fiftyfour fiftyfour

5 hours ago, The 158 Man said:

I considered getting a rake of 7 in Intercity Swallow livery, but then reconsidered. I have a full rake of the Hornby ones and although the Bachmann version is considered the better model there's nothing drastically wrong with the Hornby ones, with the finer elements of the Bachmann version such as the CDLs and the end details being wasted on me as I like to see them running, rather than sat in a platform or siding or carriage shed etc.

 

We all know the Hornby colours are *slightly* off (though nowhere near as bad as they used to be) but when running as a complete set it's not noticeable, especially with a white skirted Swallow 47, and even if they are "wrong" they're still very pleasing on the eye and they run beautifully. I also think I'm one of the few people that likes the tinted glazing, because it saves me fitting passengers and that would cost a lot. Tight Yorkshireman and all that.. 

 

FInally we come to the price (yawn!) The Hornby ones came in at around £230 for a set of 7 from my local model shop. A set of Bachmann ones from Rails would set me back about £420, and that's just for the "normal" ones (I only run DC). I can't justify splashing out again at such a cost as nice as they are. It's also less nerve wracking to take a paintbrush and other weathering tools to a cheaper model... (on that note, does anyone else hate all the picked out bogie details?! They'll be getting painted...)

 

With all that being said, IF the Bachmann Swallow ones had arrived on the scene before the Hornby ones had been announced, that would no doubt have been a different story...

 

Agree on all counts. Now that I've stood the Bachmann beside the Hornby I can see what needs doing to "Bachmann-ise" the Hornby ones to make a rake and not spend £300 replacing six perfectly good coaches I already own. Add a film inside the windows to tint them up a bit more, repaint the interiors on both, take the moulded handrail off the Hornby and replace with wire and dust over the roofs to "turn them down" a bit. The underframes are interesting, I can't find any evidence of the real coaches having the step boards other than those directly below the doors picked out- the red springs are right for a newly outshopped (see below, not my photo!).

I will add Railtec CDL lights to the Hornby and that is the challenge, I think a coating of gloss varnish with a little dark brown paint mixed in onto the CDL lights before application will make them look a bit more like the Bachmann, will do a test one before the other six!

Just need a retooled spoon to haul them! I've only ordered the RFM for now to see how it looks with the 2000-ish Hornbys, which have hardly ever been run so not wanting to upgrade at over £50 a coach unless the difference is stark.

On 25/08/2021 at 12:51, Graham108 said:

How to you intend to achieve that please?

Swapping out for the Strathpeffer CD motors, done it on one HST power car so far but will attack the 47's and 37's when I've decided which are for "long term" operation.

On 23/08/2021 at 22:38, Class 158 productions said:

Probably the fact there have been multiple duffs at a ‘decent’ level for some time. Whereas many areas go untouched, DMUs, EMUs…

They don't help their own cause by not "maxing out" on existing moudlings. Only 3 new 158's so far, and the 150/2 is still to be released in many liveries carried by multiple class members. The Provincial "running man" Sprinter version as worn by all 85 of them still hasn't been done, nor has the Wessex purple/pink which was a staple livery for many years.

14 hours ago, Monkersson said:

I do!  Well, I will when I finish it!  

 

I have a mish-mash of most manufacturers products rubbing shoulders (not just with 47s), all are detailed to a point, repainted etc but have a consistent finish.  I can sometimes find it quite hard to tell which is which, even close up!

 

What I like about more modern tooled loco's is the drive-train, almost always consistently smooth - I'm not into DCC Sound, and I disable any lighting on my stock.  I've done quite a bit of work on Lima/Hornby/Mainline pancakes so they run smoother - low speed is important to me as its an end to end layout I'm building.

 

I'll happily run the latest 47 alongside 30 year old tickled Lima's, by the time I do what I like doing to it, it'll will be quite indistinguishable from my others

I'm in a similar boat, could afford to replace everything with the latest release but will only buy selectively because I don't want to bin the Lima 47's I've had for over 25 years. I grew up with those models and have put effort into them - their only drawback for me is the noise/performance and that is now addressable without spending £200 on a loco and putting the old one in the bin.

On 17/08/2021 at 21:23, The 158 Man said:

Three posts regarding Bachmann's 158s and 170s out of 23 pages of Class 47 froth. Hardly the worst deviation in history.

 

Mind you, on RMWeb I've seen people shot for less. 

 

So, back to the 47s. Don't they look wonderful! I have a feeling I've said that before..

I do like that "The 158 man" has 158 posts at time of writing. Now if someone is on 47554 postings can they please reply to this to put us firmly back on topic...

