34theletterbetweenB&D

Could this be the same blonde, statuesque and beautiful creature seen at a recent exhibition, 'herding cats' in the form of the queue of mostly over 60s with timed admission tickets. Among other gems: "Shtaahnding quieeeetly plis." "Looooking ticky teem, kwor pass heeere." "Neee sheet? Sheets theere plis, I come sooon". Sotto voce behind me, gent in green cordoruy coat, white silk scarf, gravelly voice 'Five minutes with me, you come very soon". Probably drives a Jaaag...

I doubt Hornby will jump through hoops to revise the coaches: but why not sell product they already have in the tool bank, carrying the most appropriate liveries? Sales are sales, and Hornby don't have the rights to make a directly competing loco. From conversations over the years, my opinion would be that the managements of the RTR businesses are fully aware that they are in what used to be known as 'co-opetition'. Yes, they are competing for the contents of 'our' wallets: but provided that the customer base has sufficient wedge in their collective wallet, then the availability of a wider range of good product than any one business alone could bring to market, overall stimulates more purchasing. Bigger pie = more opportunity for all suppliers. Hornby's steadily expanding choice of grouping design coach stock, will aid the sales of suitable contemporary traction from all makers; likewise with Bachmann's selection of freight stock, that will stimulate purchases of freight traction from all the other manufacturers. Heljan's manufacture of niche diesel classes will lead to purchases of associated rolling stock that otherwise might not have occurred, and so on.

Greetings. Cream crackered after an entire weekend of a some years ion the planning extended family reunion. Happily the weather truly played up for us, and hitting the weekend in which an unexpected international rugger result occurred was a major bonus as the first post lunch entertainment. The elderly contingent played a three hour match of medication one-upmanship which I am reliably informed finished as a very high score draw. The young were exceedingly beautiful and kept myself and many others mightily amused with tales of their doings on pretty much all continents except Antarctica. If you ever need to quickly get your off-road vehicle out from under a sand slide, I know just the person you should talk to for advice. The answer involves half a tribe of Uighurs, and yes, I had to look that up too. Going to sleep for the rest of the week to get over it.

By happy coincidence the oldest (just short of a ton!) member of the family with the railway bug was on the layout with me this morning, and reminded me that the only clean loco he saw growing up in Sheffield was an LNER pacific on a Pullman car special on the ex-GCR line, shortly before he was called up on the outbreak of war in Europe. He had once at much the same time seen an LMS 5XP which had been given enough of a cabside wipe to reveal the red paint beneath the filth, but never recalls seeing an all over red engine anywhere near Sheffield. The journey South to the Medway in response to his call-up - for he was a Navy reservist - was a revelation, for while the freight engines were as grubby as ever on the LNER, there were mighty green locomotives surging along the ex-GN main line, a very unfamiliar sight to a Sheffield native. Scotland apparently had good things to offer in the 30s ; the family holidayed on the West Coast, and engines and carriages were often quite shiny by the time Fort William was approached from the South.

The tender drive loses the contest the moment the 'mighty tender' begins to move before the loco. For all the praise of the Roco combined tender and loco drive, I have seen enough of this movement mismatch on that product to not believe it to be the bees knees so often claimed. Fact is that we needs must have good loco drive for tank engines, (a third of the UK steam loco fleet overall,and two thirds of the GWR's) so in my unhumble opinion, acquiring proficiency in loco drive is desireable. The way to get good is by practice: overcome the difficulties and limitations of loco drive by technical advance such as higher density alloys for chassis blocks, and intelligent layouts as seen on the D16, with the motor hung forward of the leading driver leaving maximum volume for mass over the coupled wheelbase.

