fiftyfour fiftyfour

So... I have the Hornby R2704 Virgin Livery pair brand new in box, only ever run once to test them and absolutely never been out of the box for any other reason and from a pet and smoke free home. I am looking for someone who might like to SWAP the dummy power car for the brand newly released dummy power car from the R3944 pairing as I'd prefer a pair one Virgin, one swallow as this was prototypical from 1997 to 2000. Send me a personal message, I am based in Watford (Herts) but can travel for face-to-face exchange (not beyond Hadrians Wall or to the ends of the earth!!) once restrictions lift so that both parties can be satisfied with the exchange. I'd consider a swap for the powered power car (mine is analogue control, not digital) and I'd consider, or maybe even prefer, to swap the bodies only if we do it by post.

Hmm. "Everything's done" regarding HSTs. The InterCity Executive had one release about 12 years ago and is now very scarce and goes for silly money when one comes up. INTERCITY Swallow covers over a decade slap bang through my era and all we have had power car wise is one Eastern Region pair (none of which have appeared on eBay for at least two years now), then another Eastern Region pair ONLY available digital with sound. And we have had NOTHING, not one of either Great Western Trains "Merlin", First Great Western "Superkings/Fag-pack" or any of the First Great Western "Barbie" bus group style livery the latter of which lasted 7 years in service.

"topic for each of the categories" is something I'm glad to read- saves me reading through 50 pages of stuff on steam locos, and saves the steam era modellers reading through 30 pages of post-steam stuff!

Agreed, it sounds like the cooling fans are on some kind of over-ride for some operational/technical reason. Also it was standard practice to shut down the leading power car of a HST arriving at Paddington, although obviously the MTU engine is a lot quieter on idle than either Paxman type. If anyone has a vid of a normal in-service 86, 87 or 90 making anything more than a little bit of fan noise as opposed to a semi-preserved in a one off failure mode I still wouldn't accept that any of those is louder than a proper HST on idle.

92's have noisy (and busy!) cooling fans, that's the limit of excitement! 86's, 87's and 90's are near silent, even compared to an MTU powered HST they make a fraction of the noise idling and even less noise when comparing them under load.

Am I missing something or does a Class 87 really not make very much noise? Can't you just hum as it goes 'round- you'd not be far off!

Sandwich is 10 mins drive from Margate, I presume the OP was referring to the fact that most/all of that sellers stuff looks to be reject/broken bits of recent Hornby stuff.

Was there not some influence/co-operation/sponsorship from Virgin when the Voyager models were first done? I certainly had one in the original packaging which strongly suggested that to be the case before I sold it on eBay as it was out of my scope. Back in 2002 the Voyager would have won hands down commercially vs the Class 180 anyhow, 78 sets of Voyagers (two bogie designs) which covered almost the entire country vs 14 sets of Class 180 which covered a restricted range of FGW routes. Granted, the Class 180's have spread their wings by virtue of the real things being utterly despised by operators who are always keen to move them on rather rapidly and yes, the body shape bar the cab ends is the same on the Class 175's but I would put it a fair way down the candidate list of modern image multiple units likely to yield a commercially viable model.

Problem with a Class 180 is that it only comes as a five car set, so the price would be very high and for a fairly limited market. The Northern only units suffer from only ever being in one livery, which I would imagine would crush the market down to such a low level that no manufacturer would ever take that risk, and the 185 isn't a whole lot better.

Your posting implied that if they didn't all actually operate through York on June 17th 2020 between 1418 and 1635 then anything else is a compromise! I model across a 20 year time frame leading to bizarre scenes such as peaks and banger blue spoons on blue/grey stock passing early privatised era livery kit, but that is nothing "scope creep" wise when compared to some earlier in this thread who were ordering Rocket, APT and the Floyd Class 56 as soon as they were announced!

If you are going to constantly keep up with the scene right now then you've got more money to spend than most people on the hobby! Since this time last year alone ALL your Pacers, any Arriva branded Northern stuff and most Stagecoach-group livery East Midlands Railway vehicles have all become redundant and even if you took delivery of a full whack set of LNER Mk4's and a pair of 91's (LNER and "For the fallen") they would also be on a one-way trip to the fiddle yard before long...

