Invicta

I totally see where you're coming from on the 'Era 1' early stuff- on the other hand, I can think of quite a few 'Late Era 1/Early Era 2' loco classes from the end of 1870's/1880's which were very long-lived, even into the BR transition era- we're starting to see an increasing amount of pre-grouping steam available from manufacturers, even if in grouping/BR condition, so there ought to be a few open goals worth taking a shot at, and would give those multiple bangs from the tooling- Something like a Midland 2F comes to mind, for example...

The L&Y Pug comes to mind as well- there was an article on them in one of the mags some years back which included a pic of a Pug on a well wagon, and IIRC the caption suggested this wasn't an uncommon method of returning them to works for overhaul.

I picked up a kit 753 traffic and loco coal pair from a trader at the GCR model railway event last month (coincidentally for just £8 as well- must be the going rate for elderly Ratio!), in the usual yellow box, and that definitely has Pressfix rather than waterslide transfers- although from memory, my earliest childhood/teenage ventures into wagon kit building at the end of the 70's/beginning of the 80's were Ratio and all came with a waterslide sheet- (NBR cask wagon and GW Iron mink both long gone, although I do still have the Caledonian bogie 'Iron ore' wagon). As you say, curiouser and curiouser... What did surprise me about my '753' was that it included not just a couple of moulded coal loads, but a bag of some kind of simulated coal (haven't opened that to investigate). Was the bag of 'coal' an original part of the package?

Definitely- Having attended several GC gala events in the last couple of years, I'm always impressed by the freight demonstrations, and the quantity, variety and condition of the wagons used. I've just been reading Chris Leigh's column in the latest Model Rail, talking about his recent visit to Didcot, and his closing paragraph:, in relation to the condition of their historic wagon collection: "One can understand the need to concentrate resources on the locomotives which are the centre's 'bread and butter' particularly as the vital resource of skilled manpower is dwindling. The same situation exists across preservation centres in throughout the UK and one wonders how in future the conservation and restoration of the all-important but less 'exciting' rolling stock will be managed. Or will there even be a need for these objects of inspiration once the generation to which they are relevant is gone?" I reckon the Quorn Wagon team are giving a pretty good illustration of exactly how it should be done!

Morrison's have the "Model Rail/Britain's Model Trains 2019" package deal as well

I've got a vague memory that an article on modelling this appeared in Model Rail sometime in the last few years? A couple more pics here- http://www.davidheyscollection.com/page20.htm

Is that the pair of Butterley 12-tonners acquired by Gann & Brown of Whitstable? They're mentioned (with a drawing) in John Arkell's book on PO wagons of the South-East. According to the caption of the drawing, they were built by Butterley in 1935, and registered by the Southern Railway in September 1943, which suggests that G&B acquired them second-hand. Given the date, and the pressures of wartime, was it simply a case of a wagon owner being supplied with whatever was available at the time? - not that they'd presumably have seen much of them anyway with pooling in force

I hope that works out for 2020, because I thoroughly enjoyed my visit yesterday afternoon- I'd already had lunch so didn't sample the catering, but a good selection of layouts, and picked up a couple of things I'd been looking for from traders. All in all a very good addition to the local exhibition circuit, if you're back next year, I definitely will be!

Yes, I'd agree that an unusually tall box (another example, Coalville), is a very different thing to an elevated one built on a gantry or frame- and presumably for different reasons-

The last couple of shows I've been to, TTC Diecast (Derby IIRC?) have had pretty much the full selection of Hattons Ps and Barclays and a fair choice of Warwells available on their stand- Presumably this kind of resource-sharing makes sense for both the commissioner/retailers who get to increase the visibility of their own product in the market place, and the individual retailer who get a wider range of product to sell.

Having been to the Nottingham show at Harvey Haddon for the first time a couple of years ago I was in two minds whether to go or not this year, but glad I did- an enjoyable couple of hours and a nice selection of layouts for a small show. I was a bit luckier with Mount Woodville, viewed it 4 times I think and caught the little Ruston(?) shuffling a wagon about on 3 of the 4 times. First time I'd seen Trent Lane Junction, and looking forward to seeing it again when it's completed

Maybe the NRM will claim one, if only as a warning to future generations....

