Locomotive Model reviews: use this thread to post your reviews of models for all to see

all models must have a final score, this is marked out of ten, as well as a short, verbal summary:

1-3/10 "don't bother" this is reserved for an absolutely terrible model, for example, the Triang class 08
4-5/10 "average" nothing out of the ordinary: not too bad, but nowhere near perfect
6-7/10 "Above average" not perfect, but a great model nonetheless
8-9/10 "Highly recommended" very close to the mark, but a few key factors let it down
10/10 "perfect" the best there is, no other offering of the same model could possibly beat it, an example would include something made by Golden Age Models

Hornby's Railroad Flying Scotsman:
Hornby’s ‘Railroad’ Range is a range that is designed for the more money conscious of us out there, It uses older body shells and fits them to model chassis, providing the best compromise between price and performance. When the range first started (in 2010 I believe), one of its earliest models was L.N.E.R A1/A3 #4472 Flying Scotsman in L.N.E.R Apple Green.

This particular model used the body shell from the tender drive version, which dates back to the late 1980s, whilst using the superb super detail L.N.E.R. Pacific chassis (albeit with the clunky valve gear and overscale tender from the tender drive version); complete with fixed Cartazi truck (a prototypical feature, and not, as I thought at the time, laziness on Hornby’s part), five pole motor and D.C.C. ready socket.
In 2012 Hornby retired this version after 2 years of service and introduced a completely new tooling designed specifically for the Railroad Range.

This new version currently retails for a price of £69.99 ($109.59), features an all-new die caste chassis, 3-pole flywheel motor, N.E.M. 365 couplings and comes D.C.C. ready.
In this review, I will be looking for a few things:
1. Does it capture the look and feel of the prototype to a reasonable degree?
2. Does it perform well on the rails?
3. Is it robust enough for its intended demographic (young kids getting their first model)?
4. Is it good value for money

The locomotive comes in a polystyrene box surrounded by cardboard printed in red and yellow with two-tone grey lining, this helps to set it apart from the standard range and makes it clear to any parent that this is the cheapest option available off the shelf whilst at the same time protecting the locomotive from damage, my only complaint was that there was a small amount of oil on the wheels which i had to clean off. My advice to hornby would be to use it a lot more sparingly, as oil on the tracks and wheels can cause no end of trouble.

Included with the locomotive is an instruction manual and a small bag of details, though I was slightly disappointed to find out that the plastic driver and fireman that has been included with most, if not all Hornby locomotives and train sets for the past 50 years or so, were absent with this locomotive. Could it be that Johnny Sander and Charley Heaver have finally gone into well-deserved retirement? Only time will tell.

Overall, the locomotive does a fine job of capturing the feel of the real Flying Scotsman, you can tell immediately that it's supposed to be Flying Scotsman, the fact that Hornby have bothered to replicate the distinctive burnished metal on the smokebox door is a big contributor no doubt, something which they failed to do with their budget model of 60163 Tornado.

looks are everything when it comes to producing a scale model, the fact that Hornby omitted a distinctive feature of the 'face' of a high profile locomotive such as Tornado, ruined what would have been an otherwise brilliant model

this particular model is designed to represent #4472 after 1934, when it received its distinctive corridor tender. There are, however, a few discrepancies in detail; such as a chimney (smoke stack) that is from G.N.R. years, and a cab that is more correct for Thompson’s terrible rebuild of #4470 Great Northern, though I’m not particularly fussed about such finicky details. If it looks the part, then who am I to complain?

Edward Thompson's infamous rebuilt of the very first A1; #4470 'Great Northern'. It was well known that Thompson had a grudge against Gresley, the fact that he converted a locomotive that would otherwise have been guaranteed a spot amongst preserved locomotives, thus removing it from the list for good (not to mention giving it extremely poor performance in the process) only proves this fact

One detail that does leave me feeling a bit cheated is the fact that the lettering (which should be a 3D gold and red design), is merely flat gold. From a distance, it does not look too bad, but up close, it is very much noticeable, and rather distracting as the 3d L.N.E.R. font was a very distinctive feature on the real locomotive.

