Mike Harvey

Kato have good form in exploiting and developing their tooling. Taking the SNCF TGV as an example, they have followed development of the real trains over the past 40 years, amending buffet car window layouts, bogie suspension changes, the evolution to double deck trains and the myriad changes to power car shapes and end coach window layouts. The Class 800 series offers similar scope but some of the more restricted variants might take 25 years to come to fruition. 😄

Back in the early days of the short-lived Lyddle End N building range I sent Simon a rather good mock-up of a country fire station. I pointed him to a couple of real ones which were within a few minutes drive of Westwood. Much to my surprise I received an early morning phone call from Simon thanking me and discussing options. In the end Hornby opted for a model of Upton on Severn's old fire station whilst Bachmann went for Studley both of which are close to my home. I wish him a long, happy and productive retirement.

Good to see Mk1 Fiesta, Mk5 Cortina, Mk3 Capri and Mk2 Escort added to the N range in tonight’s annoucement. And A Metro, Rover P5B, MG Midget, and current ford Ranger in 1/76 car range, plus a modern Dennis dust cart in 1/76.

The French language page of the Arnold part of the Hornby website evidently understands British humour.

From my experience they are likely to arrive in one package but you will be charged 3 lots of shipping. That is what usually happened to me over the past 5 years or so. A phone call to customer services then yields a refund of two lots of the shipping charge. Be interested to hear if your experience is different.

The new Tomytec bus chassis has arrived initially as part of set A3. Each set has an oval of snap together track with an embedded wire with the curved ends made up of 90 degrees 103mm radius and 90 degrees 140mm radius. I have two sets so I have set things up with a smaller 103mm radius oval inside the larger 140mm oval. The curved ends are linked by 280mm of straight road which on one side includes a pull-in bus stop with a manually operated STOP-GO slide switch. In the STOP position a magnet is brought close to the guide wire and operates a reed switch on the motorised chassis. There are no sophisticated electronics on board unlike previous Tomytec bus chassis with their lights, fast and slow speed and a function to pause for about 10 seconds at the bus stop. Power is from a single LR44/AG13 button cell. The set comes with a lovely static model of the Toyota SARO fuel cell bus in 1/150 scale. The body from the static model fits over the motorised chassis. The wheelbase can be adjusted so that the wheels are centered appropriately in the body. A bit of fettling was required to get the magnet in the steering arm to reliably follow the embedded road wire, so not entirely plug and play. In the videos below the buses have old batteries (use by 2018!) fitted and one seems slower than the other. When I get some fresh batteries I suspect they will speed up to about 25mph. Layout image https://i.servimg.com/u/f41/12/12/53/02/tomyte10.jpg

@Dr Al What you have written is thought provoking and matches my experience. The coupler displacement issue is important from an operational viewpoint. The layout i am building involves a lot of shunting and I have designed in the uncoupler magnets for Dapol Easi-Shunts to all be where couplers will be close to the track centre line. It all works well and is a pleasure to play with using an N gauge Society Hunslet and Kato class 77 (66 with air con). I did try coupling the Class 77 on a curve to a continental 4 axle grain wagon and this worked fine. I did not check how the lateral coupler displacement on the Class 77 catered for this. It may be that the obstacle deflector limits the coupler movement. I' ll check when I am back with the loco in a week or so. Just as an aside, another bugbear can be poor soldered connections which in recent times have been an issue with some Arnold locos and railcars. I prefer a brass to brass connection with the potential to adjust the tension as needed (Farish Class 150). My vote would be for an Accurascale Mk 2c range.

They could always tool the very similar but noticeably different Class 77 for Arnold initially. Harmonising the UK and continental prices later on would be easier once away from the “lead- in” pricing period.

I had written a complete reply but describing what I did to a different continental shunter which has a different pick-up system. Doh! I won’t be back with my Hunslet for a couple of weeks. I’ll then have a careful look to see what I did. I think it involved the sanding pipes being adjusted to limit the lateral movement of the wheelsets.

