How was your Saturday Shopping Experience?

It's just coming up to 10:00 and I'm sat here thinking that this was not one of my best modelling Saturday's. It will all come out in the wash no doubt, but for now it's not been a good day.

I had been looking forward to the weekend, and had two main objectives (from a model railway point of view).
Firstly, firstly to find a Bachmann 32-040DS Class 20 with sound. No joy there I'm afraid tried every shop within a 2 hour radius, all gone or never had one in the first place. I have one more lead to try thanks to a fellow forum member, but it looks like they've all gone now. On line searches show a few at Antics and others, but when you phone it turns out the websites are out of date.

Second objective was to buy a Hornby R2614 'Lorna Doone'. These are like gold dust too, because of course, there is no demand for the return of old classics from the Tri-ang range. None at all, a Blue Pullman, a Rocket, an EM2, no people only want newly tooled super detail models. Anyway, spot of luck a shop that is only about an hour away has 2 left, and will put one aside. Jump in car.

Get to shop, find 3 items of interest, new Pendolino pack, but as has been reported in the thread for this model, literally all the boxes are ripped. I think they must have been opened after manufacture, perhaps to fit the decoders? Anyway, decide to pass, which as they are fitted with two R8215s, probably means that this is the only decent decision of the day.

Come away with one R2614 ' Lorna Doone', and one R2625X 'DCC Fitted' (cough, cough , cough... see thread in DCC forum) Southern Olive Green M7. I'll say no more on the M7, other than I should have known better. Carefully remove 'Lorna Doone' from the box only to find that the screw fixing the body to the chassis at the rear of the cab has been over-tightened, resulting in a cracked body. A fault you have to look out for sometimes on the older Triang-Hornby ones, but not one I was expecting to find on a 2006 edition.

By the time I get a chance to return it, the sole remaing example is likely to have sold, if it hasn't already.

I'm reminded of many of the reasons that I abandoned British outline OO a few years ago and switched to continental HO. I know nothing is perfect in this world, and I do occasionally, very occasionally have to return a Roco or a Marklin. But I've never had quite such a bad day.

I'm cheering myself by running a recent Roco 3 Rail Digital purchase of an East German V200, complete with ESU load regulated Decoder(DCC and Marklin Motorola) for the princely sum of 91 Euros. I can recommend these to anybody. When I get chance I'll be happy to do a review. Even by Rocos usual high standards this is amazing tooling, even the fuel tank/battery box is cast metal.

Anyway, hopefully you all had a better Saturday than me, do tell..........................

AshleyH