Class 153 Scotrail Explorer - The BEST livery? 

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Love how you start with the storytelling about how the model fits into your layout. Hope you get the issues fixed and looking forward to seeing a layout update.

Good shout out Hylt. Good sentiment. We seem to follow the same layouts. I have learnt a lot from Scott Rails. Has had amazing growth in under a year mainly as he has good content. He’s reworking his layout now which may give you some good tips. David

Appreciate the shoutout! Really enjoying your journey man! Hopefully I can begin to catch up and get something running soon!

Production of model trains took a massive technical leap forward in the mid 1990's. When Sandakan in Hong Kong opened a new plant the size of a major Football Stadium with 17,000 staff. To mass produce, on high Tech computerised tooling, gigantic "batch" productions of models for a major Japanese model railway company. All the tooling for this plant was made in Japan. The four biggest model railway companies are all Japanese. Indeed there are more railway modellers in Japan than the whole of the rest of the World put together 3.4 times over. As a result ONE of those 4 Japanese Majors has an annual turnover in BILLIONS of U.S Dollars !!! Bodyshells get spat out at the rate of one every few seconds, at a individual cost of a few pennies. It's assembly that Costs the money ! As modern super detailed models often have dozens of separate detail parts to be applied to the bodyshell. Most of which has to be done by hand, by hundreds of girls sitting at "assembly" points in lines stretching into the distance, in that huge plant. The problems of painting was also solved, by getting rid of paint & replacing it with quick drying inks, which dries in around 3 seconds. Using Computer Tampo printing methods. So you simply create 3D Computerised on screen mock ups of all bodyshell parts & livery designs, at the R&D stage, using CAD NAM software. (Originally designed for architects). You then run off a handful of unpainted bodyshells, & send them to whichever model railway company has ordered them, for critical appraisal. If these are correct & acceptable. Then another handfull of bodyshells will be run off & put through the livery application tampo printing machinery. Only when the painted samples are acceptable will an actual production run for complete models be scheduled, possibly months later. That first High Tech Sandakan plant, was a bit like HMS Dreadnought, it made every other manufacturers methods outdated. So the handful of other production plants in Hong Kong & China had to play catch up. There are none as advanced or as big as that Sandakan plant (& Sandakan have 3 other smaller plants for production of smaller American & European ranges) but every other plant has had to adopt computerisation to a greater or lesser extent to improve production methods & speed up the actual time needed to complete each individual model. So the Class 153 models "complex" livery is no harder to apply than a simple livery, and takes no longer to apply, in a matter of seconds. Hornby's loco & rolling stock range is produced in the new PIKO plant near Canton PRC opened around 2008. PIKO is of course the ex East German model train manufacturer, who moved to China to keep up with the competition. Hornby production was transferred to the new PIKO plant around 2011-2012, after Hornby were kicked out of one of the Sandakan plants, when Hornby's competitor "Bachmann" (Actually the Kada Corporation) snuck in & bought Sandakan from under Hornby's nose !!!! NOTE: The NEM European Manufacturers Conference in Germany, back in the late 1980's, was called to get ALL the European based manufacturers (which includes Britain) to agree to standardise track, wheels, couplings & various other technical items. To NEW refined & more precise measurements. Hence the introduction of NEM coupling pockets at a standard height & size so ANY European manufactures couplings will fit that pocket, was just one of the technical advances. Todays models also have NEM wheel profiles (RP25) to match NEM track (Code 75), & NEM refined point flangeways, minimum point radii etc, etc. (The USA has different measurements & tolerances including Code 83 track). Hence if you do NOT use the correct track types to match the European or American wheels in your models you will experience running problems including derailment issues. This includes using model trains produced before these current track standards were adopted !!!!!!!!!!!

This is not the only Hornby one with these motors I've found to be the same but there all still running

I’d love it in the 80s BR blue.

I think that motor is the horror that replaced the Lima ringfields. Please be careful as they are very fragile brutes to try to work on. I had that in a Hornby Railroad - it ran absolutely horribly. I tried to fix it and it was impossible as they are so lightly constructed and full of clips. I ended up gutting the motor and putting in a Lima bogie. (Extreme solution.)

Sadly the motor in these things and all previous Class 153s and 156s is best described as "inconsistent". You can get one that is reasonably smooth and you will get one that is as juddery as your one is- i have two and one also is very juddery and inconsistent. Also Hornby have made a slight mistake with the livery- on the model the white dots at the ends are at a very slight angle, if you look at pictures of the real thing- they are in a straight line.

Hi had mine a fair while now and mine is the same sounds awful on low speed

Hi Hylt, you need to stop running it and open her up. Sounds like a drive shaft inter locking problem or the clip on the drive tower worm gear. Generally I don't trust Hornby DMU/EMUs, especially multiple unit trains. Regards Julian.

Don't run that loco you will make things worse until you have fixed the issue which likes like a motor one. You could replace the motor but don't expect it to be easy fix Hornby tend to enclose them making access difficult to start with you will find that modern model motors are not serviceable unlike Lima motors which have easy access. Quality control seems to be non existent I have just had to return a Bachmann Class 37 lights were on but no motor function basically dead on arrival. £120 for a poor loco is no joke.