stationroad

The Wales and West 90s blue ones would be nice for a second run, bonus points would be 37412 to go with it!

slightly different wagons - the Hornby one is diagram 1/800, this is 1/801

Same here, though my primary reason is to have Railcom support. Realistically ESU seems the most reliable game in town for that.

I ordered one so I’ll let you know how I get on. First experiences with 1999.jp - you place your order and then once they confirm stock they send a paypal link a day-ish after. After shipping it came to £99ish. From my limited googling on this, Japanese HO is 1:80 rather than 1:87, so this could hopefully pass the squint test. My plan is to kit bash it a bit - add a buffer beam, change the lights to wipacs and maybe change the roof a bit. Hopefully it’ll look ok without the noise barrier over the tamping part which seems to be specifically for the Japanese prototype. There are quite a few instruction diagrams on their site if you click around a bit.

It’s all gone a bit quiet with these, I’m assuming we won’t be making Q2 2023 as per the projects page?

order just gone in! +1 for more MAT numbers, and/or MAT with the roof

Now that the latest batch have started to drop in price a bit, I’ve been looking at renumbering options. I’m coming up a bit blank for easy options for 423 though - I’m not averse to a bit of modelling but does anyone have any ideas of fairly easy projects from that one?

It’s the loop just west of Slough station I think!

And with a smaller 3d printed 60 perched on the front of it?

I agree broadly with the issues around duplication, but I think particularly 008, 015, 149 are ripe for another run in 90s condition, given how rare and expensive good ones are on eBay. Let’s throw in 046 just because too!

looking great! will the snowploughs be included in the bag for every model or just some of them?

regarding the 50, and at the risk of wishlisting - 90s style 008, 015 and 149 go for a lot on ebay when they come up. Another run of those wouldn’t go amiss, especially given the prevalence of other 80s/90s models that seem to sell well.

I suspect it’s quite hard to guess. If you assume everyone is doing full rakes then the real railway gives you the answers, but once people only have room for say 4 coaches which ones would they get? if you assume a typical cross country rake is 4 TSO + BSO + FO, would you take out 2 TSOs or drop a TSO + FO? it muddies the water further on a second run as you then have people buying stuff they couldn’t get in the first run. You could probably assume 2-3x TSO as the others would hit the mark, but I wouldn’t want to be the one who has to get it right! Ironically the preorder model could help here, but only if you announce way ahead of production so you then have an idea on how many to make.

AFAIK they got a repaint in original yeoman too. One giveaway is that the orange line was originally above the top blue line, then moved to run through the middle. So hopefully they are on the ball and marry up the modified exhaust with the moved cantrail line.

I'm pretty sure they announced 59002, did those first samples as this, then announced it has been renumbered to 005. Perhaps they had tooled the roof based on the /1 (005 is more similar to the 59/1s) and didn't realise that they'd need to change it for 1-4? I'd like to have several yeoman and ARC ones, so I'm hoping for an original yeoman 1-4 in the second run to renumber.

Agree - at the risk of derailing - the smaller/newer companies also don’t have the overhead of as many ancillary staff - with a small company you don’t really need full time HR, finance, legal, layers of management, a large office/warehouse, people to run it etc. - Bear in mind that every new hire costs salary, plus employer PAYE, more insurance, equipment, space in the office etc. - it all adds up very quickly. As an outsider looking in - a lot of the smaller companies seem to be formed of a small group of deep specialists rather than a wide group of business generalists*. The need for those people will likely come, one way or another, as the companies grow. *Hattons probably the exception here, but they already run a large retail business I do find the comparisons to other products a bit of a moot argument - AFAIK Deltics weren’t used at the other end of Anglia services or on the back of National Rail test trains, so it’s not really an alternative option. If you’re not going down the kit/conversion route, then Bachmann is the only game in town for a DBSO. I have a 59 on preorder for 120 quid, I’m not hopeful I’m going to get away paying that though!

if you compare post retailer discount, which I'd argue is more realistic, they're much closer. Going by Kernow's prices: DCC Sound 47 is £288.99 DCC Sound 90 is £280.95 whilst we're here, bearing in mind they don't really do retailer discount, the DCC Sound AS 55 is £250 and the post price raise 92 is now £279.98. So that's the 47, 90 and 92 all within a tenner of each other. I'd argue any comparison is on features not on price at this point. FWIW I have all of the above on order in one form or another, and I'm confident they're all going to be a similar level of quality, for the similar price point.

Rails have a function list on their website https://railsofsheffield.com/products/43156/Bachmann-35-357sf-oo-gauge-class-20-0-headcode-box-20227-br-railfreight-red-stripe-diesel-locomotive-dcc-sound- Is this the same as the Biffo or Whiskey Galore projects?

From memory, this batch was 3 models of 90s liveries: 37174 - EWS 37242 - mainline blue weathered 37254 - dutch weathered (sound)

Today Hattons have posted on their website that they have been told November

I just put my preorder in with both KMS and T4U and I can't wait!

These are nothing more than theories, but: You may remember the EWS livery RevolutioN TEA was more expensive due to licensing issues. If Bachmann is similarly affected, they would want to maximise their return on the first run and that would make EWS/DB variants less appealing. The rumour was that a Freightliner 90 was measured and scanned. Powerhaul was their latest livery at the time, so that could be why it was in the initial run.

the whole typeface for the logo is wrong, it is close but no cigar. Apart from the i, the k, R and t are most noticeably different.

That’s precisely what they were for. The idea was that depot staff would take some pride in the loco because it had their plaque on the side, and would be more likely to keep it clean. It built on some of the unofficial logos that went previously.

The jumper cables on the front would be the other difference. Perhaps the current day version could acquire some fake ones, ala 87002