GWR-fan

I suppose it all boils down to whether Hornby is a manufacturer or a retailer. Hornby likes to have a finger in each pie and seemingly has little respect for dealers, particularly those who discount. Perhaps Hornby views discounted sales as potential full value sales that they themselves could make. Given an even playing field would a customer buy a guaranteed product at full retail from the Hornby website or face potential disappointment from a cancelled pre-order at a local dealer who does not discount? I feel that covid manufacturing issues are being used as a rouse by Hornby to gain further traction in retail sales volume at the expense of the dealers. Is it over pre-ordering on the behalf of Hattons and other dealers affected by the cancellations, or are the dealers being punished by the manufacturer as it seeks to maximise company profits? What is certain is that the company will not be forthcoming and the dealers are possibly bound by secrecy agreements.

In the United States they used a method called pole shunting. Either side of the end sill of a wagon or loco they had a poling pocket. A pole around 20 foot in length was positioned between the pocket on the wagon being shunted and the pocket on a wagon or loco on an adjacent track. The loco or moving wagon would then shunt the wagon to be moved on the opposite track. I believe the practice was eventually outlawed but it did last a long time.

The English language as stated is a living, ever changing language where pronunciation and spelling have evolved considerably. Given the puritanical roots of the American "English" language, it is conceivable that the Americans retained the original pronunciation "clear-story". In relation to American railway culture I have always seen the word "clerestory" actually spelled as "clear-story". Typically of Americans they spell how they pronounce their words, so the original "clerestory" was "corrupted" to "clear-story". The Americans like to keep it simple. I have always pronounced the word "cler-est-ory" and would cringe every time I heard an American voice pronounce the word "clear-story" (even if they were right). Given that words in common usage have evolved over the last hundreds of years, in reality how can we say what is the correct pronunciation at this given moment. The language continues to evolve. With literally billions of people using the language in common usage, variations in pronunciation have evolved to suit the times. Was a tomato actually a "tom-ar-toe" or really a "tom-ate-oh"? I highly doubt that there are scholars still alive today from the middle ages who actually pronounced the word clerestory as "clear-story", so I am prepared to accept both pronunciations, although my preference is for "cler-est-ory", although in the practical world the pronunciation has little to do with a structure that is a clear storey.

While I applaud the incredible knowledge that a few of the respondents have made available to us all, surely the finer details are more suited to a thread on prototype 4/6 wheeler coaches. Hattons made it emphatically clear that the models being released are GENERIC and as such do not faithfully replicate any particular coach. They have attempted within the constraints of the tooling to present "believable" liveries at a realistic price. For the majority of us that is more than enough. I am not going to reread the roughly 120 pages to date, but I would place London to a brick that the majority of postings are from but a few who seemingly do not run out of information on the various coach diagrams and specific livery requirements. In essence this thread could have been but a few pages long as I feel the majority applaud what Hattons has made available. There are a few who perhaps would want a more prototypically accurate representation and perhaps rather than continually professing the incredible knowledge they possess, they could better spend their time actually building the accurate representations that they would want Hattons to manufacture instead. All this incredible research material would be better suited to a thread devoted to the prototype. This thread is about Hattons releasing generic four and six wheel coaches.

So impressed I immediately opted for the BR black and placed my order.

That may well be true for a new start up company, however, Hornby was more than happy to recently celebrate its 100th anniversary, a company built on the goodwill of its customers. It seems that a new management broom is sweeping through the office as it did in an illfated way some years ago when retailers were forbidden to grey export Hornby products outside of the UK. That really backfired and showed that without its retailer and customer base Hornby is on a razor's edge for survival. Hornby cannot survive on purely direct selling from its website as its current mongrel marketing behaviour has created too many dissidents who now realise that model railway items do not only come in red boxes.

I am sure the later releases had plastic bodies.

