The Doc

Thank you all, I was also puzzled by the number on the cab side - looks like 102 or 103 (sorry, my eyesight is not what it used to be). Is this also fictitious?

Did Flying Scotsman ever have a domeless boiler? I believe that early A1s had round domes, and A3s had either round, banjo or streamlined domes, but this recent email from Hornby seems to show an A3 boiler with no dome at all. Is it a howler on Hornby's part or an accurate model?

A couple of suggestions for those on a tight budget: Lima diesels tend to be very robust, serviceable and repairable, and unless you go for a rarer limited edition, there are plenty on the secondhand market as "serious" enthusiasts replace theirs with much more modern spec diesels with the latest must have details (chains between the body and the bogies, anyone?). From 3 feet away you would be hard pushed to tell my Lima Deltic from the Bachmann one. When buying rolling stock, secondhand is a safer bet than buying locos, since there is less to go wrong. I have bought very few coaches and even fewer wagons brand new. I would avoid certain brands (Triang, Trix, Hornby Dublo, Playcraft/Jouef) as they may have different couplings and, in the case of Triang, thicker wheel flanges that don't like modern track. Most older Hornby, Airfix, Mainline and Lima wagons can be picked up secondhand for a fraction of the price of brand new models. Bachmann tend to be a little more expensive - sometimes slightly newer and more accurate designs, but they don't necessarily look or run any nicer.

With steam locos a cast metal body has the advantage of giving better traction. The weight of modern diesel models with the centre mounted motors and all wheel traction means that the extra weight of a metal body probably won't make much difference.

So if Accurascale are making the "ultimate" model, there's not much financial argument Hornby producing its own.

I bought A2 Chamossaire from Kernow a couple of weeks back - an excellent model that runs smoothly and quietly, and the lining is impressive. Thoroughly recommended.

I've yet to see the programme but I believe the wheel spacings were incorrect on the original 9F/Evening Star models (dating back from the early 70s) because the actual loco has its 5 pairs of driving wheels very close together, and wheel flanges on model locos in the 1970s were pretty big, so the flanged wheels had to be spaced further apart (whereas the distance between the centre pair and the 2nd/4th pairs could be closer together since the centre pair are unflanged as per prototype. Until this topic was brought up I had never even noticed the difference in wheel spacing on the earlier Hornby model, despite having owned several in my time. A quick scan of internet photos of actual 9Fs reveals very few with the loco sideways on, so it is impossible to notice whether or not all the wheels are equally spaced in reality. But then again, I'm definitely not a rivet counter and maybe others have a keener eye than me!

@Topcat "Simon said that it was "... only 0.6 mm, less than the thickness of a human hair." He was only a factor of between 5 and 10 out!" Perhaps Simon has very thick hair, to go with the very thick skin he needs to cope with all the grief he cops when things aren't perfect!grinning Seriously, I can't understand why people would be too worried about wheel spacing being 0.6mm out. Wheel flanges on all 00 models are more than 0.6mm too big, not to mention the gauge being 2.3mm too narrow.

Currently working on a pair of Ian Kirk Gresley teak coaches - a non-corridor composite and a 52ft brake third. Neither of these are available ready-to-run, and I have the added bonus of the satisfaction of having made them myself. I also prefer my weathered/tired teak finish to the beautiful pristine finish of the Hornby superdetailed range, though my phone makes the coaches look much brighter than they really are!

Same applies to overhead wires - the current still has to pass between wheels and the track. 12V will struggle to push much current through insulators like rust and leaves, but 25000V doesn't have that problem! Incidentally, if you think you should have steel track for greater realism, your trains will run less reliably, so you will also have to invest in the expensive Faller road system to drive the rail replacement bus service.grinning

Thanks Tony, The Fleischmann style tender drive is excellent and the 8 wheel pick-up on your version makes it a better runner (in my experience) than the later models which only picked up from one side of the loco and two tender wheels on the other side.

@Tony57 Is that the 9F with the Fleischmann style tender drive (all 6 wheels have traction tyres)? My oldest locos are all Fleischmann dating from the early seventies. The bodies are just a one-piece bit of moulded plastic, but the chassis and motor design is so rugged, well-engineered and reliable they run much better than Hornby's UK built tender drives of the same era, which were geared too highly (in my opinion) and didn't have enough pick-ups for smooth running.

@Fazy, Not sure about a shaving mirror - some of them are deliberately concave - but yes, a good piece of flat glass is great for when you are allowing the glue on the underframe to dry. I've made the bogies of many a Kirk coach kit using the glass from an old photo frame as a flat surface.