Why so expensive? Start from the entire scan and manufacture of the tooling, the manufacturing and finishing of the model, production and printing of the magazine, gargantuan packaging, and costs of the retail distribution inflated by the unnecessarily bulky product, and finally the profit margins for producer and retailer; all that for £8.99. Let's guess that half of that shop retail price may be assigned to the model element, half on the superfluous tackle: magazine and 90% of the packaging. Compare to production from available tools, finishing of the model and compact packaging and shipping: that should be well under the £4.50 mark because of the start from available tooling eliminating all of the scanning and tooling stage. The VAT might bring it up to a fiver retail - remember that whatever the profit element Amercom and retailer take, is baked in already in that price - and that's for all the exterior visible parts of a fair sized loco. The question then becomes what capability exists to produce and assemble the working components, to move the product from a static to running model. If that exists at the same location, then it looks a good prospect to me.

Given how well 'the source' did on the basis of a knock off, so the tooling cost is included in the retail price along with the gargantuan packaging and a magazine; I feel Hornby could do a lot worse than try this outfit with some of their own older tooling, initially as a source of Railroad product. The mouldings and castings on the A2 are very crisp and clean, they clearly have good technique on tap.

Somewhat of a panic earlier this week. Several of the parental generation on both sides of the family achieved neatly coordinated confusion by messing up their continuing essential prescription drug supplies. I have a new acronym - SDAFU - Seniors Drugfree...

This online preview of new releases performed FOC for Hornby by their Australian customers is working out rather well for them isn't it? Sometimes everything does come up smelling of roses. There's a message there for the magazines. Get an Aussie correspondent on board pronto!

If Heljan were actually trying to run a teaser campaign by intent, they couldn't do much better.

Top suspect is a connecting rod fouling the leading crankpin. All too easy for someone handling the model to just put a slight bend into the connecting rod or slide bar so it can catch. Look at the model from underneath to see if there is any risk. Gently putting a slight curve in the connecting rod so it always clear the crankpin, or resetting the slide bar position as appropriate to the cause, is the cure. If not the rods catching ,then it is on to other causes, as already mentioned split or damaged axle gear and quartering are possibles, a slightly off length coupling rod, or even a piston rod with travel limited at the end of the forward stroke, a loose or out of position wheel bearing, a pick up wiper or other fixed chassis component catching on a wheelset. There's no definite 'it will be this cause' answer: however, the important diagnostic you have made of same position every wheel revolution means it must be among the components attached to, or close enough to touch, the driven wheels or axles. Incidentally, no Cartazzi truck on a Bulleid pacific; these had regular trailing pony trucks on a pivot. The Cartazzi truck has inclined slides for the axleboxes in rigid frames, exclusive to Doncaster designs in UK practise to the best of my knowledge.

The J50s were put on freight transfer between ER and SR in the early 1950s, as the older J52 class previously allocated to this work was run down.

The return of the Christmas splurge on model railway products? Remember also that most dwellings boast enormous reserves of unused space beneath the floor boards. With some cunning work on your trousers you may discretely dispose of any arisings when out on escorted work detail to Tesbury's or whatever.

All the direly dangerous laboratory practise of our yesterdays. When I had my first serious career job, there was no restriction on eating and drinking in the laboratories, despite the continuous prescense of acute toxins in the principal lines of work undertaken. Smoking wasn't generally allowed, but that was because the ash could readily contaminate some of the microanalyses. When was smoking banned in UK state schools? The staff rooms of the primary and secondary establishments I attended were nicotine dens, and some staff would smoke elsewhere around the premises, though I feel this was not encouraged. (One notorious fellow burned a hole through his jacket pocket with a lit pipe, having commanded his class to absolute silence, great amusement all around.) In the year before we turned 16 we were told that there was no smoking despite becoming of legal age, and we must leave school for college if we wanted to kill ourselves that way while also taking O levels. May you be pleasantly surprised. I have been over the past couple of years, by one girl now 10, who was seemingly obsessed by online fashion design games. Mum brings her over about once a month to have a go with the trains. It's the engineering side of it that engages her most, the how and why of what makes it work; we are laying track next session. Think she has the makings of an engineer, if she wants that.