That second wagon looks more like the Tri-ang Weltrol wagon. The second image shows "Weltrol" on the side sill.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001287313553.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.0.0.546472e0Cvf6Ax&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.169870.0&scm_id=1007.13339.169870.0&scm-url=1007.13339.169870.0&pvid=2c444e78-48ac-47ef-b26c-b533cc5faf21&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller,scm-url:1007.13339.169870.0,pvid:2c444e78-48ac-47ef-b26c-b533cc5faf21,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2323_668%230%23131923%2323_668%23888%233325%2314_668%23888%233325%2314_668%232846%238116%232002_668%235811%2327175%2322_668%232717%237561%23330_668%231000022185%231000066059%230_668%233468%2315615%23634_668%232846%238116%232002_668%235811%2327175%2322_668%232717%237561%23330_668%233164%239976%23402_668%233468%2315615%23634

These have been around before and I have used quite a few of them in the past, being very comparable if not the same as the Hornby spoked 12.6mm wheels. Normally on Australian eBay the cost for 24 axles would be over $50.00 Aud. Given that in Australia a pack of ten Hornby spoked wheels is around $45.00 Aud shipped, these represent excellent value. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32921624436.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.0.0.5cd27da4VQKnJH&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.169870.0&scm_id=1007.13339.169870.0&scm-url=1007.13339.169870.0&pvid=657d7f3a-7c00-4b7c-b4a1-1eed17c98777&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller,scm-url:1007.13339.169870.0,pvid:657d7f3a-7c00-4b7c-b4a1-1eed17c98777,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2319_668%230%23131923%2319_668%23888%233325%2314_668%23888%233325%2314_668%232846%238116%232002_668%235811%2327175%2322_668%232717%237561%23330_668%231000022185%231000066059%230_668%233468%2315618%23969_668%232846%238116%232002_668%235811%2327175%2322_668%232717%237561%23330_668%233164%239976%23402_668%233468%2315618%23969

Typical of much of Hornby's contracted soldering, those joints look like cold soldering. A good soldered joint should not "ball up" as in your image. A multimeter should be used to test continuity from track pickups to circuit board and then circuit board to motor terminals. Like many others I have received locomotives where the track connection is incorrectly wired direct to the motor causing DCC issues. One such loco was a TTS fitted P2 which as soon as power was applied fried the decoder. The Castle class was another known culprit.

I am interested in many Peters Spares items however the current GBP40.00 minimum postage cost to Australia on eBay items is a definite turnoff. Do you have any idea when the postage cost will return to a more reasonable level, please, or is the high postage cost only applicable to purchases on the eBay site?

Last week a well known store had a Bachmann "Shakespeare Express" train pack listed in its pre-owned section described as loco seizes when running. The last two non runners purchased from the store required replacement motors so I was initially apprehensive buying the pack, however at GBP114.00 (after VAT discount) plus GBP26.00 express postage I decided to take the gamble and hopefully correct the fault in the loco. It arrived downunder barely days after shipping. As soon as I looked at the loco the cause was apparent. Given that the set looked and was packaged as a new/unused set I can assume the loco was released ex-factory in a non working state. The piston rod on the vacuum pump was outside of the footplate mounted cylinder and wedged against it. A quick disassemble, lube and reassemble and the loco runs like new. Every part of the set is as new including the paperwork and packaging. Locally the set still sells for around $500.00 Aud in new condition.

In my opinion if you purchased a new item from a store then whether you use it or not the item is "used" or secondhand and should not be described as new. If you are a dealer purchasing an item new from a distributor or from a manufacturer direct, for the intention of reselling the item at retail, then the item is new. If you purchased an item as a consumer then it is used regardless of its "new" condition. The daughters of a long time collector in Australia, now deceased, are disposing of his vast estate of model items on eBay and through a website. They describe the majority of his items, many up to forty years old as new condition and in many cases charge the equivalent of a comparative new price as if the item was recently manufactured. The items may be unused condition but they are definitely not new.