On 09/08/2021 at 19:10, gordon1970 said:

Thanks;  the question was prompted seeing a Scotrail set the other evening with it being dark enough the internal lights (even with what seemed to be different lighting between some coaches) gave the appearance of a 'different' tint to the bronze. Not entirely sure if they are the ex FGW refurbished ones. 

All ScR trailers are ex FGW (as are all power cars!) so they will have the darker tinted windows.

On 08/08/2021 at 15:16, gordon1970 said:

Odd question perrhaps..... Did all versions of Mk3 coaches as built have the same colour of tinting in the windows, and have any of the refurbishments altered this (or replaced any glass at all?)

Unless someone says otherwise (!!) they all had the same bronze tint as built, and the next significant change was on the First Great Western "refresh" between 2006-2008 (the one that introduced squiggly lines) when their vehicles received a noticeably darker tint whilst everyone else retained original looking (but probably using a different spec of lamination) during their refits.

2 hours ago, MGR Hooper! said:

Well that's the problem isn't it? The figures look terribly cheap and plasticky... Not everyone uses their locos with a "driven end" only. Lots of people have TMD layouts and end to end layouts. At some point you have to reverse a loco and and I personally feel they look comical.

PS: You really would require God's help if you want to swing the loco around when you have OHE installed

If you've got OHE you are just showing off! There really isn't a reason why the figures should look as bad as they have done in years gone by, I accept that at some stage I will have to undo my Bachmann Class 57 in Porterbrook purple and silver to do a crew change and retire my shiny purple blob man. Bachmann themselves do a reasonable set of crew which retail at about £12 for six, so fixing one of them into the seat of a £250 loco shouldn't send it above £252.

I suppose it all boils down to one question- does a driver going backwards in the rear of a loco look worse than a vacant cab going forwards?!

7 hours ago, MGR Hooper! said:

I'm glad that they stopped putting driver figures...They looked so toy-like and plasticky. And they looked absolutely comical going backwards with a driver in the wrong cab

What would be so wrong with giving us a driver only (later liveries) and a two-man crew (pre 1990) using decent figures in one-end only? I hate having to dismantle a brand new and very expensive loco to install a 1:76 card-carrying ASLEF brother in to avoid having a driverless leading cab. I've been moving towards a "driven" end (with crew, pipes and no couplings) and a non driven end and just using the hand of god to swing the loco around if I want to go the other way with it...

11 minutes ago, gridwatcher said:

Agree on that. Too often the tendency in the market is to go for 'Livery Tarts' & Ice Cream Vans! Makes them much harder to renumber to your choice too. I am all for bog standard un-named locos from manufacturers. That said I am sure they'll spin back and tell us that the namers, funny liveries sell better.....

amen to that. It's a normal working day every day on my layout, the carnival doesn't come to town as often as some people think. Hornby are the worst for this, at least Bachmann have realised the folly of faux celebrity...

Wow, looks fantastic- clearly onto a winner there.

For those who "need to save up" to buy one/three/ten of these- you probably can't really afford it in that case. Your choice how you spend your dosh, but please don't tell the rest of us you don't want them coming without "fair warning" when for so long now we have associated Bachmann with crushingly long waits between announcement and release and surely that is just as hard to budget for.

828 is an old tub, but at time of writing the only loco I've driven on the mainline AND in preservation!

Might finally prompt me to replace some (but not all) Limas provided the liveries are right and the price isn't too naughty. A GW150 green one would tip me over the edge, as might a Parcels sector one, or anything mid 80's to late 90's that I associate with being an unapologetically Western region one... 

22 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

For goodness sake.  i know darned well that HSTs moved - after all I was associated with them an an operator for a good part of their life.  And obviously you don't need a completely new front end in order to fit the buffers which they were actually designed to take if/when the need arose (which of course it did for some of them at one time).  Anyone who has had to struggle in a real life situation out on the railway to couple an HST to anything else  would welcome the provision of buffers and ordinary drawgear with open arms even in broad daylight on a nice day (and i can assure you that it's a darned sight harder in the dark with slippery mucky ballast underfoot).

 

And was the Blue Pullman 'the least successful diesel train ever built'?  I think not because not withstanding the poor ride for most of them the passengers kept on coming back to the trains which ran at the right times of day, the standard of catering was excellent, and in Standard class the seats were perfectly comfortable and would put an 80X unit to shame.  I know they had their engine problems but then over a similar lifespan so did HSTs and the HSTs weren't seen as a stopgap so got masssive design and development support and improvement that the BPs never got.

