Mike at C&M

But we were all waiting for a picture of you waving at the camera!

GWR version (372-030) now being sent out to retailers.

LMS and BR versions are now with Bachmann, and they will start to be sent out to retailers later on this week. The e-mail, from Bachmann, also states that they have stock of the LNWR still available.

And our latest small delivery. of items known to be in stock, came in two separate deliveries on two separate, consecutive days, and on two invoices. This will cost Hornby money over and above what an efficient system should be capable of. There are definitely issues with their distribution system.

Wasn't aware of the two different names being carried at the same time, so my above post is now rather irrelevant..

Plenty of examples of locos with two different names. Allow me to give a few examples from the Class 87s: 87.001: "Stephenson", became "Royal Scot". 87.006: "City of Glasgow", "Glasgow Garden Festival", "George Reynolds" 87.012: "Coeur de Lion" - shockingly replaced by "Royal Bank of Scotland" 87.023 "Highland Chieftain", became "Velocity" ....and there are many others

Could you be thinking of this? 86.233 photographed at Carlisle in 2003.

Just to confirm that these are general Dapol releases, so any good Dapol stockist will be selling them.

When we did our limited edition 86.204/86.241 run some 6 years ago, it came without headlight and TDM cables, so it can be done. Probably worth asking Dapol if they intend to repeat what they did for us. Mike at C&M

86.259 was named "Peter Pan" during it's normal BR service, pre-preservation. As I recall, it was named following a competition in which children were invited to submit names for a locomotive, the name being chosen due to Peter Pan's ability to fly. (I will say no more!)

If you choose the right train along the Cumbrian coast, you will also get a 37 for motive power on air-conditioned coaches.

And this is a sentiment that all manufacturers are agreeing with. It isn't that if Hornby disappear, everyone else will get a bigger slice of the pie, Hornby is the pie base upon which everyone can be part of that pie.

Dr.Gerbil-Fritters, a suggestion. Go to the platform end nearest the webcam. Phone a friend, and tell him to go on to the Plattling webcam. Wave at the camera, and get your friend to do a screengrab as you are waving. A wonderful souvenir of your day in Plattling!

Be aware that Friday is Good Friday, so many shops will be closed on that day. As others have said, many shops will get their deliveries of 35-050, the LNWR version, tomorrow (Thursday)

A further thought on the loss of concessions. Many of these were the shop window to the general public - in my vicinity, a large garden centre on the edge of town visited by thousands of people each week, and a Hawkin's Bazaar on a prominent corner with the main shopping area in the city centre. These are now gone, so the Hornby brand is no longer in the eye of the general public within our city. What are Hornby going to use for their shop window to the general public in the future?

One thing rang loud alarm bells with me about this comment (nothing to do with you, andyram). You now cannot allow for sales of these items through concessions, as the concessions market no longer exists. And as a model shop owner, I never buy the Christmas and Father's Day related items. The changes within Hornby of the past few years mean that what has worked historically, will probably not work now. And it will take someone with a strong knowledge of how the market works to look in detail at what further changes are now required. Sadly, I fear this expertise is no longer within Hornby's walls.

The churchyard progresses almost as slowly as the ballasting! The base for the churchyard was cut and glued to the frame. Small pieces of additional foamboard were then glued to the main structure which would carry the walls. I didn't want the churchyard to be flat and level, so a small section has been lowered, and the level of the walling reflects this. It rises from right to left as you look at the front. The polygonal hole in the base mirrors a hole in the bottom of the church, and will allow the wiring for the lighting to easily positioned through the frame. The lowered section at the front right of the churchyard is clearly seen.

Even with pre-ballasted track, ballasting the trackside and the '6 foot' is one of the most laborious and boring jobs there is! That is all!

I have posted on many occasions within this forum over the past few years, my thoughts on Hornby's performance, often with words of caution to try and give balance to some of the 'rose tinted spectacles' viewpoints of many forum members. I am not going to list everything here, or repeat previous concerns that are still unresolved. I tend to be seen as 'holding up a red rag to a bull' as many members have then told me I am scaremongering. I am sure that many retailers who are on this forum will agree that Hornby are the most difficult of our suppliers to deal with at the current time, and they still have a long way to go to prove to us that the retailer/Hornby relationship is the special one that they claim it already is. We know that the rebuilding of Hornby is work-in-progress, and there is still an awful long way to go yet before they get back to being the Hornby that we all enjoyed dealing with just a few years ago.

Whilst many are seeing the recent financial announcement from Hornby as being proof that all is now a bed of roses, the full truth will only be shown once their full financial figures are released in several weeks time. The headline figure quoted in their press release is their bank balance, which co-incidentally, has improved by around £8 million pounds [£7.2M debt at the end of March 2016 has been improve up to £1.1M Cash in Hand). As someone who deals with Hornby as a regular customer of theirs, there is still a great deal that concerns me about the way that they are operating.

C&M Models in Carlisle will be stocking the Mermaids. Unfortunately, one of the ones shown in our recent adverts has managed to get away.

With the dimensions of the churchyard now decided, a secondary frame is built whose size is millimetres smaller than where the churchyard wall will stand. The upper frame has recesses cut within it so that it fits snugly on to the lower frame, and it will ultimately be glued into place. The church will not be fixed into place, so that any repairs that may be needed in future can be carried out by simply lifting it off the layout. Next stage is to fit the foamboard sections to carry the churchyard walls.

One of the best 'tools' I have invested in recently is shown below. A wooden tray with raised sides. With restricted times when I can go into the attic at present, it allows me to continue doing smaller jobs whilst sitting in the comfort of the dining room. After many hours filling and painting walls upon the tray, all individual sections are now complete, and a rough assembly can take place to gauge what size of churchyard I can achieve. Next stage will be to build the churchyard base upon the foamboard frame. More on this as it progresses.

The Mariazell station is a one-off, and needed to be pre-ordered. I presume they did it because of their HOe range of Mariazellerbahn models, but I do not know if it was produced for them by one of the main building kit manufacturers on the continent.

One good thing to come out of the prolonged lack of work is that a solution to how to model the churchyard walls has appeared. My agent for Golden Valley Hobbies put me on to the Auhagen range of kits, and more specifically their range of parts for building bespoke industrial buildings. Within the range are two sets of brick walls, reference numbers 41622 and 41623, shown below in pictures from their website, www.auhagen.de . These kits come as individual pillars, separate ridge tile mouldings for each section, and the wall sections come with relief pattern on one side only - two of these sections are glued back-to-back to make the complete wall section [see left hand side of picture below] These wall sections are all brick, but I was looking for rendered wall sections. So out came a tube of Humbrol Model Filler, and the brick mouldings on the upper sections were 'filled in'. Because of the speed at which the filler sets, the resulting rendering was very rough. [see centre item in picture below] The rendered section was then painted with a single coat matt white acrylic, but the coat was not dense enough to completely colour the painted filler. The result looks likely a poorly rendered and poorly painted wall - PERFECT! [Right hand side of picture below] The brickwork was then painted brick red, and give a couple of washes of very dilute light grey paint. The effect I was looking for was to produce lighter mortar in between the bricks, but rather than achieving this, the converse was achieved as the bricks ended up being coloured more lightly. However, I am happy with the resulting weathered look.