Rana Temporia

I use one of these for close-up work. Since getting it from a swap meet I’ve found it invaluable. It’s a non-branded version that was around £5 with half a dozen lenses. The trick is to get the bit of the model you want at the focal point but I don’t know how I managed without it. There is a light on it but it’s rubbish.

While this was an AF I must admit to having a lot of memories coming back every time I smell Tri-ang/Hornby smoke oil. I had a pannier that had a Jinty synchrosmoke generator added to the chassis and a lot of the SH Triang locos I have have come with smoke generators which start going when the loco is tested. I do disconnect them all now but all they need is a wire re-soldering in case I sell any on. They can be quite a drain on power.

Just had an email off eBay explaining all this. Basically (according to eBay) if you are a private individual selling your unwanted goods either at a loss or a profit and no item sells for more than £6000 you won’t pay any tax. However, if you are operating as a business then you will. There were some examples in the email where people sold quite a lot but didn’t pay tax.

From Pat Hammond’s third book in the Rovex/Tri-ang/ Hornby series Hornby have done this before in 1984 releasing a set with the very rare CO CO diesel. They also produced a BOB in blue and silver for the gala performance and presented it to the Queen. Pat says this is now in the National collection in York. Nether the set or the BOB loco appear to have been available to the public.

Playcraft had an HO one so not that much of a reduction to get to TT. That one was similar to the modern Hornby one in its operation with the two ‘doors’ on the same side as opposed to the Tri-ang type. I think it was the only British item of rolling stock that Jouef kept after the demise of Playcraft although with continental couplings instead of the Hornby Dublo type.

I would be surprised if it worked at all without joining them together electrically as these bogies have traction tyres on one side and even with pick ups fitted to the insulated wheels they’d be erratic to say the least. The loco originally picked up from one side of the power bogie and the other side of the trailing bogie like most diesels/electrics made by Hornby, Lima etc. at around this time. Another thing to watch out for with these motors is the small brass connectors snapping off. I had a few of these locos as they came in several sets with totally inappropriate wagons and were available very cheaply at car boot sales. If the motor bogies were set up and running smoothly they were fine but any dust or grit in the gear train and they were rubbish. I think someone was selling more powerful direct replacement motors for them in Railway Modeller at one point. I seem to recall one version had two traction tyres on one axle rather than along one side. But that might be a second hand one I got that someone had messed with. I will see if I have one handy, I think I still have a couple left somewhere that were detailed up.

There are a number of other fictitious NS diesel and electric locos available from various manufacturers but there are also some genuine ones. Playcraft produced a model of the NS1300 class in blue which was the version of the SNCF BB7100 class that they sold to the Netherlands. It was a different body moulding to the French model but shared the same chassis. Jouef then produced this model in the later ‘Dutch’ yellow and grey colours, Jouef never produced the early blue version. Jouef also produced the Spanish version of the loco which again was a different body moulding and I think the prototype was 3Kv dc as opposed to 1.5Kv dc. Lima has also produced versions of the same loco. Lima has produced the NS1200 class in blue and yellow/grey, and possibly maroon? I think Marklin and ROCO have also produced models of this class. There are models available of the short BO BO electric (ROCO?) that again was a follow up from a French design but I forget the class number. The Dutch put noses on the end to protect their drivers when the class was refurbished. And don’t forget the British EM2s that were sold to the NS, the only HO model I know of that was produced of these was a very expensive brass version.

If the 37 has the class 31 power bogie it’s the X67 but if they both have the same class 47 ringfield bogie then it is X8466. These will also fit the silver seal class 47 bogie. For the ringfield versions I would also buy some additional springs as they have a habit of pinging off around the room. Some photos would confirm which version they are.

Thanks Elloloco, I like the picture of what appears to be a King at the start of the Spanish catalogue followed by a picture of a class 47 below the 31. The 31 towers over the N coaches, but I don’t think it’s as poor a scale replica as the Delic was which may have been closer to TT.

Really enjoying this thread! What are you going to use the other B12 chassis for? I had a couple of damaged locos which I think I’ve got rid of but at one point I did have plans to convert one to an A5 possibly using parts from a GBL Director and the Tri-ang B12 body, There is a scale drawing in one of the old Railway Modellers or Model Railway Constructors I have somewhere. My other option although I’m not sure about wheelbase/size etc would be a Furness Railway Baltic, inside cylinders so no great problems with a suitable chassis but a huge impressive loco

I am sure someone made a working version of these along with other illuminated platform signs but it was a long time ago since I’ve seen them advertised.

The hollow body acts as an amplifier as it reflects around the noise generated by the chassis. One old way of dealing with it was to glue some foam/polystyrene on the inside of the body where it wouldn't foul any moving parts or come into contact with anything hot to absorb the sound energy. Use PVA so as to not melt the foam. Modern locos have almost every bit filled with weights, DCC sockets and the like so don’t generally have this problem.

There are usually plenty of chassis blocks with wheels on eBay for not very much money, just make sure you get the right one! The motor is a standard X04 so watch out for damaged or badly repainted Nellies/Jinties and the like described as runners which you can still pick up for less than a second hand motor.

The original version used the Princess motion bracket and there were other differences with the chassis as I have found out to my cost when repairing quite a few of these. I’m not sure if the early ones used cellulose acetate as I don’t think I’ve seen any warped ones, but they were a very shiny plastic and the decals rubbed off very easily. There are also a number of shades of green used through the years. I got one of the very early ones in a box of junk once and it was seized solid, a bit of cleaning and lubricating and off it went like new. Also in the box was a fully working plunger Princess with a half decent un-warped body and various other contemporary items plus several Dapol ex-Airfix kits. A very odd mix.