This sounds like a problem of getting power from track to the decoder. As a light weight loco with fine wheels and a short wheelbase, the Hunslet is very susceptible to minor track irregularities or dirt on wheels. It might be something as simple as contact with the wheels on one side being lost as the wheels move laterally. I would be checking that the pickups remain in contact with the wheels even when a wheel is displaced laterally to the maximum extent. I only run mine on DC but obviously with every loco being decoder-fitted by default, this involves the chip. I tweaked my pickups to overcome the occasional stall with the loco sitting on straight track.

Not quite sure why the vacuum brake couplers require Air Raid Precautions.

If you want replicate it without acquiring 3D modelling skills, why not make a rubber mould and use that to make replicas in whatever material you choose? No fancy chemicals needed if you cast in something like plaster of Paris. Rubber mould kits widely available online or in retail outlets like Hobbycraft.

https://revolutiontrains.com/projects/

Using an existing outer may well have been more valuable than creating the cutting tool and other parts for a bespoke box, especially as the brand is likely to become part of the Hornby range sometime soon. No problem with recycling the larger box though if it is not required for storage of the model.

You must have a knack. It only happens on preorders as I said originally. It has happened on every pre-order since 2017. Each year the items are pre-ordered on the same day. Hornby splits the pre-orders into single item pre-orders each with a shipping charge as the system does not know when each item will come into stock. I know that items I pre-order (Arnold grain wagons) always arrive together from the factory. The items come into stock together. All arrive in one parcel - good. Each one attracts it’s own shipping charge although the total is substantially over £50. What am I doing wrong?

In my experience, even if they group pre-orders into one package, they still charge separate shipping for each item, and you have to claim back the excess shipping cost over the phone. Hornby probably would not qualify as a Tier 1 dealer.😀

The instructions refer to it as an ESU decoder.

I was in Kerrville, Texas recently, and a bit surprised to find a half-ish size stonehenge in a dedicated park! it shared the space with a few Easter Island stone figures. https://texashillcountry.com/stonehenge-texas-hill-country/

And the 2009 survey was a readership survey not a market survey, which may or may not be skewed by the magazine’s scale specific content. You couldn’t make it up………..well it seems like you can.

I would accept that N predominates in the Japanese market, but without evidence for the UK market share for N, the assertion that the UK N share is smaller than in most other nations is meaningless. In my experience, taking our nearest neighbours as examples, N in France and Belgium is a much much smaller market proportion than in the UK.

So between 3% and say 7% of the total all gauges market? I would really like to see the up-to-date evidence to support that.

Model Railway Journal 293 has an excellent illustration of this detailing issue. A very talented builder, Gordon Gravett, scratcbuilds a 2mm and 4mm version of the same ship side by side and explains the differing challenges between the scales. Worth a read for anyone who does not comprehend that reproducing every fragile detail in N may not be a practical solution, so upscaling does not always work if the more comprehensive details are not known.

I would say that it is worth trying the Fleischmann N Profi coupler provided you are not running on an uneven floor introducing switchback conditions. After 30 years of using them on layouts built on baseboards I have never experienced the unplanned uncoupling that Michanglais has. Using them with magnets for uncoupling, I was able to push a preuncoupled rake of wagons round a tight 180 degree curve, through a reverse storage loop with 7 facing turnouts back round the 180 degree curve and on to a straight, where the loco and first wagon remained preuncoupled. I am building a new post-bereavement layout now where the grain terminal will rely on magnetically operated Profis.

I do not think that Oxford Rail are averse to renumbering. The Tilmanstone wagon comes with 3 different numbers - two versions in the EKR set, and one individual wagon. It is possible that the Pilchards being delivered now are the second part of the original batch, just not completed, packed and delivered earlier.

Although it is an ugly beast in N, the Fleischmann Profi coupler is made for the TT:120 NEM pocket. They are a rigid coupler held together with a pivoting latch on the top. A 1mm diameter neodymium magnet in the top provides for a home brew magnetic uncoupler using under track magnets to repel the latch upwards and to one side. Fully compatible with kinematic coupler arms by being rigid. No unplanned uncoupling, and a pre-uncouple facility too even using the magnet. Mechanical uncoupling is possible using a between rails ramp, which is what Fleischmann use on one of their large exhibition layouts featuring an automated hump-shunt yard. Might be too short for general TT use. https://www.fleischmann.de/fen/products/accessories/others/389545-profi-plug-in-couplings-9545-bulk-pack.html