Red Fox

Is there a deadline for pre-ordering with the air freight option? I can't find any info on the Hattons site.

I've not been particularly adventurous with testing them on curves as I only go as far down as radius 3 and I don't have mine gangway to gangway as I used kadee 18's, I could probably have gotten away with 17's (didn't have any at the time) on r3 or even a solid bar. My principle goal was just to get rid of the awful Hornby coupling arrangement on the HST's!

I've gone for Symoba coupling conversions from DCC Supplies on my HST sets, good for the power cars as you don't have to cut into the floor, just the middle of the air tanks to make space for the slider.

Precision Labels do 3d printed replacements for the Hornby 60 horns.

Pines Express was a named train for Intercity Cross Country and Virgin Cross Country in the 90's and early 00's. I believe it was normally a 47 + set of seven mk2's.

The photos that are currently on the Hattons site of 73212 are of the pre-production sample. The ones on the Olivias site are the production version.

It dragged the mainline sets along non electrified lines on through trains, Summer Saturday services to Great Yarmouth for example.

Equal numbers of forward and reverse seating and four tables with wireless charging points in the new 444 First Class section. Best legroom on the train though is the new airline seats in the enlarged standard section in the same coach.

The 444's are in the process of getting the same 2+2 First Class seats, about half the fleet are done now.

There was a rather nice former exhibition layout that was for sale for a while on eBay, quite large, steam era BR Scottish Region initially priced at £1800. It eventually sold for £250 about a fortnight ago.

I've been using Plastikote Hobby and Craft Sealer on all my resprays which have used Phoenix paints will no adverse effects.

Found it listed on the Rail Express Modeller Index Selsey Beach (EM) – Geoff Holmes (RE36)

Does sound like Selsey Beach, I remember it featuring in an early issue of Rail Express and by that time had Connex South Central units. I was also rather impressed with the layout and have tried to find more pictures having long lost that issue of Rail Express, unfortunately I haven't had much luck.

DCC Supplies have reduced the price of their OO Gauge Limited Edition Dapol Chiltern Railways green 121, 121034, from £140.50 to £89.00 https://www.dccsupplies.com/item-s-121034/class-121-oo-no-121034.htm Sadly it doesn't seem to have sold very well as it was released in December 2017 as a Limited Edition of 300 and they still have 253 in stock at time of posting. It is a lovely model with plenty of attention to detail in the livery. I bought one when they first came out and it included a sprue of painted etched brass plates to attach at the bottom of the doors to represent the door locks Chiltern added but they don't mention this on the website so who knows if it still comes with this

Thank you all for the positive comments. By accident? It's all Slaters English Bond with the tunnel face and tunnel lining sheets lined up as best I could. At my current scenic work rate that should be some time in 2020......

About time for the annual Tunnel update and progress has been made. The visible faces have now been clad with embossed platicard and plastic wise all it needs is coping stones along the edge to finish it off. The coping stones will probably be bits of styrene sanded to the appropriate profile, not looking forward to that job. Once complete it will then be sprayed in appropriate brown brick and concrete colours and weathered. I've gone for slab track to try and match the tunnels current track arrangement. It is modified Peco Bi-Bloc track, I'm apparently only the second person to buy a length of it from that particular large and well known model shop since Peco launched it, maybe when HS2 is built they'll sell more...... This stage hasn't been without it's difficulties. I wasn't happy with the initial alignment of the face with the internal structure so I set about putting it right. I successfully managed to get it looking correct only for disaster to strike during the first attempt at cladding. I made a mistake cutting the excess plasticard away and cut a bit too much away exposing the white structural styrene underneath. While attempted to removed the offending plasticard I must have knocked the face and it split in half. Bother! Managed to glue the face back together and after some slight rebuilding of the internal structure managed to successfully get the structure clad. I'm quite pleased with how it has turned out so far, it's not a perfect match for the real thing but close enough for my liking, I think it will certainly look the part once painted up and signs attached. Next major construction will be the signal gantry.

Was most impressed by this layout and concept when I saw it at Wimborne at the weekend. One thing that struck me was how small the modules were in real life, they look a lot bigger in the pictures! I should have paid more attention to diagrams you posted earlier in the thread.

