Jenny Emily

There are some incredible pictures appearing in this thread! I've been through over a hundred pictures of my own looking for pictures that try and come close to the bar being set by others:

Swansong of steam, as 49395 sits between duties in the warehouse sidings.

Taken on Grove Street yard. Unadulterated except changing to B&W.

Argh! Now stop it! We've both had a go at "ironic" spelling mistakes, and now I don't know whether the people who corrected us were being ironic or not.

 

For my part, can I just say that, while I won't have a go at anyone's spelling (or typing) on here, anyone selling on Ebay ought to at least make an effort at spelling the descriptions on their items correctly. While it's highly amusing to spot the odd "Horny" engine, it wears a bit thin when yet another seller seems to think that "guage" is a real word, or that there/their/they're are basically the same... how poor must folk be that they can't afford a spellchecker?

The ones that get me are those that capitalise every single word. In my view that's harder to read than the shouty people who type with the caps lock on. Then there are those who treat punctuation like a game of pin the tale on the Donkey. Finally, my biggest pet hate are the ransom note writers who capitalise random letters. Why? I don't know.

Then there are the keyword spammers ("...suitable for Hornby, Trix, Bachmann, Lima, Heljan, any other train manufacturer I throw at this listing...") and those who don't seem to understand that if they mass produced thousands of an item, it isn't rare no matter how much you want it to be. Finally, those who seem incapable of describing the condition of their item as anything other than 'very good' or 'nice condition' when it is clear that it has been eaten by a dog, played with by a wannabe Ninja and beaten to within an inch of its life.

Now 25? Now that's what I call a chancer, more like. I buy these albums on LP in mint condition from record shops around the country for usually the princely sum of between £1 and £3. For information, Now 25 is not rare on vinyl at all - but we already knew that, didn't we?

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item563d044a20

I do like the wearthering on the tar tank, especially the cracked and peeling paint under the tar. I presume you use something like paint thinners on the nearly dry top coat to encourage it to craze like that?

Surely the Kadee performs that function these days?

 

Keith

Probably does, but having used the Peco couplings for years I'm familiar with them, and making the discreet equipment to get them to uncouple on demand.

I await a NEM version of the Peco coupling with interest - I have a large wagon fleet, but I would be tempted to at least replace the ones used a lot for shunting.

The original Hornby Dublo coupling was a ghastly afair. If anyone has ever played with prewar HD they will know what I mean. Certainly the Peco coupling was light years ahead of them, and certainly better than the competition that seems to have lumbered itself on the UK market. The Peco coupling always reminded me of a very crude buckeye coupler.

As others have said, a converter wagon is probably a better option, as the HD couplings are held in by a rivet, and it can be a damaging process to get them out. Wrenn wagons tended to have facilities to attach both types of coupling.

The Hornby Dublo (actually, I believe, designed and patents held by Peco) coupling is much better, though it is impractical to fit to newer wagons like Bachmann. Certainly the coupling and uncoupling process was a lot easier to deal with - no trying to pick a wagon out of a train and ending up with a string of wagons dangling like sausages!

I don't know whether to be really happy, or cry; it's going to be expensive for me when these come out. I held off on the class 14s, and am glad I did as I quite fancy the Loadhaul liveried one that's forthcoming. The weathered BR blue class 28 looks interesting, but that's a lot of squids to now have to save up.

Does anybody think that some interesting liveries may appear in the second batch that Hattons will inevitably produce? What livery might the class 28 suit from the later BR period? I think RTC red/blue probably would have and maybe Dutch.

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item5d291e0249

 

Sincere Dublo enthusiasts and other suckers kindly form an orderly queue. Oi! No shoving, there!

When I was selling off a lot of mine and my Farther's Dublo collection, £80-£100 was the absolute maximum realistically that these would fetch. Methinks this Ebay seller has an overinflated opinion of what his stuff is worth.

How's about this listing for zero information. How are buyers supposed to make their mind up off no picture and a listing that simply says "class 29"? For all I know if I bid I'm actually bidding on the whole of class 29 from Eagley infant school. Thirty unruly seven year olds - whoopie do.

minimalist info

A cheap Triang 3F ??

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...=item563714395a

I keep seeing stuff listed - I presume speculatively - on Ebay at silly prices. One of my pet hates is the way a significant number of Ebay sellers seem to confuse the word 'rare' with 'mass produced; there's hundreds of them'. It has to be one of the most misused words in Ebay listings.

It's not as ambitious as building a complete new fictitious loco, but I have a class 03 with the number 03254 and a class 04 with 04019. I keep meaning to get and repaint/renumber a class 15 and 17 with TOPS numbers, and I rather like the idea of Hattons' forthcoming class 14 in Loadhaul livery.

25083 waits between shunting vans on 'Grove Street Yard'.

Area riddled with un-mapped mine workings - One house a couple of streets away 'fell down' in a heap of rubble about 4 years ago.

Whilst the pics seem to indicate an OK area, strongly advise that anyone does a check in person, on several days , locally it has a very suspect reputation..

