fiftyfour fiftyfour

I've been an advocate of converting the sleeper to HST since the mid 2000's; it's so easy to do and would have made economic and operational sense.

The drawbar between the HST power car and the loco is an "emergency" aluminum affair that has failed in use, so starting a passenger train like that ought to be banned. If FGW's own locos are not working they really ought to hire in a loco from somewhere else (but their proximity to other ETH fitted loco users and lack of crew knowledge often precludes that). 75% is theoretically a lot, but if you only have four locos it means you are stuffed if two break down. 75% on 20 locos gives you four spares and would be excessive.

He did specifically ask the 1990's! It's perfectly possible but less likely, as power car utilisation vs loco utilisation at the time probably meant all the HST power cars were busy on the ends of Mk3 rakes with passengers within, and any dead loco moves would have been done by one of the then plentiful locos. Sending HST power cars back to back to rescue another HST or even a loco-hauled train does belong in the realms of the more modern era when the loco fleet on FGW was "one for the up, one for the down, one for the Old Oak-Pad ECS and one spare". They really shouldn't pre-plan to run a passenger train like that, and GWR knows it...!

What controller are you using? I agree that the ringfields are not great in that respect, they are ye olde tech so I don't have high aspirations, but not so bad that I'd bin anything because of it. I used the 6V motor in the trial power car install, well capable of holding the speed with 8 Mk3's and a dummy power car, but the need to set the wave switch to "half" and then still not use full power otherwise scale speeds get ridiculous. Oh, and the noise volume is quieter but the electrical noise upsetting my LED headlights is "Spinal Tap"...

Curious, what is your Railroad HST not doing that you want it to do with regard running qualities? I'm clearly less fussy, or not trying to creep around with them but they are OK for me, if a little noisy.

I've been boring everyone senseless with this, get the Lima coaches, put in the Lazerglaze and the replacement interiors if doing a livery after blue/grey, invest a bit of time and effort in the power cars and do a bit of weathering and you end up with a train in many ways far better than Hornby's output for a fraction of the price. I've also repowered one of my Lima power cars with the Strathpeffer Jcn "CD motor" and trial running that before rolling out across some of the more tired power cars in my fleet, and almost all power cars now have a (crude by other peoples standards) directional lighting rig up.

The market is wrong then, not Hornby! I wouldn't pay £314 for a pair of power cars that lack such an obvious bit of detail, or a similar amount for nine coaches with significant compromises/flaws on them but I'm not saying there are not several that will- more fool them in my book.

Only derived from the APT in that both are tilting electric trains, on the same basis Class 395 EMUs are derived from Class 302's. With regard the HST- Hornby seem careful to restrict supply which causes prices to remain high on the resale market meaning there is scarcity forcing modellers to wait and buy new ones from Hornby. Look at IC "Executive"- one pair released early on and nil since. Then look at IC Swallow, the staple of the decade leading up to privatisation, only two pairs ever released and one of them a premium priced DCC/sound only run and both pairs depicting Eastern/Scottish ones.

Nameplates look OK to be fair. They are "good" until c1994 I think, they swapped them off for cast ones as it was a "pet" power car.

Absolutely, they never existed (in the modern era) before the May '98 timetable change. They had Bristol drivers and Preston "Train Managers" lodged at Penzance so as to save on taxis to/from Plymouth after hiring in local people from other TOCs was done away with. It didn't last massively long, they had gone back to using Plymouth crews with an 80 mile taxi ride by 2001, and there was more than one occasion when the Virgin HST was trapped in Penzance for half the day because one of the lodging crews went sick overnight and there was no plan B!

If you are in the ICGW-GWT transition a derelict 43104 with a tree growing up through the cab floor is a "must have"; it got dumped there for several years after GNER decided to make do with 21 power cars and nobody wanted it until the insurance man signed off the overhaul to put it back into traffic as a crash replacement.

43179 used to be nicknamed "Hide in Laira" during a long spell of poor availability so you will want to model that one, maybe with the roof panels off or up on the jacks in the shed... When it got the cast plates they changed the background colour every other week, from memory red, dark red, black, gold and green were all used at some stage.

I'd need to see them in the flesh, I had a pair for something at the time from CGW and they were rubbish, although technology may have moved on since then. Back then I thought the best way would be a plain shiney metal strip to go onto the loco and a black lettering on clear background transfer to go on top, in 4mm the lettering shouldn't be visibly raised on that style of 'plate!

