John M Upton

The fact remains that in this Internet age, high street retail is dead, we have become a nation of coffee shops and very little else. Ironically, Hattons moved to be an online retailer in preference to a high street bricks and mortar shop in the traditional sense and still wound up in its current impending fate which shows even online retail is not the be all and end all of everything. You see a lot of people in the local press complaining about high street shops closing and crying out in annoyance when yet another coffee shop/restaurant/takeaway announces they are opening but I have found those making the most noise are those who hardly ever use high street retail anyway!!! I really cannot see any way back for high street retailing as a whole, no amount of Government funding or social media support will revive the corpse now. On a side note, Hattons bought a US Railroad retailer last year, are they done for as well? No one seems to know the answer.

Just had a last look through their stock, not a lot left! The vultures well and truly descended last night it seems and scooped up pretty much everything. They were still listing new preowned last night so I presume this will continue until stocks are exhausted and/or the shutters come down?

Been a customer of Hattons since the string era, probably late 1980's. Huge shock and worrying. Lately they were my go to place of choice for reasonably priced second hand US outline HO stock.

I do have Office 365 (soom to be renamed Microsoft 365 apparently) which I begrudgingly pay an annual fee for but still have copies of Office 2003 and 97 for a couple of older computers I still run (and which IMHO are still better than the current Office apps, I want Visio back though!). I point blank refuse to use Edge (Internet Explorer as was) though, dire unusable rubbish.

Too many items coming through and not enough time to test them all perhaps? They need to lower their prices for untested "non runners" accordingly though, a very good box just doesn't cut it, especially as most boxes I get wind up in the recycling anyway.

What does the CL on the corner of the Mk1 there mean?

Surprised this has not already been posted, nice little show, worth dropping in if you are in the area: https://www.bognorregismrc.co.uk/annual-exhibition.html

Looks like someone has tried to lever that off and failed.

Just had a trawl through ebay for N scale stuff for the first time in a few months, no bargains anymore, excessive RRP+ pricing, hefty postal charges and lots of keyword spamming. I think I will contend myself with my existing fleet this year.

Top of my list of wants from Graham Farish!!!

Some of the older legacy models are more tricky to convert, usually carving the whole coupling assembly off and replacing with a complete box is the only viable option. Fortunately, Athearn Blue Box ones tend to have the metal spring clip version which is a lot easier as long as the spring cover has not got too badly bent or the plastic tabs worn off. Despite their age (some wagon moulds date back to the 1950's) they are cheap to buy and with a little work, still brush up into a half decent model.

Horn hook couplers, fit only for the bin, should be banned really.

And yet someone seems to have bought it!! Of course it could be the irresistible allure of the words 'Very good box' that did the trick... One born every minute as the old saying goes...

I am guessing a bodyside long hood access door has at some point been damaged and swapped for one from another loco in a different livery. Actually happens quite a lot in US railroading, there was a photo of a Southern Pacific loco with some very odd spelling of its owners name on the side posted here a few months back.

I think the word 'Tea' did some pretty heavy lifting with whatever was actually contained in those cups!!!

Gatwick Airport, earlier this evening:

N gauge is more tricky admittedly. In that scale I regard all 'non runner' and 'spares/repairs' lots as parts donors as will only pay accordingly (unfortunately since Farish themselves now seem to think an exorbitant fifty quid just for a body shell is a reasonable price, prices for non runners have skyrocketed as a result) and sometimes you get lucky, other times you have more bits for your spare parts box.

Arrrrrgggghhhh!!! Us HO scale followers just got buried under another tidal wave of Model Power landfill. Seriously, where do they keep finding it?!?

Generally my experience of DCC fitted non runners is once you sling the DCC chip in the bin and either fit a blanking plug or hardwire the wires back together, that more often than not solves the problem.

I have actually tried sawing off the bottom of the split head code ends but with mixed (i.e. wonky!!) results!!!

It's been a while but this afternoon I decided to crack on and get the lights working:

Here is the direct link to the RoS one: https://railsofsheffield.com/products/Bachmann-trains-42907-flashing-led-end-of-train-device Currently out of stock though.

Hello I am trying to track down a copy of the June 1972 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine. I have tried ebay and there are a few in the US with eyewateringly ridiculous postage costs but none in the UK. Looks like this: (Image borrowed from US ebay listing only for reference) Anyone have one going spare please? Happy to pay reasonable amount and cost of postage. Many thanks!

Seem to have been a lot of undecorated Athearn Blue Box GP9's (I use the term GP9 loosely as it is a bit of a mongrel in its details) suddenly come through in the last week, despite being identical, they all commanded different prices for no readily apparent reason.

The existing Farish Class 37 body is not in need of retooling (despite the clamor from certain areas of Social Media who get all umpty when something has not been retooled for at least six months) but does need one new end for the most common variant, split head code with cut buffer beam shrouds and retaining the centre doors, for some reason this variant was never tooled up, the nearest being the later variant with doors replaced with blank panel and a high intensity headlight, useless for anything pre 1986. Of course the retooling of the chassis to incorporate all the techno gimmicks will hike up the price for us analog dinosaurs who have no interest in such things and that does annoy me a bit...