Flying Pig

21 minutes ago, Cowley 47521 said:

Thanks for that. 👍

 

Yes it’s now set up in its new home. I must say that it’s quite a stressful experience moving a layout that was never really designed to be moved. However it did actually go very smoothly all things considered and once we’d got everything levelled* and all the wiring connected the only thing that wouldn’t play was one of the station lamps on Eggesford.

 

*The room at my house that the railway was in had quite a slope to the floor being an old house and all that. So when we set it up in their industrial unit I couldn’t work out why despite taking that into account and getting the whole thing level one of the wheels was off the ground. Turns out that their flop had even more of a slope than mine did!

I was once part of a very rapidly aborted scheme to build a layout in a cellar that had a floor with a profile like the Alps. That wasn't the reason we gave up, though: several sessions of scrubbing the walls that just generated more and more brick dust suggested it wasn't an ideal location for a layout.

I thought Sam's second review gave useful insight into the headlamps, particularly how easy they are to change.  One of his blanking lamp irons wouldn't come out at all; one came out easily; the bottom centre lamp came out, but residual glue prevented it or a blanking piece being fitted (cleaning up by the buyer would no doubt fix this easily); the smokebox lamp came out but the blanking lamp iron does not fully block the light feed; one of the additional lamps supplied was incomplete and couldn't be attached.

Not a fully developed system, I feel.

The recent Bachmann model shows what a 37 would typically look like in the later 1970s.  The 'domino' headcode places it from 1976 onwards when headcode indicators went out of use.

https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/p/82781/35-303-Bachmann-Class-37-0-Centre-Headcode-37305-BR-Blue

And here is the brdatabase entry for it, which shows it may have based at Landore:

https://www.brdatabase.info/locoqry.php?action=locodata&type=D&id=6605&loco=6605

2 hours ago, zr2498 said:

Just checked video footage, and this is the best snap shot view I currently have. Certainly shiny (ish) rods and valve gear, but more of a polished metal than silver paint appearance. Nothing a little weathering couldn't sort out.

I confidently expect that the motion on Eric Treacy will be the usual bright nickel silver plating.  It doesn't represent steel that well, but it will be no worse on this model than on any of the previous ones.

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But that is driven by factors outside of the railway itself - the change from coal to electricity (and natural gas) in providing energy for industrial and domestic use. 

Yes, of course.  Just as mineral working on the steam age railway was shaped by outside factors.  My point in this instance was that long trains and large locos are not per se impossible within the confines of Britain.

4 hours ago, dave75 said:

I like it , it has the feel of a dockside branch, loose the turntable and have two sidings in its space for loco storage/inspection/coaling.

 

Model the fiddle yard as the inner end of a set of exchange sidings and you have the full branch, with the added bonus of shunting at both ends.

8 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

I think @rockershovel is right-Britain just wasn't big enough to justify changing the relationship between all those interdependent systems.

As others have pointed out, it's more nuanced than that. Block trains of high capacity wagons hauled by 3000+hp locos have become the norm in recent decades and Britain hasn't grown in the meantime.  What has changed utterly is the traffic and the operations and infrastructure that support it.

1 minute ago, TomScrut said:

 

Thanks, but it has spent more than half it's life in preservation so I don't want to presume that it is identical today to what it was when it was named over 50 years ago! That's why I am asking.

 

The Rails listing for it does show it as Era 11 so it should be as per today, however.

Ah, sorry. If you look at the main Black Five thread there are recent photos which show it in this livery with polished smokebox hinges and motion, so I guess the answer is still yes - the model depicts the current condition.

1 minute ago, TomScrut said:

This looks to me as though it's in present day condition. Is this the case does anyone know?

The loco was named in preservation, so yes.

1 hour ago, daltonparva said:

The colour of the valve gear/rods on the new Eric Treacy looks a bit jarring.  Something else to have a go at.

Seems to be correct according to @zr2498's photos above as this is of course a model of the loco in preserved condition.  Rods and smokebox door will probably look like 5200 on the actual model.

The 'For Sale' video popped up on my Youtube feed this morning for some reason. I hadn't been paying attention to this thread and it's always a bit of an 'oh no' moment when a layout you like is put up for sale.  Glad to hear it had a good outcome.

8 hours ago, maico said:

The traditionalist, or Luddites depending on your point of view, must be horrified at this loco which has water based smoke system, sound and LED lamps...!

Compared to the Hornby system (below) that steam generator seems quite a bit more convincing.  For a start, the exhaust emerges at a higher speed which results in a realistic transition from a laminar column to a turbulent cloud just above the chimney top (all to do with Reynolds numbers I think).  Also the cloud stays aloft longer whereas the Hornby one looks like a portable rain shower - finer droplets from the TRS unit?

36 minutes ago, Barclay said:

Somewhere on the Pugbash thread is an outside cylinder 0-6-0 version, and it looks superb.

Quite a number of people have used the Electrotren chassis which as you day can look very good indeed.

On 20/04/2024 at 23:07, Steamport Southport said:

Not quite, it was for the very short lived Ticket Operated train set.

