Rana Temporia

I forgot to mention that the picture in your video of the still from ‘(unpermitted word) on the Orient Express’ by Agatha Christie shows a model of a French pacific that was made for the film. It and the coaches from the film now form a restaurant at the side of Bassenthwaite Lake in the Lake District in the UK.

The Jouef model was originally available in black and ran on 6v with vastly over-simplified motion, a bit like the early Tri-ang Princess. The later 12v model had a large can motor which had a mind of its own and acted as a flywheel, I used to try and see how far mine would go when you cut the power. Keeping the same body moulding and very basic chassis the model went through a largely unpainted green stage followed by a short lived brown one. It was then re-introduced in a green painted version with a standard small motor and only drove the wheels via one cog, all the previous versions drove front and back driving wheels via brass cogs. The new version also had rubbish wheels with plastic inserts that made the loco impossible to quarter correctly as the inserts move. Mine now has an early chassis which is much better for running. I think your version is the later one, painted brown NORD but original 1950s body with tender dive and scale wheels with much better (although still simplified) rods. I think it looks pretty good for something that was designed as a toy in the 1950s. Over the years it has had at least three types of coupling, the Lanal Tri-ang type, the PECO simplex type and the standard continental type.

The 6v one in the picture was dead despite cleaning and lubricating ‘til it got 15v through it. That livened it up a bit and it now it runs perfectly grinning

I also enjoy paper catalogues but must admit the old ones do it for me. I have quite a lot of Jouef and Playcraft ones from the 1950s to the 80s, the newer ones don’t interest me. I have some other continental range ones but also old British such as Farish and British Trix. Great pick-ups on a gloomy day!

For your enjoyment grinning A series of Jouef locos. Top clockwork BB9004, I have a clockwork BB9200 but it’s in the attic at the moment. Early 6v BB9201 fixed pantographs short body 12v BB9201 fixed pantographs, short body (tatty box) Later 12v BB9201 with longer body and working pantographs. Moused cabling on the roof. 12v BB16001 working single arm pantographs and separate cabling on the roof. 12v BB25110 working single arm pantographs, separate cabling and repro Playcraft box. My Le Mistral red BB9200s are in the attic along with the Hornby Acho and JEP locos.

Great video. I have one of the earlier Jouef versions of this loco in the blue green livery which was bought as a non-runner. It just needed all the contacts cleaning. Mine has been fitted with Playcraft Dublo-type couplings and lives in a repro Playcraft box as a Neverwazza. Similarly a red Capitol BB9200 and blue-green BB16000. All very similar locos to look at but the BB9200 were 1500v dc, the BB16000 were 25Kv ac and the BB25xxx were dual voltage. Like a number of French families of locos the dual voltage class number was obtained by adding the dc and ac class numbers. I also have a couple of the Hornby ACHO BB16000s and a JEP BB9200 body on a Lima chassis fitted with Jouef pantographs. The Jouef versions need a bit of plastic to be filed off the bottom of the buffer beam for the Playcraft type coupling to work properly. Jouef did some earlier versions of these locos which were low voltage, I have one somewhere and it’s either 3.6 or 6v. This version was also available with two motor bogies. There was a cheap version available with fixed pantographs on the old very basically detailed body but running on 12v and a clockwork version of the BB9200. Great locos, I could watch them all day.

I have also been waiting well over a week for Hornby to get back to me with the answer to a very simple query. Poor.

Tony, please keep the photos of the Tri-ang repairs coming! I need to fix a few of mine and like you have a box of 3D printed parts awaiting fitting. I’m not going down the original Tri-ang pantograph route as I bought a job lot of mainly Lima and Jouef continental ones and although they are smaller are close enough for me. There were two people doing Davy Crockett spares on eBay but I think one of them has stopped. I think the next stage will be some of the transfers that were available on eBay, I need to see if they are still available. I was very happy with the ones I got for the Baltic tanks.

EBay for the brush holder, you can get one with a rivet that you squash with a pair of thin nosed pliers. When you de-solder the brush be careful as the carbon may fall off if you put too much heat into it. The top of your motor should look like this older version of your chassis.