Nah, you don't need a Merlin one- the vast majority of sets had the three window 407xx, just restrict yourself to one of those! After trying three ways of making the TRSB I can reveal that the best way is to cut and shut a Lima buffet using two window bays robbed from a spare TF or TS. I did a rehack of a Limby RFM (the window layout by the kitchen is wrong for a TRSB) and years ago I tried one of those Hurst overlays but this produced the best result for me. On the kitchen side the little full depth window wants to slide along one bay and the narrow one it replaces goes across to the other side, the first couple of shots hopefully illustrate. The finished coach is good enough for me and slots into my "Cross Country" IC swallow rake seemlessly.

For me the Lima roof slightly edges the Hornby, and the lack of "enforced" Central Door Locking on the Lima ones (simply add Railtec 3D orange "lights" if modelling post 1994) edges it for them if you are doing a pre 1994 train. And regarding interiors, Lima only ever did three, the buffet one which is pretty spot on for the three window TRFB, a TF one which is good for the first class vehicles but terrible in the standard class coaches (it was used in both), and the TGS which is right for the blue/grey one only. The TGS isn't so much of a show-stopper as it at least has 2+2 seating but until this year it was a long standing deficiency in the Lima one that it has that silly 2+1 interior in the TS vehicles which was presumably just done to save the cost of doing another interior. Fast forward to Hornby scale length and their earlier releases of TS/TSO vehicles did have 2+2 seated interiors correct for blue/grey but not beyond when BR introduced the higher density, more airline 76 seat layout (common across HST TS and loco-hauled TSO), and Oxford Rail then did exactly the same. Then this year the INTERCITY swallow livery Mk3's were released by Hornby, all with 2+1 first class interiors so it was in the flying Delorean and back in time to the 1980's in that regard. To fix two TGS's at a time I cut one of the new replacement units in half, the guards end of the Lima/Limby TGS stayed fine post blue/grey (the shorter coach section prevented increasing the density) so that can be cut in half and retained. And regarding the Limby re-worked four window buffet- yes, its a hacked about Lima one with the following deficiencies; 1) if you take the roof off you may find the body is bowed as the roof was strengthened to hold the body straight and 2) the "fourth" bay window (actually the one nearest the kitchen both sides) is slightly bigger than the rest, Lazerglaze do a separate pack for this and 3) the roof is a horlicks most similar to loco-hauled RFM, so if using it for a HST it's so far wrong you are better off finding a beaten up coach with an OK roof on eBay and using that as the starting point and adding the vents.

Every day a school day, I've just checked by hitting a few random Class 87 numbers into Flickr and they did indeed paint the frames on WCML loco hauled Mk3's. The answer to your TGS issue is a silver metallic marker pen, far easier to control than paint and something I use to silver the frames after Mk3 repaints anyway. Regarding the logos- there were two variations on HST (I'm not going to speak for the LHCS Mk3's now!!) as early versions had "Virgin XC" with the words Cross Country written through the XC. This was changed to slightly larger plain Virgin logos after a handful of sets had been painted, although at the time the HSTs were separated by home depot and formation type they did later mix around, especially so post Voyager introduction so the switch to non-route specific logos was in retrospect a wise one. The kit-kat stripes should certainly have been the same across all vehicles, power cars, locos and trailer vehicles of all flavours- but then we expect Hornby to cock it up then as they do now. If its any consolation they did something similar when they brought out the FGW "Barbie" TGS some years after the rest of the Barbie vehicles, it's from a different rake and has the later style of half blue, half white door which sounds like a quick fix until you see there is a colour fade across the bottom of the door.

I was surprised when I saw the interior photo, there is no "wow" factor at all, in fact some earlier refurbishments were more classy in first class than the Blue Pullman, such as West Coast (Intercity/Virgin) and GNER. The three NMT power cars have the top headlight as that is, I'm informed, a requirement to work on HS1.

