MarkSG

Well, they were, originally. As rebuilt and preserved, probably not. But it's a bit of a Trigger's Broom question.

If we're going to have a go at making uninformed predictions, then I might as well stick my oar in - particularly given that I had a pretty good hit rate last year! Like other contributors to this thread, I think that more Era 1 stuff is almost a given. The real question is whether it will just be more repackaged versions of Rocket, Lion and Tiger or whether we'll get a completely new loco. If so, my hunch is that later, rather than earlier, is more likely - something like a Patentee would be an obvious choice. I think that if Hornby were going to do the other Rainhill locos they'd either have announced them already, to cash on on the popularity of Rocket, or they're a longer term future plan intended to mark the anniversary itself (which is only five years away now). A 2024 announcement would fall too far between those stools. Equally, I don't think Locomotion No. 1 is the sort of thing Hornby would do. It's too standalone for them. Hornby likes its products to have strong repeat sales potential, typically with new liveries and/or different variants of train packs that can be released in subsequent years, in order to amortise the development costs over a longer period. But I'm not sure how they could do that with No. 1. I think we will get a No. 1, but my gut feeling is that it will be from one of the other manufacturers, and very probably in a marketing tie-in with the NRM. So if Hornby do announce more Era 1 this time, I think it will be post-Rocket. As for other stuff, I think we're long overdue a new tooling for the Caledonian single. Similarly in the coaching stock, some clerestories to contemporary standards would go very well with the generic 4 and 6-wheelers. Era 2 in general seems to be an expanding market, and it's an obvious choice to address this by re-tooling existing products. Given Hornby's penchant for streamlined locos, 5005 Manorbier Castle would be another obvious choice which would not only complete a set of streamlined locos from all of the Big Four but also fit the "one offs and oddities" category that we all know sells well. At completely the other end of the era spectrum, someone is going to do a Class 345 and Hornby are probably the most likely - it would follow on naturally from the FLIRTs announced previously. As far as wagons are concerned, there will of course be yet more Private Owner wagons in a range of liveries of varying degrees of accuracy. But after the new tooling TTA tanks announced last time, I wonder if this might be the year that Hornby take on Bachmann's venerable ex-Mainline 14t tank wagon with a newly-tooled pre-war 14t design. That, too, is long overdue; Horby's own Era 3 14t tanks are an old ex-Dapol tooling and, until Dapol themselves announced the "Air Ministry" tanks recently nobody seemed inclined to do a steam era tank wagon to current standards. So it is another obvious gap in the market. Plus, of course, I think we will definitely get more industrials, both new liveries for existing toolings and at least one all new tooling. And some older toolings will get rebranded as Railroad (or Railroad Plus), there will be at least one gimmick, and Skaledale will keep on coming up with buildings of various levels of appeal and design quality. Anyway, we'll see how close we all are with our predictions in week and a bit's time. I just hope Hornby's website can cope with the traffic this time.

Yes; I expect wagons in transit would generally have a distinct lack of yard workers standing in them 🙂

As I posted upthread, the original bridge they used to go under is still there (now used as pedestrian access between the harbour and a car park), so if anyone happens to be down that way they could take a tape measure along and measure it. https://maps.app.goo.gl/hZEMvjoptJDCBMBQ8

Do you know when the ladders were added? All of the black (class B) liveries have them, so that presumably means they're all apropriate from the time that ladders were added, but not before.

The big advantage of Ivor is that it would avoid all the comments from the people who tend to jump into any product announcement thread to point out that one of the bolts on the solebar is a scale half inch out of place. it would, though, need a licensing deal with the BBC, or Smallfilms, or possibly both. Maybe Hornby could have another go at a "Trains on TV" range 🙂

I've voted for the ones I might genuinely buy. None of them would have a place on my main project (unless I push my alternate history far enough to assume that the double-ended Sentinels stayed on the W&U), but another Era 1 loco to go with Rocket would make for a good working diorama.

To answer a question posed in the poll, "Have there been any RTR vertical boiler locos?". Yes, and it was a popular quirky choice. That is, the Dapol Sentinel Y1. But the Head Wrightson would definitely be quirkier 🙂

What I find interesting is that it's obviously a model of a Stephenson "Patentee" 2-2-2. Hornby, even in 2023, are still selling stuff that's less prototypical than that! We oviously can't tell from the drawing whether it was functional or not. If it was, it may have been a very early example of a live steam or clockwork "carpet railway" that was intended to run directly on the floor, without track. These became popular from the 1850s onwards, but it's not implausible that royalty were among the earliest to have access to them so an example from 1848 is within the bounds of possibility. The earliest known photograph of a working model railway (with track) was taken in 1859, which is only a decade later. So I do think it's reasonable to consider this model a very early part of what later developed into our hobby.

