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It couldn't run in passenger use as the doors were not turned out in a contrasting colour, thus it was not compliant with PRM legislation.

I completely hear what you are saying, but even a reduced length Class 91+MkIV or a Midland Pullman HST is going to come out at £400, which I feel is outside the "give it to a kid to run it at max speed around the living room" market. It's the age old question, is Hornby a toy manufacturer with cross-over into the adult modeller market or the other way 'round!

At least the APT did something, looked quite nice and was high profile, the latter two characteristics have already sold many Midland Pullman livery HSTs in many peoples minds. My "it would cost a £1000 to replicate" may have been closer to the mark that I thought; 2x EMR livery with DATS branding power cars- £250, TWO Class 91's in LNER livery (as they won't do a "dummy" 91!)- £400. One Mk3 DVT in DATS- £50 and assorted livery Mk3 @ £35 each all-in comes to £980!!

Err, I think if you want to make up a train that existed once or twice EVER to carry out some tests, mostly nocturnally, then what you do with the thick end of £1000 worth of rolling stock behind closed doors is nobody else's business! Quite how many units Hornby would shift by packaging this up together as if it were a real train commonly seen out and about on the national network I'd not like to guess, but I imagine it to be in single figures. I can sort of understand some commercial viability in doing the Midland Pullman for people who just buy "stuff they like the look of" and want a train that will run 20x a year nationwide running round their layout but this idea is a step into the surreal...

Step 1- take off ends Step 2- carefully insert a blunt knife or thin screwdriver between the roof and body Step 3- stretch body out away from the roof/glazing unit Step 4- insert a bit of thin card between the body and the glazing. Bit of a cereal packet cut up is ideal Step 5- work your way along body and repeat. Lima only needs one every other pillar, Limby will need more Step 6- repeat steps 2-5 on the other side of the coach Step 7- push the roof/glazing unit up simultaneously at both ends Step 8- (not illustrated)- send me some £££ for the advice!!

You have to use the old Lima method but with a bit more bravery and bits of cardboard to open the TGS, or indeed ANY Limby Mk3. I got my IC Swallow one open using this method and without cutting the coach in half as crazily suggested by the NMT link. The combined roof and glazing section has not been glued onto the body on either the IC Swallow or the FGW Barbie Limby TGS vehicles I own (or on the RFM I took apart) so I'd be surprised if it has been on other releases.

I'm still one of those lunatics that think that the Lima Mk3's have yet to be beaten as slam door HST trailers. Add the Lazerglaze flushglazing, and install one of those great new interiors* in the TS vehicles if doing any livery post blue/grey and tidy things up a bit around the end beams and couplings and to my eye a very good standard of HST can be produced when sandwiched between a pair of Hornby power cars. Having come at the TRSB problem from both directions my conclusion is that hacking about with a Lima Mk3 buffet to create a four window version is a better starting point than the Limby RFM (you need a donor TF or TS to rob two full window bays and the "blank canvas" of a standard trailer roof to add the correct pods to, but the RFM is miles away from a TRSB when viewed from above). 40619 (to which you refer) was a three window bay buffet with first class (so not far off the Lima or Hornby buffets) was only ever a short term spare in the Cross-Country fleet on and off during the 1990's and is a bit of a hybrid/freak show to trial "cuisine 2000" which fell out of favour almost before it began. *declaration of personal interest whilst stocks last!!

I am trying a two-pronged approach, I have a bottle of Winsor & Newton Galeria Matt Varnish on order and I've e-mailed by friendly Phoenix Precision supplier in Chelmsford to see what stock they have, I will report back! I'm really only looking for something I can use to hold down transfers like numbers and small embellishments rather than something I can spray over a whole vehicle.

That is an acrylic, will it not react with transfers or enamel paints?!

Acrylic was the one that killed the transfers, luckily it was only warning flashes on the ends of coaches but it has left me with a lot of vehicles on the work table all pending just that one bit to finish.

Can someone recommend a brushable clear matt varnish to go over transfers please. DO NOT even mention the word "Humbrol"- the tinlets either come out chalky white or high gloss after about two uses , the spray cans are a total dead loss as you get about 1/100th of the product out before the nozzles seize up or spray everywhere except out of the nozzle, and as for that bottle of rubbish I paid £6.00 for at HobbyCraft, it's just curled up all the transfers and cost me about ten times that in effort and made Railtec £15 richer tonight. Also, don't use Klear Cote "flat" as that is now coming out super high gloss after one use. The frustration of now a dozen different efforts all not doing what they are supposed to and setting jobs back a full week whilst spending more money getting back to where I was two hours ago cannot be overstated. Help!

Problem with the 91 (and by extension any ideas of retooled Mk4s) is their operating sphere is so tightly restricted. How many people are modelling the ECML since 1988, and of those how many will get away with two locos/rakes to represent a transitional period let alone more? And yes, I am choosing to ignore the "I will buy anything I like the look of/I buy stuff just for the sake of buying stuff" markets!

