At long last I've managed to get my hands on one or two of the new Hornby ex-LMS Stanier coaches which are that manufacturer's latest flagship attempt at passenger rolling stock.
I thought you were a diesel modeller, I hear echoing around? Well I'm a 'transition era' modeller and there were enough of these pre-nationalisation coaches around during that era for some to actually attract BR blue/grey livery, so discount them at your cost. Or maybe that should read - at their cost discount them!
I've waited a long time for these coaches. I travelled on them well into the sixties when travelling to work between Normanton and Leeds, and they were an integral part of my planning for an early 60s layout. With an RRP of £28.99 - a full £7.00 more expensive that the superlative Bachmann Mk1s - I was expecting near perfection! If we're going to approach the Continental manufacturers in pricing structure, then I think we're entitled to approach them in all round quality too.
So where am I going with this? Well firstly the coaches certainly look the part, scale pretty well and have a host of wonderful detailing touches. I say 'they look the part' or at least they do until you look at the colour. The BR maroon is hopelessly wrong - it's far too drab and matt and is sadly lacking the richness of the prototype livery. To my untrained eye, I'd say they're much too 'brown' in appearance.
Then there's the glazing. Again with a product at this end of the price range I would not expect to see any of the old-style prismatic effect around the edge of the windows, but sadly it's there for all to see if you look closely, and is marred further on several examples I've checked over by highly visible white glue. Whatever happened to Hornby's traditional quality control?
After going to the trouble of fitting a 'close-coupling' system to their recent Gresley coaches, and indeed to these new Staniers, it all appears to have been a total waste of effort. It's completely impossible to get the corridor connections to come any where near together. They should actually protrude further than the buffers, but don't, and I can't get a corridor to corridor connection closer than 5mm - totally unacceptable in 2005 - and then it's only that close because Hornby have chosen to add corridor connection blanking plates to the end of each coach. Even the preceding Gresley coaches can achieve a gap of around 1mm. There seems to be no easy way of remedying this problem without completely replacing the corridor connections.
Nit picking? I don't think so - at this price level I was expecting more, and to be honest these coaches don't hold a candle to the much cheaper, and much older Bachmann standard Mk1s, let alone come anywhere near close to the new Bachmann Pullmans in terms of quality and value for money.
Score out of 10 - only 6 I'm afraid. Can do much better!
John.