Another area where they have omitted features is the lining, instead of the white-black-white of the prototype, Hornby have opted for solid white lining on the boiler, this is somewhat more understandable as it would bump the price up if they had opted for super detailed lining.

On the tender there is white-black-white lining, though I suspect this is because it would be very noticeable if they had gone for plain white lines here.

Credit where it’s due though, none of these details were misprinted in any way and all the colours and edges are nice and crisp. The body shells are finely moulded, with only the tiniest hint of a moulding line on either, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the vents on the cab roof had been moulded in different positions, thus adding a degree of character to the model. There is even some separately applied detail on the locomotive and tender, namely handrails and safety valves on the boiler and smoke box, and brake handles on the Tender.

Inside the cab, there is a wealth of moulded on details such as pipes and gauges (though this is a standard affair on British models).

There is even moulded on footsteps at the front, a very nice touch. They could have opted to forgo these, and I wouldn’t have complained, but it’s nice that they went to the effort of designing it into the mold
One area where the moulding on both the loco and tender did not satisfy me (and I’m in no way alone in this opinion) was the buffers, which whilst very nicely detailed, are insanely flimsy and made of plastic, this wouldn’t be so bad…if it wasn’t a model intended for young children. Surely non-sprung metal buffers or even the old style plastic buffers (which are virtually indestructible) would have been a more sensible choice; an increase in price of a few pounds would be understandable if it meant it was more durable. It is for this reason that I have bought some ‘fit-it-yourself’ L.N.E.R. prototype sprung buffers (ironically made by Bachmann) to fit when I have the correct equipment, until then the buffers look fine as-is.

Moving on to the chassis, this is where I am most impressed, the valve gear is at a size and fineness one would expect from a super detail model, it was for this reason alone that I decided to by this version.

I have the 2010-2012 version, and whilst it had a brilliant chassis, for me the biggest let down was the valve gear, it was big and clunky. I shall be retiring the old one and relegating it to a backup with the intention of eventually converting it into the practically unheard of Robinson A2 in its rebuilt form, with A3 boiler and cartazzi truck.

The ill fated class of 5 Raven A2s were rushed and badly designed, they were also some of the longest rigid framed locomotives in Britain at the time of completion, one was rebuilt with a Gresley boiler and cartazzi truck. Throughout their lives they were ill maintained and relegated to fitted freights and heavy semi-fasts. When they were withdrawn in the 1930s they went away with a mere whimper. No one notice them when they were still around and no one really noticed they were gone until it was too late.

Another detail that has me impressed is one that cannot be captured on camera, not without breaking the warranty. Behind the wheels, it is possible to make out fine rivet and prototypical chassis detail; they have even gone to the effort of having a support strut for the running board moulded into the chassis, another detail that Hornby did not have to do, but they did anyway. Yet another improvement over the old chassis is that they have molded the Cartazi truck and even part of the fire box(!) into the die cast chassis, this gives it an increase in pulling power (always welcome), and it looks stunning

In terms of performance, it is yet again a brilliant model, straight out of the box it is a smooth and quiet performer. No doubt this is aided by the 3-pole flywheel motor, no matter how quickly you kill the power, it will smoothly slow to a stop every single time without fail.

now would i go around raving that they absolutely have to buy this model? In short, NO!
it costs £70, when it's worth something along the lines of £50-£60, so i wouldn't recommend it for the price it's currently at, however, it has the makings of a brilliant Gresley A1/A3 and i wouldn't tell you to not get it

to sum up:
"Above average"

in total I'm giving it a 7/10, as it's so close to being a brilliant model, but some aspects really let it down

Pros:
Brilliant detail
Valve gear
Crisp paint scheme
Excellent performance
Flywheel motor
D.C.C. ready.
NEM couplings

