New Railway Modellers Forums

They have had samples of the finished items over here on display, flown in. That means they have manufacturing process proven and ready to go. Since the date they are giving for UK arrival is four to five weeks away, most of which is taken up by the sea shipment and the palaver around that operation...

It will be an interesting test of the often claimed great potential interest in 'industrials'.... It certainly will. When we ran Pat Hammond's 'Wishlist' Poll earlier this year (http://www.mremag.com, results here: http://www.mrol.com.au/Articles/Polls/PollResults00.aspx) the voting for industrials...

.. the Princess Coronation class is my favourite loco and I love the Britannia and rebuilt Merchant Navy classes too. So many beautiful trains.... It could be that the layout for you is a stretch of track in the countryside with little to give away any regional affinity, so that you can run trains ...

... when there were still major historical idiocyncracies in what ran where... Very well put. That's why I go for the last decade of BR steam. I can operate at least forty seven classes of steam loco (two dating back to the 1880s) twenty-one production diesel classes, and three prototypes, all comp...

Truth is that Hornby really have no choice. Pretty much all mass manufacturing of consumer goods is done in this way: it keeps costs down. Just google on 'lean manufacturing' there are endless articles. It has its' origins in the activity of the JUSE and was adopted early by companies like Toyota an...

That's the trouble with the batch production system: production runs are 'kitted' on fixed numbers of units, usually 512 is the minimum batch size: that's 2 raised to the ninth power. As the required components become smaller they are made as twos, fours, eights, sixteens and so on: in exactly the r...

David, We are now in the happy position that the OO manufacturers have picked up the centre motor drive developed for the HO market, and the running quality compared to ringfield power bogies is as different as night from day. Heljan, Hornby and Bachmann can all turn out stuff that runs well, even i...

The whole cab slides up off the end of the bonnet which has a slot round it in which the cab spectacle plate fits (same arrangement on the class 08 for future reference). What you have to do is lever out the lower cabsides by the bonnet to release a lug each side at the bottom of the slot. Bachmann ...

92099 is listed as having a BR1B. But of course it also had the air pumps on the loco, inset in the right hand running plate, to enable it to operate the doors of the iron ore hoppers on the Tyne Dock-Consett run. At least with this loco and its fellows on this work, the popularity of the route as a...

The only namer in BR service was Evening Star; but you could take that as the hint that they should have astronomical names. And since the 'evening star' (actually a planet but never mind that) is bright, what about really large bright stars as a line of names? Aldebaran, Arcturus, Sirius, there's h...

BR mk1 and mk2 stock, mostly in blue and grey, as it was used to haul express services on the East Coast route circa 1969 - 1970. It may have run elsewhere, but I didn't see that.

The Hornby 9F has always been one of the better models in the range, once it was advanced to 'superdetail' (in 1998?) it was basically 'right'; and it just got better when Hornby fitted loco drive. Bit weird that it is in Railroad, as it is a lot better than some main range items, but it is a savvy ...

... Kestrel was designed to operate at speeds in excess of 100mph... Why were we experimenting with such locos when the infrastructure of our railways was still being torn up?? Richard Marsh the then chairman of BR was responsible for the final death knell of the Lewes-Uckfield line whilst swanning...

Martin, The flangeless Cartazzi wheels can be replaced by the flanged pair provided, at the cost of a little work hacking at the fixed mount so that the loco still goes round whatever minimum radius you require. Since the 'scene of the crime' is fully concealed by the outside frames it's all gain to...

All the Bachmann bogie diesels have the bogies attached in the same way, the body is carried on a flat surface surrounding the bogie pivot, into which a screw goes from the top. The usual cause of a lean is a bit of moulding flash on what should be the flat carrying surface of the bogie. I have 'fix...