Rana Temporia

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.

Tony, as Bee has mentioned before, you can download Freecad surprisingly for free! I am used to 2D industry standard Autodesk CAD software so trying to use Freecad is a bit confusing for me as the commands are different although it is a massively powerful product and I need to spend more time with it (if I ever get any!). There are some excellent free tutorial videos online for Freecad. There are also lots of free 3D files for OO models already available, either at 4mm scale or 100% scale that need scaling down to the right size. The problem I have found is getting someone to print them. All the people who have been recommended have either not replied or have never actually got round to doing it. I think 3D printing is going to be the way forward for a lot of modelling, why Hornby aren’t involved is beyond me.

I don’t know if anyone knows the answer but I recently got two Hornby Pendolino motor bogies extremely cheaply and I want to swap the wheels with traction tyres for solid wheels to make them self propelled units. I think the bogies are X9711, they are the version with black rather than white gears. I think the wheel sets on them are X9718 and I wondered if the X9704 wheels have the same diameter axles so that they could be swapped over? If anyone knows the answer to this it’d be much appreciated. The motor bogies run extremely well and seem to have silly power magnets as they pick everything up around them.

I am supposed the rude word filter didn’t stop this thread. It’s stopped some of mine for less grinning

Great loco

They are possibly from the Hornby Acho range, Hornby Dublo’s French branch. I have seen the Acho stock with both the Continental type and the standard Dublo ones. Some Tri-ang stock was also sold with continental couplings, I think under the Acho brand but also VB.

Do a search on this as there have been lots of similar questions before. I am dealing with the same issue and I know about model trains and I’m finding it difficult. I sold some items to a dealer, I won’t go there again! I have had some success selling wagons in job lots but I suspect that none of them have ever been out of the boxes so I have been getting a good price for them. One dealer tried it on and didn’t get any, another gave me what i wanted so got them all. I have been selling locos on eBay, I know what they should be going for so I am getting better prices but it’s a lot of work and eBay take around 20% on the selling price AND postage. I am still getting around two to three times what I would get from a dealer though so it’s worth it, especially as I know what I am doing. It’s worth mentioning that currently there seems to be an increase in the number of idiots on eBay who don’t pay when they win something and don’t reply to messages. I always report them but eBay doesn’t seem interested.

Keep going right on the second link. Some incredible locos on there!!!!

This is the unit and some quick calculations and tests show that I need a minimum of 15mm between the ends of the coaches to get it round a 1st radius curve. Losing the black corridor connections gets me 8mm so if I move each coach out on the central bogie by 4mm that should do it. I will also have to lose the cab steps but I can live with that.

It’s probably a metric M threaded bolt if Bachmann can’t supply it (unlikely). If you have a friendly engineer with some miniature metric dies you can get them to check what size it is using one of the others and order some off various websites. One of my work colleagues did some for me off some 1960s continental locos and I was able to get everything I needed off eBay for pennies rather than pay inflated prices for ‘genuine’ parts which were simply M nuts and bolts between 1 and 2mm. The convention for metric screws, bolts etc. is M and a number so M2 is 2mm diameter, you just need to know if it’s coarse, medium or fine threads. Tri-ang, Hornby Dublo etc used BA threads and again dies are available to check what they are. There are several charts with the nearest metric equivalent to drill clearance and tapping holes but you need the correct BA taps, nuts and bolts.

I hadn’t thought of looking at tram sites thanks, pretty obvious when you see a lot of the modern units in places like Manchester a Birmingham. As my partner keeps telling me, dont be so closed minded. I’ll put some time in over the weekend. I think the biggest problem I’ll have is working out how to do it without ruining the appearance of the articulation and getting it round a first radius curve.

I have found the same colour to be indistinguishable from the Precision paints DMU green so Tri-ang must have got a good colour match with their plastic.

I motorised one of the Atlas editions French EMU units and it was obviously designed to be easy to do. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to do another one and chose the Z4702 articulated unit as I liked the look of it. The construction of this unit is completely different and doesn’t appear to have been designed with motorisation in mind, and there is a lot more metal in it that may need to be worked with. Nothing is not solveable but i have never had to sort an articulated unit before. I would assume that the central bogie is the best one to power, and have the correct size tenshodo but that brings another problem in how to connect to the two coaches, as the finished unit will need to get around 1st radius curves so the distance between them will have to be worked out leaving a non-prototypical gap around the bogie. (Remember this is HO so 1st radius is not a real problem). I have seen a photo of a motorised unit on a French website but there is no indication of how it was done. Has anyone powered an articulated unit or has any other advice on where to put the power unit?