I'll pass , Thanks

When I was a child, not far from here, a row of around ten terraced houses developed a rather precarious lean forwards. They were demolished, and I believe unmapped mine workings were responsible for that one. No other houses in the area that I know of have ever been effected by unexpected subsidence. Well, except for the ones that were on top of a lost and filled shaft from Black Harry tunnel.

...and you thought that 'leaning to the right' was a trick of the camera. Read the description of this 'item'

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...#ht_1074wt_1165

That property is quite intriging. I've looked closely at all those pictures and cannot see any cracks that would indicate it moving. 85,000 squids is still a bit much to part with without having a damn good poke around in person first.

Some really excellent pictures appearing in this thread. It has motivated me to Try A Lot Harder with a decent camera.

A recent picture taken on 'Grove Street Yard':

The yard's resident shunter is an ex BR class 04, D2267, still wearing faded BR blue. It waits with an empty wagon on the approach to the warehouse yard.

Can anyone confirm whether these releases are identical to those released last year, or whether they carry different running numbers? I have to agee that they were a superb model when they first appeared - the Modelzone weathered trio really do look good. I also bought the late BR and GWR versions (hence I have no idea whether the running number of the wagon showed in the OP's post is the same or different from when initially released because that was the one varient I didn't get).

I'm very impressed with the method of storage - ingenious use of space, and I guess it makes it quite mobile too. I presume the whole lot could be easily wheeled onto the tail lift of a luton body transit and then wheeled easily around at exhibitions too?

Very nice layout! I am envious of the space you have available. Given its exposure to the outdoors, how do you cope with potential issues of sunlight fading the scenery?

Very impressed with those fuelling points!

That is one impressively neat baseboard underside. Puts my little rats' nest tangle of wires to shame!

But the Bachmann range is based on the TV series models, whilst the earlier books are clearly proper railway locomotives. As others have said, don't hold out too much hope....

It is an interesting point that to make a more accurate model of the real locomotives that the books were based on, rather than the caricatures in the TV series, it would neatly get around the licencing issues for selling what would amount to Donald and Douglas models without the faces on the front*

* When I was little we were too poor for the Hornby TTTE offerings, and several Hornby Dublo locos were drafted in to represent TTTE locomotives, using a dollop of imagination to replace the faces (and other small details)

The Bachmann Thomas the Tank engine stuff has always looked like a robust toy, designed down to a price and to be suitable for being played with by ham-fisted four year olds. However, I have to say that from what I've seen they are a lot better than the Hornby offerings. It's a shame that the consumer can't have a choice and get an easier supply of the Bachmann models in the UK - the Hornby ones have all disappointed me when out shopping for my nephew. So much so that my nephew has ended up with some of my Bachmann duplicate stock in preference.

The Salty shunter has interested me, as it appears to be loosely based on an 07 shunter. An 07 is one of the BR locomotives quite high on the list of locomotives I would buy if they were readily available RTR. Also the Mavis version of the 04 looks ripe for Wisbech and Upwell convertion.

I look forward to seeing any photos of the Donald and Douglas pairs. Would Bachmann think ahead and make them suitable for a UK market in non-Thomas guises?

As far as buying model railway stuff on Ebay, I've not had that much luck. I've bought a few Bachmann wagons on buy it now at a fair price from a shop in North Wales, but other than that I have succeeded in winning a grand total of one wagon on conventional bidding (a pristine boxed Bachmann blue riband five planker in 'George Lovegrove' red livery) which I only won because I decided at 99p it deserved a bid, and no-one bid against me for some reason still unknown. That was around four years ago though.

Everything else I've bid on went for silly money - WHO is paying £10 or more for run of the mill Bachmann wagons that are still available from Hattons new at £6 or £7? Even more unusual stuff I bid on goes for stupid prices to the point where I'm almost tempted to strip out all the old Hornby-Dublo D1, D2 and G3 switches that control the electrics on my layout and sell them on Ebay, because every switch I've bid on has ended up going for £10 or more.

Many other things are going for silly money too. I've been searching for Bosun dinghy hulls, to replace a scrapped hull that now is filled with plants and soil as a fancy gate guardian. I'm almost tempted to dig the thing out, as scrap hulls on Ebay were fetching several hundred pounds. I used to buy a lot of clothes and records too, but these areas seem to have also been invaded by the red mist merchants.

The only bargains still to be had on Ebay are not in model railways. For weird little computer parts (like IDE compact flash adapters, and PCI to PCMCIA cards) Ebay has more choice than the High street at a fraction of the price. How long before the red mist merchants kill this supply too?

I've sold a lot on Ebay, but whilst Bachmann I sold went for silly prices, latterly some of the Hornby Dublo and Hornby Acho wagons and locos I was selling were failing to attract even a single bid, so I stopped bothering with them. I tried selling my Father's old stash of Flying Reviews and Commercial motors too which he didn't want, and only ONE issue from 1964 actually sold. Even at 1p, no-one wanted them, and there were complete sets through to 1989 of Commercial motor and Flying review for 1960s/70s IIRC.