Photograph courtesy and copyright of 312 Model

The resin KMB Dennis Jubilant featured below (5th October) appears to have been released in Hong Kong. Believed to be a joint venture with Concorde Hobby Shop, it appears that of the 400 models, 200 feature route 13D to SauMauPing Central and the remainder route 103 to Lok Fu.

Photograph courtesy and copyright of 
the Network Shuttle

The resin Seddon Pennine IV from Hong Kong Model Co has now been released in Hong Kong. It features AR7601 on route 40 to Kwun Tong Ferry. It retails for HK$308 and quantities are not known.

Thanks to Philip Chan, a photograph of the real KMB Metrobus S3M228 has now been added to the appropriate page (DW10701).

If you come across any broken links on the site, please e-mail me. 

Please note that the site has now been moved to this new URL. Both sites will run in tandem for a few days to ensure things are working, but please bookmark the new URL as no updates are being made to the old site. Over 1,500 pages have been transferred with over 9,500 hyperlinks, so if a few don't work, please bear with me! 

Should you experience any difficulties or problems with the new site, please let me know by e-mailing me at the following new e-mail address :- news@domainname.co.uk but replace the red text with orientalmodelbuses . 

The layout of 'Home' page has been revised, and new 'Search the Site' and 'Site Map' functions have been added. My thanks to Kevin Ellis of the EFE Zone and OOC Zone for tipping me off about these facilities - I hope you will find them useful. A word of note though, many page descriptions for the Site Map need some tidying up! Please also note that both the EFE Zone and OOC Zone have moved to new locations, just follow the appropriate links. 

Also under construction are additional pages for the various resin model producers. 

Photograph courtesy and copyright of 
the 80M Bus Model Shop

Released yesterday in Hong Kong yesterday was Drumwell's Kowloon Motor Bus MCW Metrobus (DW10701) S3M228 (Reg. EH3608)  on route number 95 to Tsui Lam. It is limited to 2,000 pieces and retails for HK$288.

Photograph courtesy and copyright of 
the Hong Kong Model Co. 

The Hong Kong Model Co. website has announced as 'coming soon' a resin KMB Seddon Pennine 4. It will feature AR7601, the first of a batch of 100 such vehicles, on route 4 to Kwun Tong Ferry. It will retail for HK$308.

The transfer of files to the new site is continuing, but is taking rather longer than anticipated, purely as a result of the large number of pages and links the site contains. As soon as this has been completed, the new URL will be announced. 

The current situation is that I have acquired 500Mb of webspace from a web-hosting company. The existing site is currently being transferred to this new hosting company. A new URL has also been acquired and this will be announced once the new site is ready. Once the files have been transferred, all the internal links on the site will require amending and finally the site will need to be tested.

I have set myself a target of Sunday 22nd October for the new site to be fully functional - hopefully I will better this target. I will of course keep you posted on developments, but in the meantime, owing to the amount of time being spent on this project, I will keep any updates to a bare minimum. For the same reasons, I have been unable to respond to all the e-mails received, but I will in time!

I have received an unconfirmed report stating that KMB's next model issue, following the release of their S3M-class MCW Metrobus in mid-October, will be a Tilling-Stevens K5LA7 single decker. Also expected will be a remote-controlled ATE-class Enviro 500 bus model.

Creative Master Northcord Limited has proudly released its third livery on the Mitsubishi Fuso Aero King double-decker coach replica, JB4003, in Hiroshima Electric Railway colours. 

The Aero King is an exclusive double-decker bus / coach developed by Mitsubishi Motors Company, later Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation, and available in the Japanese market. The Aero King bus is a 12-metre 3-axle chassis design featuring front independent suspension  and an aerodynamic body shape which created history in the Japanese double-deck bus / coach building industry. 

The replica features excellent detailing, inside and out, including 4 windscreen wipers, hand rails on the upper and lower decks, an opening engine door and engine detail. This is a one-piece casting whose clean lines accentuate the windows and livery application on which all logos and lettering are clearly legible. The model has no ugly metal poles to hold it together.

Hiroshima Electric Railway (Hiroden) have operated overnight highway route bus services which connect Hiroshima and Tokyo using their first double-decker coach Mitsubishi FUSO Aero King since 2004. 

JB4003 has some outstanding features which reflect the special requirement from the operator. There are two aisles on the upper saloon. The passengers on the upper deck are able to enjoy an individual reclining seat together with exclusive space. The sleeping room for the co-driver is featured in the lower saloon. In addition, the toilet facility would be found on the lower deck too. The overall passenger capacity is 38 only, including one wheel chair.

