Playing with Hornby Dublo 3 rail again

[sagaguy]

Dublo & Wrenn city chassis & bodies are a nightmare,there are at least three versions that i know of.Wrenn body fixings don`t fit Dublo chassis & Dublo bodies don`t fit Wrenn chassis without modification & then you have some Wrenn bodies that don`t fit Wrenn chassis.One version has a plastic plate extension screwed the rear of the chassis to locate in a slot in the body,Difficult to find these days.This a Dublo body i modified with a brass bush soldered to a brass plate & epoxied to the body.

 

                                

 

 

And here is the Wrenn chassis with the plastic plate extension.

 

 

 

                               

[Wolseley]

Yesterday I asked our 3 year old grandson (we have two - he has a 10 month old brother) which of all the locomotives I have was his favourite (there are over 30 of them to choose from), he said, without hesitation, that it was a Dublo 0-6-2T - the one I had painted blue and put a Thomas the Tank Engine face on....

[Wolseley]

Dublo & Wrenn city chassis & bodies are a nightmare,there are at least three versions that i know of.

 

 

 

I could never understand why there had to be so many variations and why Wrenn didn't just continue with the exact same model as Hornby used.  Come to that, why did Hornby feel the need to change the chassis in the first place when they upgraded the body?  Surely it would have been just as easy for them to have made the new body to fit the Duchess chassis.

[sagaguy]

I think it was a case of making the City chassis to fit the A4 body as well albeit with a few modifications.

 

 

                             Ray.

[Wolseley]

I think it was a case of making the City chassis to fit the A4 body as well albeit with a few modifications.

 

 

If that's the reason, and it probably is, it's something they should have thought of when they brought out the original Duchess of Atholl.  Surely the cost of developing the tools and putting the City chassis into production would have far exceeded any savings they might have made.

[sagaguy]

Don’t forget that the Duchess of Atholl was designed pre war & City locos were only introduced with the advent of two rail twenty years later.I think at the time,Dublo models were the least of their thinking.

 

Ray.

[Wolseley]

Don’t forget that the Duchess of Atholl was designed pre war & City locos were only introduced with the advent of two rail twenty years later.I think at the time,Dublo models were the least of their thinking.

 

Ray.

 

 

Yes, the design dated back to pre-war days but, when you put a City and a Duchess next to each other, the only obvious visible improvements were the tender body and the corrected cab roof detail.  And, good though it is, the City chassis (body fixing points aside) was not really any different from the Duchess and was hardly a step forwards as regards design.  I think it would have been easier and cheaper for Hornby to produce a two rail version of the Duchess chassis to go under the City body.

[sagaguy]

The City was a new casting,if you study Atholl & Montrose,you will notice that the driving wheels don`t line up with the splashers,this was corrected on the Cities.

 

                  Ray.

[Il Grifone]

According to the 'bible', the original 'Duchess' was to be a streamliner on the A4 chassis. They could easily have made a modification to the casting and made it suitable for both classes, but the reason why they decided on a new chassis is lost in the mists of time. The only reason* for redesigning the chassis for the City was to correct the wheel/splasher misalignment, which really only needs the frames trimming at the front to allow the chassis block to sit further forward. Now if they'd wanted to fit wheels of the right diameter....

 

I made a rear extension for a 'Duchess' chassis to fit a 'City' body ('London' not 'Liverpool' obviously). then I acquired a 'City' block which made the project redundant. (It then needed another 'Duchess' body and tender but there is always room for another locomotive....) The squared off angles proclaim it as a Wrenn block but it fits OK.

 

* A cut-out needed milling underneath for the 2 rail pickup but this wasn't a problem on other models and wouldn't have been here. At the time, I couldn't understand why they needed to rehash the 'Duchess', when we could have had a completely new model instead. A WC/BoB could have used the A4 chassis for example, or even a decent 'Princess' to show up Tri-ang's horror.

