Hal Nail

They pop up on eBay pretty regularly at decent prices.

Someone on here grafted a JLTRT lower cab front onto a Heljan one some years back. Its a lot of work though!

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, merely curious: the appearance of some of these in the 60s suggests the GWR insignia is showing through a later application of black, be it faded or deliberately rubbed away. That being the case, presumably they might originally have been standard green ones rather than necessarily wartime black?

No idea, they didnt say!

Whether or not to do it.

To be honest I haven't read all of this but I would be rather surprised if anyone on either side of these arguments will be swayed by anything anyone else says, and both will find the opposing view equally irritating! If you are risk averse and negative then people glossing over events provokes a reaction and similarly if you are positive and tend to shut out bad news you react to any suggestion of doom. I rather thought, if nothing else, the contrasting initial reactions to Covid should have taught us that!

I think the 24 is the tare but I don't know if any AA21s were 24 - I'd expect 20. Some unfitted vans of earlier diagrams were 24. http://www.gwr.org.uk/nobrakes.html I haven't particularly looked into fitted ones but the positioning of lettering on unfitted varied quite a bit, so if you really want to be accurate you'll need a photo of your example.

Its probably quite a hard decision to upgrade a model. Of course eventually someone else will, but if you are already selling one, then objectively, the cost of new tooling has to be covered by increased sales/margin over your old one (which might be virtually all profit by then), not just the total you manage to sell. A rival may sell slightly fewer than if there wasn't an existing one, but each sale is new income for them. Financially you probably should just let it go when someone else steps in and do something different to grab yourself that market share back elsewhere.

Is that typical fireman's uniform or just a passing docker?

A few years back they claimed to have simplified tickets to make it easier for travellers. As far as I could tell that was a classic case of announcing something without actually doing anything. If anything it's got worse. A day return from Alton to Clapham junction is £35.60 anytime, £30.90 off-peak or £23 evening out (out after 1pm, return avoiding evening rush hour). A day return from Clapham to Alton is £22 anytime or £21.60 off peak. So someone getting up early enough in Clapham, can travel back towards London having paid 22, on the same train as someone setting out from Alton, having paid 35. I thought public transport users from Clapham were supposed to be very average!

A couple of previous threads are worth looking at. Hornby and Bachmann 08 compared in the attached link, plus the specific Heljan 07 thread obviously. I find searching Google including RMWeb in the subject, usually comes up with info.

I know its only one example, but the recent O gauge Heljan class 73 was over £100 more than previous releases. Stock numbers at Hattons were only in single digits from release and I suspected exactly what you have suggested.

You can't really rely on one photo from that era for a shade, let alone a red (lighting, exposure, film emulsion, how it is reproduced etc). Unless I had absolute proof it was painted any different to anything else, I'd do it in my favoured BR maroon but a cleaner finish.

I keep wondering why they made so many!

Is it 5?!

From the date this should be black. Aside from the hinge straps, the bonnet doors are flush and don't have the raised outline of the later type modelled. Whether you would see in this scale is another matter. http://manlocosoc.co.uk/sutherland/slide-webone-off.cgi?ws-025&01

I ordered something about 6pm on Monday, it was picked at 11am Tuesday and arrived on Wednesday. Looking back I was clearly after the announcement but I had been searching for a specific loco every day expecting it to drop sooner or later (Rails just had). Only 2 locos came up under bargains in 7mm, so I didn't think anything of it until I logged on here much later.

Ignoring that arrangement, I presume retailers don't typically buy on a sale or return basis, otherwise there would be no need for their periodic clearance sales as they'd just send surplus back? Where a product isn't really selling and the retailers stop ordering any more, leaving the manufacturer with surplus, do the manufacturers sometimes offer discounts to the retailers to incentivise them to try and shift it or are discounts solely at the retailers expense? Or does everyone just negotiate these things as they go along?

There is a very pleasant walk from Ystrad Rhondda up the side of the valley to the wind farm at the top. Now the fact there's a wind farm there probably should have warned me, but blimey it was blowing a bit!

Original thread here think it may have been the mogul someone reported a split gear

I read somewhere Hattons had 3-4m of stock in their accounts Shudder to think how much Gostude has.

It works for me! Think of it as an investment - you've bought a 70 quid gain :)

I fear it is too late for that. But as a longstanding forum dweller, I can vouch for your wisdom!

I don't have any direct experience but there are threads on here from pro kit builders and poor kits seem to be a mere inconvenience to a decent builder. Obviously if it requires near total reworking that would be different but then you'd think they'd contact you promptly to discuss I also get the impession that wait times are down to working through the queue rather than construction itself - the good ones build them in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

Ah, but if the insane part of your brain points out you'd get most of your money back on eBay if it came to it, then everyone is happy!