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Probably not, but elsewhere lots of Colas people sign HST power cars including all the infrastructure monitoring people that TUPE'd in and many from previous employments where poached from long distance passenger TOCs. They generally don't use HST vehicles on the Southern as most of it isn't cleared for either the power cars or the Mk3's so I would assume the other locos would still have a role down there.

All of the "new boy" operators have wised up to this, Locomotive Services and DATS both using VP185's. The cold start thing is an issue, although it can be over-ridden but at the cost of 100 hours added to the engine hours clock if you do that to an MTU under a service contract, but the bigger issue is that after a few days of being stood the MTUs tended to drop all their coolant, and it's a reliability and cost headache to recover from that each and every time- ask EMR for details!!

Allegedly to replace Class 37's, they need something with a "go anywhere" RA Index of 5 that isn't 60-odd years old. I suppose they will relivery them if they prove to be better than the Class 37's for what they are using them on.

Tangent subject but I'll never understand why GWR didn't convert the SLE/SLEP coaches to HST type three phase, put a power car on each end and dispense with the unreliable 57's anyway. The list of advantages is vast and the cost of modifying the sleepers easily re-couped over a short space of time.

From 1991 when ECML electrification cascades basically doubled the XC HST fleet the XC allocation was split, half (mainly the original NE-SW sets) were at Laira and the other half (principally reformed ECML sets) were at Craigentinny. Only the ICCS pool code sets from Craigentinny were scheduled onto the Bournemouth services (along with some other long distance Anglo-Scots to/from Penzance) and the sets were "captive" with cyclic diagrams which returned them to EC every few days. The ICCP pool code sets from Laira still covered the NE-SW route and the Plymouth to Aberdeen and return, these were by then fitted with Short Swing Link bogies which would allow them to stray onto the Bournemouth services but it was uncommon. This regime stayed in place until May 1998.

July 1991 for the HSTs down to Bournemouth. Initially some mixed up sets until the ex ECML rakes were reformed and buffets swapped about, by the end of 1991 pretty solidly 7 car rakes, TGS, 4x TS, TRSB, TF. Power cars initially drawn from any in the "Eastern" fleet but by Spring 1992 mostly drawn from the EC based "ICCS" pool- this included all eight buffer fitted examples.

The CDL error is a quick fix, repainting the ends is also a quick fix and can be done whilst I repaint the step boards and fill in the holes where the buffers don't go, although such things lead me to question why I'm having to redeploy £200 of brand new coaches straight to the work bench! Others I'm sure will live with the totally wrong interiors in much the same way that others will live with the colours on the Oxford Mk3's- I'm happy to be in a minority who wants something better!

I have one each of R40003/A/B/C and all are first class interiors.

The daft Avanti livery duo of Pendolinos (390155/156) have contrasting coloured doors but the door and surrounding panel colour changes along the train length, so how on earth a partially sighted person is supposed to determine where the doors are on those is anyone's guess.

PM sent to MGR. I think, probably wrongly, that if many of those people were told their MK3's are wrong and given a solution that solves that it would bring them into the market! It amuses me (but I say nothing) when I see a Mk3 rake on an exhibition layout and they have got the locos or power cars 110% spot on looking brilliant and it's hauling a rake of coaches which have also received lavish external attention but stopped short of addressing this issue. Of course I accept that many don't care and are happy to run with then as they come. I have knocked together a seating area for a TRSB using bits from scrap coaches but the nature of the beast is that it needs a lot of seats to feed each coach- we are talking 76 seaters and nothing else has close to that many.

I'm not on Facecloth or Twitter and never will be so those options are unavailable to me. Using the right interior for the Mk3 from the range of carriage interiors they have would negate my need to contact them! You have not addressed my point; I'm not asking for a special interior to be made just to make me happy, I'm asking for them to use their existing standard class interior inside their standard class coach. If that makes me unreasonable then so be it.

I did it because a minority were spoiling this thread by starting/perpetuating a childish slanging match and I wanted to talk about a new Hornby release instead. Have me struck down by lightening for wanting to get back to talking about Hornby 2020 Range Announcements in a thread of that name....

I didn't ask Hornby because I don't have a direct line to them, they probably don't care and it's too late now anyway. As for the comment about having to shell out thousands to get the interior right- they HAD the right interior, when the scale length Mk3's came out there were three interior mouldings, a first class "48 seater", a buffet for the three large window varient and a standard class interior with a 72 seat layout which whilst not perfect for models after blue/grey was vastly better. They used this interior on all the releases back then and I have several HST trailers in Virgin Trains and First Great Western livery that have the standard class seat layout in the standard class coaches. I'm not capable of making an interior, I'd love to hear from someone who is- I started a thread on the "Modifying and Detailing RTR Stock" thread in the hope of someone coming up with one!!

