Jenny Emily

Finally filmed a review of my 72xx. Skip to 1'53" if you want to get straight into the review and don't want to watch me inhaling helium and talking funny.

That's probably why the dart looks all right! https://www.youtube.com/user/jennyemily667 is the Youtube channel. I haven't had a lot of time in the last couple of months to do many videos, so a review of the 72xx will be a little while in coming.

Not a 42xx, but I succumbed to a 72xx today. The reason? I had looked forward to one from when they were announced, but was put off by mixed reviews. I considered buying a lot of stuff from Hattons in the Hornby fire sale, but decided that rather than buying stuff simply because it was cheap, I'd support one of the shops Hornby burnt in their fire sale by buying one of these 72xx machines. The one I chose is R3225 in Great Western green, which I believe may be from the first batch? The smokebox dart looks fine to me, despite not being metal, and the unsprung buffers do not detract from the model in any way. I'm glad to see that Hornby have sorted the double pivot front pony truck that plagued the LNER 2-6-4 tank, and it runs faultlessly through all manner of curves and pointwork. Running is really smooth, even down to a crawl, though it has to be said that build quality was variable, and I had to check over a couple of identical models to find one without a banana shaped running plate. That said, if you find a properly assembled version, they really are a fine model.

I believe that there is a rule in the Highway code (not got a copy to hand to look at the specific rule number) that says that in heavy traffic, some lanes may slow, and in which case it is all right to undertake if your lane happens to keep going at a faster speed. Given that lane hogging is now an endorsable offence, I would guess that the coppers would be more inclined to book the lane hogger than the person who felt no need to change out of a perfectly clear lane 1 as they maintained their speed.

I was once told the only thing faster on the road was an Irish trucker late for his ferry.

Idiot today in traffic on the M1 was using the hard shoulder to jump the queue. He started gesticulating with a trucker in front of me for not allowing him to push back into queuing traffic at the junction sliproad, completely oblivious to the copper sat straight behind him. The copper must have followed him on the hard shoulder some distance. Karma was supplied on the hard shoulder as the copper finally got bored and fired up the roof to give the hard shoulder queue jumper something else to worry about.

Quite a few years ago now when I took some work through an agency at a recycling company, one of our jobs was to change the paper banks at supermarket carparks. One of the big narks was muppets who parked their cars and left them in the clearly marked recycling bays. One time I got so annoyed at this that I shuffled all the skips (bottle and can banks having the same fittings as the paper skips, so they could be moved with the same lorry) so that there was a paper skip within an inch of one side of an inconsiderately parked car, and the bottle bank within an inch of the other side. I then left. As the car was a saloon, I neither know nor care how the driver got back into it upon their return from shopping. EDIT: I also know how many undertakers it takes to carry a Ford Fiesta out from a loading bay where it had been illegally parked to between two bollards that were within an inch or so of the total length of the car.

I have an LNER rail chair that I found in spoil bulldozed aside at a factory just after they had built an extension. The land it was on used to be sidings at Godley Junction. I saw a corner peeping out of the dirt and knew instantly what it was and dug it out to take home. Cleaned up and painted it is an ornament in my garden. My Father has a one foot length of flatbottom rail he was gifted from a friend who worked at Horwich loco works that he uses as an anvil.

A decent N2 would be nice and potentially quite commercially viable. LMS brake van (of the type that Hornby have an outdated model of) is also another major ommision from RTR availability - ran until the early 1990s in an increasingly interesting mix of liveries such as Regional Railways IIRC. For something unusual, how about 'Hardwicke'? ICI bogie caustic liquor wagon á-la Hornby Dublo model of the 1960s. Classes 01, 02, & 06 diesel shunters.

There is/was a sign in connection with the current roadworks on the northern side of the M60 for the sandersons sidings bridge which once had the former Tyldesley loop line pass under it.

Certainly did. I'm a sucker for pre-grouping liveries.

Test running the radial now. Runs fine, no derailments or loss of traction. I've got it pulling four Bachmann MkIs with no sign of slipping. It runs quite slowly, even at 100% power, but runs down to a crawl without stalling.

Picked mine up today. It looks really good, and the block under the boiler doesn't actually show up as bad as I thought. Because it's painted black instead of green, it doesn't stand out, which is good.

My Dapol fruit D misbehaves. I tried weighting it with lots of scrap lead, but it showed no improvement. It sits in a siding, but I will try replacing its wheels and see if that helps.

I finally filmed mine running. Judge for yourself, but in the sunshine it certainly fills the part far better than the old Hornby one:

If it wasn't for the fact that it is trying to rain here, I'm getting inspired from reading recent posts in this thread to run a little Hornby Dublo on my garden layout. A City of London with a rake of tinplate super detail coaches will look nice snaking through the daffodils.

Agreed. Please could people listen to the kitty and stop this thread from getting locked, as it was interesting!

Dinky Toys and Hornby Dublo used to suffer terribly from this. In particular, the Hornby Dublo items made prior to the second world war were especially prone. I have had in my possession a southern brake van that had had three of the four wheels crumble to dust. Strangely, the fourth wheel and the chassis were fine, showing that variation can exist simply between different batches. Apparently this came to a head post second world war when Hornby Dublo discovered that items that had been in store through the war had crumbled in their boxes (I believe post 1940 they were unable to sell items, even those made and in the warehouse, because of restrictions in place). The problem was traced to poor quality control in the melting of the alloys and in some cases it was the binding wire from the sacks holding the raw ingots that were tossed into the mix, adding impurities. Once this issue was sorted, I haven't seen much evidence of further occurrences in Hornby Dublo's production run except for one through station that had a bloom appear on the surface, though even this didn't result in failure of the casting. It stands to reason that a failure to adequately ensure a lack of contamination in the alloy mix and the mazak rot will turn back up just as it did in the 1930s. Perhaps workers in the factory in China are doing exactly what Binns road employees had done 80 years before, and tossed the binding wires from the sacks of alloy ingots into the melting pot.

When those roadworks were happening in Birmingham, it was often far quicker to go to the next junction, do a U-turn then join the M5 south from the M6 west. I believe the highway code also says that if you miss your junction, you should proceed to the next one and double back there, not attempt a dangerous and illegal banzai maneuver.

In theory. Just like Communism is really good, in theory. The practice is that w4nk3rs will try and jump the entire queue and push in at the front, making the people who have actually queued legitimately wait and wait and wait and never go anywhere. When it works it works just like a zip and no-one has to stop. Of course, in 20 years of driving I've only ever actually seen it work like that once. Yes, once.

"The rock was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit it"

The Austerities were/are great. My only chance of seeing working steam were the last remaining Austerities, and as a child I used to beg my Grandfather to take me to climb all over the Cefn Coed gate guardian, which I believe is still there looking sorry for itself in the carpark.

I must admit, I joined purely for the pair of cheap terriers. They haven't made any effort to woo any new members now those have sold out, so I cannot see any advantage to join/rejoin now. Unless more models like the terriers show up*, my membership will lapse and not be renewed. *And for this I mean models rather than toys like the warp speed 0-4-0s.