Form your note on delivery dates I see Hornby are unlikely to be following Bachmann with the release of the Scot ! pity Bachmann chose to do the Rebuilt before Parallel boiler, I suppose they could see life in the old tools for another run.
Yes Mainline looked very good but quite a few wouldnt run. Must admit had I found an Airfix one before a mainline - or even Bachmann - then would probably have just got Airfix (till the new ones arrived). I have no problem with tender drive.
It will be interesting to compare the two manufacturers' offerings. The 'Royal Scots' and 'Jubilees' were two of my favourite locomotives and I shall probably have to have one of each - sadly for display only as neither fit in with my current modelling plans. The real question is of course whether my choice will be Hornby or Bachmann?
The rebuilt Scot has far greater sales potential than the parallel boiler version. Even this old bugger never saw a PB Scot in action - they'd all been rebuilt before my interest in railways started in (or around) 1957.
The Airfix tender drive was terrible, whether it was in the Scots, 4Fs, 2Ps, Castles or whatever. I think it's really sad that Hornby perpetuate that in the ex-Airfix/Dapol 4Fs and 2Ps. It really must hamper their potential sales.
I'd love a high quality 4F or two, but the present Hornby offering doesn't look or run anything like their more recent models.
It's a far better model than the 4F and maybe worthy of a kit-built chassis underneath, although in that case the tender will also require a new chassis.
Hmm, I don't know. From a detail point of view, I think both the 2P and the
4F aren't in any way poor models (though I don't know about their dimensional accuracy). It's just that awful tender drive that really lets them down for me.
The 4F has issues in the way the cab roof and cab sides join from memory, and the quality of detail is poor. I also think that the splashers are too big and are missing the beading from the circumference.
It certainly doesn't quite capture the 'atmosphere' of a 4F for me.
I can't remember the blokes name (it's totally incomprehesible in English anyway) but there was a CZ (can't spell that either!) chap who designed some very innovative, and frankly weird, cars during the 30's. One was a concept of a vehicle that looked remarkable like the Beetle, rear engine and all. His designs were pinched when CZ was annxed/invaded (can't remember which). As far as I know he never actually built one, but he certainly came up with the concept.
Ah! I see the confusion - I was using CZ as an abbreviation for Chzecosolovakia (which I can't spell!), it never ocurred to me that CZ motorbikes whould would be associated!
">> There must have been something right about the Beetle for it to have been in
Depends on what you mean by 'the concept'; as a cheap family car just about everyone took up the idea.
If you mean rear engined, then a few did, the same with with air-cooled engines.
As for the Mini, you don't see many rubber coned supension cars on the road, or cars with very small wheels. About the only feature that survives is the transverse engine, and the Mini wasn't the first.
So it is about honours, even apart from the long production run for the Beetle.
I must admit I thought that you were referring to the CZ company not the country.
The Beetle was never cheap st start with! It only got cheap late in life when produced in cheaper countries and as more modern designs gain complexity (and hence cost).
Indeed
Just about every autmotive engineer would disagree - the transverse engine with integral gearbox, not having leaf springs, maximising the cabin size in relation to the body, putting the wheels on the very corners to give maximum handling, front wheel drive with no gearbox tunnel, getting rid of the rear axle and simply being designed to allow "the average family" to own one, and be able get in (until the Mini, Mr Average could afford a motrobike or one of the bubble cars, Mini was the much same price as a bubble car and not much more than a motorbike and side car), etc etc was all new, radical stuff and is reflected in every small car since, almost all medium cars and increasingly in larger cars. The Mini fundamentally changed design conecpts (what type the actual suspension etc is is irrelevant) and expectations. The Beetle contibuted a whole lot of "don't"s, which could be seen as a legacy I suppose - but certainly no one else thought "oh! that's a good idea, lets copy it!" which is the clincher.
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think any tinplate wagons were produced with plastic wheels by the Meccano factory, although as you suggest some may have been converted by retailers or individuals.
It wasn't until the SD6 range of plastic wagons went into production that plastic wheels were fitted and marketed for 2 or 3 rail operation.
Very nearly at the corners in a Beetle, the engine layout behind the rear wheels also maximizes cabin space.
No transmission tunnel in a Beetle ether.
The basic mini price in 1959 was £497 and that was very basic, not even a heater, the Beetle was a little more expensive at £550.but did have a very good heater, automatic choke, windscreen washers and kept going in the wet.
The mini was not the first to use any of these concepts, perhaps it did happen to come along at the right time when the average person had more money actually buy a car
I am not sure that I agree with that, the Beetle had a lot of good points, unfortunately perhaps they were too radical for a conservative motor industry and buying public. There is nothing basically wrong with air cooled engines or rear engined rear wheel drive, and with the same amount of research and development that has been put into water cooled they could have been just as successful. Certainly up to the seventies there was also a strong anti foreign car feeling in the UK which no doubt helped the Mini when compared to the Beetle.
It is interesting that most upmarket, sports and specialist cars do not use any of the 'Mini' concepts. So perhaps the Beetle route would have been the better way to go.
Anyway I'll stick to my Disco, it's a long time since I had an air cooled car (911). (:-))
But theh Mini was revolutionary, so the market cannot be accused of conservative. It was widely predicted amongst the tradionalist designers that Mini woul never catch on, for all the cliche reasons, but look what happened
I doubt it - even motorbikes are water cooled these days - you just cant get the heat away from the cylinder walls with air.
Or was it just that the Beetle is pretty cumbersome in comparison? As for anti-foreign car feelings in the 70's, by the late 70's and early
80's were very much the other way round.
But the whole point of the Mini as that it was a *not* a specialist car. A lot of performance cars do infact use Mini concepts - all of the "Hot Hatches" for a start! Even the clowns on Top Gear acknowledge it's influence, which speaks volumes, and front-wheel drive cars seem to dominate the Touring Cars scene on the occasions I see it on the TV. Of course a front-wheel drive Farrari is never goin to happen, but that probably has as much to do with there being no space in the front as anything else.
I've never had one - there' crap off-road (911 that is).
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