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=446

I'd completely forgotten about this item.  The working signal impressed me at the time: I guess it was a very simple mechanical linkage, but it still looks like fun.

37 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Flying Scotsman is "iconic" because it suits the NRM for it to be so.

 

It should also be remembered that until the Moneypit fell into their hands, City of Truro was the NRMs candidate for "the first to 100" .  All the official stuff for FS is their spin.

 

I get rather tired of the Waah! that Flying Scotsman attracts.  It's the only A3 that made it into preservation and without it we'd have none of Gresley's original Pacifics (insert arguments about it's not an A1 here).

13 hours ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

 

That week by week builds into a pile of shhhhhhhteam memorabilia🙄

Fortunately this one was sold out or I might have been tempted.

You might be interested in this old thread:

18 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Some of you might remember stories about Concorde supersonic booms being heard in the West Country (Devon and Somerset) and the Channel Islands.

The supersonic shock wave would travel ahead of the aircraft and if the atmospheric conditions were right (or wrong, depending how you look at it), Concorde’s boom would continue forward towards landfall in the Bristol Channel (for London), or the Channel Islands and northern Brittany (for Paris ), even after the aircraft had decelerated through subsonic transition long before crossing the coast.

 

I've read claims by Hunter pilots that they used that effect to fake supersonic overflight of US bases.  The Hunter would go supersonic in a dive, but was firmly subsonic in level flight.

13 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

But Hornby don't just need to come up with a better mousetrap but also the right sort of mousetrap at the right price.  Locomotion No.1 might wot rk very well for them but will they sell enough of them to keep the price down and thus sell even more?  The right version of Black Five could be quite attractive for me but I would hope to see a more attractive price ticket.   k Make the right thing and get teh marketing right so that you k make more and reduce the unit price.  That is where SK misses the track in that RM comment piece - overheads are one thing but getting the marketing right is a very different thing and far more important.

I'm not sure Hornby understand it either.  This (below) looks ominously like they're looking at new rabbit holes to dart down.  They really should have learned that lesson by now.  From the reactions it has attracted, the Black Five is clearly a mess - if they'd just designed it like the Princess Royal it would have been fine and probably cheaper to develop and produce.  I don't know why they feel they need to chase novelty.

Quote

we expect to start improving our revenue and margins positively this financial year through the identification of new customers, opening up of new territories and launch of new product ranges.

13 hours ago, ColinB said:

It may be they wanted the extra weight. One of the reviewers I watched was showing how to fit the DCC decoder, it was hard to see but it looked like the tender weight was gone and it was mainly plastic. As I say it wasn't easy to see, but that could be a reason.

Yes possibly, but designing a tender isn't rocket science and Hornby generally do it very well.  It's not as if the Stanier type is particularly small either.

10 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

London outbounds passed over the Bristol area before crossing the coast near Weston-super-Mare, prior to reaching the acceleration point out over the Bristol Channel, heading towards the Oceanic track entry.

They used to pass just south of me in North Wilts and if conditions were right I could follow them westbound all the way to the turn onto a southwesterly heading down the Bristol Channel. It was particularly dramatic just after a late autumn sunset if a Concorde was leaving a sunlit contrail.

10 minutes ago, 62613 said:

At least they weren't Paxmans😬

If you follow the Rock Family Trees histories of Napier and Paxman, by the mid 70s they almost were. It was all Poached Paxman Diesels in a White Wine Sauce at that point, before the inevitable split.

3 hours ago, zr2498 said:

But he brought to light a number of points with this new Black 5 to consider:

I'm not crazy about the tender underframe - diecasting certainly seems to be a rabbit hole in this case and I don't think the result is as good as on earlier all-plastic models, certainly not as crisp, which I think will show up in normal use.  There also seems to be less daylight than there should be through the frame cutouts. They had a good Stanier 4000 gallon tender underframe with the Princess and all they needed were some 9 ton bodies to go on top.

12 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

The difficulty with requiring people to attend courses is whether they will actually take any notice of the course material.

Or indeed whether they are able to gain anything from the course.  In this case I suspect it will be like sending a dachshund to a 100m hurdles workshop.

21 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

A candidate for a Hospital Order surely

 

Two years, suspended, and a two year disqualification, amongst other stocking fillers, apparently.  I like the requirement to complete an "accredited thinking skills programme" within 20 days.

https://www.thamesvalley.police.uk/news/thames-valley/news/2024/april/15-04-2024/man-sentenced-for-dangerous-driving-and-child-neglect--m40/

37 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

And back to model railways, this is just one of the objections to sound effects at exhibitions.  The sound doesn't stop neatly within a foot or two of the layout edge...

But it should.  In the future we will have holographic soundscapes from arrays of speakers attached to the layout that yield all the correct sounds for the listener's position and stop neatly just beyond viewing distance.  At last it will be possible to correctly simulate the doppler effect of a Deltic passing at speed and the etched hens on Wansbeck Road will be able to cluck.

Even better the same technology will be mandatory for all domestic and automotive sound systems, so we won't have to share the listening choices of people who think WOB WOB repeated endlessly at maximum volume over frantic shouting is music.