murphaph

Yeah it's really well done isn't it. Very hard to see where the real stuff ends and the backscene begins.

When did the Norfolk Liner(s) actually start?

Former 086 to become 111 ca. 1995. Sanding down the top mould line.

Oh very nice work. Really looks the part. Are the transits prototypical for 1995 or are the later or freelance? I have looked for pics of similar but only ever found plain blue and red transits. Be cool if these existed in reality.

No problem. It's hard to tell the tone sometimes online

Anything coming into the EU is in principle subject to duties and VAT, new or used. The value and whether or not the item is a gift are what determine whether duties and/or VAT is charged. Many categories of items, including model railways are zero rated for duties (tariffs) but VAT is still due on virtually everything, unless it's a gift and even then the threshold is only €45 before VAT is due. I thought the UK was still following the same regime to be honest. HMRC might be waving stuff from the EU through, however that is an "operational decision" I guess. In Germany customs are waving nothing through. It's now very rare a parcel makes it through. Robert Shrives sent me a gift for 10GBP and it was stopped and VAT levied, incorrectly as well below the threshold. A book I bought from Jim Markle was incorrectly levied with 19% VAT instead of 7%. I make a point of claiming refunds for these very small amounts to cause more work than they are worth collecting. Many others are doing the same in the hope of getting the Zoll (German customs) to put pressure on the federal government to bring the issue back to Brussels to find a better solution for us all. We shouldn't be stopping small stuff from reputable countries just because certain predominantly far eastern sellers have been defrauding the tax authorities of the EU for years, by systematically under-declaring the value of commercial items. The solution is to stop everything from those countries and check it. They are still under-declaring the goods of course, just paying less in import duties and VAT! A threshold of €100 is totally normal elsewhere in the world. The effective €5 threshold in the EU is ridiculous and should go. Stricter checks on goods from the far east are the solution. Given the huge geopolitical changes we are experiencing right now, I can see this happening in that context.

No Jason I think you're reading something into my response that I certainly didn't intend. Apologies if I wasn't clear. I'll try to clarify... I've reread my post and can only assume it's the "tendency" word that made you think I was talking about your advice. In fact I was talking generally because the cab tends to naturally tilt forward when you pull up on it and this is because it's clipped to the chassis at the front base in the centre. Squeezing the cab sides forces the clip receptacle outward and allows the cab to be lifted straight up. I just thought I could add to the forum by adding to this thread rather than creating a separate one. Sorry for any offence caused. None was intended.

Hi all, Does anyone have any good colour code matches for the red buffers and yellow warning panel on these? The most important thing, the blue is ok, Revell 52. I think it was actually RAL 5010. Revell 52 and my RAL 5010 are dead ringers for each other on a sample anyway so it's the red and yellow details I'm after. Cheers!

Seeing as this thread was resurrected elsewhere I can contribute something useful to it. The above pictures show a design flaw with the babies leading to light bleed. There's a hint of white light being emitted from the red marker light. Paddy seems to have corrected this on the big GMs as I found out a couple of days ago when dismantling one. The light pipe design was modified thus: The light pipes received a silver paint (NOT where the light enters or exits obviously!) to help refract light internally presumably but also that black strip of plastic was inserted between those adjacent light pipes to ensure no cross contamination as a belt and braces approach. This improvement could fairly easily be retrofitted to the babies if you are going to the trouble of fixing the independent marker lights problem.

Apologies. I wasn't sure anymore. It was a great find

Was thinking the same. It rivals anything I've seen.

No probs. I think it may have been Sean who figured out that it was fairly easy to get the headlights to work independently of the marker lights on the babies. I had always assumed the same LEDs were responsible for the light but it seems they aren't.

Not me. I've never played around with the 141s beyond fitting a speaker and Loksound in one. I modified a 201 to allow the red marker lights to be switched off with an F button when hauling a train, maybe that's what you're thinking about

Ok I got impatient. In answer to my own question... There is a trick to releasing the cab. The tendency is to tilt the cab forward as initially this appears to be the only way to get any movement going. In fact this may just cause damage to the lamp irons. Luckily for me the first cab came off despite tilting it forward like this. Then I could see clearly how to properly do it. Lucky for me as the second cab was far stiffer. There's a clip at the front in the centre that holds the cab down. To release you need to squeeze the sides of the cab where the numbers are. This caused the front to bow out enough to let it slip up over the clip. The clip is visible in the exploded diagram if you know what you're looking for. By the way, everything else that needs to come off to respray the cab comes off without breaking except the windscreen wipers. The plastic is very soft and welds to the body such that removing them cleanly appears impossible to me. They will have to be glued back at the end.

I'm about to remove the cabs from my first 071 to respray it. Before I break something, is there any further details beyond wiggling it that might be of help? The cab does come apart from the sole plate I take it? Is it glued in or just clipped or what? Appreciate any pointers folks.

Oh it looks brilliant in its new home. You can appreciate the scale of it much more here. I always thought it was much smaller than it is in reality!

Very much looking forward to following your progress!

What year was that SNCF livery and did the loco ever run in revenue service like that?

I like it

Who buys Irish models in Japan and then decides Oh no I don't want it I'll sell it for 4 times the price? Is there business model I'm missing here?

Fantastic that this layout lives on.

Yeah it's the real cost of landing the goods in the EU, including postage. If the item was "free post" then customs can even assign a reasonable amount for postage and slap it on top. I never quite understood that as the real cost of landing the goods is the total paid. That a seller chooses to hide the postage cost in the total should not change this. I've been challenging every error the German customs makes by the way. I hope that if enough people do this, pressure will come on to bring back a sensible duty and vat free allowance. I've had books taxed at 19% for example. That's wrong. Books have 7% VAT here. The rules aren't just for you and me. The state must follow them too The last appeal I put in resulted in an automated response informing me that they are swamped with appeals and my case will take time to process. That's exactly what I wanted to hear.

Oh man, you'd think whoever put the 'out of service sticker' on it could have removed the big collection time one at the same time. Half arsedness at its finest.

With a bit of luck GB will rejoin the customs union if not the single market. Probably packaged as something else akin to Norway or Switzerland but in practice eliminating customs controls at least, and thereby the handling charges also. Without rejoining the single market though, parcel motel is not making a comeback unfortunately but under a new government I wouldn't rule it out in the next decade. Brexit just isn't delivering any tangible positives, certainly none that outweigh the negatives caused by leaving the SM and CU.

It would require a very small bit of circuitry to output a nice clean 5vdc from track voltage. I had always assumed this would be required to be honest. I wasn't all that optimistic that a usable supply would present itself that easily lol. So close though. I read on the Stummi forum (RMWeb for German) that the guy actually contacted ESU about his software and they said ok let us know how you get on. They clearly don't expect too many people to do this, which is probably true. Great posts Sean. Edit: The power supply will probably need some form of keep alive in the form of a capacitor, the more capacitance the better. Otherwise the board is likely to cut out at every bit of bad track it encounters and that would be annoying. The sound wouldn't restart like with a decoder obviously but it could be very "clicky".