Porfuera

But none of those things are designed that way. As I said before, these days you wouldn't get away with deliberately designing an HST to run as a 4-car set. It would be the same if someone decided to use a generic chassis for a number of steam locos - that would be unthinkable, and to me a 4-car HST would be the same, regardless of the fact that most people won't be able to run an 8-car set anyway. And as I mentioned already, Hornby had problems with the Mk1s and these were easily sorted. I like to think positively and say that any problem with the Mk3s would be equally minor. These things go through a lot of testing and hopefully any problem will be an assembly error rather than a fundamental design issue.

I know you have some TT:120 but that thought wouldn't even have crossed my mind - not designed to run anything less than an 8-car set, not these days. After all, they are selling 8 differently-numbered coaches in two of the liveries - presumably they expect some people to buy all of them so why would they deliberately design it so that the powered car couldn't pull them all together?

That's interesting. No wonder mine was running freely - I didn't have the correct coaches for the test! Good to know that your power car is running OK, at least, and hopefully you'll get to the bottom of what's happening with the Mk3s. I seem to recall that there was a problem with the early Mk1s where a stub of plastic was left on the underside of the coaches (IIRC it wasn't meant to be there - it was something to do with the assembly process and should have been removed) and this rubbed against the wheels but only when the coaches went around a curve. It has since been fixed on the Mk1s but given that you were running a long formation on a loop of track could it be something like that? Maybe at some point you could you try the HST and the Mk3s on a straight length of track to see if they are OK on the straight and therefore whether it is something that only happens on curves? And good luck with your house move - I hope it all goes smoothly!

Hi Andy - I don't comment often but it was good to see another video and nice to know that Tonleigh Bridge went to a good home even if it wasn't what you'd planned. Best wishes to Mrs. P and I hope she is improving and that the building works won't be too disruptive. I always enjoy your updates and along with everyone else I'm looking forward to seeing your next build develop!

Hi Michael, I'm sorry to say that you might want to return your HST to Hornby for them to take a look at it if fitting it with DCC doesn't cure its problems (and I'm also doubtful that it would cure it but it must be worth a try). After seeing your post I thought I'd give mine a test as I currently have a running-in loop of track on my dining room table (much to the delight of the Domestic Authority). The loop is a full circle of Tillig bedding track of radius 396 (so equal to Hornby's R4) plus only four 166mm straights, laid out with two straights per side (so the circuit is an oval rather than a 'square'). I don't have any BG Mk3s (they're not out yet) so I tried my HST set with three unlit Pullmans from the Scotsman set and three Mk1 from the Easterner. My HST set is DCC and it came pre-fitted. The 'train' was long enough to cover almost half of the circuit so a considerable amount of it is always on a curve yet it pulled away at the lowest speed setting (i.e. '1' on the app) and continued crawling at that speed without any problems for a full circuit. Then I noticed that you said you were running 8 coaches rather than the six that I had. The only bogie vehicles I had left to try were three Arnold container wagons so I added those to give a total of 9 vehicles plus the dummy power car. I think the Arnold wagons are a bit heavier than the coaches, plus the 'train' now covered more than half of the circuit, so it was even more demanding. However, the result was the same with the HST starting at '1' and continuing to crawl around at that speed for a full circuit. I have to say that my three steamers (Blink Bonny, William Whitelaw and Trigo) didn't show the even slightest interest in pulling the six coaches plus the dummy HST car at the same low speed as the HST. Even at speed setting '10' Trigo would stop and wheelspin frequently. However the steamers weigh a bit less than the HST so maybe they'd benefit from a bit of extra weight (and maybe a bit of wheel cleaning, too). Finally, I have to say that if the TV series 'Hornby: A Model World' is even faintly true to reality then I think the idea that Hornby would settle for a 4-coach HST as a 'maximum' because "TT:120 is for smaller spaces" doesn't really hold water. There is no evidence for them thinking that and on the TV series they seemed just as enthusiastic to see a loco pulling a realistic rake of carriages or wagons at speed as the rest of us.