Although having a working model railway runing round the tree does seem to have been popularised first in the USA, a toy train under a Christmas tree is as old a tradition in the UK as a Christmas tree itself. Here's a contemporary drawing, from 1848, of Victoria and Albert's Christmas tree that year. Look closely at one of the toys in the foreground under the tree.

Cue complaints that "nothing was moving...."

I'll second the motion for some GER opens. But, also, a GER brake van would, as I've already said, be a good choice. They'd be perfect to go with the J70 in any era, but they were built in fairly large numbers, were widely dispersed across the network in LNER days, and many lasted into BR service, so they'd be appropriate for any Eastern region layout and even further afield. Also, they haven't been done yet by any other RTR manufacturer, as far as I'm aware. Everybody seems to love a GWR Toad, and there are plenty of models of other Big 4 and BR designs. But pre-grouping brake vans are a rarity, despite their length of service in many cases taking them all the way through to the end of steam. So a GER van would be a great way to redress that balance.

The other big problem with open wagons is that they are, well, open. So there's the question of what to do with that openness. Running a train of empties is unrealistic in most cases. So you typically need to put something in them. That adds to the time and effort involved, and not everybody wants to do that. With vans it's a lot easier because you can't tell the difference, from the outside, between a full and empty van. Also, at a typical goods yard, the opens wouldn't come in with a cargo and then go out again with exactly the same cargo. They'd come in with a cargo, then go out empty or with a different cargo. That's incredibly difficult to model without huge amounts of "Hand of God" intervention, which is probably a step too far for most people. On a roundy-roundy you can do all that in the fiddle yard if you want to (or just have different trains with different combinations of loads), but on a shunting plank it spoils the illusion a bit if nothing ever actually gets loaded or unloaded. And, again, vans don't have that issue, because the loading and unloading can all take place off stage, so to speak.

To me, though, that's actually one of the things that I like about them. It means that a rake of open wagons will look similar, but not quite identical. One of the things that I dislike seeing is a train comprising a rake of wagons that are clearly identical. In real life, they simply won't be. Particularly in the steam era, when BR had a veritable hodgepodge of different wagon types both inherited from the Big 4 and also their own designs, a goods train would have had an assortment of different wagons even if they were the same basic design. And there's something extremely aesthetically pleasing about that, even if the differences are small enough that you can't quite put your finger on precisely what they are.

I suspect that, if these OO ones do well, an Air Ministry livery is a likely second run. If they time it well, they should be able to get it on the shelves at the same time as Rapido's S160, which would be handy for people modelling a wartime setting.

The law is one thing. Etiquette is another. Just because you are legally entitled to do something doesn't mean it's always polite to to it. And just because something is impolite doesn't mean you have a right to stop them. Some photographers do make a bad name for themselves with their self-entitled behaviour. Using flash without asking, pushing in at the barriers, hogging the best viewing position, wielding large equipment that gets in other peoples' way, and so on. Unfortunately there's no real remedy other than giving them a hard stare. But I hope that most people who take photos at exhibitions are sensible enough to avoid causing disruption to others.

That was the year the Bachmann Wickham trolley was released, so I'd only just got it. We'd put the Santa train set round the tree anyway, but I had the idea to run the trolley round it as well just for the fun of it. It was my daughter's idea to put Santa on the trolley! I've half a mind to do it this year with the Rapido Titfield set.

We had this a few years ago. Might evn resurrect it this year....

I don't think anybody is expected to remember all of it. Not least because there's more to it than just legislation - case law matters, too. But anyone who deals with intellectual property in a professional capacity (or even as a significantly involved amateur) should be familiar with the parts of it that apply to them, and be familiar with where to go to check the details that they don't know off the top of their head. One of the biggest gotchas of intellectual property law, though, is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. The rules which apply to photographs aren't the same as the rules which apply to 3D objects. The rules which apply to 3D objects aren't the same as the rules which apply to software. Design right is different to copyright. Copyright is different to database right. And so on. And that's before we even get into the qestion of derivative works. This is what tends to trip people up in cases where you're dealing with multiple inter-related rights and properties, of which railway models are a very good example.

