SRman

The red one doesn't look too bad at all, but Brekina rather shot themselves in their foot with the green one. As the OP says, Green Line versions were the RMC, which had dual headlights and rear doors, with a modifed back end to match. London Transport's country area did not have any standard RMs, only the lengthened RML versions with the extra half bay in the middle, so the model does not truly represent any green bus or coach versions.

Some fun on Newton Broadway, with the running of the preserved Stephenson's Rocket and its train.

I'll have to check, if someone doesn't beat me to it, but I thought the lettering was red on the stone colour. Don't quote me on that yet, though.

The Mainline/Replica model, excellent as it was, suffers slightly from over-prominent window frames. Many years ago I bought a green one with a scratch on one side at a much reduced price. When it came to repainting it, I filed the window frames down somewhat, then painted the rims black, and the effect is almost flush-glazed, because the sides were commendably thin. On a much lighter note, somewhere back in the 1970s, Model Rail Constructor ran an April article with plans for the British Rail toasted teacake. That would be an ideal subject to finish ff your new Hornby models!

I don't remember removing any screws. They may be the ones holding the cab moulding in place. They are fiddly to remove the bodies, and even more fiddly to replace, but mine did eventually clip back in. I found I had to jiggle it a little to get it to sit over the cab lighting properly, then lowered the body as evenly as possible onto the chassis, before easing the sides slightly at one end to get it it sit down, then the same thing at the other end before firmly pushing the whole length of the body down.

I have four of these Heljan models, and none have exhibited any tendencies to derail (except when there has been "operator error"!). Check for freedom of swing on the bogies, trying different angles to see if they are catching anywhere. If you have the screw couplings fitted, they can be a pain at times, dropping into the tension lock loops and limiting the swing. Generally speaking, Heljan's locomotives have plenty of free movement in their bogies, and the Co-Co designs have the very free-floating centre axles, so are effectively Bo-Bo's with an idler axle in the middle of each bogie doing nothing useful - they are there for appearance only.

Having built (or being in the process of building) several Bratchell kits, I can say the basic shells go together very well and form a nice, robust structure. The underframe details supplied are a little crude, and could be improved, but the units can go together quite quickly and be made to run very nicely with a little added weight. My own units have all been motorised using Replica Railways motorised chassis with 12mm wheels. So far I have done, or am still finishing, two class 455 units, a class 456 (unmotorised but soon to receive half of a Replica chassis), and two class 319s. All benefit from removing moulded handrails and adding wire ones, plus the necessary SR jumper cables where appropriate. They are getting a little expensive now (but what else isn't?), but I still have plans for one more class 319 when the livery I want is released.

Not all versions of the Hornby Q1 had the oil lubricator drive and linkages, in line with the real ones. You could consider checking photos and renumbering to suit.

You should try it with two cats! Somehow, I seem to end up with both of them on me at night: sometimes just one or the other, sometimes both at once. Occasionally one will lie on my other half, but not so often.

It's proof that the Earth is flat. It is the square pole at the centre that we rotate around!

If you are seeing it upside down, it proves you are not in Australia (or NZ)!

I did exactly what you propose: fitted a newer DCC-ready chassis into an older body from a split chassis version. I did have to modify the mounting points to suit. I can't remember for sure, but I may ave had to grind away a small amount of plastic from inside the body too. Conversely, I reused the still operational split chassis, converted to DCC, in the newer pannier body (with minor mods again to suit), painted into my industrial fleet, where slow speed running required of it reduces/hides the obvious waddling motion of that chassis. I have swapped wheelsets around but all of them had some wobbles, so I chose those with the least run-outs.

I was going to find and post a link to Unwinism myself, but you have beaten me to it!

I don't think 1800 rpm was the rev limit, but was the recommended/suggested change-up speed. Certainly some units accelerated to the top speeds better than others. Having ridden classes 110 and 111 from Leeds to York and back, they had no difficulty sitting on 70 mph (looking through the screens behind the driver). Similarly, two power twin class 104 units from Manchester Victoria via the Oldham loop were racing along at top speed within a short time of leaving the station stops. On the other hand, a class 120 unit on the Ayr line was extremely ponderous, even allowing for speed limits, it was very slow accelerating to the speeds. I haven't checked, but weren't the 120s quite heavy units but still fitted with the AEC/Leyland 150 bhp engines? As an aside, one of these units I rode on had all sorts of masking tape around the inside corners of the cab, and someone had scrawled in black marker pen, "Very cold and draughty cab".