Signal Box in Anstey have a garden railway-scale (G?) loco on a shuttle across one of their windows- although it's helpfully AWOL in the pic on Google maps... From vague teenage memory, at one point they had a small layout in the side window of their original shop in Coalville

Private Owner Wagons of the South-East by John Arkell, published a couple of years ago by Lightmoor . The book reproduces the same photo that you posted, and the entry for Tilmanstone in the chapter on SER & LCDR lines in East Kent says 'a photograph exists of 3 wagons at the pit head yard. It is probable that the wagons were for internal use only (or over the East Kent) as the SE&CR and the Southern did not offer carriage rates in PO wagons'. The photo appears in a chapter on the Kent Coalfield. which talks about part of the cost charged by the Southern (2 shillings per ton in 1926) for transporting coal from Tilmanstone to Dover being payable to the EKR and the Dover Harbour commissioners who owned the tracks to the Eastern Docks, which meant the Southern couldn't reduce the rate without making a loss on the deal- this situation led to the construction of the aerial ropeway. I guess it's one of the frustrations for the pre-48 modeller, the availability of so many beautifully printed PO wagon liveries- applied to completely the wrong type of open wagon. I know Oxford have had a bit of flak for this in other threads, but none of the other RTR manufacturers are any better at times.

Are the wagons going to be a bit on the fictional side? According to John Arkell's PO Wagons of the South East, the only known photo of Kent colliery PO wagons (reproduced in the book) shows a handful of Tilmanstone wagons in the colliery yard sometime between 1915-23- however they're 8-plank, not 5... Still it's not the first time Oxford (or anyone else) have put a PO livery on an inappropriate wagon. It's also suggested the Tilmanstone POs were internal-user only, although they may have been seen on the EKR, carrying coal destined for export via Dover which I guess is fair enough for the EKR train pack. Returning to the main topic of discussion, although it's not something I need personally, the J27 is a welcome addition to the scene- Oxford definitely seem to be focussing on smaller locos of pre-grouping origin so far.

There's a comment in the latest Hornby Engine Shed blog which states: Three new types of tender have also been tooled, the ‘old standard’ 4000 gallon nine ton tender, the self-trimming ‘standard’ 4000 gallon nine ton tender and the ‘standard’ 4000 gallon ten ton tender I really ought to know this, but does the reference to the 'old standard' 4000 gallon/9-ton tender suggest the 'Fowler-style' early tender appearing for a subsequent release, or are they talking about a variation on the high-sided Stanier tender theme?

Third car on the top deck looks like another 323- IIRC they did come in both hatchback and 4-door saloon flavours. Next in line seems to be another 323, then one more at the back after a Polski-Fiat. Second car on the lower deck looks more like a Polonez?

Actually, assuming the absence of any licencing issues for the logos etc. a 'proper' Burtons would make a nice addition for a low-relief High Street- from the early 30's they had an in-house Arcihtects Department, so their purpose-built shops had a very distinctive house style of architecture https://buildingourpast.com/2017/01/28/burtons-modern-temples-of-commerce/

Thinking back to the stuff I was buying as a kid/teenager, although Airfix and Mainline made a quantum leap forward in terms of appearance and detail, if not mechanisms, we're really on a different planet these days, not just in terms of detail but also the sheer variety of what's available- Could you imagine Hornby bringing out a Ruston or Peckett in the late 70's? Having said that, when I returned to modelling in the early 2000s, the first thing I unpacked from 15 years of storage and that ran pretty much straight from the box without any fettling was my Wrenn City of London bought second-hand in about 1983... My old Mk2 (1979 1.3L, bought when I finished uni in 1988 and sold on early in 1991) is still around- although last time I looked it was currently on SORN- and 30 years later I still miss it a bit and crave an RS2000 if I had the money and spare garage space...

