Invicta

Thinking back to growing up on a 1960's estate, that sounds like a pretty representative cross-section- From memory, the car history of my Dad (miner) in the 70's ran through Ford Anglia, Vauxhall HB Viva, HC Viva saloon, HC Viva Estate, FE Victor, BL Princess- apart from the Anglia they were usually bought between 18 months- 3 years old and kept for 2-3 years max. Immediate neighbours (miners, NCB office staff, office/management at a local factory etc.) had mainly a succession of Vauxhalls (Vivas, Mk1 Cavaliers), BL (1100s, Allegros) or Ford (Mk2/3 Cortina, Mk1/2 Escorts, a couple of Mk1 Granadas) or Rootes (Imps, Avengers, Hunters etc.). What I remember of the school car park wasn't much different. Foreign cars seemed fairly rare, until sales of Japanese cars started to grow- I've got a vague memory of a neighbour having a Simca 1100 at one point, and my form tutor when I started secondary school in the late 70's had a couple of Renault 16s, which seemed pretty left-field at the time. There was certainly a fair amount of 60's - and even late 50's stuff- still around.- At the beginning of my time at secondary school ('79/80) I can remember a couple of Triumph Heralds/VItesses, and at Junior school while my teacher had an HC VIva, her neighbour in the next class had an early Mk1 Mini, and one of the younger female teachers in the infants department used to turn up in a very ratty old Ford 100E- this would have been 1977/8-ish. Exotica? Not much, although one of our junior school teachers did have an MG Midget, followed by a Lotus Elan, and the neighbourhood Mk1 Escort contingent included either a 1300 Sport or a Mexico

Doncaster in Feb, followed by Sileby the following weekend. Apart from the GCR Winter Steam Gala, Doncaster usually marks the start of the 'season' for me in terms of going to shows etc., so I certainly didn't anticipate it all being over for the year in those three weekends, apart from managing a few day's break in Wales and a trip on the Welshpool in September...

One of the smaller Midland 4-wheelers to the similar pattern (as per the Slater's kit) ended up on the Isle of Wight as Isle of Wight Central Railway No.5 and survived long enough to wear SR colours at least- both guises are lllustrated in the Essery Midland Wagons books (vol 2 p 91)

...and Bachmann did a Midland brake van a few years back, albeit it's another late one from immediately before the grouping- their MR/LMS van is the late Midland design that carried over into LMS production (D1658/9 IIRC) .

An pre-grouping brake van could be a great idea - it's one of the key items to being able to do any kind of pre-grouping modelling. The trick would be not to fall into the trap Hornby have with their 'generic' Stroudley-ish coaches of producing something that's visually too specific to one railway to work as a 'generic' brake.

Yes, increased drag was my main recollection of them, combined with a certain amount of light bleed glowing through the coach sides. Even as a teenager, I wasn't particularly impressed by them!

Hornby certainly used to offer a coach lighting kit as an add-on back in the 80's- I've got a couple of the LMS 'Stanier' coaches from my teens lurking in the loft which I fitted with them -from memory a couple of strips of metallic tape inside the roof with the bulb(s) stuck to them, and wires leading to a plastic moulding clipped to the underside of the bogie, with brass plungers to pick up power from the rails. I don;t remember them ever being offered factory-fitted though

From very vague memory, on the Hornby one I bought about 15 years ago, I think they'd progressed from glueing the crate on, to a plastic moulding that the crate slipped over, which in turn was stuck to the wagon bed with a double-sided sticky pad or tape- Certainly I did manage to separate wagon and crate without leaving permanent damage to the finish of the wagon. As you say, the crate never really looked right on a Lowmac, and I've usually had a vehicle of some description on mine

A bit of further digging reveals a 1939-dated photo in the Essery LMS Wagons vol.1 of a D1927 in exactly this livery combination of small post-'36 lettering style on a pre-'36 grey wagon, with a number not far away from Hornby's release - The caption suggests a number of these wagons were thus painted in 1937, so it's another case of a correct, albeit unusual, livery applied to the wrong wagon. As you say, a bit lazy, given that looking in the correct book could have given them a more accurate combination.

...and presumably some money to be made from collectors of Beatles and Coca-Cola memorabilia, which is no bad thing!

Indeed, it's always frustrating when they pull off these near-misses- one numbered as an ex-Midland 3-plank, which is rather closer to Hornby's tooling (I've supplemented my Slater's kitbuilds by repainting a couple of the Hornby 3-planks over the years) in a more typical livery would have been much more useful. I quite like the occasional 'oddball' livery on a wagon, but it's the kind of thing I do as a repaint or on a kit. If I'm buying RTR, then the more typical and standard the better, although a scruffy patch-painted grey one with the later lettering would be very tempting!

