Model Railway - What's your latest acquisition?

Nothing insane about it, if you like it and can afford it go for it! :-)

It is dangerous to judge value by ebay prices, it is a very uncertain and volatile market. Much depends upon who is bidding, and how sensible they are. Few bidders often means you get a bargain, but if you have one of those idiots with more money than sense bidding the price can go sky high. Ramsey's guide  (which is only a rough guide but does help to give a pointer) lists an unboxed "Lord Westwood" in excellent condition at £25, so you are about on the money. My unboxed HD 2207 0-6-0T I bought yesterday was labelled at £18, but (a) someone had swapped the couplings to Triang, (b) the paintwork and decals were 'rubbed', and (c) it was unboxed. Another similar but original, mint and boxed was on offer for £75. Ramsey's guide lists this as £50 clean unboxed and £70 mint boxed, so I am happy.

People run away with the idea that old Hornby Dublo is rare and valuable, but the opposite is in fact true, there were clean unboxed 'Silver King's and 'Duchess of Montrose's being offered for £45, and these were all in good working order. Ramsey's list them at £100, so it shows how unreliable guides of this nature can be. Triang is generally even cheaper too. and you can often pick up servicable locos for less than £20 the smaller ones for less than a tenner, and carriages for less than £7. Certain rare pieces can be pricey but unless you are a dedicated collector you will not actually want these.

hi, i have full set of HORNBY DUBLO, 3 rail, except for 2, and the valuable ones are more the southern tanks, and little diesels.  I run mine all the time, so probably devaluing, but i read somewhere that they better with regular use. Its things like theO gauge buildings in boxes, that fetch good money, mine are boxed, but on show. john

It's about the money for an unboxed Lord Westwood, however they are now a serious collectors item so it's worth seeking out a box for it. The trade uses Ramsay's guide as a benchmark as it offers a stable retail price, ebay prices fluctuate too much to be of any use for finding out prices of things. I've put mint locos on there that have gone for 99p in the past and for a fortune at other times!

Latest acquistions, a pile of third radius curves, 6 standard points new and unused at a bargain price, to diamond crossings, a Hornby Queen Mary Red Class D tank loco, a mint rival make B1, D.pol(later Hornby) N2 boxed mint, Tri-ang/Hornby motor brushes, a pile of Hornby empty boxes, some N gauge wagons by the main maker of them, Hornby Early Norstand Mineral wagon (now getting rare in early form), Hornby BR 20ton Brake Van, two big boxes of Tri-ang-Hornby EM2 pantographs, and earring drops!

The other half makes earrings etc., the earring drops will be fitted with highly polished old stock unflanged driving wheels, and go on the other half's stall as novelty limited edition jewellery, keeps her busy!

I just had delivered " The Heritage Rail Express" train pack. I was not going to buy the Duke 71000 because of some unfavourable reports. All I can say is that it looks very nice, especially close coupled. The BR MK1's in the pack are more than adequte in their repesentations of the real thing but I cannot see why the water feed pipes are moulded. Even the old HORNBY DUBLO SD coaches had wire pipes and that was 50 years ago. It is sad that the design clever method really takes the models back to the early China redos of models such as the Brits that were made around 2000 ie the revamped UK models.  I can say though, that Hornby have done a nice job with minimal addon parts to be broken off in transit and the overall look is good despite my reservations on some aspects.

I have just received another 'C' class 31579, from that shop near Binns Road.

The fact about scale / gauge discrepancy is certainly true. And the fact that the model railway media (magazines and forums) are 'calling the shots' has greatly influenced the model railway market, but not all of it is necessarily bad. Personally I am happy to accept a lesser degree of fine (and vulnerably delicate) detail but I am glad that proportionally the models are getting more accurate and the painting and lettering is so much better nowadays. The variety available is also much better, not perfect of course but that is always going to be a problem and will depend upon which group shouts loudest.

Tornado, DoG and CotN are of no interest to me, they represent specialist types that I will not find justified in a mainly Southern based collection, but recent models of MN, WC/BB, N15, V, Q1, N, C, Maunsell carriages and the promised 2Hal have more than justified my support for this hobby and the commercial manufacturers.

A railway model is all about creating an image. few if any of us if any can have a layout with scale length trains and scale curves, so the detail really only comes into its own in glass display cases. Footsteps and vacuum pipes have to be removed to clear bogie swing and a huge plastic coupler protruding from  under a buffer beam.

Nuff sed!

Two bargains off the bay. Hornby LNER A1 'Great Northern' and B team D11/2 Hobbie Elliott. Very happy with both!

The 2008 Collectors Club 0-4-0 Pullman shunter, which I've converted to DCC. Couldn't resist it, good runner as well for an 0-4-0.

SE&CR No 271 and SR A593 arrived in the post this morning.