PeterStiles

Hornby's website includes a section entitled "Last chance to buy" with an additional "Get them now before they're gone for good"

Fine.

But one of the items is the venerable Hornby (under-board) point motor. I mean I can see the Elite is one of the products in this section, we know Hornby are betting heavily on HM7000 so it makes sense to chill out and stop making Elites, but I've not seen a replacement Point Motor in any Announcement recently.

I suppose they could be defaulting to the idea that their target market doesn't cut holes in boards and would only use the Surface-Mounted motor?

Both the Elite and the Point Motor are in the 2024 catalogue.

Maybe I'm reading too much into a Marketing slogan...

2 hours ago, micklner said:

No one is moaning

Really...

Remind me to check the definition of moaning in the dictionary.

There's moaning, accept it.

Also accept that no one on Rmweb is likely to buy one of these 8Fs now, but also that's unlikely to affect Hornby's profits this quarter.

Decided that I wasn't going to lose much more of my life painting, so sprayed all over with black then a "highlight" spray with dark-red

I've got some "coal" to add into the hopper.

I pity any poor n-scale person who has to climb that ladder and then stand on the platform, I'd not trust those railings...

21 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

back onto dead lions?

He's not dead, he's just pining for the fiords...

I'm embarrassed to put this here really. 

I've bodged a hand rail - plastic rodding, brass rodding and super glue. Too much super glue, in fact. I'm not going to be able to fix the railing astride the ladder, I'll ruin it trying to glue the 4mm long posts to it, so obviously my maintenance guys are Really Hard and don't need no stinkin' hand-rail. I used a broken piece of girdering to help attach the two halves of the ladder together.

And, erm, let's not talk about the opening at the bottom of the conveyor being fitted 90 degrees out - I was having a bad day, ok... I'll find a reason why...

I used Revelle plastic cement because I like the metal tube delivery mechanism, but even delivering the glue one drop at a time was too much for some of the smaller pieces of plastic - many of the girders are warped :(

it'll look better when it's painted and planted, I'm sure.

'N' scale... I love it but I often think it doesn't love me.

P[

8 hours ago, Dagworth said:

Isn't there a circumfence to prevent things falling off the edge?

+5 points for pterry reference few people will get :)

17 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

We are?????

.. i wrote a really long and complicate reply and it was no was as funny as your simple counter.

4 minutes ago, Mike Harvey said:

royal train coaches

given the fact we're all going to own the Two Princes class 47s, I feel that someone should make an effort and give us proper coaches for them to argue over.

Yes, it is the 2mm Scale version I'm crying over. 

I can see how it'd be a lot more manageable in 4mm...

Maybe it's time to go Senior Scale, if only I had the room.

Has anyone actually managed to build this?

I'm not inexperienced in building plastic kits, and I'd probably say I've put together hundreds of plastic kits of various scales and quality throughout the years.

But this is the first time a kit has made me cry. All but three of the handrail posts broke either as I cut them ever so carefully from the spru, or as I tried to run the handrail wire through them. The girders that connect the ladder to the main structure are similarly fragile, which brings me into the ladder itself... Two pieces of plastic n-scale ladder which you are supposed to glue together end to end...

Is this kit actually impossible or should I just consider myself useless and totally incompetent in a field in which I thought I was actually fairly skilled?

I'm not interested in hearing about where I can obtain metal ladders or extra girderage, I'm just interested to hear if anyone has built one as per instructions...

27 minutes ago, Ian J. said:

thread is 5 posts short of 1,000 pages

Four.

On 27/01/2024 at 21:26, markwilson said:

and 12V DC is still 12V DC.

It's been shown that many of if the older designs of controllers put out a Spike when starting that can dramatically go over 12v, potentially this was on purpose to help rough motors get going in the first place. 

 I'll join the others in recommending the alternative thread listed above and repeat the reminder that many Resistance Mat controllers of that age used asbestos - so don't poke around inside a 50 year old controller...

20 minutes ago, goldfish said:

BR GREEN DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE *BATTERY POWERED*"

Looks a lot like a triang big big train to me, what's the problem?

1 hour ago, Ian Hargrave said:

Plus what exactly ? 

How many times??

Railroad Plus is a Railroad model, there are no technical differences. The _difference_ is that "Plus" get a full paint job, not just the three colours max normal Railroad get.

On 23/01/2024 at 17:02, didcot said:

RB would love a race around the concrete cows in Milton Keynes. 

Actually,

As Milton Keynes has a grid of dual-carriageways looping round it, each one connected via a circular chicane(*) to the next you could plan out a pretty fun race circuit on it... And yes, we had the same "British GP to be held here" April first joke in the local paper(**) a few years back.

(*) I gather some people call them roundabouts

(**) A concert that appears to have disappeared of late for some reason (***)

(***) I would have expected to see an article on the internet explaining why..

49 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

the 'plus' bit to be Railroad Plus.

From what I read, all "plus" means is they paint it in more colours, normal Railroad products having a limit of, I think I read, three colours...

15 minutes ago, Paul H Vigor said:

Hairy? Or 'a smooth man'??

Tch,

He came down the hill on (in) his Triumph...

The youth of today, eh?

1 minute ago, Porfuera said:

They seem to store card details on the website but I don't know whether existing pre-orders are updated if new card detail

Hornby's website's dealings with Card Expiry are excreble. My card expired last March, and, upon checking the website on how to update details on my pre-orders I was unpleasantly surprised to find it was not possible.

On calling Customer Support they said each (pre-)order will need to be dealt with as and when they try the old card and it is declined; they have no way of updating orders, and so every few weeks I've had a "we can't dispatch your order because your card has been declined" email. Luckily they've made it easy to deal with the issue so you don't have to keep ringing customer services up, but it is still a right royal...

Every Single One of my

14 hours ago, Richy59 said:

I'm actually a little annoyed about this, I bought the RailAdventure set on sale when it first started and it's only been out the box for a brief test run. I'd have happily waited for douple points to buy it, and I'm well past my 2 week returns window.

If I got annoyed every time something went down in price after I'd bought one I'd be a bitter old man...

Oh, hold on, I am a bitter old man.

I had a try at this with powering a track through a DCC decoder - on a small layout (inglenook) - it didn't work for me.

Because you've got The Track (and its imperfections) between you and the motor, rather than direct wires, you add a point of failure that the technology wasn't really designed to cater for - you can't have a "stay alive" for instance, so you can't deal with imperfections in your track laying/cleaning capabilities.

it was a pity because I read about how it was the best way to set up Zero-1 modules!

My vote is for the Kato "N" re-railer, best one I've used...

Awesome.

12 hours ago, regme said:

for a minute there I thought I would have to report you to the police

"Does this handkerchief smell like chloroform to you?"