CORKY.

A new Hornby J50 0 6 0 tank, and a Hornby Class Q6 Raven 0 8 0 tender loco (half price), they both perform admirably and pull like a ... well, like a train actually. Plus some more second hand Railroad tank wagon bargains from ebay. I do like Railroad tank wagons, colourful, rugged and at my whim can be instantly loaded or unloaded.

KERNOW do similar to Hattons, eg R 3542 £96.99 , RRP £194.99. !!

If you fancy a trip to Doncaster Racecourse on 12/13th Feb 2022 you could visit Festival of British Railway Modelling, and take your models with you. At least one trader is offering to pay cash for secondhand at the show,

Your track investment looks too good to change.................... change the engine shed !

My Class 66 has ribbed sides and other detail items , but the applied stick on panel is so thick that it does not allow the ribbing to show, it just sticks to the raised part of the ribbing, not the valley, so it just looks flat, and tiny detail items do not show through properly. Perhaps not so much a lack of quality control, but more a lack of design planning. It seems the retailers realise this problem too and are offering huge discounts. And don't try to smooth the plastic film into the ribs... the colour comes off.

Just a thought.... I have a tender drive black 9F 92200, 92220 is my other one, loco drive , green, the Evening Star, a bit of imagination ,fat fingers on a keyboard, or the "wrong box" and there you go, the first I paid £46 R264 the other £82 R3288, obviously not the latter though,'cos that was available 2018 ish

If you Google "Hattons formation guides" you can see lists of locos and appropriate wagons/coaches.

If you google "charity disabled trains" you will find a choice of worthwhile causes all around the country who would enjoy a donation of Dad's trains.

Jadlam charged me £59.95 for a Hornby Class 66 in November 2021, WAY BELOW the Hornby asking price, and £16.99 for a Hornby railroad container and wagon, which seemed reasonable

I googled "x6451 Hornby" and several ebay sellers popped up.. one with 97 pairs in stock.

Marketing/advertising by Hornby has indeed become a joke, I emailed them on errors/omissions about Class 66 locos, and MSC/MCS containers, but have given up , they are still about, APT reversed photo, wagon pack wrong description or wrong photo, box description for Pullman pack wrong, it goes on, makes me wonder what quality checks they are not making on the actual product. Unfortunately some hapless retailers just copy the incorrect Hornby advertising onto their own website. Comments on video about the "big arrow" on the side of a loco grated a bit too, and too many errs and umms. It's not a GWR Class 800/802 problem, it's a Hornby problem

Bradshaw's Guide took Michael Portillo to the site of a roundhouse, that had been replaced by a rectangular building, the advantage was that long tender locos fitted within the diaganols. The Ebay roundhouse seems amazing value, and comes with a huge choice of angles and number of sections to suit different turntables, the ends are open but could be "bricked in" with model paper

I must admit to be rather taken by the Black Five and looked for a couple of videos and found an over long one from Hornby that promised details, trouble was half the steam visuals were lost behind the trees it travelled behind, and half the sound was overlaid with music...

I bagged a 2021 club loco from Ebay at a price well below membership price, stands alongside my similar Ebay club locos dated 2009,2012, seems I am alone in liking these locos, but they suit my area/period, and they blend in with my magnificent J50

Well, still waiting for my membership pack, but on a test purchase I find that my club discount is applied now automatically, so it looks as though I have the best of both worlds, 10% discount and a "free" 0 4 0 loco.

@ Brew Man, thanks for that, I'll wait for the membership pack first, and see if ordering with club discount works then. If not I will ring them, and as you suggest, ask for a deferred renewal to make up, but the way things are going, I doubt if I will renew, just think myself lucky I joined with a "free" loco that I wanted. Perhaps they are holding onto my member pack so that they can include the 2022 pin...............

Hornby took my money on 4th jan 2022, and my membership shows as expiring 4th jan 2023, but I don't have membership details, my membership does not show when I order, and I have lost nearly 2 weeks of membership discount benefits. I guess I might have been better off with retailer discounts and loyalty points.

Oh dear, Hornby trapped in their tiny Margate bubble. In the real world, both meteorological and astronomical, winter is from 2021 Dec to 2022 March, and of course in 2022 it is again winter in December............... unless of course,,, you are not in Margate, but in the other half of the world, the southern hemisphere, this winter nonsense DOES NOT WORK. Even spring, summer, autumn , understandable for Margate ,is wrong for half the world. One would hope they draft their contracts with a bit more thought. Here's a thought, why not borrow the plan used by the rest of the world, or "ROW" as Hornby dismissively call it. .... First Quarter, Second Quarter etc. They could even use Q1, Q2, if they wanted to borrow from a forward thinking Formula 1

Disappointed at the scarcity of Railroad models, but what is this "junior" name creeping in? Is it the new Railroad, as seen on the HST 125 Intercity exec.

Available to club members for £15.60 with free post and packing for rest of world, Meanwhile my club membership application on 4th Jan 2022, has not arrived, and my membership is not active, BUT , the FREE LOCO arrived 10th Jan, the 2021 0 4 0 loco. It seemed obvious that cost saving and price increases were at the top of the Hornby agenda, so I took a chance and it has paid off.

On the most used Hornby advertising photo of the APT, I notice a couple of strange features, which I guess are down to poor photography. The grill on the front of the cab is on the wrong side, and the quarter light or side window looks odd as if it is set at the wrong angle , it would "look" nicer if the side of the windscreen was parallel to the leading edge of the quarter light , might be down to camera lens distortion for the window, and the grill being transposed, might be down to image reversal... like Hornby have done with their MSC container... showing the wrong image of "MCS" in their advertising. Well, at east they printed the ATP the right way round on their calendar

When my family was younger we bought tough Playmobil garden gauge sets, and the local shop swapped out the curved track for straights, allowing us to have bigger circuits, and no wasted curves sitting around. 20 yrs on and they are still going strong

Hornby made some great value Railroad items to go with anything, tankers in set of 3, grey open trucks, brown open trucks, also in sets of three. The trucks had no markings, so will fit in anywhere, and the brightly coloured tankers had fuel company markings, so would mix in with anything. Might have to look for second hand, I think they sold out quickly. I would guess this loco is era 3/5, it is freelance, so no specific date. It would look more authentic if you ran it with era 3/5 trucks, the era is often stated in the description of the rolling stock.This club loco is good value, a similar one on pre order has an asking price of £50

My first hit on Ebay was a uk retailer new in box £134.71 freepost....and £105.2 from Amazon, and no warranty/vat/duty hassles.

Airfix was brought home successfully, with better quality, and no big hike in prices, perhaps the guys at Hornby trains could get off their chairs, walk over to the Airfix guys and learn how they did it with such success. Or maybe the push came from the company that developed improved processes, and now manufactures the Airfix kits rather than a slumbering Aifix/Hornby themselves.