The drawgear/no drawgear thing comes down to aesthetics vs the occasional operational convenience. The chaps on the depot managed to put up HST drawbars with no fuss in 30 seconds, but I accept its different for someone doing it for the first time ever in real life in a pressure situation out on the mainline where underfoot conditions are less than ideal. The HST to HST bar is actually far easier, so we would always prefer a back-to-back pair as rescue locos vs a 47 or whatever.

The original Blue Pullman was an unmitigated disaster. What happened inside the carriages delivered by uniformed staff has nothing at all to do with the technical quality and reliability of the train. You could fit tables of four and a kitchen area in a Pacer, but you've still got a Pacer, albeit one with tablecloths and a priority limited stop pathing....

2 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Over the years the HST fleet went through lots of 'bad' periods with availability falling through the floor and numerous failures in traffic.  I remember at one time on the Western that if some of the sets actually got into traffic in weather of the sort we are currently experiencing with both engines working it would be miraculous if that was still the case at the end of the day and equally it would be surprising if all those that entered traffic in the morning on one engine still had it working at the end of the day.  

 

The early days were fraught with numerous problems but gradually mods and developing depot, and  fleet engineering, experience greatly improved matters although englnes still dropped out in traffic for various reasons particularly when ambient temperatures were very high.

They have moved on a lot since those days, by understanding how cooler groups needed to be maintained (after some false starts) and then later inventing the Brush cooler group to replace the original Marston units which took them to the top of the learning curve. You are comparing what existed in the 1970's and 1980's with what exists now, which in engineering terms is like saying "I'm not buying a 2015 Ford Focus because my 1975 Ford Cortina used to break down a lot".

What the HST power cars in the LSL fleet probably will suffer from most is lack of regular use (we shall see if the Staycation performs better) and being divorced from Neville Hill, which had become very good at what they did (GWR depots should stop reading now) rather than bodge it up and kick it out again. They were helped by a healthy spare power car availability, and by the ability to limp home on one- not an option for LSL and especially not when a mountain stands between you and home as it did on Saturday.

Putting buffers on simply to replicate "the Blue Pullman"? Why not just replace the whole cab if you are that fussed about it. I'm still bewildered as to why you would want the most successful diesel train ever built to look like the least successful one because the passage of 50 years has dulled the memory, but its their money. 

Lastly modern locos with drop head buckeyes (class 66, 67 etc) need the adapter fitting to attach to HST, it was standard kit on the ECML ones and every single one of those bar 43208/239/290/299/302 is currently parked in a field somewhere so there should be about 25 of them doing nothing much!

On 17/07/2021 at 10:42, russ p said:

It would look better with buffers so maybe time to fit them 

and ruin the classic Kenneth Grange front end? I don't agree.

On 28/06/2021 at 14:21, 97406 said:

A standard large logo 50 with pearl grey roof, due to the difficulties getting one at the moment. 

The early NSE one is just as scarce, I've been on the look out for one. So even just a different number on the large logo and on the NSE would probably sell very well and require little effort by Hornby. Just not a sodding faux celebrity or survivor though please, I know that we can't have an anonymous un-named one for obvious reasons.

My three (having 54 is mental!) have all been modified with red lights isolated as I never run light engines, and those stupid bright red rad fans painted black along with the surrounding brilliant white gubbins. I'm sure they only did the fans red so we could see their willy waving pointless feature!!

On 19/06/2021 at 11:19, Steadfast said:

A quick Google suggests there's a number of 240 or 110 volt generators well under 800 kg. I read somewhere the other day that LSL have added extra jumpers to the ends of the power cars, not seen a photo though, presumably taking the catering equipment on a separate circuit to the stuff supplied by the power car ETH. I'd be interested to see first hand!

 

Jo

Well that will do one socket, what about everything else?! I need to see first hand as well, extra jumpers would sound like the only way of doing it, and some sort of switching device so that the power car ETS can still feed the caterers if the gen set doesn't work/overheats/runs out of fuel or whatever.

On 14/06/2021 at 23:07, surfsup said:

 

The van space in the rear part of the power cars is now filled with a rather large Inmesol diesel generator to provide additional hotel power for the rake. Such is the power draw of the super kitchen (40802) and cocktail bar (40801) that the additional generators supply additional power for it - kitchen equipment doesn't like the fluctuations a 'normal' power car ETS can supply, as the frequencies fluctuate as the engine revs change (as does the air con systems on Mk3s). 

And what does that weigh, because if it's over 0.8 tonnes (which it obviously will be) then its too heavy for the luggage van and they would have to go through assorted vehicle acceptance hurdles which are not easy to overcome. Also interested to see how they have wired it in, you cannot just add a diesel generator as a supplementary into the three phase ETS supply. 