I agree with the recommendations for Zimo. Good budget price for a premium decoder. Having said that, two of my 350s have ESU LokSound v3.5 decoders fitted with legomanbiffo sounds. These two have both been turned into class 450s with vinyl overlays. The biggest problem with those is there is not room for a decent speaker. A Bachmann 450 and a 350/1 both have Lenz Silver 21-pin decoders fitted, also a very good decoder but bought and fitted before the budget Zimo decoders were available. If I was doing it now I would certainly go the Zimo route.

Nahh. Blue's the way to go! I agree about the number plates; much better than some of the flat printed ones most other RTR manufacturers seem to offer. That's what made me keep the number rather than changing to my usual etched Narrow Planet plates.

I have seen a slow moving wall of water (heavy tropical downpour) coming down my street's hill in Rockhampton (in Central Queensland, right on the Tropic of Capricorn), so it would have been possible to have different weather between the front and the back of the house for a few minutes. It doesn't seem to happen here in Melbourne, so I think it is wishful thinking on Sykes' part ... if, indeed, he thinks at all.

I succumbed to temptation a few months ago and bought 1366 in GWR shirtbutton livery from Rails. It too has the stiff leading axle, but running has been very good. I do intend bracing the soft Heljan pickups a little with some brass wire and/or phosphor-bronze strip - something I also want to do with their class 05 and 07 diesel shunters for the same reasons. My 1366 was destined to go into my private (fictional) industrial fleet, so the cheapest model from Rails was entirely appropriate seeing as I was going to commit the ultimate sacrilaege for GWR mdoellers and fans and repaint it into a blue livery! I chose BR express passenger steam blue, and it is seen here partly finished with what is now my Christmas train (after repainting a couple of those German coaches into gaudier liveries). I still intend to add some white lining to the loco and some nameplates. I decided to leave the GWR number plates in place rather than giving it a number in my industrial sequence, though. I think the blue actually suits it quite well.

For some reason, Heljan insist on using cranked couplings on most of their British OO stock. I usually substitute Hornby or Bachmann straight couplings. The NEM pockets are not often the culprits, but if they do droop (not just applicable to Heljan, here) I usually put a tiny blob of black-tack or Blu-tack into the triangular locating notch and reseat the pocket into that.

Sykes gets quite upset if it is raining. We open the back door to let him out (and Hattie too, if she wants to go), but if it is raining, Sykes stops and looks at us, looks out again then turns around and demands to be let out of the front door - he seems to think the weather will be different if he goes out at the front.

I'm not sure they'd work well togetehr on DC, but with a bit of work in DCC they could probably be adjusted to play nicely together, without too much fighting.

That last photo illustrates that for Gatwick traffic, the centre coaches were usually marshalled the "wrong" way round, so the ex-buffet area was adjacent to the luggage area of the DMBC, meaning that the toilets were all collected at the other end of the train, with the TS and DTS having them near the gangway connections.

Having converted a Hornby 110 to a 3-car 104 many years ago, then adding a 104 DT from a Hornby TS, I would like a better model, and Heljan's looks to be promising. In the 1980s I had a very stirring ride in a pair of 104 power twins from Manchester Victoria via the Oldham loop to Preston. The acceleration was electric, and arrival at every stop was early so we had to await time. The Hornby conversions I did are in plain BR blue, reflecting those memories, but I might be tempted by either an earlier green Heljan model, or possibly one of the NSE sets as being a bit closer to "home" for my London area SR-based layout.

Another European purchase has graced Newton Broadway. A Roco Swedish Rc3 locomotive in the latest SJ black livery arrived in the post. A Zimo MX637 PLuX22 decoder was fitted, but it took me a little while to work out that the dip switches on the loco's pcb had to be set to 'off' to allow the upper and lower headlights to be controlled independently. The photo shows the loco straight out of the box (well, just after fitting the decoder), and the video shows the lighting effects after setting those dip switches and reprogramming the tail light outputs using JMRI Decoder Pro to make them flash approximately once every second. Quite a few of the extra detailing parts supplied in the box have been fitted to the loco by the time of taking the video.

This sounds like a very attractive theory.