SamThomas

But most North American measurements are - even their non-metric are different (such as gallons).

Tried Concepts decoders a few years ago & found them very time consuming to set up for automatic running so gave them to a friend who manually drives his locomotive. Gave 3 Zen Black with Stay Alives another try recently - every one went back because of different issues. Shame because they are not a bad price.

Personally, I would invest in something like an ESU decoder tester.

Keith - I'd be inclined to suspect the trailing bogie wheels - could you try running the locomotive without them ?

I have already queried the actual plastic used for the body (i.e. is it brittle ?). Just wondering as a high proportion of the damage is to the left hand smoke deflector could there be a moulding defect or in the commendable effort to get the smoke deflectors looking "right" (i.e not too thick) it's a natural weak spot ? Such a shame, otherwise a generally superb model.

Ron, I did not intend my "clearly don't know" comment to offend or indeed be regarded as rude, to that I apologise. Thanks for clarifying the other matter.

In that case his comment makes little sense...................

Ron, clearly you don't know how the Trade "works" - any distributor/importer/wholesaler that supplies the trade & the public sells to the public at non-discounted rates, otherwise their Trade customers get the hump. The public are free to shop around - often they will find prices below the prices quoted by GM from other retailers.

Would that be why you had to "park" the drives in early PC's before shutting them down/moving them ?

Re : Packaging. Some years ago I worked for a well known parcels logistics company driving trunking vehicles between the main & local distribution hubs. Imagine a box around the size of a 20' ISO container full, from floor to roofline with assorted parcels, all weighs, shapes & sizes - all basically chucked in - yours could be at the bottom......

Nothing - the laws of supply & demand - effects absolutely everthing we buy whether it's essential or not. A trader I know always orders/buys in excess of what he knows will sell out quickly. The "overstock" gets stored until these models become rare & then dripfeeds them on eBay - simple business sense on a trade where the margins are very low to start with. Nobody will be forcing people to buy model locomotives.

Simple - because they are cheap & cheerful. They are much better than they used to be. On the other side of the coin UPS have recently gone from excellent to bad - maybe because they are now using subbies in our area.

I think you've missed my points Paul. Close couplings are detail & in any case details & spec' go hand in hand. To reiterate - the APT is in the same ball park as european models but not quite the same detai/spec.

Now, I did not want to actually say that.................

Not quite Paul - the Piko one does not suffer from light bleed from the headlights & has Close & Conductive couplings throughout meaning one decoder only in the centre powered coach required. Also, on the APT there seems to be a lot of daylight between the body/bogie areas. OK, neither the Piko or Trix tilt but Fleischmann used to do a tilting ICE-T if you really want a tilting HO train. & of course the Trix & Marklin versions are fully lit throughout as standard. BTW - are you aware that the Piko & Trix coaches/power cars are interchangeable ?

That's way up there with HO European models price wise.........

Just a thought on the damaged locomotives. is it possible that the plastic used for the body mouldings is a tad brittle ? The damage in the tender drawbar area I've seen in images suggest to me that the plastic is of a brittle nature. As a matter of interest do Hornby (or any other manufacture for that matter) specify the grade/type of the materials use ?

I feel for you John - a few months ago one of our cats (she was the runt of the litter) a beautiful fluffy female who was deaf got knocked over outside our house**. On of our neighbours found her just after it happened. She is buried in the garden, I cried when I buried her & still miss her. **Also a 30mph limit but too many people seem to think that's a minimum speed.

The Antex just does not seem to get hot enough & it's been back to Antex.

Personaly I would stick to the likes of CPC, Farnell, RS & Rapid for any componants that could result in a hazodous situation. More expensive than the major on-line retailers but cheaper than a fire...............

Really irresponsible to publish challenges like that - all the "cautions" & conditions in the world will not stop some people putting themselves at risk.

Huw sums it up well. I had an Antex one with the temperature setting in the handle - gave me many years service until I lent it to someone.................... I then bought a Maplin Branded Soldering Station, again good service until they no longer supplied the bits. The next decent one I bought was something like £8 from a car accessory shop when I was away from home - lasted years as a standby & did not kill me - cheap soldering irons must be luck of the draw. Currently, I have an Antex Soldering Station but I just don't get on with it - time, maybe to invest in a Hakko ?

We still do in places.

In the US the problems are often caused by the layout of many crossings with hard turns immediatly after the railway lines. I suspect this may be because in many parts of the US the railroad tracks came before the towns which simply got built up either side of the tracks. A simple(ish) solution would be to have another set of barriers accross the tracks which work in opposite to the existing ones, but the terminally stupid could still drive through them.

Not only that the accents in the Black Country towns varied a little even though they were next door to one another. Lets not forget the "Yam Yams".