits in particular went together so satisfyingly. I can still feel the excitement of inspiration from Heckmondwike now, while I'm typing this and remembering it. Pete T.

It's a very good question and one that's bang at the centre of the arguments that critics of the Genesis carriage project have been making. You've managed the task of asking the question without (in my opinion, anyway) causing offence or being seen to be arrogant. The trouble is, the written word - or post - is there for ever for us to read again, analyse, pick apart and find offence in. I suspect if some of these points were debated face to face, more would be taken in the right spirit because you could clearly see and hear that the speaker wasn't trying to be rude or arrogant - I think one or two of the very recent posts might well fall into this bracket. Unfortunately, one or two of the posts criticising the project are most definitely, clearly intended by the authors to be rude, arrogant and/or spitefully dismissive and as a result contribute not one iota to the debate other than deliberately souring the atmosphere and making rational debate more difficult. Now, my answer to your question is that I suspect most would not put up with a generic loco, whilst at the same time 'putting up with' generic carriages. It's an obvious fact that many, many railway modellers, train set operators, call them what you will, are loco-centric. It's the locos that matter most to an awful lot of us, often to the detriment of attention we perhaps should be paying to other equally interesting aspects of the railway. But that's ok. It's fine; enjoy your version of railway modelling as you will. There are no rules as to how you derive your enjoyment from railway models. Even collectors who never use their models (shock, horror) have a legitimate place in our world. As a modelmaker that wouldn't be my idea of fun, but who am I to say others shouldn't collect things and never use them? Live and let live. I count myself as having a foot in both camps in this debate. I spend a lot of time kitbuilding, scratchbuilding and modifying rolling stock to create trains of the Isle of Wight in the 1950s and 60s. I've also given in to temptation with several of the lovely pre-grouping liveried RTR locos that have come along in recent years and I'd like to run them occasionally on my railway, with stock that looks more appropriate than 1960s BR green carriages. Without me having to divert huge amounts of money and/or time to build stock for what is really a sideline interest, I can purchase from Hattons more-or-less appropriate looking carriages. I'll freely admit at this point that, from the Hattons illustrations, some pre-grouping liveries look more comfortable on the Genesis carriages than others. These carriages come at very reasonable prices, one of the crucial reasons for which is that they are generic in design and will require far less in time and other resources to get to market. Hattons, as a professional business, will certainly have done viability studies into the project and judged that to develop a range of carriages specifically to take a wide range of pre-grouping liveries that still look period-authentic will cost them far less and be far more marketable than basing the carriages on actual prototypes from one railway and adjusting all sorts of other liveries to print onto them (with varying degrees of success). That's why they'll have taken that route. In so doing, they've come up with a product I'd like to buy to run occasionally with my impulsively purchased, beautifully finished RTR pre-grouping locos. However, at the same time as I'm waiting for my Hattons Genesis carriages, I'll carry on buying, building and modifying Roxey Mouldings kits, Smallbrook kits, etc., etc. for my 'real' railway... Pete T.

Crikey. Even assuming it's a bit of a Paddy's hammer (or Trigger's broom) by now, they got their money's worth out of that bit of classic Leeds engineering then, didn't they? Pete T.

Thank you for the update - that rules out 30587 then. Maybe I was right first time around when I said 62 Martello? At least it's a Terrier, in a thread about Terriers... Pete T.

No, I'm wrong, one of the Beattie Well Tanks - 30587 - is still working isn't it, and that's from 1874? Pete T.

(326)62 Martello, 1875? Pete T.

...and they do very nice fall plates appropriate for a Black Five, too (nicer than the Hornby version). In fact they do a detailing kit for the Black Five and most if not all the included parts are also available separately, so you can pick and choose what you want. There's a minimum order value of £10 with Brassmasters on mail orders, not applicable if you buy from them at shows, but when you look at their website I don't think it'll take long for you to come up with a shopping list of repair/detailing bits for your loco that gets up to the minimum amount. I'd just say that if you haven't used them before you'll need to bear in mind that response times from them on emails sometimes lag by a day or so - they have other jobs to go to! The kits are shown on their website; if you want individual bits you'll have to download the pdf price list to find them all. Chances are, before you know it, you'll have a Black Five that looks better than it did before the near-catastrophe. Pete T. (an occasional and very happy customer of Brassmasters)

Now, the burning question is, do they have one glitterball per seating bay or just one per carriage if there's no partitioning? Glad you left it. Amused me too. I nearly choked on my coffee reading it. Pete T.