Yes, the additional headlight above the screen and current spec headlights (suspect they replaced the ones in the apertures that existed since MML changed them circa 2000) means no need for a yellow front, as per all the TPE stuff and other new units. Inside it's total gash, FGW bum-slider e-leather trim remains, FGW retina-burn laboratory lighting remains, no table lights or other finesse such as additional partitions added.

Lot to come back on there! Lima never did a four window buffet, only the three window one, but they did it in every livery they ever existed in upto and including 1999 FGW "Fag-Pack". The only four window buffet that has ever been done is the Limby RFM which is really only any good as an RFM as the roof vents/hatches are totally different to those found on any HST four window buffet (or indeed on any low numbered RFM which were converted from HST vehicles). This product was only ever manufactured by Hornby but re-worked the old Lima buffet tooling as Hornby already had a scale length, three window buffet so its construction is Lima-a-like, so far I've seen it done in BR blue (complete with central door locking!), IC Swallow and privatisation era liveries such as Virgin, Arriva Trains Wales, Grand Central and Anglia. I use scale length Hornby and Lima in the same formation and think they are fine, but probably best to flushglaze the Lima ones otherwise they stand out too much (and of course install one of those replacement interiors in any TSO/TS vehicle post BR blue- I need to make more sales, type "Hornby Mk3 interior" or "Lima Mk3 interior" into eBay!!) . I think Lima with flushglazing is unbeaten for a Mk3, the underframes are so uncomplicated on the real one that no super fine detail is ever going to give us a leap forward in appearance in my opinion. Wish list? Mk3 sleepers are scarce, they could bring out more blue/grey, more InterCity and more early private liveries and still sell out, the world and his wife models loco-hauled trains and they have been unavailable for a while now. Didn't Kernow do some "day" coaches to go with the Night Riviera current style and how good were they? With a clever bit of design a Mk4 TOE ought to be possible from a normal standard class coach, surely the only difference is a blanked off vestibule end?!

Err, what is the difference between a Virgin Mk3 HST TS vehicle and a Virgin Mk3 loco hauled TSO vehicle, apart from the numbers and the end buffers, the latter are supplied with everything anyway? Genuine question, as the loco hauled examples fell well outside my West-is-best modelling remit but I don't remember them being any different in terms of paint finish.

Sorry? Rails and Hornby stock in the same sentence??!

Except that commercially modelling the Avanti livery is now a fools errand; only two trains have received the full livery (c40 sets have just had the driving cars branded), the company is on it's last knockings and the ERMA won't continue after March 2022 as First group has already agreed the escape route so you are looking at a maximum of two trains (in a fleet of 56) carrying it for a maximum of 27 months. They might have been better off doing a Class 390 in the Virgin "flowing silk" white livery, at least that was carried by almost all sets!

The Electrostars reach Dover, Shoeburyness, Kings Lynn, Milton Keynes, Swindon and Southampton in their normal working day with 655 sets in service counting the four basic front end variances. Hasn't spawned a model in the 20 years they have been in traffic though!

You wouldn't do an Aventra for the same reason they never did an Electrostar, they are a London and South East centric electric only unit ergo the market is limited. I don't know too much about the many variants of Electrostar but I imagine with a Class 37-nose style interchangeable front end you could cover the three main cab fronts and the two styles of headlights for the centre-gangway front enders, and with further underframe retooling squeeze some Class 172's out of it but even with close to 1000 sets of real life units I'm not seeing the mass appeal.

Nude and painted versions as requested by MGR Hopper. They were done and with me within three weeks, quality is good, perhaps 2-3% of the fragile arm rests either didn't print fully or broke in transit but everything is as per the design.

Because the TGS is the Lima moulding repurposed by Hornby, hence "Limby". The Mk3 sleepers and the RFM (and all four large window caterers) are also the same. Hornby "scale length" as developed c2001 only did a TS/TSO, TF/FO and a TRFB so until they rescued the TGS moulding from the Lima skip it wasn't possible to complete a HST in any post Lima livery!

Will have to agree to disagree there. Make the worlds most successful diesel train look like the least successful one. I suppose it proves that given time any past sin is forgiven, maybe in 20 years time someone will turn a Class 68 and Mk5 set out in Connex livery and everyone will be fizzing over with excitement at seeing it or owning a model of it!