From the 1965 catalogue;

It was probably a Graham Farish (Grafar) model. They had a smaller version of the Triang type coupling but could be converted to Hornby Dublo couplings. They had a very heavy cast body. There are several versions, the earliest had plunger pick-ups and a very poor motor. Later versions had see through wheels, pick up from the wheels and a much better motor which was quite powerful. The motors are a bit temperamental to set up and form part of the chassis. Their version of the 94xx pannier is a good source of spares as they are often available cheaply but you have to get the version with the same chassis, the pannier has even more types than the prairie having been made over a longer period. Watch for mazak rot in the chassis and body, some of the Grafar models disintegrate into a pile of dust at the slightest provocation. The contemporary wagons and coaches would have been metal and are very heavy, the later plastic versions are much better.

I have had problems cutting 3D printed bodies. I suppose it depends what they have been printed in but as well as it being tough it melts at pretty low temperatures so using a dremmel disk is difficult as it clogs the slit. Drilling a series of holes along the cut line can help but you have the same problem with the drill getting clogged with melted plastic and if you allow it to harden it’s virtually impossible to clean off. Is it possible to print clear test shots to check clearances?

For anyone modelling an independent light railway this royal carriage could be used quite legitimately to represent a couple of prototypes. The Rother Valley Railway (Later the Kent and East Sussex Railway) had a very similar ex-royal carriage in its stock. The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway had a different design of 4 wheel ex-Royal carriage that was regularly used on normal service trains, as well as a number of interesting locos including tender ones.

Tony57, I think it’s the same 3D printer who makes the front cow-catcher for that loco, which happily also fits the clockwork wild-west tank. I tried to get him to 3D print the funnel and lamp for the clockwork loco but he needed something to take measurements off and make sure there was a demand.

Does anyone still model narrow gauge at 5.5mm to the foot using 12mm gauge track? It was quite popular using Triang TT mechanisms and there was a range of kits by GEM I think?

Going back further how about Sammy the Shunter or Chuffalong?

Saw this at a nice price and couldn’t resist it. I already have the first one and it’s a great book.

The front wheels look like and have the same number of spokes as the old clockwork mechanisms that had no rods or just rods to the back wheel.

Is it TT track? The sleeper bases look quite thick. The rolling stock has quite big flanges and you’d need to drive off more than one axle to pull that lot, plus it might be a bit top-heavy to go round tight curves. All sortable with some suitable weight.

If you have a decent box and all the other parts, look for a complete one with a tatty box, or no track and controller. As Elloloco says, you’ll probably get it much cheaper than buying the loco and coaches separately. I have sold off a few of my sets recently that I no-longer wanted. No-one was interested as sets even at silly low prices but selling them off as individual items I got more than I had been asking for the complete sets.

I think I have solved this. I was looking through an old railway magazine and by chance came across a picture of something very similar. I think they are some type of close coupling device that allows the distance between vehicles to extend on curves. They look to have had the mounting bracket for the coupling removed creating the open end, and a quick check shows they have been cut there.

Small but easy thanks to pre-existing holes in the mounts and the fact that the chassis is plastic. Amazing, since I bought a set of mini metric taps and dies for one specific job I have found all sorts of uses for them. I haven’t used my BA set that much for a long time!

I found my old Ladybird book on ‘The Story of Railways’ while clearing out my late Father’s railway room. Funny how I remember all the pictures from this well read book from my childhood! All visible are the tender, the Chandon’s and the Experiment coach. No idea if this is from an original depiction

At the last Bolton swapmeet I got a selection of British Trix wagons for not very much money but needed to convert them to Tri-and couplings. Trix thoughtfully provided appropriate mounts for them in the chassis mouldings and my previous means of fixing them was with superglue and track pins. When I tried that last week it didn’t work very well, modern track pins must be a bit thin! I checked the hole in the mounts and it was the right size for an M1.4 tap so I’ve tapped them all and ordered some M1.4 screws for a pittance off ebay which took less than 2 weeks to arrive from China, presumably not on a slow boat. The couplings are completely solid and I am very happy with this way of fixing them.

I have just been in Tesco and didn’t see that.