frobisher

I can't find a good profile picture of the 423, but isn't the side of the connecting corridor supposed to be black?

It depends on the livery (for instance http://upload.wikime...on_Victoria.jpg and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/3414_and_3419_at_London_Waterloo.JPG/800px-3414_and_3419_at_London_Waterloo.JPG), but in general they end up being thick with dirt on the sides of the ganway regardless of what the colour underneath was. I seem to recall they were nominally yellow (subject to grot) on BR Blue Grey but I don't remember them in Blue at all locally (London/Portsmouth line) but whether that was just being too young at the time or the line didn't get an early enough batch.

I was talking to a friend about this a couple of weeks ago, in fact! Yes the motor is visible, but it is a fairly low profile motor, so it doesn't to much into the visible area. Plus when the motor is whizzing around a layout, you won't notice the motor much!

But it would be even less visible if it was in the brake compartment... There should be no practical reason to place the motor bogie at the open rather than the brake end of the carriage.

I'm sure the over-whelming amount of detail Hornby have put in to it will cover the fact of the motor

Unless that detail is an awful lot of curtains or a cloaking device, I think not...

If it's like the Bachmann 4-CEP then you can turn the body round yourself. Some of the 4-CEPs actually had the odd vehicle the wrong way round (one of mine included) and it was fairly easy to change ther body round (well fairly easy once you'd got the body off!).

And then the seating unit won't match up...

Can I put in a plea for some earlier 86s quite soon please! My OHLE posts are up and just waiting for a white window/cab roof combination and an un-named Rail Blue without cantrail stripes to glide under! Thanks in anticipation Dave!

I suspect you might be waiting a while as this requires a retooled body (to remove the Flexicoil "mount" - though I can possibly see Dapol skipping this in the interests of expediency/relative ignorability), a retooled front (headcode unplated), and retooled bogie (no flexicoil suspension). But it would be nice for them to take a stab at the 86/0 and 86/3s though.

Given that I am sure Dapol are concerned about the tooling costs for the one offs then why not include them in the sets so they are guaranteed sales at the appropriate cost for the toolings....

Problem is I think Dapol then have a no-win scenario. If the RFM/TRUB/TRUK/whatever and TGS are only available with the power cars you'll get complaints that they are not available seperately (after all, where are Dapol currently selling all these HST MK3's to..?), which means doing extra small batches anyway. And of course there's the problem that you don't always need a TGS. There's also the problem that (potentially) not all your book set sales are to "modellers" and a the further oddity (on top of the 4 vehicle oddity) of half the carriages being catering might put the casual punter off (I say might, 'cos let's face it we're dealing with nested hypotheticals here ).

The major reason for the decision is probably that the other body toolings aren't close to ready yet and the power cars are and better to have these eagerly awaited items on the shelf now(ish) than delay them waiting for what can be an add on item or two.

So what was wrong with the £88 being charged by Hattons?

Charlie was talking list price/RRP... If it was say £90 then Hattons would probably be knocking them out at £75-80. He's also probably saying that knowing Realtrack's costings that's where he could have placed an RRP for an equivalent if Realtrack were producing it.

This is obviously purely hypothetical and all that and only sparked off by the current discussion around both Dapol and Heljan producing DP2 in 00.

Simply put, if DP2 hadn't been damaged beyond economical repair what would her fate have been?

Would she have been in effect commisioned as one of the Class 50's and operated with the rest of the fleet (gaining the MU cables and any other differences in equipment)?

Were her differences significant enough to not make that viable, if so what would have EE wanted to do with her next?

I suspect that if she had continued on alongside the 50's she'd have probably fallen by the wayside with the refurbishment programme being that little bit older than the rest.

Obviously no right answers here

no faffing around with over-complicated drawbar mechanisms that don't work very well anyway.

To be fair, tension lock couplings really don't work well with close-coupling mechanisms. Replace them with something a little less sloppy (Kadees or Roco for instance) and suddenly you get the performance you're meant to.

The side image of the VEP just put online raises a possibly unwelcome issue.

Drive mechanism seems to be the new Limby style bogie (fair enough) but what were Hornby thinking/smoking when they chose to mount it where they did? It's shown at the non-guards end of the MBSO..? Do what? if there was one EMU that ever had a guards' area that could swallow a drive mechanism whole it was the 4VEP. Yes, they've made a feature of producing the refurbished version of the VEP with seating in the former guards' area but at the cost of plonking the motor in plain sight in the open area of the vehicle..?

Hopefully the production version will swap ends.

No new tooling 142 in Hornby's announcement - go on, you know you want to

With all fairness to Dapol here, they've been stung a couple of tiimes by announcing a date, and then external factors coming into play and people then whinging and moaning about slipped dates. Dapol are on record now as going with an over all "when it's ready" programme with most announcements being 30 days before it hits the shops.

Compared to the TSO/SO and TFO/FO which share a common body shell, the RFM and the TGS both require seprate tooling.and given how busy Dapol are these may just be competing for time in the schedule. We know these are being produced, we just don't (yet) know when. In the interim, there's the Farish equivalents to fill in, or perhaps, modify one of the Dapol ones to suit..? It took Hornby buying out Lima for them to get around to extra MK3 varients...

