The hostler's stand is at a fixed position about a third of the way along the right-hand side of the B-unit. This stand only allows driving at slow speeds around the yard.
For normal main-line use, the driving position of the B unit is in the front of the A unit, via multiple-unit controls.
Wow, that's not going to allow much of a view - makes me think of the sort of driving one encounters in supermarket car parks.
Yeah yeah, I know all that. ;-)
Granted, many B units had no hostler's stand.
But since you want to quibble:
"Right hand side" implies a front and a back end, as the right hand side is the one your right when you are looking out or towards the front end. So there is a "driving end" on (some) B units.
And to confuse the issue even more, some B units had an F painte on the frame at one end to denote it as the Front end. Dunno whether tha influenced the placement of the hostler's stand.
There were also GPs built as B units....
HAH!
Er, I meant, HTH. ;-)
kim said the following on 18/08/2007 16:07:
I'm a manager of a small manufacturing facility, and although there are certain standards of quality below which we refuse to drop, a customer who pays for 100% inspection/test is guaranteed to have a higher pass rate (100%!) than one who only wants to pay for sample inspection and no test. Things do go wrong in any manufacturing process, and it's up to the end customer to decide how much risk he is prepared to take compared to the cost of reducing that risk.
Wilson.R.Adams said the following on 19/08/2007 19:33:
I suspect that the Blue Pullman is one of those models that everyone wants, but no-one will buy. As John says, it was pretty inaccurate anyway. If the model suddenly became readily available (and 2500 is a high number, not limited) then I think the appeal would go. Who would spend, say, £175 on an inaccurate representation of a 6-car set from tooling that is 40-odd years old?
Talking of tooling that can't be used to represent any other model, nor can be repainted into any other livery other than the liveries that the prototype operated under.... :-)
Oops, I sit corrected! :-) I was, of course, referring to a "proper" driving cab... ;-)
"Collectors" and "retro modellers".
(kim)
kim said the following on 20/08/2007 13:45:
But wouldn't they want the real 1960s thing? Otherwise it's just a reproduction they're buying.
"Paul Boyd" wrote
Try buying one of the recent 'Lorna Doone' models from Hornby. These are simply a re-issue of the old 'Lord of the Isles' tooling with a very slightly uprated chassis - different motor and more pick-ups. I think there was only around 1,000 of these produced.
My guess is that 1,000 of the 'Blue Pullmans' might sell - I'd certainly risk an order for half-a-dozen of them, but I suspect demand is relatively small; indeed when I sold a boxed one on eBay a few months back it only made around £75, so whether the market would stand such a number priced probably around £150 is anyone's guess.
John.
Marklin collectors do!
You don't need much of a view. You have other people on the ground instructing you when to stop and start, so you only need to be able to see them.
I don't see why they shouldn't sell, There's plenty of collectors that would love to get their hands on one or two sets, plus quite a few modellers. £75 for a boxed set isn't a bad price to get. I've seen them go for a higher price than that. I bought the 1974 version unboxed for £50.
Wilson a few weeks ago.
They were the ones that were permanently coupled to the A unit by means of a drawbar. When they were converted to using normal couplers, hostlers' stands were added.
Don't forget that A and B units were similar, except for B units not having a cab, so the front of a B unit (where the F was painted) was the same end as the front of an A unit (where, unsurprisingly, the F was painted). Apart from hostling them around the yard, B units were never driven by themselves, and as it didn't matter which way round they were marshalled in a consist the concept of "driving end" for a B unit is meaningless.
I understand that that was mandatory under federal regulations. Something to do with hood units, where some railroads designated the long hood as the front, whereas others designated the short hood as the front.
I doubt it.
True.
Well it certainly helps raise the confusion level.
>"Greg Procter" wrote
Maybe not in sufficient numbers - Marklin went into administration not so long ago and were bought out by a British merchant bank (venture capitalists?).
John.
"Private equity group".
They take an existing company which is losing money, delist it from the stock exchange, then claim the losses back from their tax liability.
(kim)
The problem with the "Collectors" market is that each purchase is an individual and isolated event. (as opposed to the "modeller" who tends to purchase to a specific theme) With the downturn in the German market/economy the collectors reduced their buying drastically. That of course was the market that Ma had directed their marketting/output towards in the last decade or so. We modellers still want the Bay G4/5 - LNER A1 - T7 - ... so a change in fortunes just slows our purchases. Hopefully the venture capitalists will figure the three different markets and pick the segments that will allow Trix and LGB to survive.
Greg.P.
..... then asset-strip it and sell the intellectual property when they have gained all they can.
Richard
Isn't the problem with "centre cars", a lack of. From what I remember, I lot of Pullman sets were sold, but with very few centre cars to extend the train length. Even if the centre cars were not of the right types, some do just buy them anyway to make a set the right length. Just try any magazine photo of a "full length" train and you are likely to find it consists of Brake 3rd's & Compo's.
Kevin Martin
John Turner said the following on 20/08/2007 17:32:
Did that sell well, then? I wonder how many people bought it because it's a nice engine, and how many bought it with some thoughts of investment value :-) My original LOTI was bought with the intention of hacking it about into a better model, but then I bought the K's Milestones version instead as a better base for hackery.
eBay is strange with regard to Blue Pullmans - you have to get the timing just right, and of course you only know that if you're selling one! It's the centre coaches that tend to go for large sums, but for some reason including the centre coach as part of a three car set seems to devalue the centre coach sometimes!
I was at a model railway show not so many years ago browsing about the second-hand stalls, as you do, when I espied boxes of more stuff underneath, specifically the arse end of a Blue Pullman centre coach. I bought three of them at a tenner each, which completed the car count for a Western Pullman (even if the wrong consist). Eventually I saw the set for what it was - an old inaccurate model - and flogged the lot on eBay.
I bought it for nostalgia. I would have loved to have had the original Lord of the Isles when it first came out but couldn't possibly have afforded it. Quite a few years later I got a rather battered one cheaply second hand but it never ran very well fitted with a zero one decoder and I never had the time to sort it out. Now I'm retired with some spare cash and time, I can indulge myself occasionally. Despite its solid hand rails and gap between the front bogies and the body, I get pleasure from looking at it with these ageing eyes. It's sitting in line with a number of other GWR engines waiting for me to get round to fitting DCC decoders.
Alan
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