Rana Temporia

I have been thinking about this (as you do) and although I do have some fond memories of Hattons from being younger and looking at what bargains they had in the January Railway Modeller or MRC to spend Christmas money on, or on the odd occasion going on a visit to Liverpool to actually go in the shop my current thoughts are wider for the hobby. Like a lot of the ‘box shifters’ Hattons SPENT a lot of money in advertising with the modelling press. Putting out your own fairly chunky advertising magazine within other publications can’t have been cheap and that money helped support the overall communications and viability of railway modelling. I assume it paid off for Hattons but now that source of income has gone is there anything else to fill the gap? Advertising pays for a lot of the cost of publications and without Hattons can all the current titles survive? Railway Modeller has survived through bad times before but other magazines haven’t been so lucky (or popular/well managed). Hattons also supported the hobby with their models manufactured by others, providing income across the hobby. Their statements have been extremely supportive of other shops, both large and small and are a credit to them. I have just seen SOT’s post on Warley, is this a further indication of what’s to come. I hope not.

I have seen British HO layouts where nominally 3mm to the foot Tri-ang TT rolling stock has been ‘stretched’ to represent 3.5mm HO stock so that should give an idea of size. The Triang 3mm scale on 12mm track gives a scale 4’ gauge, slightly worse than the OO 4’1.5” when it should be 4’8.5”. HO and modern TT are much closer to scale and although I’m mainly OO, HO and modern TT do look much more realistic with the scale to gauge appearance. Some people have used the Tri-ang TT suburban coaches on OO9 narrow gauge layouts fitted with appropriate bogies. There is a very good book available on the Tri-ang TT range by Rob Hampton and intended as a companion to the Pat Hammond series on Rovex/Tri-ang/Hornby.

Casey Jones, steamin’ and a rollin’ Carey Jones, you never have to guess When you hear the tootin’ of the whistle It’s Casey at the throttle of the cannonball express I’ll pretend I’m not as old as I am and allow the younger members to wonder just what I’m on about……..

I had never seen this one before. Some interesting facts on the Fell loco but also some other footage thar’s new to me.

81F, glad to see someone else likes the Farish OO coaches. They are often available quite cheaply although some sellers seem to have an odd idea of what they will sell for. I have a set of four suburban LNER ones I got out of a junk box for £1 each as the seller didn’t know anything about them and when I told him the make he said “Farish have only ever made N”. Looks like I have imagined my coaches, pannier, prairie and King then! I got the coaches to run with a my clockwork Trackmaster/Tri-ang N2s and also to add to some damaged ones to crate a MSJR ex LMS overhead EMU which typically has a partially completed motor coach and the rest waiting to be done. I had one of the GWR brake coaches to run with my Tri-ang pannier as a child, and never managed to get the composite. I have one now, plus a rake of the GWR corridor coaches. They all run superbly and being all plastic are very light. I understand they are all based on LMS prototypes and typically for the time were turned out in LMS, GWR, SR, LNER and BR colours. The teak printing on the LNER versions was way ahead of anything done by other manufacturers. Much better than the BR MK1s that were usually the only other coaches available from other manufacturers in the same options but which were only built after the formation of BR. I have seen some blue versions of the suburban coaches (prototypical) but don’t know if they were original. All the coaches were painted so it would have been easy for them to do. The only exception was the cream on the GWR coaches was self coloured plastic, the chocolate being paint. I would like a rake of those excellent pullmans they did but any that have not warped are quite pricey. I think it was Chris Leigh that used to produce a kit to convert three of the suburban coaches to the LMS 3rd rail Euston EMU, similar units being used around the LIverpool/Wirral/Southport area. Two of the original EMU coaches were converted into electric 3rd rail parcels units for use between Liverpool and Southport, MTK did a kit for them but they would also be an easy conversion from a Farish coach.

According to Industrial Steam Album number 2 by M J Fox and G D King it is Kitson 5470 of 1933 Colwyn as posted by ntpntpntp. It doesn’t say what the coach is other than it’s in MGNJR livery. The filming was on the North Norfolk Railway at Westbourne on May 21, 1973. Funnily enough, I was reading the book this morning which is why I knew I’d seen it!