Cons:
Price
Buffers
Lettering, lining and numbering

Information
Gresley A1/A3/A10

Raven A2

Thompson rebuilt A1/1 'Great Northern'

3825197 Hattons' Heljan L.M.S. Beyer-Garratt (soon to be re-reviewed)

Here in the UK, Hattons is a Liverpool based model shop known throughout the UK for extremely good discounts and commissioning the occasional unique model, such as Bachmann's model of the L.M.S. Diesel twins

in 2013 (i think, my memory is a little foggy on that particular detail), Hattons made the surprise announcement that no one was expecting: It would be collaborating with Danish company Heljan (Pronounced Hell-Yan), a company that exclusively produced Diesel locomotives, to create the L.M.S. beyer garratt 2-6-0+0-6-2: the only mass-built mainline garratt to run on britain's railways

after mulling it over for a while, i decided to fork out the £199 required to purchase this monster of a loco, and in the summer of last year (2014), it arrived

the locomotive comes in a very secure box which is the standard affair of model companies today, the loco i chose was the L.M.S. plain black version with rotating coal bunker

Once you get the cardboard packaging off you are greeted by the sight of the monster of a locomotive suspended in ice.

once out of the packaging you really start to get a feel for the immense size of the locomotive.

the only complaint i have is the method for joining the tree parts together: the two power units and the boiler & cab. They are joined via wires, as the motors are in the power units, but the decoder-plug is located in the center unit, with nothing other than a magnet that couldn't support the weight of a mouse holding each power unit to the boiler. So, whatever you do, do not pick it up by the boiler section the result will be £200 down the drain faster than you can blink

moving on, the loco has some of the best detail i have seen, the garratts were generally very plain, but what detail there is has been replicated beautifully, including, for the first time on a OO gauge model, accurate representations of the four bolts that would have been used to hold the return crank onto the wheel

the only complaint is on one side the return cranks have been set wrong, on the real locomotive all four were set with the tip facing towards the rear of the loco when the motion was at the bottom of the wheel, but on the model this is only true for one side. I personally would have expected Heljan to have fully researched this detail considering they had already been working on the model for a year when they announced it and it took a further two years to reach the shelves.

moving on to the front of the loco, all of the handrails have been correctly fitted, though they would have been better unpolished, you even get a lit L.M.S./B.R. pattern lamp set to a class J headcode at both ends, each denoting a "though mineral or empty wagon train" a feature that makes this even better is the lamps light up red or white, depending on the direction the locomotive travels, this is a very nice touch and definitely the locomotive's party-piece.

underneath the locomotive there is a wealth of linkage detail and pipework, including reverser linkage

on the track the model performs flawlessly, producing only a quite rumble that seems to whisper "Poweeer!", it has incredible haulage capacity as well, capable of pulling 100 wagons at least

now moving onto details you can't see, both power units contain powerful 5-pole flywheel motors that have been thoroughly tested to ensure they work in sync, and there is a factory installed speaker located in the firebox, though no sound decoder is fitted, meaning you have to dish out an extra £100 to sound fit the loco, surely an interesting project to do in the future. Also of note, the DCC socket is located in the firebox, and is accessed by simply unscrewing the bottom of the firebox and performing the necessary steps to instal a decoder as you would with any other locomotive

To sum up:
"Highly recomended"

I'm giving this locomotive a 9/10, as it is very nearly a perfect model, but there are a for details that just seem to detract from the model

Pros:
Value for money
Excellent detail
Fully painted cab
Highly detailed valve gear
Weight and high hauling power
Factory fitted speaker.
Factory fitted, working lamps that light up both white and red, and are set to the correct headcode for the type of trains the real locomotive pulled
All details are factory fitted

Cons
No form of coupling between the center unit and the power units, leading to a high risk of damaging the model if not handled correctly
restrictive cab-space, making it hard to fit crew, and not without cutting off their legs
Inconsistencies with the setting of the valve gear

Information:

Information on the L.M.S. Garratt

British headcodes