O'N' the gauge fe'N'ce!

[Dock Shunter]

Sesame Street - Let's hear it for Capital N!


Classic Sesame Street - Letter "N" interview

[moogle]

I'm all punned out after reading this, but it confirms that this place is indeed inhabited by Nutters.

I'll get my coat 

Hey!  I've been recognised! 

Now where did I put my meds? 

[Karhedron]

All manner of variety of tank engines and small diesels are included as well, as I have a fairly broad interest era wise stretching from pre-Grouping until the early 60's. I doubt I would be using much passenger equipment, except perhaps 4-wheeled stock if modeling an earlier era.

If using smaller locos then one recommendation is make sure you use electrofrog points. These are particularly beneficial for short wheelbase locos who have a tendancy to stall on insulfrog points when running at low speed (e.g. shunting). There is no 4-wheeled passenger stock currently on the market that I am aware of. Farish used to produce some 4-wheeled coaches but these were generic models that did not represent any particular prototype and were simply painted in different colours for different companies. They tend to command silly prices on eBay these days.

I want to pursue automatic uncoupling - I want to be able to operate the layout from a completely 'third person' perspective, with nothing but control panel and controller (i.e. without the hand of God!)

My limited experimenting suggests the new Dapol couplers should fit the bill although other couplers are worth a look ifyou are happy to modify your stock.

There appear to be dreadfully small production runs at any one time and a much smaller secondhand market. I loved the green whiskered 121 by Dapol, but I saw not a one so much as rear it's head on the internet since it's launch, as they were all pre-ordered! The Farish 3MT also seemed to come and go in a flash, as did a few other models.. how frustrating is it to obtain a model not currently in production over the internet?

It can require patience but it is not impossible. Ironically the internet is not the best place to look as model shops with a strong online presence tend to sell out quickly. Getting a copy of a magazine such as railway modeller and contacting some of the smaller stores may yield better results. At least one shop I know of still had green, whiskered 121s as of last week.

Dapol have said they will be producing the similar 122 in 2012 and will include a green whiskered version. My advice with this (and any other loco you definitely want) is to pre-order as soon as they become available.

[EtchedPixels]

My Dapol rule of thumb is except for "special liveries" - wait

The second and third generation models sometimes have mechanism improvements and minor errors fixed (like silver cab windows on the blue 121). They often come out with weathered ones later, and they price also comes down. Special liveries you take your chance though.

For Farish i tend to wait a bit just to see if the model sucks on review, but beyond that it is very very rare they make changes between re-runs beyond numbering and minor livery items.

Alan