The five GWR Mk3 TSOs in the online shop that that were recently showing "Spring" are now also showing "Summer", with metadata dates of 30th July. Therefore all the outstanding BG and GWR Mk3s are now showing "Summer". Hopefully these will change to earlier dates at some point - my HST pack arrived today and I would very much like to have some coaches to run with it! I think Hornby will get some stick if the Mk3s don't arrive until June/July. Maybe we will hear better news on 2nd April.

There is a post on the Hornby Bluetooth decoders thread saying that the sound profiles for the TT:120 Duchess, Class 50 and Class 66 are due to be released by the end of the month (although I haven't checked this myself). However the shop is showing 'Expected' dates of Summer (for the Duchess and Class 50) and Autumn (for the Class 66) for the locos. If they're releasing the sound profiles soon then maybe the shop dates for these locos are being pessimistic. Fingers crossed! EDIT: Or maybe it is the easiest way for the factory in China to get hold of the profiles to preload them onto the sound-fitted locos, which are due to be released at the same time as the DC locos...?

It is interesting that they are getting these out so early because (according to the shop pages) the TT:120 Duchess and Class 50 aren't due until Summer (possibly end of May and end of June respectively) and the Class 66 isn't due until Autumn (possibly end of November) at the earliest. Hopefully the shop dates are being pessimistic!

This is why I put "the only way we'll know for sure is to check these dates against something that will be released in the near future". I'm not sure I agree about the dates. Just because 'long' dates frequently slip, it doesn't mean that near ones are unreliable. Hornby must have a good idea when stock is going to arrive so that they can send lists out to dealers. However, going by how quickly the Swallow-liveried Mk3s were sent out after the power car packs you'd think the BG and GWR Mk3s would be here already but who knows? And I've just had my notification email for my digital BG HST (or rather SWMBOs HST!) so I'm as keen to see the Mk3s as anyone else, otherwise I'll be running it with Pullmans!

Well that blows my theory out of the water! 🙂 EDIT: I've just checked and it look like it is only the power car packs so maybe I'm safe for now...

As a continuation to the above, five of the GWR Mk3 coaches are showing an availability of "Spring" (all look like TSOs) while three are showing an availability of "Summer" (these are Buffet, TF and TGS). For those with Spring, the "product:availability_date" is showing as "2024-03-28T00:00:00+00:00" so we will be able to see whether this happens on the 28th March or not (assuming the date doesn't change). For those showing "Summer" the date is showing as "2024-07-02T00:00:00+01:00".

I'm still seeing a date of 2nd June on the shop page. Anyone can try this for themselves to check something on the web page called "product:availability_date" The following is for a Windows 11 desktop using Google Chrome (I haven't tried it with anything else so if you're using a different browser or Android or Apple devices you may need to find a different method). The instructions may even be different if you are using a different version of Chrome but you can try the following: - View a product in the Hornby shop (e.g. the blue/grey Mk3 Tourist Standard Open, E42141 here) - Put the mouse pointer in the white space above the photo and right-click. A menu will appear - click on "View page source" (or instead of doing this you can just type <Ctrl-U> i.e. hold down the Control key and press the letter 'u') - The HTML/JavaScript code for the page will appear in a new tab - don't panic! You are looking for something that says "product:availability_date" that has a date and time after it - this is in the format "2024-06-02T00:00:00+01:00" On my screen this appears on the first page at about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way down but that may depend on the size of the screen that you are using, the screen resolution, that sort of thing so you may need to scroll if you can't see it. There are line numbers on the left and for me it is at Line 42 but again that may depend on different factors/settings on your PC - I don't know, I'm not a Java/HTML person. Alternatively if you can't see "availability_date" then you can search the page by typing <Ctrl-f> (hold down the Control key and press the letter 'f'). When you do this a small box appears at the top right of the screen - type in "availability" (without the quotes) and all occurrences of the word "availability" will be highlighted. Click on the down arrow in the box until you reach "availability_date". I'm not saying this is 100% guaranteed to be the actual day that an individual item will become available but someone on Facebook was able to 'predict' when the GWR and blue/grey HST sets became available to order on the Hornby web site and I'm guessing that this is what they used - the only way we'll know for sure is to check these dates against something that will be released in the near future, for example the Duchess of Athol, which has a date of 30th May, or something earlier if someone spots something with an earlier date. Interestingly there is another item called "data-stock-level" which appears to be positive for available items (like the HST sets) and negative for pre-order items (as you might expect) but it seems to be quite low (generally less than 100 for most values that I've looked at). For the TSO above it is "-54" and for the Duchess of Athol it is "-127" so I'm wondering if the value is scaled (maybe by a factor of 10) because I would have thought that pre-orders would be higher - unless people are now mostly pre-ordering from retailers because the TT:120 Club discount is no longer available. AFAIAA neither the availability_date nor the stock-level are directly displayed on the web page - I'm guessing that the former is used to calculate the season while the latter is used to determine whether you are allowed to order an in-stock item or whether you have to place a pre-order and it is used to format the page accordingly. EDIT: I've just checked the 2nd June and it is a Sunday, which is possibly unlikely (unless Hornby's logistics/warehousing company works a 7-day week) so maybe it is just a placeholder for an earlier date.