I've made a few Parkside kits (fish vans and cattle wagons) and the more modern ones seem good and run smoothly. I only had problems with an older one where, if you followed the instructions and moulding lines, the two frames were too close together so you couldn't actually fit the wheel axles between them. The only bad wobbler I have had was a recent Dapol ex Airfix oil tanker kit. I believe that the Airfix moulds are now so old that they use a softer form of polystyrene, and the underframe was so warped in the pack that I couldn't get it flat.

A gloss finish at 1:76 scale isn't quite the same as gloss at 1:1 scale. It's the same as colour. Some people refer to "scale colour". In photography I think it's called aerial perspective, where more distant objects look paler and less saturated in colour. The rich green shiny surface you see from a few feet away in a museum, or from the platform of a preserved railway, doesn't look as rich or shiny when viewing the same thing from 76 yards away (which in 00 gauge is 3 feet). Hence manufacturers try to reproduce the appearance our eyes perceive when viewing the model from about 3 feet away.

To illustrate the point, here's a picture of A3 Humorist with round dome (from the online LNER encyclopedia):

Not all A3s had banjo domes. Harvester looks like it has an A3 boiler because they all had two plates, one on each side, on the upper part of the smokebox behind the chimney. Some A3s had banjo domes, many had streamlined domes, and some still had round domes.

I seem to recall that last year Youtuber Jenny Kirk built an upside down layout - I think it featured in the first "Hornby - A Model World" series. By use of neodymium magnets the trains ran on track mounted to the bottom of a baseboard. This wagon would suit that layout perfectly!

@Topcat If you use a dilute solution/light wash the lettering and numbering is slightly reduced but still visible. I have used some old Railmatch GWR brown diluted roughly 1 part to 4 parts white spirit. It improves the coaches significantly. The best views of my coaches can be seen here: A previous video goes into precise detail about how I upgraded my Railroad teaks to match some Ian Kirk models I had made.

@rjpallan, I'm not sure that sleeper coaches prove very popular. I imagine LNER ones only ever ran on a few select trains from Kings Cross to Scotland, and while a model train can justify one first class coach, or one buffet car, it looks a bit odd with just one sleeper coach in it. They are "all or nothing" coaches for many modellers, I expect. Just my point of view, others may well disagree.

John o' Gaunt operated in East Anglia from 1951 till early 1963 so all the above suggestions are good. If I recall correctly, the set comes with 2 Mk1 composite coaches and a shorty Gresley brake composite. If you want to create a longer train but maintain realism, it would probably be better to go for some all 3rd coaches - either the Railroad Mk1 coaches, or the superdetailed Gresleys which are often available in maroon or crimson and cream on ebay, and significantly cheaper than the superdetailed teak livery. They never made an all 3rd in the cheap shorty Gresley version. As Buz says, there was often a mix of liveries in the same train (particularly on lesser passenger services in East Anglia) so a mix of maroon and crimson/cream is very appropriate. Teak liveries were probably quite uncommon by the time the maroon livery came in, but I'm sure there will be a photo out there with all 3 liveries in the same train. Older teak coaches were often employed to increase capacity in the summer.

If you don't like the look (or price!!) of the superdetailed teaks you might consider buying an Ian Kirk kit - often available on ebay, in very many different varieties. When painted - I go for a layer of Railmatch LNER teak, followed by one or two very diluted washes of GWR brown - they look much more like what teak coaches looked when in service, especially from normla viewing distances. The Hornby superdetailed range are beautiful, but look more like those coaches preserved in museums in high gloss finish.

Quite a few people have reported problems with Hornby curved points on this forum over the years. I have an A4 that happily runs around the "outer" branch of a curved point, but frequently derails when trying to go on the sharper inner radius curve, if that makes sense. It may be that my point is not laid perfectly, but I know I am not the only one to have had issues with Hornby curved points, and several forum members have advised against using them. Like Colin, I use almost exclusively Peco electrofrog points, and these are all much gentler in radius than the Hornby curved point. The Hornby curved point may look like a useful space saver, but may ultimately lead to disappointment.

Hi Paul, It's worth checking whether it's the pick-ups themselves which aren't working (i.e. not rubbing against the inner wheel treads), or the connection between pick-ups and decoder socket, or between loco and tender. I tried to fit a TTS sound decoder into one of my J15s, and despite the tender weight clearly being designed to take a TTS speaker, I found it impossible to fit. I gave up that idea and the next thing I knew the loco wasn't running quite so well, and the flimsy wiring from one tender pick up had become disconnected.