SRman

I had a similar dilemma with my LCDR brake van, and still have not found any photos that show whether the end windows or side openings were glazed or not. I glazed them with the same philosophy as you; if they subsequently prove to have been unglazed, I can always push the glazing out, that being much easier than trying to add glazing retrospectively.

Wimp! The one I get on one of my school's security cameras is at least twice the size of that one ... a good 2 metres across!!

Or maybe the lighting functions will be permanently on, as per their class 73s.

Like you, John, I had some reservations about buying the Hornby VEPs, with their known compromises and inaccuracies, but I ended up with five, all bought as bargains at different times. I also have a much earlier VEP built using MJT sides and ends on Lima Mk1 coaches, complete with a Lima ringfield motor and "pizza cutter" wheels! I wish Hornby had released replacement interiors for the DTC vehicles to get those corridor side windows. I have successfully hacked one unit using older Triang-Hornby composite interiors for the first class sections. I really wanted to avoid the hard work if I could with the other blue and NSE units, but it looks like I have to do it the hard way after all. I also have five and three-quarter CEP units with a sixth on the way (once again, a bargain). The three-quarter unit gave up a centre coach chassis to convert 2H into a 3H, but it may yet end up as a refurbished unit as a 3 CEP unit. The liveries vary so I can ring the changes through the years and run plausible mixed combinations (e.g. green syp CEP with blue or blue/grey CEP and green syp, blue or blue/grey MLV, or more uniform all-green or all blue/grey sets). I haven't tried 'consisting' a VEP and a CEP yet - that could take a bit of adjusting of decoders to match the types.

Which is why I was talking generically about the SR sets. Of course, Hornby have released matching pairs of coaches to form sets with the ex-LSWR coaches, as Chris K-T has listed.

Some time back I had a brand new class 150 in First Great Western livery, which ran fine on test on DC, but had all sorts of lighting and behavioural anomalies on DCC. After much testing and fiddling around with different decoders and testing the decoders in other locomotives (as you did too), I eventually traced it to a small bit of solder bridging the connections between the main PCB and the daughter board that carried the decoder - the short was between pins/tracks 10 and 11 (edit: or was it 9 and 10? - too long ago now!). Once I had cleaned the solder bridge out, the unit worked and behaved perfectly after that. I'm not saying you have the same problem, but it could be worth checking the tracks closely under a strong light with good magnification.

Interesting, John. I have always found both Kirk and Ratio bogies to be rather fragile, although I have been able to get good running qualities out of both types. I have a wagon (a steel high) full of bits that have fallen off Kirk bogies over the years!

There will always be a minimum of one brake coach in a set. BCK + BTK (as mentioned by Tim) was a common formation, but the Southern did have some 2-sets that had only one brake coach; depending on the branch and traffic requirements, it might be TK + BTK, CK + BTK, or even TK + BCK. Later on some Open Thirds (TO) also found their way into sets, while many were 'loose' coaches added to strengthen sets. There is a list of coach sets somewhere on the SEMG website, although I can't remember whether it goes back to Southern days or starts in BR days, but it will give some idea of the various formations and how many sets there were with any given formation. All of the above refer to gangwayed types. There were many non-corridor types in sets as well, such as the ex-LSWR sets and the Birdcage sets.

Already been done! Heljan's class 128 DPU pulled something like 36 coaches on Gwiwer's old layout, including some gradients ... just a few more coaches than the real ones could manage!!

I pre-ordered the Port of London version with sound, so hopefully by the time they come along all the production issues will have been sorted out.

The weight certainly affected the power to weight ratio, but that's only part of the story. If they had used the later uprated engines, as fitted to the production batch of class 22s they would have had just that little bit extra power. Reliability could have been improved with a bit of perseverance, again as did occur with the 22s. Certainly, having the A1A wheel arrangement was not conducive to good traction with two unpowered axles taking weight off the driven axles - better for the brake force, though. Even that is not the whole story; the later Warships and Westerns used the lightweight construction to great advantage, but the Hymeks reverted to conventional heavy construction which, in their case, actually assisted in their usefulness, improving their tractive effort and brake force.

Mine came from the very first batch of Hymeks Heljan released, and has a Howes ESU LokSound v3.5 decoder with two speakers in parallel installed (8-pin). I am very happy with the whole combination and have never seen the need to update the sound in this one, although I did buy a set of the newer plated wheels from Howes to replace the original brass ones.

The Smallbrook one uses its own resin chassis. I have one in build at present, along with two other designs from the same source. The 18t one is all but finished, but the other two are still under construction, awaiting final paint touch-ups and glazing.