Surely the original roadmap was the catalogue? My reading of the catalogue is that the J94 and the 5700 were not in Phases 3 and 4 originally, the Class 60 and the 9F were instead - the 0-6-0s were in the bit after Phase 4 that read " Plus, BR Britannia, LMS/BR Black 5, J94,GWR/BR Class 5700 Pannier and much more!" - although even that is open to interpretation as to whether or not that is Phase 4! That is interesting - AFAIR the first anyone knew of that page was when @Les1952 posted about it last July. It is hard to believe that it was around for eight months from November to July before anyone noticed it. I know that others have looked for it on the Wayback Machine and not found any reference to it before last autumn so you've done well to find that reference. I don't remember reading those items so I probably missed them. From those quotes it certainly looks like there will be three more 0-6-0s, contrary to what I was thinking. So now the question is: when? I still find it hard to believe we will see any of them this year - especially as the Class 66 has been delayed yet again until Autumn and the Class 50 has also recently gone from Spring to Summer I think. Also I can't remember much information lately about the Duchesses even though the website says Spring/Summer (the dates for these are currently showing as 30th May and 5th June, depending on the version). But maybe an 0-6-0 will be a 'surprise' - they are sorely needed, even though I won't be buying one - I'm waiting for the diesels. It will be very interesting to see what is said in April. Not long to go now!

Maybe I'm mis-remembering but to be honest I didn't think there was a mystery 0-6-0 in addition to the J94 and 5700 - I thought that unnamed steam 0-6-0s were mentioned in one of the livestreams about a year ago (something like "one in tooling and one about to go to tooling"). Then later, in the July 'Future of TT:220' announcement, the J94 and 5700 were brought forward into Phase 4, replacing the previous Class 60 and 9F that were originally in Phases 3 and 4. So to me those are the two previously-unnamed 0-6-0s. I do seem to remember Jintys and Terriers being mentioned but then SK would never say 'no' to any suggestion brought up in a livestream. And three steam 0-6-0s seems like overkill when there is still so much to do. I guess the only reason would be if they could bring it out imminently (say in the Summer) and then they could keep the J94 and 5700 in Phase 4, which is likely to be 2026 (with Phase 3 being 2025). Roll on the 2nd April!

The Hornby store shows the TT:120 sound-fitted steam locos at £222.99 (the Scotsman is £231.99) while analogue are £167.99. The Next18 decoder is £69.99, so cheaper to buy them DCC fitted than it is to fit them yourself. But I think you can get around 10% off at retailers although there are DCC fitted locos on a certain auction site for around £180 - or possibly less if you make an offer and it is accepted. But obviously there is less selection. On the website the TT:120 HST packs look to be cheaper than the 00 ones (especially the DCC ones) but you can probably get large enough retailer discounts that the difference is wiped out. In any event I don't think they were saying that TT:120 would be cheaper - IIRC someone asked that on one of the livestreams and SK and Carl went through a lengthy reply explaining why they weren't cheaper just because they are smaller. And I was looking at Z Scale on a German retailer the other day and pretty much everything seemed to be about the same price as TT:120 and that's almost half the size.

And as I said I know that - it is in the public domain. Do you feel you can stop now?

Well there is an item called stock levels which I wouldn't have thought they'd want known but as I say it is in the public domain so maybe they're not bothered. But why don't you just leave it now and let people get on and talk about the topic of TT:120 HSTs rather than continually trying to pick me up on insignificant little details?