Some stuff on my wishlist there! They did a Devon and Cornwall Black 153 (and I'm very happy with it) but I feel like we have been short-changed with HSTs, no GWT Merlin or Fag-Pack since Lima and no FGW Barbie has ever been done (apart from the toy that Hornby did using their then 30 year old moulding, and that was 15 years ago). If they did do anything HST wise I'd bet they do the LNER blue/grey farewell (service life; 4 days) or the infernal Midland Pullman (service life at time of writing; 0 days).

But the 95% who don't would cut their reading down by 50%, and you'd increase your reading by 0%. It won't happen as the mod clicked "like" to the one who took the mickey out of the idea and wants to wade through 73 pages of something on the off-chance they find something of interest to them!

So then at least cutting it in half would work for you despite taking the p*** out of my suggestion??!!! Two threads would not be unmanageable and would probably save idiotic name calling from people who struggle with the concept of someone being from a different era to them.

First complete upgraded Lima eight car HST rake almost ready to hit the rails, photos taken just before the roofs went back onto the standard class coaches and the curtains fitted to the first class (materials awaited). For the TGS I cut one of the replacement seating units in half, which by damn good fortune and the fact that BR arranged the seat layout in the TS/TSO vehicles so each half was a mirror opposite means one sliced up seat unit can upgrade two TGS vehicles. The Lima/Limby layout stays correct for the van half as the loss of a window bay prevented a higher density layout on the real thing. In case any keen eyed readers are wondering, I've used Lazerglaze down one side only and will retain Lima on the other, with over 70 Mk3's to process I decided to cut the glazing bill per rake down from £72 to £36, you can only look at one side a time!

I have a request/suggestion for the actual "Hornby 2021 range announcements" thread when it happens. That it's split into TWO threads, one steam era and one modern image. The 2020 thread went wandering off down all sorts of rabbit holes and nearly 50% of readers had to plough through discussions regarding models which they have no interest in. That's usually avoidable by not opening the thread if the title isn't 'your' era but not a luxury available on an unwieldy single cover-all topic...

You've made a wild assumption there that V98 gets in (from Scotland via Manchester) with enough time for the stock to be shunt released and the loco attached the front of the down sleeper for a right time departure! More likely looking at them that loco 20 next works loco 16 and the sleepers are self contained diagrams. All your writing above does is prove beyond any argument that you need FOUR locos to run diagrams 19, 20 and 22 ergo you need 23 locos to run the 22 diagrams shown...

Err, still no. Loco 22 works Monday's 2359 Paddington-Penzance, stays in Penzance Tuesday 0819-2215 and works back to London, arriving there 0608 on Wednesday morning. So what loco works Monday's 2215 Penzance-Paddington or Tuesdays 2359 Paddington-Penzance?

Err, no. How could the same loco have done C02 and A03 on the same night, both working throughout. It would have to be a 23rd loco like the S03 and O13 needs two locos in the separate table in the bottom right corner.

Spotted a problem with that set of diagrams, loco 22 passes itself going the other way at around 0300 in the Taunton area!

Because of the amount of depots that could do lower level exams on 47's there wouldn't have been any need for them to go back to "the mothership" other than for major exams or large repairs (eg engine swaps). Clearly they are the full diagrams as worked by the locos as, for example, loco 8 and loco 16 are partial workings of much longer trains. Even better than that were the spoon diagrams in the post-privatisation (and therefore post Bath Road era) when the GW fleet was all maintained at Landore, and worked exclusively on Paddington to West of England trains. Old Oak (south side), St Philips Marsh and Laira would have had little or nothing to do with 47's by then due to lack of facility or capacity in the case of Laira who had become "HST central" for well over half the total HST power car fleet, and that is a LOT of mileage wear and tear to make good!

Yes, 3D printed. The lovely "MGR Hopper" kindly did an excellent job designing them and they have come out very well, when installed in the coach they look spot on and exceeded my expectations. Small declaration- on the Hornby ones they do fit but I found it best to just shave a little area off around the six body locating clips so that they don't pop up above the clips on one side whilst clipping the bodyshell back onto the chassis causing the interior to sit slightly higher on one side, but that was just me being fussy. Shameless plug- still available whilst stock last; ebay item # 184545028334 or just search "Mk3 interior Lima" or "Mk3 interior Hornby".

Sort of. The Challengers were not fixed pairings but they could NOT mix with "Pioneer" power cars or trailers and vice versa as they were maintained by Alstom as opposed to the Bombardier maintained Pioneer fleet (for WCML HST operation and a small number of XC trains post Operation Princess) and this itself imposed the bulk of the operational restriction. To the outsider a power car in the same livery, leased to the same operator, from the same ROSCO being unable to replace a poorly counterpart from the opposite pool was insanity (and yes, especially so to the insider!), especially as the maintainers mostly sub-contracted HST maintenance to other TOCs who owned the depots anyway but was the post September 2002 set-up until the Challengers were binned and drew the lucky straw as overhaul and refurbishment for Midland Mainline awaited most of them.

The Western region persisted long after the Eastern had realised the folly of trying to keep power cars with their allocated sets, even down to still applying the 253xxx numbers to the nose cones of some power cars as late as IC Swallow paints in 1987. I don't think the ER really took it seriously from day one, there were reports of "wrong" pairings when the ECML HST service was launched in 1978.