Mostly because I make the effort to get my carriages right outside AND inside, before entering service all my rakes have the interiors repainted so that when you look through the windows they are as good as they can be, seats all the right colour, bulkheads, walls, floors and tables all accurate. Having a first class layout on a standard class coach means I cannot do that, and whenever the thing is running I will know and that will be bad enough for me! None of mine are intended to live in their boxes, and I don't have anything in untouched condition as it comes.

Don't know where best to put this, but one product I would certainly buy a lot of units of would be a replacement seating unit to go into Mk3 trailers that would fit Lima and Hornby versions which represents the 76 seat standard class seat layout as used on all Mk3's from c1985 until present day with only a few exceptions (eg Grand Central?). Someone with a degree of skill and the ability to knock out a load of cheap plastic mouldings in a single colour could turn out a successful product, there must be 1,000's of modellers with rakes of Mk3's out there in all sorts of liveries from InterCity to the Arriva WAG set all with the wrong insides....

It's just so disappointing. I can hopefully get away with it by increasing the tint level on the windows to hide the useless interior, anyone with digital fetish internal lighting is totally screwed- I cannot see any way of fixing the inside short of scratch building a whole new set of seats and tables and then repeating x4. The CDL issues can be fixed in a day on the workbench, as can the step boards and the coach ends but the interior is a real show stopper. It's not just one coach, I resourced one from Faversham (thanks to tip off!) and the other three from John Dutfield in Chelmsford which I trekked across to in person today.

Why can't Hornby be bothered to check stuff?! Biggest and most obvious- the interior on the standard class coach I've just received has 2+1 First Class seated interior (in dark blue). So FORTY years after Lima did this as an expediency to save two different interior mouldings on the TS and TF (or TSO and FO for loco hauled types) Hornby cannot be bothered to put the right interior and this is not something that can be fixed at this end. Next the central door locking releases, they are moulded correctly for a HST TS or TF but they have randomly decided that these are loco hauled despite having 4xxxx numbers and put a decal representing the handle and surround on the wrong end on one side. Obviously the buffet is totally wrong, they always are which is why I'm not buying it, but they have correctly not coloured the CDL light at the buffet counter end whilst still depicting the release handle and showing the door handle which shouldn't be on that door. And I wish they would tell me what their obsession is with the half white rubbing plate and bright white doors on the coach ends- the rubbing plates may have looked like that for 15 minutes when the coaches were brand new before coupled to another vehicle but not c18 years in by the time CDL was fitted! The doors were never white either....

Dan @ Derails came back efficiently, they sold out on pre-order ergo none left. So far Kernow, Hattons, Derails have none available so I'm open to other suggestions- the Rails stock must be somewhere?!

I'm thinking this as well- if a big container full of them are floating towards us and a large % were headed for a shop I cannot mention due to over-moderation then all the suppliers "out of stock" may find more stock available!! Cannot find them on Derails website, may e-mail them tomorrow when they open. Hornby want £35 a lump.

since Rails have cancelled my order and I still want the models, can anyone suggest a supplier that is still taking orders for these. Kernow and Hattons are sold out.

I will try e-mailing them with a pic and see what occurs. I got a look at a Class 57 exploded sheet but its an early version which shows the pipes and battery boxes as if they were one item and lists 750-008/1, 750-008/2 and 750-008/3 as the part number without specifying which bit does what.

So you know a part number please? They do indeed appear to be the same as Class 57, but it's not one of the loose detail parts in the Bachmann Class 47 box- i've just checked!

Off topic but hopefully will be forgiven- Anyone any idea where I can get the white (cooling??) pipes that sit above the fuel tanks on this side for detailing another loco? They seem to be unique to ScotRail 47/7's??

Sort of, HSDT was configured with coaches which were loco hauled types with buffers and 850V supply fed MA sets and the power cars were set up like locos with standard ETH supply, buffers both ends. I suppose they could have been used back-to-back on other traffic but any thoughts of using them like that were abandoned before the prototype was actually built., although a small second driving desk at the van end was capable of being used for shunting with the ability to apply two of the five power notches. As the 1970's rumbled on BR "got over" mixed traffic jack of all trades, master of none and realised there were to be considerable cost savings and reliability gains by making HST a stand-alone train capable of highly intensive utilisation as an express passenger trains, and at the same time developed the first type 5 bespoke freight locos. The idea to use the Class 91's on "other trains" between daytime use on Mk4's had two fatal flaws- the incredible daily mileage they would encounter meaning they needed maintenance at night, and the fact that you might well end up with a Mk4 set or five sat on a depot all dressed up with nowhere to go if their "power cars" had failed to make it back off the other duty in time!

Virgin didn't take over West Coast until early March 1997, the date quoted was the XC take over and they didn't operate any push-pull. The original question was about BR so it's probably legitimate to ignore any current operators which are temporarily underwritten by government, much as the Class 91's operated by East Coast after NXEC failed and by LNER after VTEC failed also don't fall under BR despite being directly state owned.