Foden

Any considerations for tooling up the 8ft plateback bogies also Rich?

I've had a couple of the Cambrian kits, and whilst they're a decent kit to build (prefer the Sturgeon though), they're understandably very light on their feet, which is fine if you model them with a load helping the weight, but there's no obvious place to hide a significant enough ballast weight on them, I tried between the trusses, but it was too obvious so binned the idea. In fact I sold my small collection off shortly after the Flangeway announcement gathered pace, it's no particular fault of the kit, just I couldn't get them to work unloaded. These Flangeway releases are very nice indeed, but for me their clearly biggest attribute is the weight the diecast chassis gives, which obviously comes at a premium. I might not be alone in saying that if they were mainly plastic, but cheaper, I probably wouldn't have bought any.

Today I’ve been turning the fuel storage tanks for my depot into something a little more weathered by the elements...

Whilst I have no particular axe to grind with Sam'sTrains, I'm probably not his target audience, and I rarely give his content more than a fleeting 'just flicking through' view. It's all very subjective thought isn't it? One man's junk is another man's treasure, etc. It's difficult (for me) to argue against some valid points of poor value vs quality on some examples, but the rest, generally, I put down to taste, which of course differs wildly.

There's My Incontinence? It's a bit much!

Exactly the same here. The bit about still finding second runs of personal interest, to clarify....

Morning all, sufficiently crap weather here in the East Midlands. Just been into the garden to collect the dog’s dinners from last night, and although it doesn’t appear to be that bad, it’s that very fine rain that deceptively soaks you to your skin in no time at all! Feeling the effects of COVID a little more today, where as before it’s just felt like lethargy typical of that you’d get with a mild cold for me, yesterday evening and this morning there’s definitely a strange sensation on my chest, nothing like I’ve experienced before. It’s nothing severe right now, I’d perhaps liken it to having just walked into a smokey room. Wifey still showing no signs though. She’s relieving her self isolation boredom by baking, and I’ve had more volume and variety of cake in the past few days than I’d typically consume in a calendar month! How have I gone 34 years and never tried the absolute delight of banana cake?! I don’t particularly like bananas, but this is my new guilty pleasure! Have a nice Saturday all.

With respect, I don't understand the mindset. Delaying the announcement of a product until closer to its release date doesn't alter the end result of when you will have said product in your hand. What it does do, is stop disappointment and speculation as to how long it takes to get on the shelves, and in light of current challenging circumstances, I hardly think that's a bad thing. The mindset, of 'what I don't know about doesn't bother me' really.

My point in saying 'may' is that in the example above, of an item of rolling stock for a model railway, I have no particular knowledge one way or the other whether any warranties or guarantees etc are passed on, I'm not qualified or educated to know this. However, your comment of 'something' lead me to believe you are broadly referring to all things, which is incorrect. Recently new houses, cars, and in some cases some everyday products can have such assurances that are passed on to another end user, even if there may be some stipulations attached in doing so.

Which bit what exactly?

Whilst that may be the case here, it is certainly not always true, and is not a hard and fast rule.

Got a nice parcel through this morning! I have to say, these are lovely. Nicely weighted, nice finish on the printing, and some very intricate detail underneath. A few separately fitted parts, such as bolsters if desired, drawbar and coupling, and air pipes, but well worth the wait for me to add these to my ever growing guilty pleasure of engineers wagons. Few pictures of the first out the box:

Thankyou all for the welcomes in! The username actually comes from the fact that my Grandfather, a major influence in my life, was an engineer at Foden trucks, and was part of the team for the design of many of their heavy goods vehicle models from the 50s, until he left the company (and Sandbach) in the late 80s to move to Leicestershire, where he worked for a showman modifying and maintaining many of the trucks he had a hand in the design of, as showmen had a strong preference for these British built trucks at this time. Me following him around like a shadow in the school holidays, I spent a lot of time in and around old Fodens, ERFs, etc, and had a photo taken in front of a Foden S10 where the ‘Foden’ badge was just above my head. I used this photo during a school ‘bring and show’ day explaining what I did during the holidays with my Grandad, and the nickname stuck ever since! He was a very proud man of what he achieved in his career, and he was a huge railway, and model railway enthusiast too, and as such an influence as he was to me, that unsurprisingly rubbed off on me also. So he was proud as could be when I later went on to become a mechanical engineer, and started my own business. It was his lifelong wish to get to drive a train, so when I’d arranged for this to happen at the GCR heritage line for his birthday, it went some way to repay a man who’d been a massive influence in my life. When he passed away there really was no other option for the hearse than to call in a few favours, and the old boy turned up in style in an ex military Foden recovery truck!

