57xx

That's that one ZG. On closer examination I would agree, comparing it with the height of the opens in the line-up. It was the van to it's right that misled me, as the apex roof is sitting higher than the normal curved roof of the other van. What I didn't take into account is how squat that other van is!

They might have been rare but them seem to get around a bit in pics. I was browsing a book I borrowed off my dad (he still lives in Hythe) caled Southampton's Railways. I was studying a pic of the Town Quay taken in the late 30's primarily to spot the makeup of wagons from the various companies. There amongst all the 'normal' vans and opens was lurking one of your pent roof diagram. If it wasn't for your model I would probably have completely overlooked it.

Extremely!!!!!

You seemed to have missed the sarcasm in my post there 81C. *I* model pre-WWII and am fed up with top feeds being obligatory for the last 35+ years on GW liveried locos. Given how the manufacturers are now able to model variations on a theme e.g. Hornby with the 2800, 8 coupled tanks and Stars being available with variations of straight/curved footplates, with/without steam pipes etc, then producing models with no top-feed option to match the livery and timezone they are supposed to portray shouldn't be beyond them. And yes, to those who might want to say it, I have "done some modelling" and removed top feeds off an Airfix 14xx I bought for £15 30+ years ago and one of those surplus 57xx bodies that were on eBay a while ago. It was enough of a pain not to want to do it to a brand new £70+ loco.

We better tell Bachmann not to bother producing any in Great Western or shirt button livery too then, as no one models pre-war and they won't sell any...

Whilst the driver was able to apply the brakes from the trailer, he had to reply on the fireman to blow them off.

There is a dvd showing a day in the life of the Dart Valley Railway which shows exactly that. It takes a lot of tweaking (well, tugging back and forth) to get the regulator in the autocoach at the right setting. The driver need the window open to hear the loco to know it was right.

I agree with 81c and miss prism, the Hornby macaw H is the wrong starting point. The H was a 35ft over headstock 20 ton wagon, whereas the B was 45ft over headstocks and rated 30 tons. It was the J14 Macaws B that were converted for tank use (diag J17 after conversion) and the basis for building new diagram J18 specifically for that purpose (ref Atkins et al). I believe the advice in the other thread is incorrect. edit; corrected diagram numbers.

Quite a few? The Hornby model is just the 35 year old Airfix product, and it shows. There are plenty of areas for improvement over a model with 1970's course moulded details and inaccuracies. It wouldn't be the first time a model has been re-tooled to improve quality or that one was duplicated across the range. Maybe the question should be, how many would Hornby sell if DJM introduced one...?

I'd agree that £20 doesn't sound that bad for what is being proposed. Regarding the size of the market, don't forget that this is not just limited to GWR modellers (unless you were including BR modellers in your statement). Also Steam's Lode Star is a "limited edition" - of 1000 models. Steam must have thought the market is there. I would have thought most people would be buying more than one kit, not just because a few Toads would be required for a layout, but also so they could produce the potential variations. How many Lode Stars are you likely to buy?

Whilst not something that would fit in with my modelling, I think this is a brilliant initiative and wish it every success. Hopefully it will lead to more commissions in the future.

I wonder if Simon Kohler tried to persuade Steam that they were wrong and the quality of the certificates was correct......

Phone them up and speak to Geoff like I did last Thursday, he will tell you all they know.

Rob #1, I was referring to the video when I made my initial comment although your pic does show this up as well. I think the colour just looks too pale on the actual model. Having said that, my one and only Hornby loco is similarly (although not looking as bad) lighter than all my other locos. Wire handrails all round and the correct pattern buffers for the loco alluded to being represented by this "special edition" would have been nice too. I was hoping for more than a few dabs of silver paint and a different name on the side for my extra £40. I certainly didn't expect to have to take a knife to it and splash out on replacement items just to get the basics right! Whilst it does look "nice", it is not what was expected. The trouble is with people going ahead with buying it, is that Hornby will then think they are justified in saying they got it right and future models will suffer the same reduction in fidelity as we have witnessed here and on other recent models. I've learnt my lesson on this one and will be leaving Hornby to their toy trains in future.

is it just my screen or do the buffer beams look an odd shade of red, almost pink?

Have to say I do find "unboxing" videos a snoozefest, though at least this one is slightly useful. If you pause the video at 5:17, it looks like both cab rails (horizontal and vertical) are moulded on. Perhaps a pleasant surprise is not in the offing after all.

It's a perfectly valid assumption for a "special edition", I too assumed it, having seen the detail on the Hornby made NRM 2818 which I purchased for 2/3 the price of Lode Star. I am reserving judgement as I don't think there has been any pics an an actual production version of Lode Star anywhere so we could be pleasantly surprised. However it if turns out to be a tarted up regular production run, I could spend £108 for 4018 at Hattons, give a £10 donation to Steam, pay to replace the "correct" bogie wheels myself and still have £20 in my pocket.

Someone send that man a copy of O.S. Nock's 'GWR Stars, Castles & Kings' so he can do a bit of simple research. I thought they'd managed to crawl out of the toy train market, but with the "don't care" attitude seeming to be shown above, they are losing their way. A VERY small delivery. Mine was order #11, so at most they could only have received 10! Just keeping my fingers crossed it's up to the standards of the NRM 2818.

That's about normal, doesn't look much different from how I remember it ~30 years ago. It was always a rickety old ride, used to love it as a kid. Mind you I don't remember gaps in the planks that big!

Ahah! All is clear now. I was associating the comment about the quick trim with the picture below it of the Manor with no spindle.

One quick Gallery creation later....

You've made an excellent job of that Mikkel! You've captured the character of that wagon really well. Well, technically, Mikkel is actually a "nut counter", as these are actually the nuts on the ends of the bolts that are used in the wagon construction . In the prototype photo you can actually see they are square, not round. I took the opportunity to run one of Mikkel's colour pics through my "ye olde" Photoshop filter with added grain for Rob but unfortunately I've just found another blog short-coming; I can't directly attach a pic to this post without uploading it somewhere else first.

Excellent bit of fault finding, Ray. I'm curious why you didn't just shorten the over-length spindle though?

No. I paid extra for a "special edition" model, not a run of the mill "design not-really-clever-at-all" 1970's fidelity model with a different name/number.