The warnings, oh yes, but also a carrot in the form of a summer school on explosives and other violent reactions at QM College UL as an element of our A level chemistry course. This was truly excellent as it was a multi school event, and some of the other schools had females taking A level chemistry (unlike our boring all blokes group) including one dazzler with whom I had real chemistry. She was interested in me, which came as a true revelation. That was a good summer.

No, both for real. I have flown an awful lot, some in very dodgy parts of the world. It's very safe to fly with me, I've had my lifetime allowance of plane crashes. The helicopter, we just stumbled away from. They don't come with bouncy castles.

The answer is right there in your post: not a current standard model by a country mile. With tooling cost long ago amortised, and a relatively small parts count making it cheap to manufacture and pack, it's an exploitation of old tooling. (I might even guess that they are manufactured as kits, with some getting assembled to take up what would otherwise be slack time in an operation.) Fine if that's the class of product you are interested in, but I didn't imagine that is what we were discussing. If this is such a good way of doing business, ask yourself why Dapol do not offer this option on every newly tooled introduction to their range? You must know the investment model in this line of business: the new introductions recover the development and tooling cost over the initial sales, which is ploughed back as investment in the next new introductions. Nobody is up for giving that away!

I am in a feisty mood today, something to do with this week's annual wrestling match with scaredy-cat insurers who feel that a little subsidence risk is not something they want to take on. Joy unbounded, got an outcome with Towergate Insurance, halved my premium after too long stuck with one insurer following my nearest neighbour succeeding in an eventual £60,000 claim for subsidence some years ago. (The real thing, corner of the house fell off with a bang. We had the 19 y.o. daughter of the family on our doorstep at ten in the evening looking really pale, and the first thing she said was 'I didn't do anything'. She had been in the corner of the house affected when the falling off event happened.) Since I have actually left aircraft via a slide - twice - with people generally behaving well, I offer these thoughts as the fruit of experience. Denim jeans are also not a good plan as air travel wear. People wearing these felt the frictional heat. Wool mix trousers on my derriere performed admirably. There was considerable reluctance to remove shoes and jump onto the 'bouncy castle' chute among many passengers. One guy who didn't remove his Cuban heels achieved a compound fracture of the ankle, about the worst injury on that occasion. Now I have also been on cruises, and a statutory requirement which is observed is the practising of the wearing of the bouyancy aid and assembling adjacent the lifeboats. Should be the same with air travel. Easily achieved with no loss of time: make the boarding of the aircraft by the same type of inflated slide as used for evacuations. That'll sort out the evacuation capable survivors from the also rans. I offer this idea with no thought for reward or recognition, but solely for humanitarian benefit. You might imagine that she would realise this is the downside of the easier path through life that good looks typically confer. But that needs a sense of humour among other attributes. Got the full T-shirt on this one. My leg was so fully numbed that in my half awake state I couldn't work out what was amiss, kept trying to stand up and falling over again. My dearly beloved still has near hysterical laughter when the event is recalled. I took no injury at all from the falling about, but the ensuing 'pins and needles' as the circulation and sensation returned were like nothing else I have ever experienced. But still not allowed to be anything near as awful as childbirth nature's way of course.

It's a funny thing, I have accepted an inaccurate assembly or appearance on a model because it is neat; or perhaps better expressed as doesn't catch or offend the eye. My 40 year old kit built J15 has properly radially arranged handrail knobs, but they aren't as neat and uniform as on the Hornby J15 - nor is a lot of the rest of its exterior - and as for the interior, let's not go there: the Hornby is a work of art by comparison!

Significantly this style of product is a single mode of operation: there's no fully assembled alternative from the manufacturer, the detail parts are supplied in a form that makes the kitting as simple as possible by having them on sprues. Exactly as the miniature text in your post which made me laugh, this isn't a universally popular option; most folks want all the detail fitted - for free - and there's regular griping about the small quantity of optional detail offered in this style with some Heljan products .