Yes, they were all pretty run-down. After the ex-Standerwick VRLLs, there was a Bristol LD Lodekka done up as a fake London Transport Routemaster, at least one FLF and one FSF, and later on, some ex-Reading VRL 'Jumbos'. For a while they had a storage yard at the corner of Centre Road and Warrigal Road, taking a corner off the Ventura depot - Ventura now have the whole lot of that land.

Where you bin, boy??? Din't you know D600 ran with a big sticky label on its roof one day in Spring 1961 after the crew complained of rain leakin' in!

For a bit of fun, I made a video up showing a variety of trains running through Newton Broadway station. There is a bit of steam, some diesels and electrics, locomotives, DEMU and EMU stock, freight and passenger all included. The time periods / eras are mixed up too, but I have kept appropriate locomotives on the right trains for the eras. At the end, there is a GBRf class 66, 66 701 Whitemoor, on Freightliner HHA wagons; that was due to the failure of Freightliner 66 610 that was supposed to haul that train (a failed decoder, which has now been replaced). While I have many more locomotives not shown here, the video would have been way too long if I had attempted to include even half of them. Some of you may argue that it is too long anyway ... just turn it off if that's the case. There is one surprise train there too, that really doesn't belong! I really hope it's not too boring for everyone.

A couple of them came to Melbourne (Australia) and were seen in a red livery with black windows for a few years, but I don't have details of which ones they were or what happened to them subsequently.

I was running a series of different trains from different eras for a video I am compiling. One of the last trains was formed of container wagons and was very heavy. It was hauled for the video by a Bachmann class 66, but I also had a Hornby class 60 haul it with great ease afterwards. There was a little discussion about the haulage power of Hornby's S15 some way back, and I said I was very impressed with it, having hauled over 30 4-wheeled wagons on DougN's difficult figure-8 layout, and I got to thinking, "How well would the S15 cope with this heavy train with no gradients to get in the way?", so here is the result, in the form of a very short video. These container wagons are very heavy in combination, although they are all fairly free-running. I had to remove three wagons (two bogie wagons and a bogie twin, so technically four wagons), and the S15 coped with that load with a little bit of a struggle round the back of the layout (it isn't perfectly level). For the video I added a single bogie wagon back on the end, but it is a little bit of a cheat as it slipped to stand at the back of the layout, in the tunnels; a slight nudge got it going again. Anyway, I'll leave it to everyone to judge for themselves just how deceptively powerful these locomotives from Hornby are. Incidentally, the sound is from YouChoos.

Actually, that one surprised me, because the crocs are not all that common that far south, and certainly such a large one would be extremely rare, even further north. The Fitzroy River flows through Rockhampton, which is on the Tropic of Capricorn. Before they built the barrage in Rockhampton, the river was tidal for quite a way further up, therefore the water was brackish up to a bit short of Yaamba. After the barrage came into operation, everything upstream of Rocky is fresh water. Rockhampton's water supply comes from that part of the river above the barrage, whereas when I lived there, all the water was piped from Yaamba - the pipe was not terribly big so Rocky had perpetual water restrictions at that time. Before that, I and a school friend used to go fishing for barramundi a bit further upstream. Sharks were not unknown in that stretch too.

I tend to do much the same, but I use a paint marker pen to do the arrows. It's only certain EMUs and fixed coach sets that need this treatment. For example, with Bachmann's 4 CEP units, I know the correct order and orientation of by heart, but Hornby's VEP units need the driving trailers placed at the right ends. My new centre trailer for the 3H unit (ex-2H) also needs this treatment. The SR tended to have particular orientations for their sets, with the first class end of composite coaches always at the same end in relation to the two adjacently numbered brake coaches in 3-sets, but I can never remember off-hand which way that should be. One of these days I'll get around to marking the undersides with arrows as above. It is a useful technique for such fixed sets to assist us in getting them right.

I have had nothing but helpfulness and support from Barry, the retiring owner, and wish him well for the future. I hope the same level of service will continue under the new ownership.

I wonder if the bells would work for some of our Australian station (ranch if you are American) owners! 25 hectares would probably be the size of their verandahs! Seriously, some of the outback stations over here are the size of England.

That's brilliant, Vepslam. Now, are you taking orders?

These date back to 2008, and the phone camera was not as good as most current ones, so these are a little blurry in places. Some snaps of Knowing being made at school. Nicholas Cage was actually in one of the black cars in the first photo, obscured by the shrubbery and people. The "Elementary School" sign is part of the film set; it's nt a part of our normal signage! Incidentally, I pointed out to the film crew that for all those flags they had posted in the classroom, they missed the Australian one!

While things have changed a bit over time, I have taught a few real Kylie Moles in my time!