Andrew F

I meant the frame. You won't have to bother on your coaches as the thickness of the plastic is already hidden by the dark livery, in fact they look quality.

Yes, SE Finecast flushglazing. You have to remove some of the plastic from the inner edge of the window apertures (scalpel/needle files) to make the glazing push into the frame without force. ;quite a faff but very necessary as the glazing looks terrible and distorted if it's forced into the frames. Also best to paint the thickness of the plastic out of the aperture with brown/grey paint.

Yep, I think I used what was already there; cut out the top ventilators and then carefully saw down each side of the vertical frame (give yourself a mm or two from the frame for filling etc later) from the top of the coach to half way down the window. Then two small horizontal cuts that then removes the top half of the window. Chop that removed bit down to size and glue back in position with maybe styrene slithers/shims to fill the saw cuts. Placticard to fill the top gap between the window and the roof line. The vents were just 0.010 round microstrip I think. Glazing just hand cut acetate fixed in with glue/glaze or canopy glue (that works best for fixing in the SE Fincast glazing too).

It's surprising how good beer from a can can taste these days. Thornbridge Jaipur IPA has been my staple lockdown can on a night along with Westons old Rosie cider until the end of March when hopefully my first batch of homebrew cider won't have turned to vinegar. It has been quite a nice new hobby, picking apples and pressing them, whilst pubs/friends and real trains have been removed from my life.

Carpet monster 1 me 0. Has anyone got a right hand side (as you face the loco) bufferbeam step for the Hornby class 50? It's the one with a shorter horizontal top. Here's hoping....it's not my 50.... Cheers Andy

It was called Space Precinct wasn't it? with the lovely Simone Bendix who was Verity in The Crow Road. Battle of the Planets will never be forgotten I reckon. Me and my mates still talk about it or did down the pub. What about Me and my Girl or Home to Roost

Weird; when I saw this thread I thought straight away of Driving ambition. Weren't there are a droopsnoot Firenza in that? One I've searched for and found on youtube that was on at Christmas in the early 80's was "Quincy's Quest" with Tommy Steele. A strange musical about broken toys. Crappy late 70's/80's American sit-coms anyone? Big John/Little John Charles in charge Small Wonder ....There was one with a talking urangutang but I forget it's name.

It's quite a simple job to just transplant the Bachmann motor/bogie and metal block onto the Hornby 110 plastic chassis.

Hello there. Does anyone have any Lima GUV parcels vans (the long BR 93XXX/86XXX) that they don't want?. I'm after X 2 of these; any livery/no boxes/damage/missing parts, anything considered. Also looking for a Jouef mk3 buffet; again anything considered. Thanks for looking. Andy

Hello chaps, I wonder If anyone has 3 old Hornby VDA 4-wheel vans they don't want (boxes/damage/livery unimportant) Also I'm in need of 4 extra "bogies" for same ( same as steel carrier SAA and OAA open wagon/PVA van) again damage/condition unimportant. All for budget Speedlink project so anything considered. Thanks .

If your average daily mileage is below 40 miles..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle

£20 seemed to be the going rate for City of London on ebay last year; some BIN. One of these was unused in a perfect box with the instructions included. Phoenix tends to fetch a bit more but the IC 86's went for around the £20-£25 region.

Sorry, I might be talking rubbish and confusing the mk2 roof end fitting with a mk1. Yes, the roof on the mk2 has tabs at each end that clip under the domed roof ends of the coach body. If you trim off the side glazing from the roof mould you lose the mountings from the bottom of the glazing that hold the roof section to the body but you should be ok with just the end tabs. Another thing with the SE flushglazing is that you'll have to cut the three smaller top-lights away from the main window and fit them separately.