The Mitsubishi Fuso King coach is the fourth 1/76 scale diecast bus or coach replica for the Japanese market from Creative Master Northcord since 2000. It is also the first double-decker, following the Mitsubishi FUSO MP Non-Step Bus, Hino Selega Coach and Mitsubishi FUSO Aerobus Coach.

The JB4003 model is limited to 200 pieces for the UK, Australia and Hong Kong. They will be distributed by John Ayrey Die-Casts Limited (UK), Transit Graphics (Australia) and Concorde Hobby Shop (HK) respectively.

In reviewing the options open to me today, I had the choice of either abandoning the site altogether, leaving it as it was with no further updates, and over a period of three months or so it would gradually disappear. With the frustration experienced over the past few days, this was certainly an appealing option. The other was to transfer the site to a web hosting company, which clearly would involve hosting fees and a great deal of work in changing almost all the links on the site so as to work in the new format.

For the time being, I have decided on the latter - this decision will be reviewed in a month's time. The concerns I have with the web hosting is the popularity of the site and whether, with this popularity, I will incur additional bandwidth fees. As you will appreciate, the site is run as a hobby, in my spare time and with no financial support from any other party. I have resisted the placing of adverts on the site, as I find them most annoying when visiting sites that allow them. I would also like to remain independent from any sponsor pressure. 

I have considered restricting access to the site to members only - membership being granted subject to the payment of an annual subscription fee, however, this too would incur considerable expense and expertise to set up. The site currently receives about 700 hits a day, although over the last two weeks, figures between 1,400 and 1,800 have been recorded. Another possibility is to seek sponsorship, which as mentioned above, I am not entirely happy or comfortable with. The final solution would be to seek a £1 annual voluntary donation from each regular visitor to the site, possibly payable through PayPal or by post. This form of 'begging' goes against my conscience, but at the end of the day, it would be a means of covering the increased costs in providing the kind of news and information that so many of you are seeking, and which I have provided over the last eight years. 

Please e-mail me your thoughts or suggestions in order that I can make an informed decision - .

Creative Master Northcord Limited has proudly released its third batch of Shanghai Shen Xin Bus models, cnbus 1009. It is again featured on the well known replica Sunwin Volvo B7R model, in the brand new colours of the Shanghai Shen Xin Bus Service Company Limited. 

The new livery of Shanghai Shen Xin Bus is represented on the latest design of Shanghai Sunwin bodywork developed for the Volvo B7R chassis. Those layouts include the brand new air-conditioning unit as well as two fresh air intake units on the roof, new windows and an enlarged engine room at the back.

Shanghai Shen Xin Bus Service Limited is a Sino-Singapore joint venture company, jointly owned by Shanghai Dazhong Group and SBS International Holdings Private Limited, a member of the Singapore DelGro Corporation Limited. 

cnbus 1009 carries fleet number SWK 149 which is shown operating on Showcase Route 104 in downtown Shanghai. 

cnbus 1009 has special metal plates on all sides representing the company logo, and the names of “Dazhong” and “Shen Xin” in Chinese characters respectively. It is the second time that a CMN bus replica has had this realistic feature.

The replica features excellent detailing, inside and out. This is a one-piece casting whose clean lines accentuate the windows and livery application on which all logos and lettering are clearly legible. The model has no ugly metal poles to hold it together.

The cnbus 1009 model is limited to 1200 pieces for worldwide distribution. They will be distributed by John Ayrey Die-Casts Limited (UK), Porte Publishing Company (Japan), Transit Graphics (Australia) and Concorde Hobby Shop (HK) respectively.

As mentioned in yesterdays News, I am currently experiencing difficulties in uploaded files, and as a result the main Xtra page is not linking to various sub-pages. Several of these sub-pages are also unavailable. There are a few other pages where links to adjoining pages are broken.  Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience. 

The above photograph shows the new Scania K95UD about to leave the Salvador Caetano site for it's final test run before being shipped to Hong Kong. Now carrying KMB decals, some other minor alterations also are evident....... a full report tomorrow! 

My thanks to Jotus.com for providing photographs of the two recently released resin KMB Duple Dominant coaches (B0020) 

I have recently received photographs of a New World First Bus Dennis Dart in a special gold livery. It features Fleet No 2001 on route no M21, as did the first NWFB standard liveried Dart. Can anyone provide any further details?