Apart from the spurious black ironwork, I've certainly seen photos which suggest the 1936-style lettering on a grey wagon- there's an example in the Essery Midland Wagons book of a D305 3-plank which the caption says is grey with the later-style lettering- and very obvious squares on a weathered wagon side where the original 'LMS' has presumably been patch-painted out, and faint traces of the original lettering showing through. The '12-Ton' branding and wagon number seem to suggest that what Hornby have actually looked at is an LMS D1927 3-plank, as per the Ratio kit or Mainline/Dapol/Bachman RTR, which is a slightly larger beast than Hornby's little 8-tonner!

Indeed, it probably makes perfect sense for them long term, but you can't help thinking it looks a bit like a shot across Hatton's bow, and I do wonder if that's how it will be perceived in Liverpool? Hopefully there is space in the market for both and neither are going to end up catching a cold on this- I can't help thinking though that maybe Hornby might have been better served by releasing some authentic Stroudley LBSC coaches for the Terrier, even if they then did go on to offer them in a range of non-prototypical pre-grouping liveries. As the only 'London Midland' livery option they've put out in the first tranche is LNWR, I suspect my money will still be going to Hattons in the first instance. Let's hope the presence of two competing (or complementary) ranges of generic pre-grouping coaches doesn't push the prospect of some accurate RTR ones further down the road.

A state-of-the-art 2P would be very welcome, although I wonder about the 4F given the existence of a good alternative from Bachmann. The Fowler/Stanier 2-6-2Ts are one of the few remaining gaps in the LMS 'standards' offered by the manufacturers, so sooner or later, someone's bound to bite surely! A push-pull set is maybe one of the biggest gaps- although I wonder if there's more chance of that appearing in a blue box than a red one, as a logical follow-up to Bachmann's Midland 0-4-4T release (though I think I've said that after pretty much every London Midland tank engine release since the Ivatt 2-6-2T!) Fish vans would definitely be nice to have- and totally out of left-field, a retooled modern-standard version of the Palethorpes sausage van (and associated LMS Insulated Milk van) strikes me as the kind of thing Hornby might spring on us rather than a more obvious and predictable bit of LMS rolling stock

When did Ballard's finish? Oddly enough it's one of the model shops I never visited during the 20-odd years I lived in Kent, but I recall them doing a series of Dapol commissions of local PO wagons in the early 2000's, and I definitely mail-ordered at least a couple of these from them.

Working for a County Council, most of our payments are made by BACS, but as a signatory on an office petty cash account, I still hold a cheque book for that, and both have to cash cheques at a local bank and write cheques to make payments fairly regularly- maybe once or twice a month. The vast majority of our purchasing though is either done through our central ordering and payments system and paid by BACS, or done locally on corporate purchasing cards. Away from work, it must be nearly 10 years since I even had a chequebook, much less wrote a cheque- although I have received a few in the last couple of years to pay in.

Yes, same here- ordered the red, and it's still showing as "pending", and no payment taken yet. I only pre-ordered in mid-November, (just after the "Precedents" were announced, I pre-ordered both at the same time), so I'm probably quite a long way down the list they've got to work through. Must admit I've been pondering whether I needed to chase up in case something had gone amiss, but based on posts above I'm not panicking too much just yet... The Collectors' Club S&DJR one arrived on Friday though, and very nice it is too!

Yes, had the same email this morning, and just paid for it- Still waiting on news of the MR one I'd ordered from Rails, but as said a few posts back, seems they're inundated with pre-orders, so not panicking just yet!

According to lnerinfo.com, the LNER's S160s were distributed between six sheds, across the Great Central, Great Eastern, North-Eastern and Scotland: 25 at Woodford 50 at March 21 at Stratford 25 at Heaton 25 at Neville Hill- these apparently wandered about a fair bit, as far afield as Hitchin and Edinburgh 22 at St. Margarets A quick search found a couple of nice pics of S160s on Warwickshire Railways.com - one on Nuneaton shed, complete with LMS (6D- Mold Junction) shedplate, and one on a coal train at Hatton on the GWR Banbury-Wolverhampton route OK. so their appearance on UK railways was fairly short-lived, no more than a year in 1943-4, but with 400 spread around the network, it wouldn't be that difficult to justify one if you're modelling that period- You can certainly put me down for one!

It's probably not even all that left-field, there seems to be a bit of momentum behind offering models of pre-grouping locos at the moment, and it's got a long history in the Hornby catalogue- and makes quite a nice follow-on from them retooling 'Rocket' last year- when they re-released the two singles and 'Rocket' back in the early 80's, IIRC they came out pretty much in consecutive years OK it's a one-off, but there are three livery options, it was in service until 1935 and it got about a fair bit during its' early 60's return to steam, so potentially attractive to the BR era modeller. I wouldn't be all that surprised to see Hornby do a retooled version of either the Caley or the GWR Dean Single in the next couple of years. I'd be amazed if we don't see another industrial this year, they seem to be very much flavour of the month at the moment- at the very least we'll get some new liveries on the Pecketts and Ruston.

