34theletterbetweenB&D

And a Black Bentley saloon in the box set too, Photographic background by you know who, Wheezing up the line from Lyme, No chance of Axminster on time, Better add another of the Radials Clever Hornby, yet more sales ...

Do the QoS Pullman cars count as the LNER stock in this round of releases? Personally should Hornby care to look at LNER coaches, an accurate rendition of the Gresley gangwayed coaches would be my top pick. Plenty of subjects without RTR models, the end vestibule stock would be my favourite, and a triplet dining set for the wow factor. And then a streamlined set. All those Doncaster pacifics and other ECML power sold, few good RTR coaches for them...

Driven wheelbase only 3" out too. And strange to relate my trop ancien Craftsman C12 is in dire need of a mechanism transplant. It spent many years running outdoors ...

This is a good example of an aspect which one would hope to see improving until an acceptable compromise is developed (or a set of compromises to suit varying prototypes as required) and is /are adopted generally. The lowest cost approach is likely to be alternative clip in parts: with NEM coupler pocket, installed on model as supplied; substitute part as close as possible to prototype appearance, for user to exchange if required. From models that I have looked at closely, good examples of the way ahead include: Bachmann class 03, plug in bufferbeam section to conceal hole for pocket. Bachmann class 66, supplied air dams fully concealing pocket. Hornby's M7, already mentioned, front pocket mount completely concealable under a supplied air tank moulding. Hornby's Shark ballast brake, supplied with alternative ploughs with no aperture for pocket.

Have you already worked out the appropriate latin tag for Mr Stirling's 8 footer? It couldn't be as simple as Singularum Sublimum could it?

I do, I so do. Contemplating which RTR items might just be so useful for adapting to some other purpose is all part of the fun. A 4-4-2T running gear with a necessarily compact mechanism is a very attractive prospect. The advantage relating to sporting a pork pie hat cannot be underestimated at such a juncture.

However easy it is, not the right choice! Take a Bachmann 57xx, discard mis-shapen body work, and there you have a mechanism with the right wheelbase and wheel diameter for a J52. Other mods to taste to further de-Swindonise...

The 'joined up thinking' quotient is high at Hornby. Let's hope the 'joined up spending' policy of hobbyists is sufficiently well developed that this line of thought is further encouraged. At the present rate it'll be very simple 'We intend to produce everything you want (in OO)'.

Currently admiring the operation of the large yellow car which men ride in with things that poke out of the side and a thing on the top which rises to great heights and lifts stuff about. There was a bit of kerfuffle earlier when the large yellow car which men ride in with things that poke out of the side and a thing on the top which rises to great heights and lifts stuff about needed to be moved because the muticoloured car which men ride in and put other men on trolleys inside arrived unexpected like. Unfortunately it would appear that a near neighbour's emphysema is giving him hell. Although it usually wins me a kick on the shins, I find it irresistible to greet the morning of the 22nd of June with 'summer's over, here comes winter'. Badgers anywhere in the vicinity? Always my top suspect for 'things that go bump in the night'. Will happily accomplish the second half of getting over a fence by just falling off the top.

I'd be confident of the assembly operatives far exceeding that figure! My estimate would be about 7 seconds incremental to the mechanism assembly if the workstation is well laid out. But whatever, I'd trade off as much of the cab interior detail as necessary - barely visible on a moving loco - for this useful feature. Clearly, what the UK market generally wants is cab interior detail however, and Bachmann have noticeably moved in that direction while dropping good mechanism features.

The really important thing is to stand on the ground of good sense and reasoned debate when there is something worth debating. Because the factional 'all or nothing' style is a constant of human behaviour. I could show you an example from over 2000 years ago, over which of the lunar or solar based calender systems were superior. From the available records the really nasty stuff is coming from the solar advocates: but then they were the outsiders, trying to topple the establishment 'lunatics'... For sure it isn't worth getting heated over model railways, but I promise you, all such behaviour that I have seen is a mere nothing compared to the behaviour over high fidelity sound reproduction in the early 1980s. And that was without an internet to fan the flames.