There have been several versions in different coloured green plastic including the short lived appalling ‘Kendal mint cake’ appearance. I think a later one was painted a decent version of the standard green. If it’s plastic as 81F says, you won’t be bale to touch it up and will have to paint the whole loco. I have two that were originally blue, one was detailed as the earlier version with head code discs and the other painted similar to the Hornby green version but some were painted in two-tone green with a paler upper body, rather like the class 25/3s. The much earlier Playcraft HO version had a pale green or grey plastic body and fully painted finish in a very good match to BR loco green.

Bee, some information for Manchester around the early period of the Industrial Revolution. I used to work for a company that did site investigation and part of my role was to dig underneath buildings and find out how they had been constructed as most had no records. The usual method of construction was to dig a trench, build a brick foundation that was wider at the bottom laid direct onto the bedrock (yellow or red sandstone) or hard red clay that lies beneath most of Manchester City Centre. The trench was then backfilled with whatever they had to hand, ash, rubbish and lots and lots of oyster shells that were the peasant food of this time. Before the Manchester Ship Canal was built barges could sail up the Rivers Mersey and Irwell straight into the centre of Manchester and bring seafood in vast quantities. This changed with the construction of weirs, and for a while some very low draft boats were used that could be dragged up the weirs and carry on their journeys. Lots of the old tips around Manchester are also full of oyster shells. The River Medlock through central Manchester was also navigable up through the city centre and barges could sail up a tunnel from near Oxford Road up to near Manchester Piccadilly station where wagons could be loaded with the coal they brought. All the canals, rivers and railways in the city centre were interlinked, and there were major boatyards constructing quite large vessels in Manchester City Centre. They would make an interesting addition to a period layout. The control building in Castlefield basin looks just like a signal box! Have a look at the Manchester Coat of Arms, the three gold stripes on the shield represent the Rivers Irwell, Irk and Medlock recognising the importance of them to the City and the ship (odd for an inland City) represents the Bridgewater Canal linking Manchester to the sea, superseded by the Manchester Ship Canal. Another peasant food up until the Rivers were killed off was salmon. There was a report in one document I read about mill workers in Salford complaining about the amount of salmon they were being forced to eat caught by the Mill owner in the adjacent Irwell. Possibly important to remember that the River Irwell is the divide between the Cities of Manchester and Salford. NEVER tell someone from Salford that they are in Manchester, I have made that mistake before.

A number of the model railway magazines have published drawings for locos that were designed but not actually built. Is it possible someone has adapted a kit/proprietary loco to build one of these? I have seen a model of the 2-8-2 original design for the 9F. The other option is that not all the parts are off this loco.

I managed to find some time to do some work on the Atlas Editions model I have had for a while. I threw away all the parts that had fallen off it and I couldn’t locate where they had come from. I have replaced the moulded pantographs with Jouef ones, I would have preferred Lima ones as they have the insulators included but I didn’t have any in good enough condition. I have glued the bogies together so they are setting but this looks like it will be a very easy conversion. I found another on a French website but he had painted it a very dark green rather than the bright green the model comes in. I have no idea what the correct shade is for this unit? I can only find B&W prototype photos. Parts of it do seem a little fragile, I may look at how I can strengthen it a bit. I only paid a pound or two for it, so quite happy with this one.

I have been after one of these for quite some time now! I’ve paid more than I wanted to but it’s the only one I have seen for sale in the UK for years, watch a sudden avalanche of them appear now. Basically it’s the old Jouef/Playcraft BB67001 body, originally painted with extremely well moulded see through grilles and separately fitted metal stripes at one end, 4 axle drive from a huge can motor and brass wheels and cogs, later self coloured blue body withplastic moulded stripes, 2 axle drive and a smaller motor. Finally the body was modified to take their standard long wheelbase clockwork chassis and the blue version was sold as clockwork. That wasn’t the end of it though, the modified body was sold in starter sets, possibly in blue but definately in Red (Lima and at least one other manufacturer has released this loco in red, a colour that the real loco never carried). And…. In one set for a very limited time and not sure if it was sold in the UK in green. This has the final version of the chassis with single axle drive, motor in the bogie etc. The place where the hole would be for the clockwork version is clearly visible and the slot in the roof is present for the clockwork brake. It actually runs quite well if a little noisy. I have a number of the different versions of the blue one with the various motors, one red one with the better Playcraft chassis swapped for the rubbishy single axle drive and now the green version. It is in very good condition and now joins my collection of ‘toy’ locos. Great!!!