As nice a model as it is, being plain black it lacked the 'shiny thing' appeal for collectors that something like the SECR-liveried version of the C had, and in isolation, with a lack of suitable RTR Midland stock to run behind it, as Phil suggests, it wasn't a particularly useful model in layout terms, so it's no surprise it stayed bolted to the shelves- (I suspect the LNWR version of the ROD 2-8-0 might fall into the same category?) Certainly I only bought mine because I had a reasonable number of kit-built pre-grouping wagons to run with it, and because the trader I bought it from at a show was selling them at a healthy discount. Even then it was bought with half-a-mind to tweak it into the early LMS goods livery to match the AIrfix 4F I repainted about 20 years ago, until I picked up a secondhand MR-liveried OO Works 2F last year to give it a shed-mate, so it'll stay Midland now. The 1P maybe moves that on a bit towards an easy way into pre-grouping modelling- If you've got the Bachmann MR-liveried 4F and brake van and a few suitable PO wagons, add the 1P, some Hattons Genesis coaches when they appear next year (or the Ratio MR coach kits), and a few Slaters Midland wagon kits, and you've got a basic starting point for a small Midland layout without too much in the way of kit-building.

I'm quite surprised they've not done that one as well, with the 3F, 4F and ROD as prime candidates- I did buy one of their LNWR-liveried RODs earlier this year with just that thought in mind, although it might just stay as is, and some of my stash of suitable wagon kits might get built in pre-grouping rather than LMS colours instead when I get round to them. To be honest, I wonder if there might be a degree of method in Bachmann's madness of releasing LMS locos in WW2/postwar unlined black- That late LMS wartime-to-nationalisation period is a market niche that Bachmann occupy quite strongly with the Ivatt Moguls, Ivatt and Fairburn tanks in their catalogue. Having all of those in my collection, as much as I'd like a Crimson Lake Compound, I had no doubts about buying a black one to keep the Ivatts and Fairburn company, and I've only been put off the black 0-4-4T so far because I allowed myself to get distracted by both the Midland and Collector's Club S&DJR versions and really couldn't justify all three at once. It's fair to say my officially pre-war LMS modelling can be a bit flexible both in geographic location and period....

Yes, it seems to have been done locally- Essery & Jenkinson's Illustrated History of LMS Locomotives (vol. 1, p. 212-3) refers to this as a 'Highbridge style', although they suggest the repainting of insignia was for the most part done at the sheds. The hand painted numerals are described as being "of a style rather like the new standard pattern but not quite the same. It was executed in yellow and varied in height according to the class of engine" and accompanied by hand painted smokebox door numbers in the absence of new plates. The accompanying photo shows No. 54/1305 and 1202.

There's a photo in the Lawson Finch East Kent Railway book that according to the caption shows No. 4 at Ashford in 1949, with cutting up in progress- the valve gear and upper part of the cab have been removed, and it's definitely still wearing EKR livery As I've just started work on a small test track/shunting plank, one of these will definitely be joining my industrial fleet- and even with the cab height discrepancy mentioned earlier in the thread, EKR No. 4 might be too tempting to resist

First train set was the Triang-Hornby RS601 'Steam Freight Set' from the 1970 catalogue- Jinty, London Brick bogie wagon, Bogie Bolster with 3 Thames vans, 'Johnnie Walker' bulk grain wagon and brake van. http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=560 My birthday falls shortly after Christmas, and I don't remember whether it was that Christmas, birthday or even the following Christmas, a passenger train got added- 'Princess Elizabeth', BR Mk1 BSK and a Pullman, and somewhere along the line we acquired a Freightliner terminal and thre circle of track, plus a siding got nailed down onto a board. That didn't reign long, and the stock got packed away in the loft, to be resurrected in the late 70's when we built my first 'proper' layout, on a 6x4 of chipboard I've still got a fair bit of it- the Jinty, London Brick wagon (both of which suffered multiple repaints when I first entertained thoughts of becoming a 'serious' modeller in my teens!), bogie bolster, Princess and coaches are still stashed in a drawer in the loft, although neither loco has run in at least 30 years. One thing noticeable is that bit of joined-up London Midland thinking by Mum and Dad when they bought my first extra loco, which seems to have stuck with me ever since- although subsequent stock purchases in my early teens remained a bit random (Hornby B12, Black 5, Class 25, then when Mainline and Airfix came into the market, J72, Warship, Royal Scot and 4F), I've always been mainly an LMS/LMR modeller.