They were cheaper (very important), lighter (quite important given the limited power) and in most cases the gangways were not coupled and uncoupled in service.

Wasn't it also the case that an awful lot of those were refits onto DMU stock that wasn't originally gangwayed, a lot recovered from decommisioned pre-nationalisation coaching stock?

Adding standard gangways to screwlink and buffer fitted stock is a less costly exercise than the going down the full pullman plus buckeye route. Stock that was already bar or buckeye coupled (mostly the (D)EMU refits) got pullmans though.

Maybe some decent Mk.I suburbans with flush window glazing could be produced as a spin off from the 2EPB Units?

We already have those in N

But yup, a fresh batch of suburban stock (almost any prototype) in 00 would be most welcome (and then farmed down to N as well...).

Looks good, just one thing though, I hope they'll remember to put the vertical window frame post above the horizontal post. VEP's did not have hopper vents as the test one shows.

Those would have to be part of the glazing in any case, as we need to get the distinctive stepping of the two sides of the (non-opening as in the real thing!) vents.

Well, I think that at least one of these will be heading my way. Now if only Hornby would do a 142 to the same standards.

Personally, I'd hope that if these do well for them, REALTRACK should take a crack at the 142 and do it right. Whilst it's good to hope such developments would encourage the bigger manufacturers, I think it's better for smaller manufacturers to develop into bigger ones (I seem to recall people being quite dismissive of me listing Dapol as a manufacturer in OO a few years back in this parish's predecessor...).

I don't usually do steam locos, but here in response to a request from member f#m is an LMS 8F in lined BR green.

Wow She really does carry that well - brings out the inate "Stanierness" which hides behind the black normally.

I thnk my main reason for my dislike of a BR blue is the dull monotony of absolutely everything being dull blue. As Paul has said large logo really did improve things, an on a 37 looks rather tidy IMO.

Thing was at the time there was quite a reaction against the gaudy large logo livery as it was being introduced (people don't like change in general). That was very much "my era" when I was paying most attention to things around me. Me and my friends definately thought that Large Logo, especially as applied to the 50s, lacked any subtlety and refinement, though it rapidly became a good way to distinguish the refurbs from the unrefurbs (beyond the giveaway headlight...).

After the event, Large Logo has somewhat grown on me as a livery but I hated it at the time, and I'm with you on its application to 37s, provided it has a stag or a wee dog on it as well

The blues weren't actually that dull in practice. You'd find that named locos (which were comparitively rare) were generally kept well cleaned so were quite shiny (the 86s and 87s always seemed to be kept clean in my recollection of the time in contrast to the 85s), plus you'd have the odd variants on Rail Blue around like the white window surrounds on the FP Deltics, and some 33/1s.

Though granted, all over blue on suburban units really did look and get quite grotty, and the campaign of repaints into Blue Grey around 1980 for the units in Southern Region really did make them look shiny and new again (until you got inside...).

Looking at this (Burkitts LMS black 'Peak') I could have lived with diesels this colour!

Yup, she does carry the livery very well it must be said

The Hornby Dublo (actually, I believe, designed and patents held by Peco) coupling is much better, though it is impractical to fit to newer wagons like Bachmann.

Whilst it's not in their products list at the moment, didn't Peco announce the intention to produce a NEM version of the coupling a in the last year or so..? Or did I imagine that?

AFAIK the US diesel builders adopted the AAR multiple control system as standard, which meant that pretty much any diesel could work with another from a different manufacturer. Sadly BR didn't specify a similar requirement for it's new diesel locos.

And in a twist of fate, AAR is the multiple working protocol that new build diesels have ended up with by default in the UK ('cos they've all come from North America via one route or other). The 59's, 66's, 67's and 70's all use it as I understand it.

What if rather than being withdrawn in 1977, the class 71s were refurbished for use on the new Gatwick Express service instead of the class 73s?

I'll have to be evil here and say that you'd need to add EMU jumpers, a Pullman rubbing plate and a drop head buckeye and it would be spot on then (but then contempory pictures of that front end arrangement are impossible to get). But still nice to see a 71 getting the treatment

A couple of RCH jumpers would do it as well..?

If the Bachmann 9F is generally available for say ??120 (a 2-10-0) then a 4-4-0 should be about ??90 max. including normal retailer mark up. Presumably NRM are not only getting the usual mark up but also a premium as well. I think its called cashing in.

The NRM have tooling costs to recover as well over a smaller run of models than the 9F. For the sake of argument (rather than being proper figures) say the tooling cost ??100,000 (not unreasonable). Divide that by the number in the Platinum edition which is 500 then you get to a figure of ??200 a model BEFORE you have manufacturing costs. If you're intending to make 5000 models, you're tooling costs work out at ??20 a model which is the more likely neck of the woods we're in, but those tooling costs are upfront, as are the stocking costs of the model etc. Until they have shifted enough stock to cover their costs, the NRM are certainly not cashing in.

I asked what others might be in the range and the lady told me Bachmann had measured up City of Truro..... oh and a Black 5

And look what's coming in the Farish range "out of the blue"...

The Heljan one seems to be a tad bigger - am I imagining that?

Looks rather nice to my (mostly) Chopper ignorant eyes though, as does the JLTRT one and I would find it hard to pick and chose between them.