The winners of the first British Model Railway Awards for 2016 have been announced today and can be read here. This year saw a resurgence for Hornby wining not only 00 manufacturer of the year, but also Overall Manufacturer of the year, helped by within a number of the categories Southern Railway / Region related products winning and or polling highly.
Congratulations to all the winners; and especially Hornby as mentioned above, coming top in a number of the individual categories including: 4mm scale carriage stock award, with their excellent SR Maunsell 58ft ex LSWR rebuilt coaches; and the 00 gauge wagons award with the super SR diagram 1529 / 1530 cattle trucks .
Also polling well was their Class 71 electric locomotive with over 25% of the vote in the 00 Gauge modern traction award; therefore ensuring that the Southern Railway is well represented in the awards, which is always good news. With the Hornby original Merchant Navy and ex SECR H Class 0-4-4T due to the hit retailers this year in my opinion they will also have a strong contenders for the awards in 2017 as well.
Also well done to the UK Model Shops website for justifiably winning the website of the year award, for the second year in a row, a category in which I was surprised to have been again nominated and came a creditable 5th among a wide range of high quality and informative websites, so many thanks to all who did take the time to vote.
Hornby did well with the Maunsell 58′ ex-LSWR rebuilt coaches – well done – an excellent model!
Hopefully Bachmann will make an excellent job of the Birdcage stock especially if they can improve their production quality in respect of the ongoing problem of white glue around the window edges.
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