teletougos

I'm pleased to hear this and it really vindicates the approach Hornby has taken in choice of model.

I drew my own conclusions about Hornby's website (and their general abilities in that area) a while ago. Once my 66 has arrived, I'll close my account & stick to shops, shows and swapmeets.

What I mean, is another part of the company trying to use interest in TT , to try to flog OO stuff. I keep hearing they have lots of unsold stuff. And being a big company, that they sometimes do things which seem to be in conflict or contradictory.

No, the error is to assume everyone ought to have the same experience as one's own. 'Universalising the particular.'

Agree their website is an overcomplicated mess. Wonder if there are conflicting intentions within the company, with some maybe aiming to try to get rid of a lot of unwanted OO stock? As that is what you're presented with, when trying to search for *TT related* magazines, updates and so on. Is it, IDK, desperation?

Replacements for the Steam Era Models ones, tho they don't look as nice. Handy to know they exist. I wonder if they could be turned down to 7mm? Tyre is kinda thick. However, wonder if the heat might warp the plastic spoke centres.

Wouldn't the issue be that the 2mm Ass'n wheel profile is so thin that it would not work properly on N track, especially points etc?

How would one adjust them, I wonder? Somehow get the spoked section out of the wheel tyres?

They are, but not for this one.

I imagine if done, might be for 009 / HOn30 or HOn3. I want them for 9mm gauge. As an unusual size, I'd expect to have to do some work to adapt.

I am wondering if any of these are produced, 8 spoke ideal (or close to it.) Aiming to use for 9mm gauge , hopefully code 88 (.088") or finer - but tbh any suggestion would be handy. I can adapt them & only need a few sets.

Was being droll. Tho the idea of 1:120 on sale in the Midl of Lidl is cool. Cross promotion ? £39 or so ? Coming home from Lidl . . . with one of those cute new little-size trains. An underwater seascooter. And not forgetting the vuvuzela.

I want me a Lidl Class 66.

Thank you for the size comparison as it is very instructive.

Maybe with a dealer markup to a price of £300+, to add to the surprise.

I think you've got it in the last paragraph. Houses. Ravenser brought this up in a comment of 21 11 23 : If you accept the "rule of 3" that a the visible portion of layout should be 3x the length of the longest train , then you need 12' length visible + a 4' fiddle yard to run a freight train that looks absurdly short.... That's 16' , and most contemporary housing doesn't have rooms which have 16' long walls.... The other factor, not only are these locos big, but in the contemporary scene, they've swept all before them. Below the 66, the next most plausible modern image loco is now an 08. There's 'heritage' stuff like a 37 class near where I live but you don't see it out hauling freight. It's an unnecessarily streamlined, large switching locomotive. Is the trend to larger locos is likely to continue? I can't find a diagram for a 70 class but available data tells me it's even longer than a 66. So probably, yes. There's a well supported scale below OO and TT too, but I think TT is primarily aimed at people who would have gone for OO, till it got 'bigged' out of the equation. That's why I think Hornby is happy with this baby. The dimensions of the human & the space he has to live in, require it. There's the novelty of an untried size, but this is TT, not T gauge. And that novelty has presumably been addressed by pricing it lower.

IIRC, a BR118 has 1800 + 1800mm trucks. That's 11' 10", quite a bit shorter than a Deltic truck - 13'6" wheelbase. We know from some scratchbuilds of the German TT group that these trucks don't look great under US locos (13'7" truck). Doubt they'd look any better under a Deltic.

A class 55 is 2'4" longer wheelbase than a 50, between bogie centres. 45' vs 42'8". That is a 6mm difference and will be visible. Tho it could use the same bogies.

Lemke or Hobbytrain ? One of them apparently bought Mehanotechnika's projects. Mehano had announced a Class 66 back in 2014 which, depending how far the project advanced, may have had good tooling if their Blue Tiger was anything to go by. Don't know who was doing Mehano's manufacturing at this time ; I believe their older factory was destroyed in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

It is UK steam where there will always have to be cheats, like the fat A4 nose. You will see compromises on other steam too. It's unavoidable. Diesels and electrics, less so.

I'll keep an eye out now, especially as they seem like TT 'possibles'. I don't know much about how many new releases there have been in N over recent years. Most of what I buy is secondhand.

I'd be one of those people, and I go to a fair few train shows. So yes the job of gaining visibility is not easy. But I screen a lot of OO out, as it's never going to be a thing I model. So if you were showing OO on your stall, I'd never retain that information. I focus on things in N or OO9 that could have a use in TT. Larger dia wheels, chassis, or components like adjustable gauge/wheelbase trucks, cheap loco bodies to harvest detail items from etc

Good point. The prototype changed, and the ways it changed took the hobby to TT's door. People may not know this : tho a Class 66 is far lower & narrower than standard contemporary American freight locos, it has the same overall wheelbase as they do. That wheelbase [ 43'6" between truck centres, 13'7 three axle trucks] came in with the SD40-2, a huge loco, even in HO. Upscaled to OO, that wheelbase is literally & figuratively right up against the buffers for what's acceptable on a small layout. US modellers can use switchers or shorter B-B road locos, a GP15, Paducah geep, Genset etc, on small layouts, but there's not many equivalents in the UK. The big beast has to be shoehorned in somehow. So going smaller, the choice is either HO (minimal gain), 3mm (no European stock, lose the compatibility) or TT. Other factors : most current UK passenger trains are permanently coupled trainsets. What's the minimum to give the right impression ?? Five cars at least? That's a lot of space in 4mm. Further, viz higher volumes inside TT vs N shells : with DCC, many N scale locos have less grunt. Con-Cor's Kato PA1, introduced in 1967, for years the best locomotive in N, could haul 24 bogie vehicles, the latest PA1 made by BLI, only 15. Could be a factor, tho I don't know much about the performance of UK N diesels.

American TT was (edit:) mainly a kitbuilder's scale and less of an RTR one. It was pretty much oriented toward steam, with only a couple of first generation diesels, and as far as I'm aware, a white metal DD35 or DD40 body kit was the only second generation one. N scale right from the start was RTR. Other factors as regards N and Z - N probably seemed a better option than TT until it came to be realised that 1:160 was too small to have much 'heft' and fine detail wasn't apparent because of lack of size. You can't know till you build it I guess. N was a scale for 'trains in the scenery', and Z even more so, maybe Z didn't seem sufficiently differentiated from N? If TT had turned around and produced RTR in 1962 when N came out, it may have been able to demonstrate that it was a better fusion of small size while still maintaining 'presence' & an ability to portray visible detail.

Think the 'defining' auto boxcars of the 60s - 70s would be 60', or the 86' monsters I'd agree with the Canadian thing. There is a Canadian covered hopper (the other big defining vehicle of the 60s - 70s was much larger hoppers, equipped for very specific bulk products.) There was a 50 foot boxcar briefly IIRC, where someone had hacked up a 40 foot car and extended it. I asked if it had a prototype on one of the American rolling stock groups. Response was unprintable (it wasn't just rivet counting, it really didn't look like anything, and had an impossible door arrangement.) It was dropped quickly.