Yes, I think in all honesty there is a new breed of pre-grouping modellers. They're those who don't model pre-grouping at all but have been seduced into pre-grouping loco ownership, 'on the side', as it were. And there's a lot of us around. My 'serious' modelling falls into three camps: late 50s/early 60s SDJR (yawn, yes, too many of us around); 70s BR Blue (what I grew up with); and 50s/60s Isle of Wight (for which I've built/adapted many a brass or resin carriage kit - ironically all pre-grouping types, of course). That's what I spend all my time at my workbench doing. HOWEVER, in the last nine or ten years there have been some exquisite pre-grouping livery RTR locos produced, some of which have tempted me by their loveliness, despite the fact that they don't come anywhere near my 'serious' modelling camps. The opportunity to have some equally lovely looking (albeit generic) RTR stock to run with them is a wonderful thing - I don't want to spend huge amounts of money or valuable workshop time making stock for them because I'd rather be building something else for my 'serious' projects. There have got to be many like me who've impulsively bought and enjoy running a Hattons P Class, a Hornby H Class, a Rapido Stirling Single, etc., etc. in all their pre-grouping finery on model railway backdrops that are totally inappropriate for them, just for the fun of it, from time to time. For all of us, these carriages are right on the button (well done Hattons for identifying a need I didn't really know I had!). And when I've scratched the itch and unashamedly watched my pre-grouping loco haul its equally colourful Hattons carriages around for a bit, I'll still have plenty of time and money left for my 'serious' modelling. Pete T. P.S. - Oh, and a very big thank you to Hattons' Dave and all those on this thread who are working so constructively together to get us as credible looking a range of generic carriages as they can (that last bit's close to an oxymoron, but I think I got away with it).

Ahh. I reckon a resin kit of an LSWR road van would go beautifully with that... Or wait for Kernow's one, of course. Pete T.

That's how some of their kits used to be, years ago. In more recent years most if not all of Smallbrook's kits have been vastly improved and upgraded - the easy way to spot the newer ones is that they don't use a Dapol underframe anymore. They'll never go together like an Airfix kit, with its precision injection mouldings, but they will go together very nicely so long as you're willing to put in a bit of preparation time. If you model the Isle of Wight then the Smallbrook Studios range has been pretty well essential and a very welcome and viable alternative to scratchbuilding modified LBSC goods stock and LSWR brakes/road vans. But (aware I'm running on a parallel topic here) I'm still really looking forward to the Kernow ones when they get here. Pete T.

You're welcome. In my opinion they're towards the top of the resin kit quality scale, but of course resin components - whatever the quality - will always require lots more fettling than injection moulded ones. I remember replacing a couple of withered straps on the resin underframe with plasticard, too, but that only took a few minutes. In fact, the build took a couple of evenings to complete (including fettling etc.) plus another evening for painting. The resin has a good weight to it and the underframe was moulded nice and square, so it runs very smoothly too. As I said, it was a very satisfying build. But for all that, I'd love to see the Kernow ones do well and I'm really looking forward to mine when they arrive. Pete T.

I did it four years ago and nothing happened! Seriously though, in light of the number of projects that Kernow have picked up to manage themselves following long periods of inactivity from the previous manufacturing agent they engaged, it's really not surprising that some have had to wait in the queue a lot longer than we customers, or Kernow for that matter, would have liked - especially when you consider they've had to dovetail all these projects in with the already life-filling other tasks of running the business. And don't forget that, for at least partly similar reasons, the earliest customers to sign up for the D600 Warship had to wait 10 years! When we eventually got them, they were superb and I'm sure the road vans will be too. It must have been mentioned before in this thread (in which case please excuse me) but the Smallbrook Studios resin kit makes up into a very satisfying representation of the road van. I love mine and I'm sure I'll love it no less when the two RTR ones I ordered from Kernow appear. Must get around to weathering it sometime though. The bigger 18 ton road van that was on the Isle of Wight can also be built from a Smallbrook kit and is just as lovely (usual disclaimer, I have no connection to Smallbrook, etc.) Pete T.

Thank you Mike. No, I didn't know. I'll see if I can get hold of one. In fact it's probably about time I joined the society. I'll do it later today. I dug out my copy of MRJ 170 last night and reread Steffan's article in it. A few more things about Maindee East clicked into place as a result. Pete T.