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| Hornby A4 "Golden Plover" |
| Ok This is the first real review I've written so I'm not going to be over critical or be too opinionated ,I'll simply tell you what I've found thats good or bad about the model, First impressions: I think a much more clever man than me designed the packaging, it's very secure but not the easiest to get into, having said that the model is delicate and the jigsaw puzzle like inner packing suits its purpose well. Once removed from the packing I found my example had shed a couple of its detail parts and these needed to be resecured, so out with the Araldite and the lubricator block was soon refitted and secure, I was a bit disappointed about this fault, this is a relatively expensive model and bits falling off it straight from the box is slightly annoying even if easily fixed. One thing you probably shouldn't do is compare this new model with either of Hornby or Bachmann's older models, It's a complete waste of time, this thing is in a different street. The A4 shape has been captured very well ,as comparison with any photo will prove ,and the cab detail & fixed rear axleboxes are very good, there's also icing on the cake stuff like three link front coupling & factory fitted brake rigging. You may have read other reviews that mention the wheel hubs not being correct, all I can say is that they look fine to me, better than hornby's old wheels and certainly not eccentric like some of Bachmann's efforts. The flangeless rear wheel set wont please everyone but they aren't that noticable when the model is on the move, and if you're lucky enough to have huge radius curves you can fit the flanged set provided. The corridor tender with this model looks just right and has a removable coal load if you prefer to top it up with the real thing, and as you'd expect it also helps provide power pickup to the loco. Performance from the now standard Hornby 5 pole motor is excellent, Mine has spent about an hour trundling around the local club layout with a modest load of six coaches and ran perfectly from near crawl to rather fast in almost complete silence, one more niggle occured when first run in that the front bogie kept falling off the rails, this was simply cured by tweaking the bogie mounting bracket down a little, again slightly annoying but easy fixed. I'd hessitate to call any mass produced model perfect and I'm sure there are people who will find fault with this new A4, but in my opinion it's the beans and I'll buy another one when Hornby realease it in the original Grey/Silver livery..(please Mr Hornby). |