...and as a couple of people have commented, they've done Southern (Adams Radial), Western (Dean Goods) and Eastern (N7), so we ought to be due something of a LMR persuasion...I like the thought of a 2-4-0- Maybe 'Hardwicke' or the Midland '156' at Butterley? ….and in WD livery would go nicely with that big railgun they're releasing

Although at first sight there's not much new, that's probably no bad thing bearing in mind their recent production troubles - and with the amount of delayed releases they have in the pipeline, its not as if there'll be any shortage of new product in the shops once it starts to filter through. I agree with you about the lack of a red Compound though- especially when one of the new re-liveries announced is the L&Y tank in Crimson Lake, which is arguably the least useful livery on that loco, only really relevant if you model the very early LMS period. Yes, it's lovely to look at, but I've got one and I'm not sure how much I really need another one compared to a red Compound As you say the wartime scene is probably a bit of a minority interest compared to the LMS modellers who'd want one in the full Crimson Lake livery- I did succumb to an austerity black one a while back though, as it does at least sit nicely with all the late 1946-8 LMS stuff that Bachmann have released over the years- Ivatts, Fairburns, etc.

So basically, what we need for a canonically-correct Hogwarts Express is an LNWR 0-6-0..... I'm game, how about it Hornby? A DX or Cauliflower might be nice... Returning to 2019 Hornby, it's certainly a more ambitious programme than I'd expected given their recent financial issues- looks like they've chosen to come out fighting rather than battening down the hatches and cutting back on new releases. Overall, there's only the Princess (which as many of us had suggested in the Hornby predictions thread was always a bit of a no-brainer to complete an overhaul of their Stanier Pacifics, especially given it's place in Hornby's history) and the LMS brake van which are 'must-haves' for me- although there's also a Ruston and a Peckett that I really didn't know I needed, but now will definitely be buying at least one of each....

To be honest, looking back at how quickly the original releases of the 0-4-0 Peckett sold out, I'd be surprised if any of these three stick on shelves...

Are exhibitors at shows an accurate cross-section of the market though? I could equally say that of the young modellers I knew personally as junior members of my former club, who would all be in their early/mid-20s now, last time I heard of them, all of them were predominantly modelling steam- I think there's a lot in Dunsignalling's point about younger people having as much experience of railways from heritage lines as the national network. One of that small group of young modellers I mentioned (who IIRC works for NR now) has been an active heritage line volunteer since his teens- needless to say, last I heard, he was modelling GWR steam. The space thing must be an issue- with the current insanity of the property market (I'm speaking as someone in the East Midlands who spent a couple of decades living in the South-East) pricing the young out of home ownership, then if you're looking to build your first layout in a small rented flat or shared house, the need to build something small and portable is likely to be in your mind. I wasn't actively modelling in my early/mid-20s, but if I was, in the shared rented houses I was living in at that age, then a steam-era shunting plank with something like the Hattons Barclay, Hornby Peckett etc and a few wagons would be on my agenda. I think there may be a lot in the theory about exposure to railways from the heritage lines as much as the national network. I'm in my early 50's, and thanks to Dr Beeching grew up in the 70's/80's in an area in which journeys on the 'big railway' were a rare treat, and probably did almost as much holiday-time mileage on heritage lines as I did the national network- the concept of commuting by train only really entered my world when I went away to uni and then moved to the South-East. Needless to say, I've been a mainly steam-era modeller from the start. Hornby 2019 predictions- the Princess is almost a certainty, if not for 2019, then probably 2020, and if the J36 sells, then I'd expect something else Scottish, and another industrial to follow on from the Peckett

'smaller Welsh locomotives', so something like a quarry Hunslet would be nearer the mark as a possible Lowmac load? As for locos on well wagons, the Kitmaster/Airfix/Dapol L&Y 'Pug' kit sits nicely on a well wagon with the addition of a bit of packing timber- I did one a few years back after seeing a prototype photo in a magazine showing a L&Y Pug being returned to Horwich for overhaul in exactly that manner