Andy Mac, my strategy too. Although I must say I found some spares I wanted on the Hornby website recently, in stock and less than half the price of any of the other sellers on the Internet. One seller seemed to be suggesting that they use the Hornby website and then add their 50%+ on top! Everything arrived within a few days well packaged and as described. For the bits I got I can’t fault Hornby. Long gone are the days of Blackwells of Hawkwell, East Kent Models and the incredibly unbelievable excellent Modelspares of Burnley who seemed to have everything from the very early Tri-ang locos right through. I think the person who owned Modelspares is still clearing some stock on eBay but the person who bought his business didn’t make a good job of it. I do hope those spares are with Peter’s now or some other seller, it would be a tragedy if they had been lost.

It should have said ‘these’ (now edited}. The keyboard on my iPad is sometimes working intermittently and predictive text makes up the rest!! It somehow managed to put the picture in the text and it wasn’t like that when I pressed OK but I couldn’t check as it had to go for moderation. The plastic parts were in with some Tri-ang and Dublo spares I got as a job lot. I have learned something new, I didn’t know Hess was a make. I can add it to my list of lesser known manufacturers such as the French GeGe who made HO rubber band drive electric locos.I have only ever had one, it had pantographs which were little more than bent wire. There must be a market for them as someone bought it and I know there is someone on eBay selling replacement rubber bands for them. The actual motor in mine was cube shaped in the middle of the loco with a shaft coming out of each end that the rubber band went round and then round a drive axle. I had an American loco with a very similar drive system as well. I may still have some parts of it somewhere as the motor broke and it was quite a poor representation so it got broken up.

I bought some spares a while ago and I am only just sorting through them. There are about ten of these but I have no idea what they are. Does anyone know?

I went to the Bolton Swapmeet (or Toy and Train fair as they are called nowadays) yesterday and came back with an interesting haul. From a 50p box, Nellie body with all steps intact, Hornby silver seal ringfield motor with front plate missing (works, fine, tested with another plate) ready to make a full one up with a burned out one I have somewhere. All gears intact. Tri-ang top tank clockwork loco bought for spares, turned out to be a very good runner so the mechanism might find its way into another loco. Triang odd coloured wagon from a clockwork set to add to my others! Five Trix wagons, four of which were 16t steel mineral wagons which although slightly larger than the Tri-ang ones look very well with them and ready for Tri-ang couplings to be fitted. They are the later painted and lettered versions rather than the early self coloured plastic ones. They look huge next to the HO Trix Tank loco I have. Bachmann ex-Thomas green Billy bought for the chassis but I can’t work out how to get it out of the loco yet! All bought for very reasonable prices, especially those from the 50p box. Happy days.

They look nothing like the Lego trains I had as a child. Battery powered and blue rails. They took a lot of room up as I had a lot as there were a couple of clearance shops in Bolton that sold ex-shop stock off cheaply and were a great source of cheap rails and discontinued rolling stock kits. I recently sold off what was left after clearing out the attic and finding that my kids had destroyed most of it so someone is still collecting it.

With the increase in non-paying time wasters bidding on eBay(from personal experience) it would be fun adding and removing money from the declaration.

I hope everyone has had a great day. We had a nice walk on the moors over Blackburn this afternoon and I was looking forward to running some of my Tri-ang clockwork locos when we got back but it never materialised as some other things turned up that needed to be done and then I couldn’t be bothered to set some track up. We are having our normal and now traditional Christmas curry tomorrow rather than today as I will be off emergency call out in the morning so able to relax a bit more. It’s been a busy week with the weather! I hope everyone is looking forward to the New Year! Take care all.

I think you can still get the free version of Anyrail software which has a good library of different manufacturers’ track and allows you to use up to 50 pieces including flexi track. 50 pieces won’t make a decent layout but it will help in the formation of parts of one and you will able to see if things are aligned.

Very nice job. What did you do the lining with? I have one I did years ago with a stretched Hornby ringfield class 37 chassis and the Dapol side frames glued on. My lining is just pale yellow but I did pick some of the correct Deltic transfers up from a stall at an exhibition, possibly Manchester or Wigan. I also bought the flush glazing kit for it but I don’t even know where it is now, I bet I’ve not seen it for at least 15 years. Might be time to get some boxes out of the attic!

If you want to look at rules, it would be interesting to see what the French did it by for the dual Electric traction speed record they held for years. They had a specially streamlined short train I find this video fantastic, especially the music; and another; The 'smoke' coming from the side of the train is actually the ballast being ripped up. There is a second video showing the BB9004 loco but it's not coming up at the moment on Google.

