GEARJAMMER

Very nice, ive always liked those in yellow, i believe there are only one or two of them over here, i think Chris Evans used to own one of them. Anyway, heres mine, a long way from its berth place now, most of them are now garage queens and only come out in sunny weather, mines still a daily user, not in the best condition admitidly, but still fills me with joy everytime i turn the key, and ive owned it over 10 years now....

60040 in its EWS/Army livery always looked nice, id like that one.

I have to agree about the Longmoor Blue livery, id certainly be in the que to buy that. I mainly model modern image and have built up a very healthy rake of Dapol Yeoman stone wagons.... now which one was it that was pulling stone trains at the last Merehead Quarry open day????? Whatever one it was, i will buy it, no ifs, no buts, i'll buy it!

I had an email this week regarding ordering 66769, just gone on the Accurascale site to order and its sold out, can i assume ive missed out on that one, unless a retailer has some in stock that is?

Not just the British steel liveried ones, id like some more Mendip stone liveried ones.

And finally......

Well as the old saying goes 'better late than never'..... So back earlier in the year I had another all to brief play with Tidworth at the Basingstoke model railway show (I think It was Basingstoke anyway???). Ian mentioned the layout would be attending the Brockenhurst show but was unsure if he had enough operators for it, living 20 minutes down the road I threw my hat into the ring and volunteered to put a weekend shift in which he accepted. As Ian has said above I took charge of the M.O.D sidings and fiddle yard and put his little army Shunter through its paces shunting back and forth with military precision (see what i did there), it played ball and did pretty much everything It was tasked with, it's a great little loco. I also got to operate some trains out on the mainline to the station when the operator for that section was busy chatting to the public, amusing as it normally resulted in said operator focusing back on the railway with questions such as 'who's moving that', 'are you controlling this', 'who's doing that'.... you know who you are fellow Portchy boy, lol. Overall it was a great weekend spent working a great layout, many thanks to Ian and the rest of the Tidworth crew and everyone else I met during the weekend, the offer to help out at Portsmouth is still open. I did also manage to take time to take pictures... and I make no apology for dumping so many on this thread, so here goes....

I never seen 89001 in service, ive never seen it working, ive never really taken any interest in it at all....... but dam, im so tempted to buy the model, it looks so good!

A very interesting thread this..... Before i run off my list i will say this, i NEVER ever purchase a new model without having first seen it, or read various reviews online and in magazines about its quality which normally highlights various build and livery errors that would need correcting or living with ( i cant stress my disapointment at the new Dapol 59 and im glad i never ordered one). Im afraid i don't have much faith in Hornby, Heljan, Dapol and to a lesser extent Bachmann these days. Anyway, i have in my possesion a lovely rake of 15 ARC Tippler wagons from Accurascale..... and thats it! However, on order (and paid for).... 2x mk2 NSE coaches. 2x class 31s (Exclusives 31407 & 31466) 2x class 50s ( 50017 & 50149 ) Not a long list compared to some, but being as none of these models have been released yet i think it shows my faith in the new manufacturers as ive been impressed at what ive seen so far to the point i will now order models before they have even entered production, i also have Revolutions Inspection saloon on order and paid for, done before i even seen a production example. Accurascales payment schemes are also very favourable, i like paying in instalments, it makes ordering bigger more expensive orders more manageable. I think Accurascale, Revolution and Cavalex have really improved this hobby no end and all three will see a lot of my cash coming their way in the future.

Sorry if this has been covered in one of the other previous 117 pages..... I've been offered an opportunity to buy a model of 68005 in DRS livery, is the livery on the model correct, ive had a quick look at photos of the model and the real thing and can't see an issue but I believe there was an error on the first release, but im not sure if 68005 was on the first release or a later batch, i think i seen 68002 mentioned? Any clarification would be gratefully recieved.

Ref the exclusive model of 50007, would i be correct in saying that the real 50007 carried a lighter shade of green (which i much preferred) for its last few years in service, the years prior to that it carried a darker green which the exclusive model is based on?

They look great, id certainly be interested in some OO gauge versions when they are ready. If any of the photos ive posted are suitable for making transfers then please feel free to use them. Im in Torr fairly regular so can photograph whatever is about if you'd like me to post more.

