AndyMac1707817969

There is this in a previous post https://www.hornby.com/us-en/forum/skaledale-19743/?p=1

If it is a version with working fan I would try removing the fan it can improve running performance significantly. If it does put the fan back with the clear plastic sleeve removed from the drive shaft so it no longer engages with then motor flywheel

What will look really unrealistic with a curved viaduct with that tight radius is the huge gap you are going to have to leave between track and side walls to get coaches etc to be able to use it. Easiest to build would be a curved approach embankment at the top and then straight across. This would then possibly leave you with an option for a skewed girder section across the river but the only reason you would do that would be to preserve navigation which the other lower bridge (unless it moves) blocks. Therefore you could just go for a stone viaduct all the way. As for the other track curve it left before it reaches the river so it traverses the river diagonally and much better alignment going under the main bridge

Personally I think it would look a lot more realistic if it was straight in the middle running diagonally across and a curve at either end a bit like Smardale Viaduct. Also why on the right would the track on the viaduct curve to the left then just curve right again. I guess Horns Bridge viaduct in Chesterfield was a good example of one bridge with 3 different types in one structure.

Mine arrived today and might sound silly but no matter what I do, I cannot get the sleeve off the box. It just will not move, tried a ruler down the sides etc. Tried as much force as I dare as the ends of the box have starting to cave in but it just will not budge. Tried slightly smaller box to distribute the force better but its stuck fast. Apart from tearing the box open which I am not going to do I see no way of getting the loco out. This one will be going back for a replacement

There is a constant stream of old spares / repairs Hornby turntables on eBay. Many sell for less than £10 and some less than £5. Buy one of those take the bits out you need and sell the rest on again, someone will always want what you don't. Every one that has sold cheap recently have the bits you are looking for

Yes, it is a viable business but you have to go to where the customers are, forget bricks and mortar, your own website unless you have a big marketing budget. You have to sell through sites such as Amazon and eBay who do all the marketing for you. Yes, they take a commission but it is a lot less than you would spend trying to promote a business yourself. You can also start it up while still having a full time job, all you need is a mobile phone or tablet Selling anything online has its drawbacks, there is an ever increasing problem of fraud and abuse by buyers and the basic rule is don’t sell anything you cannot afford to lose, both it and the money. It is not as big a problem in the world of model railways as its it getting elsewhere but basically if you have a dispute with a buyer you are going to lose. EBay, PayPal have seller protection but it’s not worth a dime. As the seller, you cannot prove you sent them the item you claim to have; you can’t prove they did not send you back the item they said they did. Any disagreement and places like eBay will come down on the side of the buyer, they guarantee the buyer the item they pay for and that means if a buyer is prepared to lie through their teeth then there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, kiss the item and the money goodbye. Even if hell did freeze over and eBay did come down on the side of the seller then they can just appeal to PayPal. PayPal can ignore any judgement made by eBay and then even after that if funded by a credit card they can appeal to the credit card company. In all these cases it is up to you to prove what you are saying is right not the buyer. A chargeback on a credit card can occur up to one and a half years after the transaction and it’s up to you to prove the chargeback claim is false. Larger retailers just look at it as a cost of business, online buyer fraud instead of older forms of stealing such as shoplifting. Most people do not care, as they are only ever buyers. For a small business, it can be a big problem even if it’s not fraud the ability for buyers to return delicate items such as locos after having them for nearly a month often means they arrive back in a state where they have to be heavily discounted. In other market sectors such as clothing it’s a standing joke, buy the clothes, don’t take the labels off, wear them for a couple of days and then return them. Free clothes for life and you never have to wash a thing. It amazes me there are any small retailers left

I must admit the demise of the local model has meant the rise of the big sellers who can hold so much more stock and variety than any local model shop could ever dream of. A successful model shop nowadays has the world as its market place not just one town. This has allowed them to branch out, commission their own models that would never have been feasible 30 years ago. Any time I contemplate making a trip of say 20 or 30 miles to a model shop just to see what they have I often come back disappointed at the relatively small range of items available. I usually come home empty handed and just go online. More often than not when out shopping, I end up buying more on the Internet with the mobile phone waiting on the wife than I do in the shops we are visiting. Of course the most annoying thing about small local models shops is when you do decide to buy something having to stand of 10 minutes waiting to be served while somebody takes up the shop owners time with the much lamented 'free advice'. This includes a discussion as to which side of a coach the air tank was actually located on, before finally purchasing their £1.50 bag of scatter

How high any site will appear in the Google rankings will depend on how specific the search term is. Search for 'Model Railways' and you can be pretty much guaranteed no, search for something more specific like the name of the shop and as if by magic there it is. Of course there is a guaranteed way of getting your site on the first page of the Google search results, pay them, It’s called marketing.

How high any site will appear in the Google rankings will depend on how specific the search term is. Search for 'Model Railways' and you can be pretty much guaranteed no, search for something more specific like the name of the shop and as if by magic there it is. Of course there is a guaranteed way of getting your site on the first page of the Google search results, pay them, It’s called marketing.

No its R9722 the shed itself that is the difficult bit of this to find. They are not as expensive as they once were and do come up on eBay fairly regularly. They might cost a bit more than the original price but then again I am sure you picked up the other 4 bits at a considerable discount as it’s hard to give these bits away these days.

When I wanted to convert a non DCC loco to DCC I just sold it on eBay and bought a DCC ready / fitted one. It was much easier and really came out pretty cost neutral instead of trying to retro fit a socket. I would do the same for DCC sound. Hornby have a wide range of customers with very varying technical capabilities and I would suggest the vast majority would not have the capability to fit these. You immediately remove a signification portion of you potential customer base. If you pay someone else to fit them it could take hours to shoehorn a speaker into somewhere it was never meant to fit. You would need various sizes of speaker depending on the room available and that will affect the sound quality which would no doubt end in complaints on this very forum. Getting a third party to fit these would be significantly more time consuming and expensive than just removing a loco body and plugging in a chip. I doubt anyone would take on such a task

If I was Hornby I definitely would not be selling these separately. They will only end up taking the hit on customer services when people start trying to fit them into locos where there is no room to fit them. It is not just plugging in a decoder to a board, there has to be enough physical room to fit the speaker and have something to attach it to or secure it.

APT-E with sound :-)