And as I said it is in the public domain I'm just not sure that Hornby want it pointed out that it can be accessed, given that there is also other (possibly more sensitive data) available as well.

I never said he had inside secret knowledge - I said that he reported using data from the Hornby website so I decided to try to find it and now I'm sharing it with others since there was some discussion of when the blue/grey Mk3s would be available given that the GWR versions are mostly scheduled to be here in Spring. Why would you think I'm getting stressed by it? I'm just sharing what I've found - you seem to be the one getting stressed by what I've posted here.

Yes I understand all that but as I said above, someone on Facebook correctly 'predicted' the date on which the TT:120 GWR and blue/grey HST sets became available on the Hornby webshop this past week so presumably any near dates have some sort of validity. Obviously further dates are subject to any number of internal and external pressures and are less reliable. I also had an exchange on Facebook with someone who said he was a dealer and he said that they receive lists of forthcoming releases covering the next two or three months (I can't remember which) and he said that these are generally reliable so I am guessing that these dates and also the ones in the metadata in the webshop are from some kind of database (presumably the same database as there's no point on duplicating data if you don't have to since duplicating data can lead to errors being made). The date of the Class 66 I looked at is interesting in that 30th November is the last day of meteorological autumn so Hornby would appear to be going as late into Autumn as they can for the availability date for the Class 66s - one day more and the availability would be Winter rather than Autumn - so this date is presumably a guestimate, which is why I caveated the dates by saying that I assumed that they could change either way.

Cross-post from the HST thread - someone on Facebook was saying that the were able to look at the metadata on the Hornby web site to see the expected arrival dates of forthcoming items so I had a dig around the shop pages and I found the following: This is for one of the TT:120 Blue/Grey Mk3 TSOs - availability date 2nd June (I haven't checked any others): And for the Colas Class 66 it is 30th November (again, this is the only one I checked): However I guess they are not set in stone and subject to change in either direction. I also found an item that gives the stock levels for anyone that wants to have a dig around, but Hornby might not want that one publicised(!)

Sorry I don't understand what you're trying to say there - can you rephrase that? They don't show expected availability dates as such, just a season. Presumably the page works out the season from the availability date (I don't know for sure - I don't speak JavaScript or HTML - possibly the season is hardcoded elsewhere) but I assume the date is 'correct' rather than just being a placeholder given that the date was different for the Colas Class 66 I looked at: I guessed it was OK to post it (which is why I did) because it is in the public domain and anyone can find it and in any case the approximate date is shown on the page but Hornby might not want it pointed out. And as I said I assume they can change.

I'm not even sure I'm allowed to post this but having spent a while digging through the JavaScript on one of the shop pages I managed to find the following, which I guess is what the guy on Facebook was posting about - it gives the product availability date of one of the Blue/Grey TSOs as 2nd June, although I haven't checked any others. But I guess it isn't set in stone and it can change. Also, I checked the arrival date of the Colas Class 66 and that was 30th November, although again I didn't check the others.

There's someone who posts on Facebook who says he can access some metadata somewhere to find the delivery dates (I don't know where the metadata is or how he accesses it so I have no way of checking) but he predicted the arrival of the blue/grey HST pack correctly as the 14th March (although to be fair he only posted that on the 12th, but even so it was correct). He has also said that the blue/grey Mk3 coaches will be here on the 2nd June so it will be interesting to see! The only thing I would say is that any metadata would only be as accurate as the source data it is based on and that even if it is accurate I would imagine it is still subject to change. Some other dates he has 'shared' (this post from Monday 11th March): "GWR & BR Blue HST this week, Phase 2 buildings mid April, LMS Princess Coronation + Coaches + BR Mk2f coaches (Blue & Exec Livery) end of May, Class 50 + Class 66 + Hopper wagons end of June & Green Shunter November." But from last Friday: "class 66 is now showing 30 November" We shall see...!

Looking at the webstore, the Class 66s have been put back to Autumn so the KFAs now won't be needed until then at the very earliest, or more likely next year. The 66s keep getting delayed - maybe they've decided to concentrate more on earlier eras rather than have a very small selection of Era 11 locos and wagons. I'm sure we'll find out more in April!