After ~15 years of forum membership maybe it’s time to pop my early risers cherry... Not that it’s a particularly early rise for me today, eventually creeping out of bed at 9am. Sadly I returned a positive COVID test on Tuesday after feeling a little rough the day before, so it’s isolation for me, the wife, and much to their disgust three unrelenting dogs. We’re both fine I hasten to add, with me feeling only mildly groggy, and the wife showing no signs to speak of. Weather here in Burbage, Leicestershire is pretty grizzly to say the least, but a full day of railway modelling lies ahead, once the dogs have been walked*, and last night’s washing up taken care of! Have fantastic day guys and girls, do stay safe. * ten laps around a rather soggy garden, but beggars can’t be choosers!

Another worthy endorsement for a fantastic service from Leigh at Colletts. Considering the current circumstances, he got my order out to me very quickly, and I was well informed where I was in the process the whole way. Could not ask for more from a model shop, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Colletts to anyone. Thanks again Leigh, stay safe.

I've actually sold a few locos recently, that were part of my collection that had never seen any real use other than being out the box for viewing, and was unsure whether they qualified as 'new' or not. I may have been doing myself a disservice, but listed them as used, but noted the above in the description. I guess what they've been 'used' for is no more than a good model shop might do before a model is sent to a customer, but I'm a firm believer in honesty coming across positively, and reassuring in an advertisement. Whether I could have got more for them if I'd listed them as new is hard to judge, but ultimately the difference in price between (genuine) new, and 'as new' is largely negligible in this instance I think. I agree though, there seems to be a lot more chancers out there lately.

Loved the stuff, even if I never knowingly had any. From what I do remember though, is that it was the devil’s own job getting me out of the Early Learning Centre once I’d clocked the stuff and made myself comfortable!

Christmas 1993, and a very excited 7 (and a half!) year old me was frantically awaiting a first 'proper' train set from Santa. Having had the 1993 catalogue for most of the year, and practically wore the print off, I had rather cheekily asked, and hoped for the 'Night Mail Express', but this was a little out of mum and dad's reach, so they'd asked Santa to bring me the slightly more affordable 'Midland Belle' set... What made that Christmas so special though, and live so vividly in my memory, was my Grandad, who was the big railway influence in my life got his 'later life' trainset too, my Grandmother having bought him the 'Intercity 225' set... Almost every waking hour was spent that Christmas, with our combined track laid out all over the floor in my Grandparent's house, where we stayed for the festive holiday period, people and cats dancing around dodging trains, but the excitement was surreal, it was one of the happiest times of my life. Never mind the fact that my Grandad's interest was in steam, and mine in modern image!

I thought long about how to do this too, as I will have the same task soon. I thought about two options, the plaster method, or the card method. I have opted for the card method to minimise mess, and give myself more options should I 'mess it up'. I've bought plasticard to firstly take the surrounding base area to sleeper height, and then again from sleeper to rail height.

I use a DCC concepts rolling road, have done for about 6 years now. It's probably clocked up over 500 hours of use in that time and has been absolutely maintenance free, and works as well now, as it did at first use, I'd thoroughly recommend one. Essential for me too, having no means of a 'roundy roundy' to run locos in. Every loco accepted into my fleet as it were, gets around 3hrs of running in before seeing any chip or modification.

I’m eagerly awaiting the 18 I’ve got on order, but at least it would appear things are close

This is right up my street! Working my way through my digital copy now, what a wealth of information, fantastic read so far, really hoping for a follow up, hope the sales have gone well.

I do wonder how much of it is down to angles of the photo etc. No disrespect intended to anyone who notices these ‘inaccuracies’, but with every release the same comments can be found, curvatures is wrong, windows too big / small / low / high, headlight too thick / thin etc, I’m yet to notice any sample release where the common consensus is ‘yeah, about right that is’. I remember before the plague started standing looking at a pre release of the class 59 on the Dapol stand, and hearing two different people getting quite animated in their disagreement of the size of the exhaust ports, which leads me to wonder how much of it is perspective over scaled accuracy? Leave alone the fact that things can look rather different when a livery is applied. As I’ve said, I mean no disrespect to anyone who wishes to model micro millimetre accuracy, but I’d hate to be that modeller. I guess I’m too easily pleased, but if it looks like a 47, and feels like a 47, my mind tells me it’ll do a good job representing a 47.

Looks like a pretty good class 47 to my eyes, but then, so does the Bachmann one! I'm not going to lie, I'm excited about this purely because it increases the availability and variation of liveries and numbers, these will sit alongside my fleet of Bachmann models with no concerns from me.

3 when new from the factory....