For the past few months I have been an SWR commuter, before that a fairly regular traveller on both SWR and Stagecoach South West Trains. I'm of the opinion that Stagecoach were by far the better operator. When things go wrong SWR have a habit of stopping everything. Good examples of this are how SWR coped with the over running engineering works at Surbiton and yesterdays disruption at Brockenhurst due to a road traffic accident. Now I fully understand that these incidents are outside the control of SWR but how they react to them is. In SWT times gone by I would have expected the reaction to the Brockenhurst incident to be a shuttle service between Weymouth and Bournemouth, rail replacement bus between Bournemouth and Southampton Central/Airport Parkway and then Southampton Central - London Waterloo rail service as best as they could manage. SWR's reaction was to cancel anything west of Southampton. To be fair they did arrange a replacement bus service from Bournemouth to Southampton Central but for anyone west of Bournemouth you couldn't get to Bournemouth by rail until the incident was cleared at Brockenhurst. Before travelling yesterday I checked to see what the state of the service was and my intended train and everything after it was showing as cancelled for the next two hours so I made other arrangements. On arrival at my destination I found that my intended train was uncancelled at the last minute, too late! A colleague at Bournemouth said that the platform displays were showing cancelled with the train in the platform and then changed to show the service was operating shortly before it departed, staff seemed unaware the service was operating. The Surbiton incident resulted in seemingly every mainline service on the SWML being cancelled, again back in the days of SWT the reaction to that probably would have been terminating trains at Basingstoke or Woking. SWT seemed to understand that not everyone is going to London, SWR do not. On time arrival with SWR is rare. The trains are noticeably dirtier than they were with SWT and some seats look very worn out. I know that the 444's and 450's are in the midst of a refurbishment program but they shouldn't have been permitted to get in to the state they are currently in. I've also heard SWR issuing some rather questionable advice during times of disruption. The Guard on one service just arrived at Bournemouth shouted down the PA at ear ache inducing volume that the train was terminating at Dorchester South and that any passengers for Upwey and Weymouth so immediately get off the train and await the next service, which was also running late. Why? Wouldn't it be more sensible to get off at Dorchester South? That way if SWR continue to fail to provide a train to Weymouth there are more options like local taxi, bus or even a gWr service from Dorchester West. Yesterdays advice for travelling from Dorset to London? Take a gWr service and change at Westbury.... Some information seems to be on a need to know basis such as passengers and staff not needing to know when the Smart system wasn't working properly so tickets couldn't be uploaded to the cards. Would have save a lot of explaining at the ticket barrier. Good things about SWR? The Delay Repay system is better than SWT's system though does seem somewhat overwhelmed at the moment. They've got the Smartcard system mostly working (installed by Stagecoach though!). They are adding more standard class seats to the 444's though at the expense of the comfortable 2+1 First Class seating and the the Guards office.

I'm slowly building a layout based on Poole in OO and added check rails as I felt it was a distinguishing feature. I've not powered it up yet but the track has passed the push test for bogied stock, can't remember if I've tried any Co-Co locos yet but I've had no issues so far. I used C&L Finescale gauges with 1mm flange gap and C&L and Exactoscale Chairs.

I see five or so of them every day in Totton (Hampshire) Yard having their tanks refilled. I assume they are are on third rail de-icing duties.

Thank you. It was with an airbrush, light blue on first and then dark blue gently applied from the bottom up. Pictures of it from primer to finish are on my Twitter https://twitter.com/SWMainLine/status/999272067290796033 as are ones of my FGW 158/9 which was done in the same way.

If anyone fancies giving it a go I can recommend Precision Labels transfers, Revell Gloss Blue for the lighter blue, Phoenix First Group Blue for the darker and First Group Magenta for the doors.

https://www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/models/trams-trains/Heljan-metroploitan-bo-bo-electric-12-sarah-siddons-in-metropolitan-livery-2016-model?sc_src=email_4591193&sc_lid=224230930&sc_uid=Nr3sez77Fk&sc_llid=721&sc_eh=ba3de35582aff7fd1#selection=style:9008__39308 Sarah Siddons for the unbelievable price of £35

Thank you. The Bachmann/Bratchell 150001 has recently departed for pastures new and is being replaced by a fully Bachmann cut and shunt so the cab doors are correct and the centre car is a proper match, I've just got to build up the courage to take the saw to my spare 150 bodies. Thank you. I think maybe layout v1 and v2 were a tad over ambitious but hopefully v3 will get the right the balance between being achievable, looking right and reliable operation. I'd like to think my skill set has developed considerably since v2 began life so hopefully I'll be on to a winner this time and there'll be no need for version 4!

Limited progress has been made layout wise as I continue to tinker with positioning of points on the large piece of paper that currently represents Ampton v.3. The tunnel mouth is now structurally complete with a short stretch of the interior constructed and is just awaiting cladding with embossed brick sheets. Stock wise more progress has been made with a few new units joining the fleet. During the summer SWT 158888 emerged from my spray booth. It was originally a bargain basement WYPTE 158 with bits missing. Now fully operational and with new more prototypical LED light clusters. The lights closest to the gangway being red/white bi-colour LED's and the outer ones bright white LED's. The FGW 158 will also get these lights in due course. Last month a chance find on eBay of Northern 150 made this next project possible. Bachmann Northern 150's are quite rare but I fancied a go at the gWr branded 150207 for a bit of variety. The Northern branding was removed with T-Cut and Precision Labels gWr branding, Northern bike and wheelchair logos and numbers applied. Finally another gWr addition to the fleet that must rank as my top eBay find of the year joins my own resprayed 3 coach FGW 158 on Cardiff Central-Portsmouth Harbour via Ampton services. This will also gain new LED lights and probably modified object deflectors. I have one more DMU project in mind for the short term before moving on to the EMU fleet with some heavily modified and cut and shunt RTR to represent the recent past as well as the end of the slam door era. Plenty to keep me busy!