stonojnr

maybe it wouldnt look so bad if it didnt look like it had been painted by a 4 year old, or were they going for that real retro 80s look. seems a bizarre thing to have expended any effort on just to create for a couple of photos and a few lines in their blog.

maybe Im missing something incredibly obvious here, but if the moulds already exist, and the demand is clearly there given how the last batch sold out, all Drax have to do is give the nod to Hornby, and they will go make some more and receive some money eventually for actually doing very little on their part. it doesnt matter if they dont need toy trains to generate money, and at some stage they obviously understood toy trains to allow their wagons to be made and to own the permissive rights to them, but its essentially free cash to them at this stage, and if the marketeers at Drax cant join those dots together, why on earth arent the marketeers at Hornby bashing down their door and explaining it to them in terms they do understand. its not like theyre saying Drax need to invest more of their cash to create a brand new wagon in the hopes of getting some tiny piece of payback, and small amount of pr goodwill, all they have to do is press the go button on the machine and crank some more out.

maybe its just degrees of noise, I grew up listening to double header 37s that used to shake ornaments off shelves past our house, the flirts even on diesel seem whisper quiet to me in comparison.

but why would they already have a running sample for a release they havent announced yet ? when theyve only just a few months back said theyve recently got the tool mouldings for something they announced best part of 18months ago and have been working on for 2 years, the timeline doesnt make sense, either theyve been working on both all along, in which case why not announce it at the same time ? and then look what we missed on the screen when they released this back in December :( which also covers a 4 engine/2 engine design.

well it certainly looks well detailed, and might GA have had slightly more involvement with this than most TOCS would ? seems interesting theyre pushing this video, and not Hornby,just seems more than mere engineering assistance/livery sign off. though Im left still thinking how is this suddenly different from how the APT/Class91s were treated by Hornbys famous care and attention ? especially when SK describes the train as radical 🤨, you mean its not a kettle on wheels style radical uses this new fangled electrickery and diesel to move around. Im intruiged by the sound, as thats literally the nosiest Ive heard them in diesel mode, they really are quiet in operation either trackside or station, the nosiest bit being that honking goose horn, so it will be interesting how that translates to their decoder., you spend extra buying this sound and its literally the quietest volume sound you get :) one thing I did pick up on him saying is theyre 100mph, thats the max speed of the class, I dont think on the Anglia routes they operate on theyre cleared for that speed even when on the main line, as theyre definitely timetabled to take longer than the 745s to traverse the same bits of track currently.

well didnt Stratford start doing it after the Union flag 47 with silver roof they painted up for the Silver Jubilee ? (Bachmann missed an obvious tie in there) so '77 might be slightly too early for the rest of them to have started gaining their silver roofs/ves too. but it looks as I remember them, of course in daily use the silver roof tended to gain an increasing sheen of oil/diesel/weathering over time, which dulled the look and might have made it look more BR grey. I wonder if it means Bachmann arent doing a Stratford roof version then though in their line up ? I was kind of hoping for a decent 47596 Aldeburgh Festival, but might have to get this instead.

yeah but like a lot of Hornby announcements, its not actually due to air till later next year ;)

not yet, and since these are now showing winter 23/24 on the Hornby store...

well I cant wait to watch how the newly announced series 2 of Hornby A Model world covers it, but like most Hornby announcements weve got to wait a year to see it 😉

well, maybe Im being a touch cynical with Hornby of late, but Id have been surprised if theyd replied back saying theyd either not tested it properly, or that theyd found these issues but decided to release it anyway. its kind of a given I think theyll say theres no problem with it at all and everything if fine, unless you can demonstrably prove the issue and send it back to them to get it fixed kind of thing.

I should have taken a bet on there being more freightlining 90s in the offing...but its upto a point if all Bachman and Hornby are doing is churning out 90s in ever more unique one off short lived freight liveries, whilst completely ignoring nearly 16 years of passenger service on the GEML, which is equal to the time they spent on the WCML in all the Intercity variants and Virgin combined. what is that about ?

youd expect it to be overseen by an overall lead designer though, who signs off what different department designers are producing, wouldnt you ? I mean someone takes responsibility for the overall thing theyve produced right ? unless its just Simon K pressing the yeah looks about right lets order button. I mean another example of attention to detail missing on their D&E models, the new Class 91 Intercity livery has somehow ended up with front left and right cab window frames on the front in white, they should be black, even though it was on the renders correctly in black, so maybe its a factory mistake, back to QC. but I picked up from a review on the For the Fallen version,which has its own livery issues on the cab front not aligning with the side panels and light cluster mistakes, but thats modelled with a specific roof setup for all the AC electric equipment which is correct for the later as is running today setup on the real thing, but it looks identical to the equipment setup theyve put on the Intercity livery version, which then cant be correct, if its known it has changed over time ?

assuming it does appear of course, Hornby cancelled the last GA 90 they had in the catalogue,and it was just a respray in effect.

yes mines somewhere between Cornwall and East Anglia at the moment and its why I went for the IC livery, as even though you could make a claim the GNER was the more longer lived and and classic operating style, I remember them being brand new in that IC livery, being launched as the "train of the future" on the BBC, and saw alot of the test runs on the ECML, just never got to ride behind them as often as the HSTs, and now yes it is a bit sad theyre being scrapped. I hope Hornby do several batch runs of these going forward, as if the Mk4s are already becoming a bit scarce in the GNER spec, its going to make it a pain to get a decent rake of things later on if they dont.

Id argue theres a Youtube video for all that knowledge now, as there were magazine articles back in the day too, Ive always been happier treating model shops as nice places to browse and look at, but I know what I want when Im going in there and not interested in it being other than a box shifting transaction. this purple engine would be the epitome of that browsing aspect just to look at it, but I wouldnt be interested in buying it at all