81F, Jouef moved from the Lanal (Tri-ang type) coupling quite early on and all the rolling stock was fitted with a metal version of the simplex coupling. When they went over to the standard continental type theirs was designed to be screw fitted to the same chassis/bogies so is an easy fit to the rolling stock. As regards Hornby Acho they did the same and some items have screw mounted couplings while others have them riveted on. They generally used a shorter version of the Simplex coupling than Trix and Playcraft and most of my stock has delrin versions which are fine but chunkier than the metal version. Your Lima class 33 was available with continental and massive Tri-ang type couplings, I have converted one from continental to simplex type quite easily, although it does stick out a bit far. I also did one of the Lima 3Fs but only on the tender as it didn’t have a front coupling. I do have another 33 that was going to become a 26 but it’s way down the priority list at the moment. I was looking at some Farish OO CIWL coaches a while ago but they were too far gone to restore having been made of cellulose acetate plastic. I know there was a kit for a OO version but I’m sure they would be popular if someone brought out a RTR version, especially for anyone who’s visited the cafe in Bassenthwaite where the ex-film set loco and coaches are.

Is the Johnson type motor the large can motor that came ready wired in the continental type tank locos? I got a box full in a job lot a few years ago, they are quite good motors although rather fast!

81F, The rear coupling is a dovetail, the front coupling has a clip to hold it in the bogie and doesn’t have the loop that continental type couplings usually have. I have had a proper look at it now and I think I can drill and tap the front one to add an ex-Playcraft coupling to the top and clip it back into the bogie, that looks like it will work properly. The rear coupling is completely different and there is no-way I can get any of the PECO type couplings in, firstly they are too wide and as you say they won’t swing at all. I have a lot of Jouef, Playcraft and Hornby Acho locos and stock and modifying them all to fit one ROCO loco would be a major and expensive task! The loco runs superbly and looks fantastic when in motion. Also, being HO it has no problem with first radius curves. Looks like I will have to bodge something for the rear coupling. The alternative is a converter wagon with a continental type coupling at one end and a PECO type at the other!

I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the continental of general forums but thought this would be most appropriate. I wanted a large tank engine to go with my Playcraft/Jouef/Liliput/Hornby ACHO French stock and managed to get one of the excellent ROCO 2-8-2 tanks at a reasonable price which has options for several types of coupling but not the PECO type which I’ve standardised on for my continental HO stock. Most of the older Jouef locos are an easy swap over but this looks to be a bit more involved, I think they are NEM pockets as the couplings simply clip in place. If it’s not an option I might try a vertical pin along the lines of what some N gauge locos use for their similar couplings, This loco really is superb but has a very odd chassis where the driving wheels are pivoted at the front and act as a central bogie with the rear pony attached to that part of the chassis, presumably to get it round tight HO curves?

I had this issue a couple of years ago and in my case it was due to the carbon having fallen off one of the brushes. When going in one direction the brass brush arm was fine as it was dragging across the commutator. In the other direction it dug into the gaps in the commutator and jammed the motor solid. If yours is a sealed motor I’d take it out of the chassis and try it to see if it rotates in both directions, and while the motor is out I would check if the chassis rotates in both directions. It may be a pick-up jamming in the wheel spokes in one direction.

Hopefully people will find this interesting in association with the L&M. I came across this pamphlet yesterday while continuing to clear out my late father's railway room and thought it'd make a nice addendum to the info Bee has been posting. I have only scanned the first half of the document. I grew up very near the line of this railway and played on the abandoned trackbed. The Austerity tank 'Harry' as manufactured by Hornby was in the scrapyard at Chequerbent for years just off the line of the original track, along with an Avonside 0-6-0 tank works no 1600. Both have now gone for preservation I believe but there wasn't much left of the Avonside other than rust.

My Hornby Acho Dublo type couplings are the later Delrin type rather than metal and held on with a screw rather than a rivet although your box shows the metal type. How are yours attached? If you want some simplex couplings damaged Playcraft wagons are a cheap source.

If you win the printer there is nothing to stop you downloading some of the free files available on the internet on various sites and printing them to get used to using the printer. Many of these files have been verified as working so at least you will know what you should be producing and be able to make any adjustments that are needed. There are lots of OO models available, some better than others! I have noticed that some that were free are now charging a nominal fee to download, just a pound or two. The working files would also be a good place to start for modifications and to get used to working with the technology.

I thought I’d add that perfect for the Ladle Wagons is a free downloadable 3D file for a Steelman diesel shunter loco. (Rolls Royce?) unpowered but it’s up to you to find the right powered chassis! Drawn at 100% and printable at any scale, easily findable through your favourite search engine.