Mike Harvey

The Paddington Bear Class 800 was the second best selling model railway item over the whole of October on the Hobby Search Japan website.  Kato might need a second run if the first batch sells out between February 2024 launch and the release of the next Paddington Bear movie in November 2024.

Just picking up on the coupler makers mentioned by @Michanglais if anyone is interested in importing from TJModèles I can confirm that Thomas does ship outside France. I have provided for Pého closecouplers in my Corail chassis 3D prints in N and their couplers are available from several retailers across mainland Europe who send to the UK.

The announcements have generally been on the first Wednesday of February, May, August and November. So if the pattern is being followed it would be Wednesday 1 November.

They cannot all be picked, packed, invoiced and despatched at once. Lots of factors come into play - order size and completeness, status of retailer’s account and credit limits, whether a wholesaler is an intermediary for some manufacturers, carrier schedules, and available time.

13 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

The first two will no doubt come along in due course. Classes 25 & 37 were also used. The tankers were distinctively Continental though, unlike any domestic tankers, and that's part of the appeal. I could do it in O scale, as the difference between 1:43.5 and 1:45 is minimal, or at least a lot less of a gap than there is between 1:76 & 1:87!!

But I don't have space to do it in O; TT120 opens up that opportunity, even if I'd need a magnifying glass to see small models again!!

There were at least three builds of the phosphorous tanks running to Langley Green owned by VTG, Eva and On Rail. With the availability of the LHB style of bogie in TT:120 I suspect that a 3D print is more likely than a ready to run model. Mike Roch has started upscaling some of his N chemical tank designs. https://www.shapeways.com/shops/maridunian-models?page[number]=1&page[limit]=48&page[order]=asc

15 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

There are decent discounts available on Paddington set pre-orders in Japan, about 27,500jpy. That's still very good value even if more than the first release. 

By the time you have added the international shipping, VAT and clearance charges, and the risk of a strengthening JPY,  there won't be much advantage over discounted UK prices (about £212) plus shipping I suspect. 

8 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Ignoring the US, of course, one of the attractions to me of TT120 was the opportunity to re-create a very regular traffic I used to see myself, of Continental ferry tankers to the Albright & Wilsons Chemical works in Oldbury, West Midlands.

Granted it was a niche traffic flow (lost, ironically, when the Channel Tunnel opened) but TT120 would allow UK locos to pull genuine EU stock in the same scale, in the same - prototypical - universe!!

The stumbling block so far for me is the lack of suitable UK diesels, although no doubt they will/may become available, and as far as I can tell, the similar lack of ferry spec. chemical tankers.

Just needs Class 31, UK gauge ferry vans and UK gauge tankers and you are there. The prohibition on hazardous cargoes passing through the Channel Tunnel did for several regular international flows. I campaigned for some train ferry capacity to be retained for hazardous cargoes but it was felt that retaining maritime capacity could undermine the non-hazardous flows switching to the Tunnel.

Gaugemaster has now announced the GWR Paddington Bear version for the UK with a regular DC train set with an oval of track and controller, but also with 3 standalone trains - DC only, DCC fitted, and DCC sound. The sound fitted one appears to have on board sound rather than using the Kato Sound Card shoreside system.

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=kato+class+800+paddington

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/catalog/product/view/id/101355/s/gaugemaster-gm2000106-gwr-class-800-and-0-paddington-bear-premium-train-set/?utm_source=Main+Lines&utm_campaign=1984ccade7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_10_18_10_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-1984ccade7-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]

18 hours ago, Guardian said:

I wonder when UK manufacturers start to introduce close coupling mechanisms to  wagons... 

Worth looking at Revolution Trains and others for that in 00. A high proportion of Revolution's N gauge output has kinematic couplers to facilitate close coupling.

The new themed WonderWorks will feature Hornby, Airfix, CORGI, Scalextric and Pocher. No mention in the mailshot of Oxford Diecast or Oxford Rail., or any of the other continental or minor brands.,

On 16/05/2023 at 02:07, Mike Harvey said:

I have put off pre-ordering these because I wanted to see whether Revolution would be able to get the bodies closer to rail level than the motorised EFE 00 gauge model. From the models shown at York it looks like the N gauge versions will indeed be tube trains.