The Shell-BP joint marketing agreement ran from 1932 to 1976, so it seems a little implausible that a wagon from the 1950s would have carried a solely Shell livery. And the term "motor spirit" is more pre-war; by the 1950s it was petroleum. A photo of 5056 in this livery has already been posted upthread, I presume that's the same one that Tourret has. But, if so, then the following discussion is relevant - the conclusion appears to be that it's an early preservation photo from the 1970s, not an in-service photo. Dapol have done this livery before, of course (photo from an archived eBay listing):

That's not unreasonable, of course. A lot of buyers won't necessarily be aware of the differences between the type of wagon, and so would perceive a similar livery as a duplication.

That's not quite true. Or, at least, in some very very restricted circumstances it can be true, but in practically none that apply in a place like the NEC. It's almost impossible to create a contractual term which obliges someone to assign copyright, other than in cases where it's explicitly framed as a "work for hire" - that is, where the photographer is being paid specifically to take the photos, or is taking them in the course of their employment. Buying a ticket to a model railway exhibition doesn't fall into those categories, and nor does walking off the street into company's yard. What is possible, and in some cases common, is a contractual clause which simply prohibits photography. In which case, if you ignore the prohibition and take photos anyway, then you are in breach of your contract permitting you to enter, and thus you become a trespasser and can be evicted from the premises. That doesn't affect your ownership of any photos you do manage to take before they throw you out, though! It's also possible to have a clause prohibiting commercial photography without a permit, and if you break that clause and sell your photos anyway then the venue operator will be entitled to sue you for damages (typically, the cost of the permit). But, again, that doesn't affect your ownership of the photos, it merely restricts your ability to exploit them. The latter (no commercial photography without a permit) is very common in sporting venues, because charging the media for access is a big source of revenue.

To respond in reverse order, yes, a model railway exhibition is a "public space" as it's a place to which the public have access, either by right, permission or contract (in this case, the contract being the purchase of a ticket). As far as photographs of models are concerned, the key point here is that a 2D photo of a 3D object is not a copy of that object, because to be a copy it would also need to retain the essential elements of the item being copied, one of which is that the original is 3D. A copy of a 2D image will also be a 2D image, and a copy of a 3D object will also be a 3D object. So, given that a photo of a model is not a copy of the model, it cannot therefore infringe any copyright in the model (emphasis deliberate, because that is precisely what the word means - the right to make a copy). In which case, copyright of the photo will belong to the photographer. If the photos are used as a means to create a copy of the object being photographed, then that resulting copy may well infringe some rights in the original. But that's a separate issue, and doesn't have any bearing on copyright in the photos themselves. The situation where it can get a bit complicated is when taking a photo of a 2D image or design. In that case, the photo can be a copy of the image being photographed, and therefore can be an infringement. The question of whether it is an infringement depends, broadly, on whether the image or design being photographed is merely an incidental inclusion in the photograph, or whether it is, as the guidance says, an "essential" part of the photograph. To give an illustration of that, most model railways have a backscene. The backscene is a 2D image, and is usually subject to copyright. So if you saw a layout, and thought "wow, that's a really great backscene, I'd like to use that myself" and took a photo specifically of the backscene so that you could print it out when you got home, then that would be an infringement. Because the backcene is an essential part of your photograph - it's the reason why you are taking it. But if you thought "wow, that's a great layout, I'd like some photos of it", and took some photos that just happened to include the backscene, then that's not an infringement. Because the backscene alone isn't the reason why you took the photos (even if the backscene is part of what makes it a great layout), and therefore the inclusion in your photos is, in law, merely incidental.

Much though I like these models, I do get the feeling that Dapol haven't put as much effort into researching appropriate liveries as they have researching the design of the wagon. The Shell-Mex and Lobitos liveries appear to be wrong for the era, and the Berry Wiggins livery, although correct for the era, doesn't appear to have ever been applied to an Air Ministry tank. At least, I can't find any photos of it on one. The only photos I can find of an Air Ministry tank in in-service condition (ie, not on a preserved railway) are in Esso, Regent and Shell/BP liveries. That doesn't mean they never carried any others, of course, but I do wonder what Dapol's justification is for some of the choices they've made.

All of the class B (black) ones would be, I think. The class A tanks I'm less sure about. The Shell Motor Spirit livery is definitely wrong for the era (and I suspect that none of these wagons ever carried it in service), and Cwmtwrch has informed us that the stone (or beige) livery is pre-war and therefore also not correct for these tanks. I think the silver Esso and Regent tanks would be OK for the 50s and 60s. I certainly hope so, because one of those is what I've ordered!