frobisher

Presumably if has no doors that are available for passenger use (i.e. always locked beyond use) then it would not need CDL.

Indeed. I suspect they would have been okay, but maybe not +£50 on RRP's worth of okay. Hornby chose a path (probably rightly so) and Heljan's wasn't that path.

Never said they did, but the CAD took the same approach a their 00 models with regards separately fitted detail.

With respect; Heljan announced their intensions before Hornby announced their range, and did so not knowing the extent of the Hornby range. Hornby made their announcement knowing Heljan's intensions, whether those models duplicating Heljan's potential development were already in their plans is not something we can know. Just because it hasn't yet got a price point doesn't mean you can't make reasonable assumptions from the 50 and the 66. Heljan were aiming at a £199 price point, both of those are well below that (the 66 very much so). Heljan's CAD of their 31 points to taking their 00 approach in this smaller scale, Hornby have gone slighly more "Railroady" (and probably rightly so). At announcement, we had no clear indication of the timescale of Hornby's phases and when this 31 would actually appear. Heljan knew their own timescale. Is "day one" duplication of models a good thing for a new scale trying to establish itself? Apart from commercial considerations obviously...

That's somewhat unfair. Heljan's release of intensions was based on the knowledge a big player was entering the UK scene in the scale. What they didn't expect was every model announced suddenly being in Hornby's own intensions at range launch, and Hornby's announced price points being quite a bit lower than theirs. Of course, had they known how delayed Hornby would have become with their 31 they should have continued and funded with the results of the next week's lottery numbers that they'd have already had...

The 64XX is modern tooling and targeted because Dapol produced a 57XX, the Farish 57XX was in Noah's trainset and not in current production since they have something filling the small GWR pannier tank slot for them...

Plus in quite a few places on gov.uk they do conflate the two with one being "commonly known as" the other.

Has anyone got pictures of the BG MKIIIs yet? Can we confirm those are in "as built" condition without CDL?

"Huge"? "Significant" maybe, but not "Huge". There's "only" two 3rd rail lines there and total length would be less than London-Bournemouth I'd have thought.

These look to be moulded integral to the glazing, unless I'm seeing that wrong?

Oooh, will be interesting to see how the curtains come out when printed... Don't think I've seen this approach before.

I think the MK1 and MK2 coaches have done well for Hornby, ditto the Tornado and Crosti 9F. As it stands, much of the TT range is very much "design clever" and much the better for it.

There were 0.9, 1.0, 1.3, 1.5 and 2.0 mm hex bits in the set I linked...

Or, just sell them as are, and people will buy them like they always do. Once they're at the retailer, they're not Hornby's problem any more.

You might be surprised. That's a handle and lamp bracket you don't have to manufacture and assemble as well. So you've very possibly just removed 2-3 people from the assembly line by doing this effectively. Tooling modification would be in the low 10's of thousand $ or less I would have thought, probably a lot less if a simple modification to existing tooling rather than a new tooling.