Rather than filing the excess plastic from the insides of the windows I found it was easier, quicker and cleaner to get in there with a sharp long scalpel blade. Don't be tempted to force the glazing into a tight aperture as it will distort and look horrible. The door fitting for the roof that someone referred to was probably the gangway doors You can saw off the side glazing from the roof but leave some plastic at the top for rigidity but not too much or it will foul the new glazing. I did a rake of these and the rooves fit Ok this way but you get the unsightly joins at each end. I wonder if it would be better to glue the roof on to the shell and fill these gaps. The chassis would then have to be modified to make it easier to detach from the bodyshell.

What is "walking"? Never heard that before.

Can you try gently bending the pipes away form the ploughs? Can the ploughs be mounted slightly closer to the bogie? Maybe the NEM pocket can be trimmed back to allow this. I suppose it depends if you want a coupling at each end. Many just opt for detail/ploughs at one end and tension lock at the other in which case you'd have to trim the pipes off at that end and do away with the central piece of the ploughs and mount the outer pieces of the ploughs to the bogies.

It depends on how well adhered the printed nameplates are and knowing Hornby, they will be tough to get off. Rubbing a cotton bud and T-cut will eventually remove them but will leave a very shiny area where they used to be. I use a blunt curved scalpel blade to try and scratch the printing off or a piece of plastikard. One method is to soak the printed plate in IPA but I haven't tried this. If you end up with a shiny area you could always spray-varnish the body shell (windows out of course).

Agreed. It's the tyres of cars that produce the most noise pollution; about 70:30 to engine noise I'd estimate. One of the benefits of the mass use of EV's in the future for me would have been the reduction in overall traffic noise. This legislation could create all kinds of horrible random noise broadcast at the highest sound levels. A kind of amplified extension of peoples mobile phone ring tones.

I just want to know if the 31 could get a better lap time then the F1 cars.

The original Elite on the Beeb and Electron in 1984 was released with a major flaw; the galactic hyperdrive didn't work which meant you could not travel between the eight 2D galaxies. The hyperdrive was so expensive It took months/years of your childhood to discover this and there was no easy way of finding out why it didn't work (no mags/internet). It was fixed later and you could apply for a free copy of the fixed game. I'm not sure how that worked, it was so long ago. I think a game as big as Elite Dangerous is always going to be bugged and need patching. Frontier probably had no idea what kind of reception ED would have on consoles too so they may be listening to a lot of feedback and updating it based on that. One thing I reckon they should have done was made it keyboard compatable so you could assign some of your ships functions to keys or maybe have a pal control the weaponry rather than as it stands now; you can only text message other players with it. It would be nice too if there was some form of entertainment at space stations; I wonder if fans on PC's have made their own DLC? The Galnet radio was a classy update; before that it was just you and the silence. In space no-one can hear you die of boredom.

That's something I considered and is probably the way to go if you have that useful little blow torch. I used a single brass top-hat bearing to remove wheels from 36 axles yesterday and it looked pretty knackered after that. Knowing me though, it'll still end up being used in a bogie on some unfortunate piece of rolling stock.

It's also best to ignore the recomendation of using liquid poly/mek in the instructions to secure the glazing as it won't work and can leak and damage the paint finish. Better to use something like R/C glue and glaze/canopy glue. This is water soluble so can be thinned down and work in a capilary action around the panes.

Thanks everyone for your help. I've managed to remove the wheels this way: Pulling off the insulated wheel and then putting the axle vertically and loosely in a vice (wheel at the top) and tapping down on the pin-point with a top hat bearing held in place with fine long nosed plierts. This still leaves a couple of mill of the axle in the wheel as the top hat hits the wheel. I then put the axle tightly and horizontally in the vice with the wheel back against the jaws and used a set of toothed pliers to ease the wheel off the rest of the way. This seems to work fine and no blisters.

Thanks for the reply Ernie. I'm looking to re-use the Lima wheels on the Bachmann axles so I've got to find a way to remove them without damage.

Hello. Has anyone ever swapped the wheels from Bachmann wheelsets (12mm wagon/coach) onto Lima axles and vice-versa without damaging the axles? The insulated Lima wheel comes off the axle quite easily but the non-insulated does not. Is there an easy way to remove both wheels from both axles? Thanks Andy