Pre-covid that road through Glazebury was part of my almost daily commute! There is a lot of interesting archaeology around central Manchester connected with the railways, rivers and canals. In the River Medlock just up from Pin Mill Brow, there are the remains of the pillars railway bridge in the bed. The area there was used by Manchester to win sand from the river, and most of the flagstones in the city centre were laid on that sand, going down past Piccadilly Station towards Oxford Road there is a car park at the back of the Lass o’Gowrie pub where you can just about see the top of an arch. That used to be navigable up to near Manchester Piccadilly (or London Rd) station and coal was brought up in barges from the canal system. When the link to the Medlock was severed near Deansgate Station, the Medlock began to silt up and the current bed level is around 4 to 6 feet above where it used to be.. The Medlock flows in a siphon below the Deansgate canal basin and emerges on the other side of the Youth Hostel there. There are several good books, there is one called the lost rivers of Manchester which is highly sought after and commands a very high price being long out of print, but you can ask your library to get a copy. there are also a couple of Underground Manchester books available. The river Irk flows in a culvert beneath Manchester Victoria station and emerges into the Irwell near the School of Music. The Irwell used to be navigable to the sea via the Mersey and any excavation in central Manchester will produce vast quantities of Oyster and Winkle shells which were used as food for the masses, being brought up from Liverpool. The construction of weirs stopped all that! The Irwell now joins the Manchester Ship Canal being directly connected to it, and from Media city it’s easy to sail right up to the large hotels in Central Manchester. I’ve done it in a RIB and the architecture is amazing seen from the river. Making use of the old OS maps so much more becomes visible and obvious in a lot of cities, including why some buildings are odd shapes, they were often built up to railways or rivers which may now have gone. Rivers do go, they get diverted or culverted and some of those in Manchester (and elsewhere) became sewers. Some rivers run in large pipes, there is one in London over a railway station and the Roch flows in a cast iron pipe above the railway north of Littleborough.

I have a picture somewhere with a baby deltic (class 23) hauling a rake of the plain blue suburban coaches. You’d probably be Ok with any of the locos used around London in the timescale you’re looking at. Potentially class 21/29 before they were sent up to Scotland, class 15, class 31 etc. All the photos I have seen of these coaches show them as filthy so weathered would get my vote. They must have been clean at some point though.

If you have some of the older HO points (turnouts) they were not all self isolating like most modern makes. The Jouef ones had a sliding fishplate to isolate them but then you had to have other electrical feeds. The old Lima points were rubbish and fell to bits at the slightest provocation! I have never worried about mixing and matching track and in fact some of my old Tri-ang trains run very well on older continental track which is very close to current standards but as Elloloco says, watch the radii. Some have their R1 at around 12.5” which would form a circle inside Hornby R1.

I have noticed the floating back and to armature problem in a couple of X03 motors causing erratic running in one direction which took some time to diagnose. As Eyesgoing found, a simple shim fixed the problem

I thought the only difference for the 2-rail version was the press on plastic bogie side frames as opposed to the original metal screw on ones and of course the coupling. Mine has an incredibly weak motor that I never got to the bottom of as everything checked out OK. It’s in a box somewhere until I can get round to it if I ever do.

My main memory of that visit was just how huge the French and German locos were compared to ‘ours’. Do they ever have open days there or is it permanently closed to the public? I used to like the large three rail layout in the goods shed at Bury Transport Museum before it became the East Lancs Railway.

I was also at Carnforth when Hardwicke was there. I was at Junior school and think I was about 10. I drew a picture on the Monday and then found out my teacher had also been there, even better I found out she was a railway enthusiast and knew quite a lot about trains. We go through Carnforth on a regular basis to go walking around Arnside and Silverdale, and sometimes see engines in steam outside the old Steamtown shed. We don’t usually get a good view though due to the coaches and diesels in the way.

Excellent solution. I have a MK 1 powerbogie with the smooth wheels from a scrap Dock Shunter in it. I retained the original axles with the brass gears though as the plastic ones uses on later models either disintegrate or come loose on the splines on the axles. The smooth ones used to be easy to find but I think everyone is looking for them now, same as the smooth DMU wheels.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I found a bag of Jouef HO metal wheels I bought years ago to improve the running of my Playcraft stock, and the axles are the exact right diameter. On the first motor bogie I changed all the wheels for Jouef ones as there was a 0.3mm discrepancy with the diameter. This left me with two plain wheels without traction tyres which were happily insulated so replaced the ones with traction tyres on a second bogie. I have a few more to do but have plenty of Jouef wheels. These are the Eurostar motor bogie, which I bought several of as they were silly cheap at around £6 a go and I have a few DMU kits to build at some point, these are the correct wheelbase. I think they are £8.99 off Hornby at the moment. I had a short on one and traced it to the contacts from the wheels pressing on the metal body of the motor. The magnets in these motors are something else, they collect all my mini screwdrivers and other tools given half a chance!

Tony, want to make it a self propelled unit which is why I need all 4 wheels to conduct. Just looking at what options I have.

Thanks all, the wheels are on a motor bogie which is why I need to retain the original axles and they are 1.7mm diameter. No-one has replacements without traction tyres and I need to ditch them to fit extra pick-ups so I wondered what else was available with smooth wheels.