Having read all the comments above reference the couplings and alternative options in the end ive gone down the route of just glueing them all shut, even the ones that worked! Ive gone on the theory that these wagons don't get split apart and shunted about, they spent most of their time coupled in rakes and whilst the buckeyes work when coupling together...you still have to lift one to uncouple (unless ive missed something). So i just lift them to join them all together and they stay like it. Working buckeyes seem a bit of a gimmic, maybe Dapol might consider producing models like this with buckeyes moulded permanently closed, it could potentially bring the cost of the model down? Anyway.... back to why ive come back to this topic, ive been looking at my rake of wagons and they are in need of weathering which naturally lead me to start looking at the real things on my visits to Torr quarry where i can see them being loaded, i have noticed that pretty much all of the JHAs have the top edges beaten down where they have no doubt been hit so many times by the loading shovel, im thinking to recreate this i could maybe take the sides off, heat them up up and bend them, i do have a spare damaged wagon, but as yet, not been brave enough to try it. The paint work is another head scratcher, i have noticed that some have been very crudely repainted to cover graffiti (only to then be recovered in graffiti) so my simple question is who produces the best matching 'Yeoman blue' paint as to that applied to the model? On a similar note is the silver/grey part of the livery, ive seen at least one wagon where clearly Merehead was all out of blue paint and the whole wagon side redone in silver (ive also seen a black one and really need to get a pic of that), but the model looks more grey, so if a paint a wagon silver, it will look different to the others, so does anyone know a paint colour/code that matches Dapols version of Yeoman silver/grey? Then we get on to the graffiti itself, does anyone produce graffiti transfers that could be used? Ive been looking at the graffiti on the real JHAs and as much as we all hate graffiti if got to reluctantly admit, some of it is actually pretty good a certainly brightens up the quarry on a damp dull morning, ive started taking photos of some of it, is it possible to get images of the graffiti copied from a photo and scaled down to a 4mm scale transfer to go on these wagons? Ive included below (or above) some of the photos ive taken, interestingly one of the plain silver ones (with Murder1 on it) is outer wagon 19313, one of the ones produced by Dapol.

Yes, i think you are wrong, but i can only go on my personal opinion. We waited a long long time for that OO gauge 59 to arrive, with some of the errors being pointed out at the design stage, yet they made it into production regardless, which i think these days is unacceptable, i just can't help but feel that if it had been designed by yourselves, or Cavalex or Accurascale and i know you three are technically competitors but the one thing you have in common is you have all raised the standard and listen to your customers, then the errors, such as the over height exhaust, wrong chassis shape under the cab, incorrect lighting and the one i can't ignore, the incorrect radio pods would not have happened. You say the rival model has satisfied most 4mm customers, well yes technically it has but only because there is no other option except the Hornby offering, and that wasn't hard to beat really was it? To date i still don't own any class 59s (except my old Lima examples), i can't bring myself to buy the new release with its errors and was so gutted when i seen them. I await the next batch from them with interest, if they to have the same errors my nagging of you to upscale yours will go into overdrive. I already know if you upscale yours, it will be better than the competition. Look at it this way, the Hornby class 60 is a very good model, but the Cavalex class 60 will be better again, the same can be said for your class 59!

This looks to be a great model, i will certainly add some to my collection although ive yet to decide which ones, however one that i won't be buying is the 60028 Cappagh liveried example, ive not long purchased the Hornby version and as others have said, its still a very good model, i would respectfully suggest dropping that one and maybe doing a DC Rail grey one instead, i would guess most already have the 60028 Cappagh livery one and are probably not going to replace it with a Cavelex one so soon, i think Cavalex could potentially end up with a lot of them unsold, however those, like me, that have the Hornby Cappagh liveried loco will be in the market for the grey version and so i think this could sell better.

Ive noticed on my frequent visits to Whatley (and Merehead) that the fleet of JNAs are looking rather..... shall we say 'random' lately, started off with the rather pleasant looking silver versions with Mendip Rail branding, then they were joined by the red/brown Touax versions somewhat spoiling the overall uniform appearance. Now we have had a large quantity of blue ones arrive, they appear to be the same blue as the Cappagh versions but no company logo, just VTG lettering.

Does anyone know if the next batch of class 59s are going to have some of the faults rectified, for example the incorrect NRN pods and the lighting issues? Im guessing the exhaust issue wont get sorted, and on that not has anyone instead of modifying the exhaust on the Dapol model tried swapping it with a Hornby/Lima exhaust from their 59?

I wonder if Dapol will change the exhaust and the NRN pods to the correct type on this second batch. Everyone going on and on about the lights, ive only seen one post on here from someone correcting the overheight exhaust and nothing about the NRN pods being removed, strange.

When do pre orders open for the upscaled 00 gauge version??????

Bachmann and Hornby seem to have gone down two different routes with their Thomas and friends characters... Hornby seemed to model them on the real life locos, such as Henry being a black 5 (painted green) used the black 5 tooling, and never really quite right. Bachmann seem to be modeling them as per the gauge 1 locos that were used for the original TV series, hence look a lot better in my eyes. Im half tempted to collect the main characters myself, as thats where the whole train interest started.