Courtesy of Mike Hale at GETS, I had a look at the underside of a powered car. I am now confident that the tube train will be hugging the rails and, from what I was told, the running tests on smaller radii have shown that the design is reliable.  I think that there is the tiniest compromise in height as a result of using outside bearing axles which means that the bottom of the car side is above the top of the very low profile side frame. This fuzzy picture is cropped from a shot taken through the perspex  of the display cabinet.

In later times (1990s) derailment of 2 axle wagons at 60mph on continuously welded rail was often due to cyclic top - where the trackbed “remembers” where the 60ft joins were and the unevenness resulting from slight dips in the rail at 60ft intervals set up an oscillation which resulted in one wheel eventually climbing over a rail. 

My Royal Mail units both have red tail lights. I think the models follow the prototype so earlier liveries have no red lights.

The Paddington Bear GWR Class 800 was the top selling item at Hobby Search Japan last week.

The substantial price increase over the previous batch is probably the impact of licensing costs, smaller production run and inflation. Not sure what the level of worldwide following is for Paddington Bear, but it could appeal to a non-model-rail sector, I suppose. It will be interesting to see if Gaugemaster will feature it in a starter set with an oval of track and controller, as with the first batch. 

19 hours ago, Bittern said:

For a small frame with simple interlocking you might have more luck using FDM printing or laser-cut plastic to implement a system like the one AMBIS make (made?) based on slotted plates. (Similar designs were used by Hornby Dublo and, briefly, the NER.) A home-made clone was written up in Railway Modeller in the 1990s, along with an explanation of how to implement some locks, but I only have paper back-issues so it will take a while to find.

 

If you're interested I can sketch up the basic elements, and/or try to find the article. The big limitation is that it can't do some types of conditional locking without losing the simplicity and robustness that are its main advantages, if it is possible at all.

There is a detailed article by Mike Cosgrove in the July 1996 Railway Modeller.

Be interested to see the Shapeways reply. Usually I find it my misunderstanding of the itemisation of the invoice lines. When I look more carefully that 20% is the VAT.

think this link might work better.   Double deck trains film

1 hour ago, PaulRhB said:

Do you have the link please as I can’t find any news on the crane or general videos. Searches only come up with the two product links shown as ‘future’.

Go to Youtube. Search for Oxford Diecast Live. The Oxford Rail discussion start just over one hour into the video. I am out in the ocean so no real bandwidth to research the precise link.

23 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Thanks for the info, however the link doesn't work unless you are prepared to register as a user of twitter.

Don't suppose they'll be honouring the original advertised price (£16.50 from Rails)

There are other public links available on the Oxford Diecast website.

18 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Not as far as I am aware, well certainly not in 1/76 scale. While we are about it there are no estate versions of any mark of Cortina, or of the 105E Anglia for that matter.

I would be happy to see the old Corgi Cortina Mk2  Estate resized even with the woody sides.

Hiroshi Kato was at Swindon and the International N Gauge Show a week ago. Hopefully somebody asked him directly.

This evening Oxford have announced a large number of new items - 69 I think across all ranges.

New shapes include Bond Bug, Mazda MX5, Volvo F88, two missing Ford Transit van variants, Bedford CF van, Ford County Tractor in 1/76, Packard Clipper, Ford Country Sedan, Chevy Corvair wagon in 1/87 and 4 items in 1/120 - Routemaster Bus, Mini, VW T2 and Ferguson Tractor.

Info to the trade tomorrow.

8 hours ago, Fireline said:

 

I dare say there will be some Corgi, some Airfix, and some Scalextric. On here we tend to focus on Hornby, for obvious reasons, but there are a number of brands that could come in, and need to be sold.

From my observations there are still a very large number of the continental railway brands’ autumn deliveries to come……Arnold, Electrotren, Lima, Jouef, Rivarossi etc. and some of the smaller accessory brands too.

The problem with back to back standards is that they need to relate to track standards, notably flangeways and check rail positions  at points and crossings. I honestly do not expect there to be a single back to back answer to suit all the various track systems. On the other hand whilst we might expect consistency for all the wheelsets on a particular piece of rolling stock, a variance of 0.2mm can be make or break for smooth running but may be acceptable in a production environment. I have tried to QC this post for spelling but not grammar and that has taken longer than I would have expected because there were correctly spelled words which were not the word I intended. QC has a time cost which translates to financial cost in a production environment.