Often too loose in some respects, (lateral, longitudinal) too rigid in the vertical plane. Straight up, OO RTR is compromised by the need to negotiate tiny radius curves in set track systems that still dominate the customer base for the product. I wouldn't claim for a moment that RTR steam mechanisms match what can readily be achieved with a hand built mechanism, especially when constructed to tolerances for a more generous minimum radius requirement. But once this is recognised it is usually possible to take the cheap RTR mechanism and with some small modification - and often limiting lateral freedom and introducing a little more vertical freedom is all it takes - to get a very satisfactory running result. I am in for 'the least sweat to get to this point' methodology, because for me a model railway is for operating above any other consideration. The centre motor twin bogie mechanisms: these will typically run as well as anything hand built. Relatively little simple adjustment is required to deliver the last ounce from these. Beating this would be both expensive and demanding in my opinion.

And you would be aligned with all reliable current opinion on that one! But it is not much use is it, 'grow long hair and I will personally activate your cueball gene'. Even as a 1960s teen I wouldn't have bought that. I didn't find long hair appealing, but as Pa's rules were otherwise so easy (be polite to your mother and everyone you meet, eat all the food you put on your plate, get A for effort on your school reports, obey the road traffic rules on your bike) then I had to find some point on which to mildly rebel.

As the beautiful young creature washed my hair yesterday evening she observed that I had more hair than her 20 y.o. boyfriend. (She was subtle enough not to mention 'considering your advanced years'.) See, that's what uncompromising parenting gets you: a short back and sides, no arguments if you want your allowance! Pa's theory was that long male hair leads to early fall out. It wasn't a subject on which debate was entertained. Waiting for the promised rain, drained the waterbutts almost completely over the past week. Opportunity knocks. You can get everything you want processed onto the agenda.

I'd raise on that, to what is looking like a well structured and closely managed information flow, with a timetable. We'll get to assess the robustness of the process when something goes awry! Possibly there's some strategy behind it: can we engage sufficient of the potential customer base by such methods to continue to secure the required sales whatever the trends are in high street retail presence for model railway product?

Then again, some of us feel that the 'full fat' version should be of the so very sexy production form. Very clever to have garnered all the sales possible on 'early thoughts' first, because most folks would never have looked at that given the free choice between the two forms. IMCUO, YMMV.

Generally i would say the reverse, and somewhat emphatically. Their introduction to the UK market of the centre motor flywheel drive to both bogies first seen circa 1991 in their 'Peak' and standard on all their twin bogie locos is a simple and robust performer that just goes on forever; and take a look at the excellent drives in the WD 2-8-0 and 9F, both the best things available in OO steam mechanisms at time of launch, and still as good as any competitor offers. Good features like sprung driven axles, compact, concealed and reliable wiper pick ups, soldered wire connections between wipers and motor, long lived motors in sturdy mounts, low wear drive trains. There has emerged a tendency to 'fiddle' with some of these proven features. Dropping simple wheelback wipers and fitting split axle collection on some recent twin bogie types, the elimination of a sprung driven axle on the more recent steam model introductions, clip on rather than all soldered connections. There's likely justification in 'cost containment' figuring in this: personally I would pay the relatively small extra to retain the 'right stuff'. I have posted this before and will doubtless again: they are following the market's desires. A flaw in appearance - see the moodlified Hall - creates howls of protest - but the loss of really good features from their steam mechanisms - such as a sprung driven axle - not a whisper. This is 'the UK customer' in action; it would appear most value appearance far and away over any aspect of mechanical performance.

Perfect day, hope folks are enjoying it as much as possible. Blue tits busy flying from our box, always such fun to watch. I swear the fledglings sometimes fly inverted. Since I have good light and have swept up all tasks, today I shall mostly be building wagons.