 

Really they should have switched to 2 rail many years earlier (1938?).

Edited July 22, 2018 by Il Grifone

[Wolseley]

The only reason* for redesigning the chassis for the City was to correct the wheel/splasher misalignment, which really only needs the frames trimming at the front to allow the chassis block to sit further forward.

 

 

Or alternatively, as the body was to be a new casting, they could have just altered the splashers so that they lined up with the wheels on the existing Duchess chassis, and then all they would have to do chassis-wise, would be to alter it so that two-rail pickups could be fitted.  Would that not be a cheaper and quicker process than designing and tooling up for a new chassis?  By the time the City came out, Meccano Ltd's financial position was not quite as healthy as it once had been, so shouldn't they have been looking for ways to cut costs?

 

As an aside, like most of us who are interested in Dublo three-rail, I was aware that the splashers and wheels of the Duchess did not line up properly, but it's the sort of detail that could go unnoticed until someone points it out to you.  I never noticed it until I read about it in Michael Foster's book.....

[sagaguy]

We had to wait a long while before we got a Dublo style Spamcan courtesy of Wrenn,this is one of mine converted to 3 rail.Not cheap but to fit a Dublo collector to it required modifications to the chassis,something i didn’t want to do so it was fitted with a Marklin skate.Very successful.

 

Ray

 

 

 

 

 

 

[brianusa]

 

 

 

 

 

As an aside, like most of us who are interested in Dublo three-rail, I was aware that the splashers and wheels of the Duchess did not line up properly, but it's the sort of detail that could go unnoticed until someone points it out to you.  I never noticed it until I read about it in Michael Foster's book.....

 

 

The same goes for those of us who are into big boys Hornby trains also but we seem happy enough with the originals and see no need for any potential alteration.  Otherwise, we might develop scale fever!

 

Brian.

[Il Grifone]

I'm never sure whether to try to correct the more glaring errors or leave well alone.

 

Mint boxed is not really my problem....

[Wolseley]

I'll touch up or, if necessary, repaint something if the paintwork is damaged or in some other way past its best but, otherwise, I leave alone.  As far as I am concerned (and our grandsons would agree with me), the main thing is to have trains running, which is where vintage trains beat their modern equivalent hands down.

 

As for "glaring errors" (the magnificent Dublo Deltic is a prime example) I don't worry about them - anything made over 50 ago is not going to be 100% accurate anyway.

[sagaguy]

I seem to recall that E.A.M.E.S of Reading modified some Atholls giving them smoke deflectors,correct cab roof with s/valves & splashers that iined up with the wheels but it was a long time ago!.

 

                                   Ray.

[Il Grifone]

I'll touch up or, if necessary, repaint something if the paintwork is damaged or in some other way past its best but, otherwise, I leave alone.  As far as I am concerned (and our grandsons would agree with me), the main thing is to have trains running, which is where vintage trains beat their modern equivalent hands down.

 

As for "glaring errors" (the magnificent Dublo Deltic is a prime example) I don't worry about them - anything made over 50 ago is not going to be 100% accurate anyway.

 

That's usually as far as I go, A few spots of Humbrol 85 (must get some more!) make all the difference. With the notable exception od the Deltic and undersized N2 most were pretty good models apart from a love of undersized wheels. (On the other hand, there are so many Dublo models that the prototype must be wrong....)

Edited July 23, 2018 by Il Grifone

[Il Grifone]

I seem to recall that E.A.M.E.S of Reading modified some Atholls giving them smoke deflectors,correct cab roof with s/valves & splashers that iined up with the wheels but it was a long time ago!.

 

                                   Ray.

 

There's a photo in the 'bible'. IIRC correctly sized wheels were fitted too. The loco seems a bit low in relation to her tender, so an extra 2mm wouldn't hurt, though it would have meant the front buffers were too high, but then Tri-ang got away with this for many years!