20 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Like this. (Pic by SM)

and a vent thing on the roof for whatever is in there. And a new cut out facing the carriage with another grille in the place where the original guards van windows were. There are a lot to detail differences now unique to this train.

The Staycation HST is on the prediction list for 2022, as is the EMR combo of 43102 (IC Swallow) and 43274 (revolting purple) and absolutely nothing of any relevance to anyone modelling pre 2020. A "Deerstalker Express" with a 67 and Scotrail Mk3's would probably inspire more modellers...

On 04/06/2021 at 15:55, Western Aviator said:

Not quite; 43134 and 43234 have palindromic numbers too.

There isn't a 43234. 

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

But where does the initial investment come from?  Logically it would come out of union funds - maybe their investment funds - but if it comes from union funds then members have the right to question how it is being spent.    Forget all the key indicators and that sort of thing because whoever goes for these management contracts is going to have to spend money, potentially quite a lot of money, in order to pre-qualify in order to be able to bid for a contract (I'm assuming that the body letting contracts is actually going to run a well founded method of selecting the winning bid and that it will included assessment of the necessary proposed management structure and safety management systems plus accounting and monitoring systems.

 

All of that is in fact why I see some of the murmuring of Benito Shapps as little more than waffled fuelled airy-fairy nonsense. It will cost money in order to pre-qualify and if your bid doesn't win that is money the bidder has lost.   Just as importantly the very cost of bidding means that a bidder will need a return on that investment and to be able to clear it, plus a profit over the term of the contract.  Even if they area 'not for profit' bidder they will still have to cover the cost of, and repay, the debt they incurred simply in order to allow them to bid - for even the simplest stretch of railway that figure will inevitably be a number followed by three noughts if the job is to be done properly.

 

In fact it would be quite a nice little earner for anyone or any small company with the necessary expertise to set itself up as a consultant advising, and perhaps even preparing, organisational stuff for a 'small bidder' such as a 'local community group'  (exactly one sort of bidder Benito himself has suggested). In fact it sounds as if it could well be a nice 'supplemental earner' to our pensions for folk such as myself with the necessary experience and professional competencies and i even know where I can get the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

You are right, the barrier to entry for bidders is too high in that respect, so in many ways it no advance on franchising. The likes of Abellio and DB can afford to lose money on UK rail as their largess or errors are bankrolled by the state back home, much as the piles of profit they stand to make reduce the subsidy back home. It's been a long standing joke that only UK based state owned entities are barred from bidding for UK franchises, and by the same extension they will not be able to bid for concessions.

8 minutes ago, Coryton said:

 

Wasn't BR pretty efficient by the time it was privatised?

 

 

OfQ was the obvious privatisation model. So that was ditched for a fragmented blame culture mess instead, obviously.

and given the hysteria surrounding the real life 43102 (and to a lesser extent 43274) such a pack should do well- and they will need the reflective birdies for 43102 as the real one carried the correct stick-on ones as they were trying to replicate "record breaking" condition! And yes, Railtec is worth the wait when a wait is what it takes- I waited for the stuff I needed and I'm very happy with it.

1 hour ago, ikcdab said:

Blimey, that sounds very much like the sort of thing propounded by Lenin and his cronies - apart, that is, from the financial incentives you say you will pay the management.

You still have a management/employee culture so I'm not sure how you can say you would never get strikes. I agree that staff turnover would be low, but staff absences would skyrocket, as seen under most nationalised regimes.

The ultimate problem is that nowhere do you mention the need to improve efficiency or to improve customer satisfaction. It seems to me that these sort of arrangements are developed solely for the employees' benefit with no thought about the passengers. 

To be honest this is where most british nationalised industries got to in the 1960s and 1970s with disasterous effects on the future of those industries...

And that is the trouble. After 40 years of right wing indoctrination as soon as anyone talks about an employee owned business which has partners instead of staff people say "Lenin" before they say "John Lewis". I feel I need to ask, how many self employed people do you think go on strike?! There is efficiency in an employee owned model as long as it doesn't become a top heavy, inefficient lumbering organisation that just wastes money and leeches off profit, and the employee owned (and possibly union offshoot organised) structure is a whole world away from nationalised, but Thatcher (and Major) have told you that private is good/public is bad so many times and for so long that you've forgotten that a badly managed, under funded and generally neglected utility became the norm here but the exception elsewhere in Europe, notably in Germany where state owned railways became a beacon of efficiency.