This will get you started: http://www.lner.info/locos/J/j38.shtml Then proceed to the J39 page. Then there's the nice summary outline 'Gresley locos' by Brian Haresnape, the very thorough Yeadon series for any LNER class of interest, and the Isinglass drawing series. That'll keep you busy for a year or two...

The different performance by direction is the result of many small variations in the assembly of parts that constitute the pick up path. These 'stack up' differently with the direction of rotation of the drive line. What you need is more 'looseness' in the running gear so that most wheels are on the rail at all times; something the class 25 with two four wheel trucks - with considerable freedom of movement between them - achieves easily, it will have six of eight always on the rail: that's three out of four on each bogie. Unfortunately a rigid chassis steamer with pick up on the driven wheels only is also often only able to keep three wheels on the rail, and if the single wheel in contact on one side happens to be on the plastic crossing, it stalls. (Earlier Bachmann six coupled tank loco products (57xx, Jinty, 56xx, class 08) are much superior, having a sprung centre axle in the driven wheelbase; but this feature never got the press it deserved and has been dropped. Things to try. Remove the wheel from the trailing truck and assess. (If the spring is over strong it may be lifting the back of the loco. if performance improves with the wheelset out, then dismantle plunger and try without spring.) Undo keeper plate screws, loosen keeper plate, restore screws letting them draw the keeper plate 'home' but don't do up tight, perhaps a half turn of slack, and assess. Quite often this makes a surprising difference by allowing the axles to flop around a little vertically. I guess you know that you are expecting a lot of performance from set track. Live crossing points haven't been de rigeur on all fine scale layouts, for all my lifetime and beyond for nothing - the 2' rad live crossing point costs little extra in space on the layout.

The scar that runs from one side to the other, over the centreline of the pick up scoop dome? That was a real feature on those GS tenders modified by repositioning of the backplate of the bunker. Cut away with a gas axe, and not refinished in any way. But this is I believe a post war mod, first carried out on B1 tenders. Not entirely certain how many - or if any - J39s had tenders altered like this. The earlier GS tender with stepped out coal raves would likely have been the more desireable model, it's what all the J38s and many J39s got when first into service.

The mess around dealing with unemployment has often come to my attention. My wife's one experience is a good example. Decided to take an advantageous redundancy offer from employer X, as organisation Y had come around asking if she was available. But there was a four month gap - May to August, can you believe it? - between leaving X, and the new offices of Y opening and thus the start of her next employment. The employees of the state couldn't grasp this phenomenally difficult concept, and were most insistent that she apply for every vaguely suitable job. I rather feel the objective was make work to justify their own employment. Why not? I declare you: Complete Event Organiser, Cooks Excellent Omelettes, Conqueror Of Europe, or any other three words starting with the right letters that take your fancy. They were the lucky ones by accounts I had. When BAe were departing there were numerically much smaller supplier businesses also inevitably folding or downsizing. People shed from those businesses had it made quite clear to them that they were getting the hindmost teat, until all the BAe crowd were sorted...

One simple solution, put the DAS on both sides of the supporting substrate in as near equal thickness as you can achieve. That will result in equal force on each side of the substrate, no net bending force. It is possible that a cheaper solution such as a PVA film and a layer of paper on the inside face will produce an equivalent balancing effect: that would have to be determined by experiment. This 'balanced construction' principle is what makes plywood and other laminate constructions stable; an odd number of plywood laminations means an even number of adhesive interfaces, so provided that the adhesive is consistently applied, the construction balances and is stable.

Suspect you would have an easier project using the hoped for GBL A1/A2 body on the running gear! And you would still have the Trix body to use, with guidance from the GBL body prototype, if that first attempt didn't work out to your satisfaction.

Not so much now the Bachmann A2 is freely available. The rarity of BP helps, but I think you will do well to get much over £100, unless your auction - and that is the only way to get the real value - happens to attract two or more determined Trix completists. Don't delay either, as most of such folk will have been drawing pensions for some time.