[sagaguy]

That's usually as far as I go, A few spots of Humbrol 85 (must get some more!) make all the difference. With the notable exception od the Deltic and undersized N2 most were pretty good models apart from a love of undersized wheels. (On the other hand, there are so many Dublo models that the prototype must be wrong....)

Not Humbrol!,totally crap paint since Hornby took it over,takes about a day to dry,Better to use Railmatch coal black instead.

 

                                 Ray.

[Il Grifone]

Not Humbrol!,totally crap paint since Hornby took it over,takes about a day to dry,Better to use Railmatch coal black instead.

 

                                 Ray.

 

There was a time when this was true (made in China I believe), but the last lots I bought were OK. Unfortunately there is no supplier of Railmatch around here that I'm aware of and the post costs more than the paint.

[Wolseley]

My experience with the current Humbrol paints is, that for every five tinlets (or whatever you call them now that they're made out of plastic), three will be good and two will have the consistency of custard.

[Golden Fleece 30]

Not Humbrol!,totally crap paint since Hornby took it over,takes about a day to dry,Better to use Railmatch coal black instead.

 

                                 Ray.

That was the case Ray, but the last few tins I have had have dried as normal again (different supplier?)

 

The paint is still in tins if you use Enamel,  the plastic ones contain Acrylic which is how you differentiate them.

 

 

It was Wrenn not Dublo that decided to use the same chassis for the A4 and Duchess hence the rear modifications.  Wrenn also changed the rear A4 pony truck as their A4 had a Duchess style tender coupling as they only ever used Tri-ang (later Hornby) tenders, they never reintroduced the Dublo A4 tender.

 

It is not really that hard to fit Duchess/City bodies and chassis's together, this photo has both variations.

 

Garry

Edited July 24, 2018 by Golden Fleece 30

[kevinlms]

Not Humbrol!,totally crap paint since Hornby took it over,takes about a day to dry,Better to use Railmatch coal black instead.

 

                                 Ray.

This from their website - so are recent tinlets (plasticlets?) OK now?

 

In 2012 Humbrol moved over 60% of its manufacturing back to the UK from China to improve supply, and ensure high quality standards continue to be met.  Humbrol’s well-established and most popular range of enamel paint as well as their new acrylic sprays are now produced in London and Manchester. Humbrol produces over 460 different products and accessories and are sold in all major and independent craft and model retailers.

 

https://www.humbrol.com/uk-en/about-us

 

Of course, older Chinese stock will take a while to filter through the supply chain, unless they recalled it from stockists - unlikely.

[NCB]

This from their website - so are recent tinlets (plasticlets?) OK now?

 

In 2012 Humbrol moved over 60% of its manufacturing back to the UK from China to improve supply, and ensure high quality standards continue to be met.  Humbrol’s well-established and most popular range of enamel paint as well as their new acrylic sprays are now produced in London and Manchester. Humbrol produces over 460 different products and accessories and are sold in all major and independent craft and model retailers.

 

https://www.humbrol.com/uk-en/about-us

 

Of course, older Chinese stock will take a while to filter through the supply chain, unless they recalled it from stockists - unlikely.

 

Useful to know. I quite like Humbrol acrylic for scenic work; pleasant to use and goes on easily. The Chinese stuff was/is rather thick, but can be watered down with no problem. I once painted the inside of the rail on some track with undiluted stuff, and it was thick enough to reduce the gauge significantly!

[hallmodelspares]

Garry the duchesses like great though I think they miss having a line of straw/yellow to match the footplate line on the loco

[Golden Fleece 30]

Garry the duchesses like great though I think they miss having a line of straw/yellow to match the footplate line on the loco

I realised that too late after varnishing them and did not want to spoil anything as I never used transfers, all the yellow was painted on.  I did get the cylinders done though as it was easy enough the just respray a cylinder if I had already done it once.

 

Garry

Edited August 2, 2018 by Golden Fleece 30