My experience with these bogies is that they either run well or they misbehave no matter how much money and time you throw at them. Critical is the amount of wear in the axle cutouts in the drive block. Also relevant is the wheel tread surface, some are smooth, others very coarse and of course the serrated treads. Out of nearly twenty of these Blue Pullman drive blocks I was only really pleased with four of them, getting them to run as smoothly as any more recent motor bogies. The others I tried new brushes, shaft ball bearings and felt pads, carefully aligning the magnet carriers and aligning the brushes with the commutator. I even tried neodymium magnets with no joy (they would just bend the armature shaft). I finally gave up and sold everything.

Many years ago I was in what would have been one of Australia's largest model railway retailers. At the time what he had in the Hornby range would have fitted in a shopping basket. A woman was in discussion with the owner asking him for information on what her teenage son would need to get started in the hobby. The owner's response was basically look around you and you will see barely nothing related to trains as the internet has killed off the hobby. His store which was once a mecca for model railway items was now floor to ceiling stocked with aircraft, military, car and ship model kits. At the time I could not even purchase styrene glue or a tin of matte black paint. By then most of the smaller model railway shops in the city were already out of business, presumably not being able to meet the rent on their premises. One who does survive charges full retail at his premises and a considerable markup on his eBay account. People must be desperate because he does manage quite a few sales on eBay, even at grossly inflated prices. In largescale the two main retailers moved their premises out into the countryside to a rural town about 100 klms from Sydney where presumably rent is less expensive. In Melbourne and Perth there are some retailers but like the rest of Australia it is full retail pricing.

RAF96, many thanks

With Rails no longer able to sell Hornby stock other than stock onhand and Hattons seemingly unable to fulfill many pre-orders, many lodged around 18 months ago, is there the possibility that discounting will be discontinued across the hobby in the near future. With Hornby selling online is there any incentive for other retailers to match the price of what were once the two major box shifters. At present there are many dealers matching or selling slightly below Rails and Hattons but will they continue to do so in a less competitive market if not forced to? With less competition to drive down prices then will prices creep back to retail? In Australia there has never really been discounting in the hobby and a tight rein kept on retail imports, so Aussie hobbyists have always paid full retail. Simply put, when there is little to no competition there is no incentive to discount.

Perhaps a naive question but would it be possible to utilise the Hornby App accessory controller to operate the yet to be released Rails accessory "decoders" to control point motors as the info on the Rails site states that analogue DC may be used to operate the unit? I like the polarity switching aspect of the Rails unit. I assume all that the Hornby accessory controller does is convert a bluetooth signal to analogue DC to operate an accessory such as a point motor.

I suppose you could always stick the mobile phone in your pocket, however, where do you place the tablet when you need to attend to something on the track? The Signal Box video from back in March 2020 makes a big deal of the emergency stop function. In essence all it does is cut power to everything or just to the HM controller in question. Is this really necessary? When re-initiated what current draw would there be when everything previously selected is powered up? Are all previous presets remembered or does the operator need to basically start all over again? Depending on the bluetooth control device used what is the maximum number of controller and accessory units that may be paired to the phone device? Would this be a limiting factor in the suitability of the system. Personally, I would have preferred a wifi system utilising a router/modem and separate controller where I believe there is no limit to the number of devices nor the number of accessories that may be operated simultaneously. I think that the system would be excellent for a smallish shunting/end to end type layout, reducing a lot of the wiring needed to activate points, signals, etc. The design of the layout could also incorporate somewhere to place your tablet when not in your hands. On a small layout the tablet could have a semi-permanent location and basically perform as a tethered controller without the need for a multitude of wires as would be seen on a conventional control panel. I am warming up to the idea but definitely not with a mobile phone (perhaps the largest android tablet I could find). What is the next step, a bluetooth receiver in each loco to enable individual loco control? Wait a minute Bachmann already went down that path with seemingly little public success.

