Joined
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406 Posts
Hi Folks
....Clearly Kristopher will be filling the blanks on the coaches but I do have to congratulate Hornby on their current coverage of coaching stock. The only fly in the ointment has been the Gresley and Thompson livery fiasco on the last (CURRENT ??) batches. Clearly the corridor Gresley stock body profile leaves a lot to be desired and this is partly due to the fact that Hornby have to cater for the Train set sector with Radius 1 and 2 curves. This affects almost all model coaches with visible channel solebars but has been a particular problem with these LNER coaches. They are the longest in the range apart from the almost flat sided Hawksworths since all the Colletts, Staniers, and Maunsells are not only shorter overall but many have shorter wheelbase bogies than the Gresley design.
....The solution adopted for the 12 wheel LMS diner is hardly attractive and the original spare chassis option no longer exists. It would have been possible to include clip-in sections in an accessory pack if a little more thought had been given to the design. An alternative solution might have been to have "Dummy" wheels at one end of each bogie which did not touch the rails or solebar. By reducing the wheelbase to 6' 3" on the remaining wheels the track radius would have been a far smaller problem.
....There are continual complaints about the ex Airfix "B" set and autocoach but if Hornby were to fit the newer bogies to them that would be a major improvement. Bearing in mind that some newly introduced 4mm RTR coaches are nowhere near as accurate as the "B" set it seems hardly fair to complain about them when the newer models are given glowing reviews and almost all of the serious errors are ignored.
....Kristopher will no doubt highlight the serious omissions but with the huge variety of coaching stock designs the best we can ever hope for is coverage of the principal body types and a selection of coaches covering the most useful diagrams. There have been many "False starts" such as the corridor clerestory stock without any panelling and the panelled versions where neither correspond to actual prototypes. A huge amount of tooling expense has been appllied to generic designs which are now being replaced with their accurate equivalent. Tastes have changed but the ability to make accurate coaches existed decades ago and it was short sighted management that preferred generic models to accurate ones and this has now come back to bite Hornby on the backside. Fingers crossed they survive to release the Maunsell dining car !! Hornby's wagon range is another matter altogether.
....Clearly Kristopher will be filling the blanks on the coaches but I do have to congratulate Hornby on their current coverage of coaching stock. The only fly in the ointment has been the Gresley and Thompson livery fiasco on the last (CURRENT ??) batches. Clearly the corridor Gresley stock body profile leaves a lot to be desired and this is partly due to the fact that Hornby have to cater for the Train set sector with Radius 1 and 2 curves. This affects almost all model coaches with visible channel solebars but has been a particular problem with these LNER coaches. They are the longest in the range apart from the almost flat sided Hawksworths since all the Colletts, Staniers, and Maunsells are not only shorter overall but many have shorter wheelbase bogies than the Gresley design.
....The solution adopted for the 12 wheel LMS diner is hardly attractive and the original spare chassis option no longer exists. It would have been possible to include clip-in sections in an accessory pack if a little more thought had been given to the design. An alternative solution might have been to have "Dummy" wheels at one end of each bogie which did not touch the rails or solebar. By reducing the wheelbase to 6' 3" on the remaining wheels the track radius would have been a far smaller problem.
....There are continual complaints about the ex Airfix "B" set and autocoach but if Hornby were to fit the newer bogies to them that would be a major improvement. Bearing in mind that some newly introduced 4mm RTR coaches are nowhere near as accurate as the "B" set it seems hardly fair to complain about them when the newer models are given glowing reviews and almost all of the serious errors are ignored.
....Kristopher will no doubt highlight the serious omissions but with the huge variety of coaching stock designs the best we can ever hope for is coverage of the principal body types and a selection of coaches covering the most useful diagrams. There have been many "False starts" such as the corridor clerestory stock without any panelling and the panelled versions where neither correspond to actual prototypes. A huge amount of tooling expense has been appllied to generic designs which are now being replaced with their accurate equivalent. Tastes have changed but the ability to make accurate coaches existed decades ago and it was short sighted management that preferred generic models to accurate ones and this has now come back to bite Hornby on the backside. Fingers crossed they survive to release the Maunsell dining car !! Hornby's wagon range is another matter altogether.