Looking at the head on photo posted on the previous page, the loco is clearly undergauge for the track; so if we assume that it is in proportion throughout as a model then it is somewhere midway between HO and TT3. Interesting isn't it, that without an OO subject to scan, the product finished up to no established scale and gauge combination. Which only leads me further down the path of suggesting that their process is clearly dependent on intellectual property theft... I grant you all this, but an org the size of Kader must have lawyers drawing salaries. They may well consider them better occupied frying much bigger fish; but my experience has been that the best time to act is while the fish is small fry. That there was neglible - and possibly even no - loss from this use of their intellectual property this time around might lead to an inclination not to spend any of the limited cash supply in a challenge. But presumably a profit has been made, and if effectively re-invested in the exploiting business, the next 'bite' may be by a significantly bigger and more capable shark.

Brian, There is solid evidence for proposing that a 'CKD' would be priced exactly as the assembled model, and it has already been stated. When T-H produced 'CKD' the price reduction was exactly the assembled retail price, less the purchase tax due on an assembled item. That was where the price reduction came from, there was a loophole in the law which enabled the retail price to be reduced by eliminating the purchase tax. So the Inland Revenue got nothing on the sale, but manufacturer and retailer derived identical income from the sale. That tax loophole no longer exists. These are facts. Why would a manufacturer choose to sell their product for less than the assembled item can achieve at retail? That's what you have to explain to make your position credible. Don't get me wrong, CKD is an attractive prospect for me in a number of ways and there is product that I would like to buy this way if offered, for all the good old 'modeller' reasons. But I have been in engineering development, manufacturing, service and customer support ops; and have some appreciation of what the problems are with such a product offering. The 'kitting' is demanding, and must be designed in from the tooling development stage onwards - that's an incremental cost over design for factory assembly- and there is a foreseeable need to run a support operation for lost/damaged components once the product is in the hands of the customer - again incremental cost - and there is also a risk to reputation, such that the CKD versions would need an indelible identifier such that there is no risk of a CKD item being passed off as a factory assembled version.

Well, here's hopiNg that this proves to be a raiN daNce for the loNg aNNouNced OO model. The refinement of the cab shape and glazing demonstrated on the class 22 does maintain my interest in seeing a RTR OO class 21. My modified Hornby bodyshell on a Bach mechanism runs sweetly enough, but is far from accurate; and looks shabby alongside more recent models. (The Iain Rice point about consistency being key, the more recent RTR has raised the bar for diesel types above what I can emulate by DIY.) And that gree sticks like excrement to a digging implement doesn't it?

Definitely the A2, saved the best until near last. (But that's because it is a fairly recent model in RTR of a class useful to me; everything available longer term in RTR, I already had sufficient purchased as feedstock for projects.) If they had a decently accurate model to copy from, and scaled it to fit 16.5mm gauge track it would be an HO model. Loco wheels would be circa 14mm diameter in HO.

Ignore Wheeltappers for a couple of days and it grows enormously. Quite lost track of when I last looked in. Best to all those coping with injury, infirmity or therapies. I can only offer the thought of my favourite old soldier, age 95, Monday evening's cracker (regarding his pills): "This is horrible, but it beats twenty blokes lying behind a hedge and shooting at you.". I am in a total dilemma over carpet. The house we bought twenty years ago was fitted with an extremely good quality and attractive 'brown with a green sheen' deep pile job, which is still in good condition after near forty years from when originally laid. Every bone in my body revolts against discarding such a proven quality item which will likely outlive me. But it shows every single piece of foreign material, and especially during leaf fall looks terrible: within an hour of the most thorough cleaning, if anything but class 100 clean room procedures are followed on all transits from outdoors to inside, there is visible carp everywhere on the carpet. What I really want is a 'random' carpet pattern equivalent to DPM, on which all deposits blend in completely. Only need to clean when sinking into the detritus begins to make it difficult to walk. But nothing so messy in carpet patterns appears to be on offer. What to do? I only have so many resources to divert SWMBO from her quest for change, and she's just coming to the end of a major distraction (project) with a member of her family so the risk of the focus coming back onto this subject is high. All Baldrick style cunning plans considered.