In my opinion the downfall of the system is actually the mobile phone. At seventy years of age I have only just purchased my first mobile (with much gnashing and gritting of teeth), while I have attempted in the past to use them but my fingers seem to always select a minimum of two characters when attempting to text message so any fine control for me is out. I have used numerous analogue and digital wireless systems in largescale outdoor railways and yet even with the choice of quality DCC sound and control I seem to always gravitate back to tethered analogue control. I may be interested in the Hornby system if there was a control other than a phone app. Remember how Bachmann were going to make DCC obsolete with their bluetooth control. What happened there? Like Hornby Zero One, E-link and live steam, I really cannot see much happening here. There will be an initial positive response but then waining interest will see the protocol not being updated by the company.

Given the multiple discrepancies in the delivery times and dates and the seller's history of items supposedly delivered but not actually received, this morning I opened a case for an item not received. Within ten minutes I had a "courtesy" refund of the payment made. At the other end of the scale, last week I received an eBay message from another Chinese seller. I had purchased a square metre of carbon fibre cloth. The seller was very apologetic, stating that the item purchased was from a new shipment of cloth and in his opinion the cloth was not of merchantable quality and that he would rather refund my money rather than ship goods that were not acceptable. 99.9% of my numerous purchases from China have been without issue.

First time I have ever had an issue with a Chinese seller. I have purchased numerous items from China ranging in value from low value to relatively high value and until today never had a problem. Fortunately this purchase was less than $10.00 and as it turned out the item is surplus to my needs. Tracking shows it was delivered on April 6th. Oddly, tracking also shows that the item was only picked up by the local courier for delivery on April 7th. I also received an email today, April 7th, stating the item was delivered with the time of receipt of the email 9.42am. Oddly, the email stated the item was dropped off at 10.51am this morning which at the time I received the email was still 1 hour and 9 minutes into the future. The seller has a long history of buyers with negative feedback stating a message was received stating items were delivered but not received, coincidentally all items with a value around $10.00. I have been home all day yesterday and today and with a very quiet neighbourhood I would hear any delivery vehicle passing by. Obviously I am very dubious as the item was not purchased until early this month and basically in just a few days was delivered from China. The expected arrival date was June 6th. EBay is not really interested as the item is showing tracking as delivered and as expected delivery was not until June 6th, no doubt they will string out the resolution process until then. I cannot give the seller feedback other than positive for several more days. I may see if PayPal are interested in chasing down the seller but given the low value I will be content with posting negative feedback on the seller. In thousands of transactions I have only ever posted negative feedback on a seller once and that was because he packaged a $1000.00 LGB Mogul in brown paper wrapping rather than a suitable box. The item of cause was damaged intransit. At the time sellers could post retaliatory negative feedback and so I received my one and only negative on my account.

It is as a buyer that I am annoyed that sellers print off a shipping label thus creating a tracking number and an email from eBay telling me that the seller has shipped the item when in fact all they have done is simply print a label. It may be days before the item is actually posted. The title is "EBay annoyances and I was expressing in my posting what annoyed me about eBay.

As a seller I never print off the eBay shipping label as I understand that creating a label creates a tracking number. To eBay this indicated that you have posted the item, even though it might be several days before the item is actually posted. My policy is that if the person has paid then my responsibility is to post the item as soon as possible (usually early the next morning) and then on return from the post office I input tracking details. My tracking shows that the item has actually been posted, not that shipping information has been received. As a buyer I receive tracking information from the seller but all it really shows me is that the seller has printed off the shipping label, not that he has posted the item. The seller in a dispute can provide a tracking number even if he did not actually post the item. A friend would actually print off the label, charge the buyer the required amount as calculated and then hunt down the cheapest courier he could find, making a profit on the postage cost. In many cases he would hand deliver the package, although the buyer would have unknowingly negated his buyer protection policy by accepting the package.