Widnes Road - (For Sale)- SOLD

Widnes Road finishes its exhibition life in February 2014, with a final showing at Stafford Showground and will be potentially FOR SALE after this date to free up some room for my next project. Please contact me with 'sensible' offers if interested in taking on this well known exhibition layout.

Update - April 2014, Widnes Road has now gone to a new home. New model railway projects are now in the planning stages.

ACME E-lok Baureihe 120 141-7 DB - Epoche VI

Hot on the heels of  the latest Brawa Voith Gravita 10BB which arrived last week from The Hobby Store in Faversham www.hobb-e-mail.com/‎,  their latest HO arrival in the form of the long awaited DB E-lok Baureihe 120 141-7 in the current DB Traffic Red livery, pre-fitted with Loksound decoder was picked up from the shop today, and I've taken some photos to give a flavour of what to expect from this premium release...

The packaging is superb, very similar to the excellent boxes that ESU ship their premium locos in, complete with a solid plastic base to which the loco is bolted, an allen-key is provided for release. This is a further improvement in loco packaging and would be suitable for transporting in future, given the very fine detail these models are now coming with as standard.

First impression are, it was worth the wait, ACME have really captured the beautiful simplicity of the BR 120 well, all angles look spot on, with the all important 'face' particularly pleasing. The decoder is the standard ESU Loksound we've come to know as fitted to both ESU and Roco offerings of late complete with the usual array of sounds including platform announcements, door closing and the various compressors and brake sounds of the loco itself. Performance is superb, as should be expected from a loco in this price bracket, with the third headlight and cablights independently switchable. The pantograph is an excellent representation of the prototype, and is not cursed with an over-firm spring so rides the catenary well without exerting undue forces. All in all I cannot fault this, and it scores a perfect 10.

BRAWA - Voith Gravita 10 BB, DB BR 261 Review

The latest Brawa Voith Gravita 10BB arrived from The Hobby Store in Faversham

www.hobb-e-mail.com/‎ late last week, and I managed to spend a few hours at the weekend getting to know it better... 

I managed to get hold of the DB Traffic red livery as 261 061-6, which sold out almost instantly on all the German model railway shop websites. Which goes to show sometimes there are advantages modelling a minority interest subject area in the UK, as even though both DB livery models are sold out at Brawa and in Europe, a small specialist shop in Kent had two...

First thoughts on removing from the well packed box (similar to the latest Bachmann boxes and far better than Roco's impossible to access polystyrene efforts), is that this is a beautifully detailed model, albeit I imagine rather fragile due to the plethora of tiny parts. To confirm my suspicion, there were two of the cab roof mounted radio masts missing. On a close inspection of the area where I unpacked to loco, one was located in the box, whilst for the other I've fabricated a replacement using various thicknesses of plasticard which is undetectable. One of the bonnet catches was also missing, and again I fabricated a replacement. The walkway handrails and side walkway guards are glued into the metal chassis with very short pegs, and one was partly lose, this was  refitted using a tiny amount of CA on a scalpel blade.

Now, onto the difficult part, actually getting in to the b*gger.

Now, I have previous with Brawa models, as I have a number of both their N and HO models and some are easier to access to fit decoders than others. Most notably I destroyed a BR 203 trying to fit a decoder on N...

The N-gauge Brawa Gravita was actually a doddle, being that the metal chassis was screwed to the bodyshell, but not the HO, no, that would be too obvious. Instead a series of fiddly clips which you cannot see, and are scared to force allow both bonnets to be slid off. Now this must also be done whilst avoiding shearing off the bonnet handrails and walkways, cab roof details or buffer beam parts. easier said than done.

Once slid forwards the bonnets pull upwards and off. Once this has been achieved, it does seem to be a little easier now they've both been on and off a few times. The decoder is a 21 pin drop in which is easy once you've actually got to it.

As I only had an el-cheapo Bachmann decoder to hand, this was used to test the loco, and before tweaking the CVs it is a little jerky at start up, but I'm going to fit my preferred decoder, ESU lok-pilot later. 

Fitted Lighting

My good god it's bright. Five LEDs heads at each end four on the buffer beam handrails and one on the cab nose they are like mini floodlights. The tails are similarly bright. Unfortunately in taking the bonnets on and off I managed to dislodge  one of the bonnet lights but on closer inspection it had simply been misaligned with the bonnet lens. The Gravita is also fitted with an independent cab light (Fn 2) and detailed cab interior which is nice.

All in all, this is a new model that looks great, runs well and is very detailed (which is a bit of a double edged sword). My personal advice would be to suggest only buying this model in the flesh to ensure the tiny weeny easily knock-off-able bits are all present and correct. In summary  9/10, (loses a mark for being a pain to get into...)