I'm not saying it didn't have relief at Landor St, but Bath Road drivers and guards signed through to Derby and had several turns which took them there, so I'd guess a change at Bristol and then again at Derby rather than Saltley, mostly because the guards had by then been separated and InterCity trains used Senior Conductors. In later eras super long distance trains would have been possible without stopping to change guards, but would still have needed driver changes. In 1998 Preston guards signed through to Penzance and lodged overnight there, and Manchester guards signed through to Brighton also lodging.

That method worked for me, apply the chisel at the joint above the engine compartment and give it a whack. I'd expected to destroy the model (and wasn't bothered as I was only breaking open a worthless one to get the seating units out of it) but it's surprisingly still OK so I kept the bits in case I ever want to make a driver trainer with most seats removed in the future!

Not helping much, but 43003 gained the "IKB" names in April 2006, firmly into the "Barbie" era! Quite a lot did carry names in the GWT era, but notably there is no supplier I've ever found for the distinctive Swallow style reflective plates which survived on several power cars in the GWT era. I wish Railtec would do them as they do reflective silver swallow logos and the flatter appearance of their 3D names would suit that style well.

There were ad-hoc occasions when a set strayed off route, usually following a breakdown of a set off region and there being a spare "local" set available to replace it. Also, several of the ER power cars came to Bath Road for their major exams back in the late 1980's and early 1990's and often these would get used on the WR for a day or ten to "make sure they were OK" before sending them back. This was because the capacity for level 5 overhauls was not quite enough at Neville Hill for the fleet size at the time, but this arrangement certainly would have finished by 1993.

But the Western XC sets were SSL by then anyway so nothing, other than the need for some sort of disruption to diagrams, would have prevented one of the WR based Cross-Country rakes working to Poole! I did follow them from about that period but only to travel on them, so no mass recording of what worked what, and as a Western based person I'd have been disappointed at the arrival of a WR pair on one of the ScR based turns.

Probably the advantage with HSTs is that most power cars in their respective pools will have worked most individual trains during each timetable period, especially so in the smaller pools post 1994. If someone had evidence that, for example, 43115 hadn't worked the 1200 Kings Cross-Inverness at any point during the 1996 summer t/t I'd be very surprised!

Hornby seem to want the best of both worlds, cut corners on the model and compromises but still charge £314 for a loco and an empty loco shell. If we are to now accept that the RRP of a dummy HST power car on its own is now £70 that places the Midland Pullman power car at an RRP of £244- anyone spending £244 on a power car should expect a pretty impressive model.

You used cut down Hornby Mk3 interiors with the eight table/72 seat layout and only four airline seats per coach? Did they fit inside with the Lazerglaze flushglazed windows installed? I've cut down the vestibules on some recovered Hornby interiors from my Virgin XC HST to cascade into my blue/grey HST trailers as that seat layout is correct for the as built HSTs until the first refurbishment in the mid 1980's but they feel quite snug in the Lima bodyshells leaving insufficient room for the Lazerglaze. See this thread for the source of correct layout innards for the TS vehicles in the Great Western HSTs...

The Great Western Trains HST rake has now been done, new 76 seat interiors in the standard class TS vehicles captured yesterday before the glazing was installed.

Page 37 of the topic "Hornby 2021 Hopes" refers to this but you will have to go right back through and seek it out as whomever set up this site never considered the possibility of hyperlinking another topic. It's on the same page as the one linked below anyway... But in summary I tried three methods, Hurst overlays (far and away the worst, it's impossible to bend a thin flat metal sheet to the profile of a Mk3 over a near 12" length), hacking about a Limby Mk3 RFM (OK but some difficulty because the moudling is so shot to bits to start with) or hacking about with a proper Lima Mk3 TRUB or TRFB (which on balance was the best option!)

Just unclips, it looks like there are a lot of clips but most don't do anything, one in each corner and two in the middle of the coach. They should be exactly the same as the body mouldings are identical.

As has been said before, there is a huge market for people who buy stuff as a "collection" and would be horrified at the suggestion they actually take it out of the box and run it on a layout, and would consider it total sacrilege to modify or detail the model in any way. Their hobby is no less valid than us trying to actually model railways but does explain why these "novelty" releases are such surefire sellers. Three HSTs this year, two of which are "look at me" show ponies - unrepresentative of a type into its 45th year in service.