Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Nearholmer]

An advert break.

 

This show will be worth travelling for.

[Nearholmer]

The Department of Old Fashiondness was given a really superb gift yesterday, in the form of a box of old Railway Modellers. Not just any old RMs, because among the selection was a complete set of the first three years, in excellent condition, with the covers and adverts intact. Desert island reading!

 

In one, I found an advert for this rare loco, which I acquired recently.

 

So, having prolonged a diversion, by rambling on about wireless remote control of models in the Castle Aching thread, here is old-fashioned control ....... a thumb wheel to manage the unwinding of a spring.

 

Wasn’t purchase tax high in 1952? We moan about VAT now.

 

You can read more about the maker and his other, better known, work here http://www.binnsroad.co.uk/railways/vanriem/index.html follow it down to see other clockwork locos and trams.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Annie]

Oh my that's a blast from the past.  Your 'Walker-Riemsdyk' loco is really lovely and I bet it runs well too.

[Ian Simpson]

That's a lovely model. I can see how a speed control like that could allow shunting with clockwork.

 

Looks as if Purchase Tax was 22.25%, so perhaps not that different from VAT.

[Nearholmer]

I've not yet examined and tested this particular one properly, but I have both a preceding Walker-Fenn, and a succeeding pure-Van Riemsdiyk, and they are both quite amazingly good. These guys made clockwork truly excellent, just at the point when it was finally being made obsolete by electricity for all but toys, which clung on to clockwork until primary batteries became cheaper and better in the 1960s (although, In my experience, they were still expensive rubbish until perhaps the 1980s!).

 

Because these animals are rare, and rarer still in good condition, my policy is to check them over very carefully before testing them.

 

Incidentally, I'm also trying to trace the design history, and the business relationships between Walker, Fenn, and Van Riemsdijk, which seem to have evolved over about twenty years ...... which locos are Walker-Fenn, which Walker-Riemsdijk, and which pure-Riemsdijk is very difficult to fathom!

 

Another random fact is that Mr Van Riemsdijk perfected the mechanism used in parking meters in the UK, taking an earlier US design and improving it, so if you ever put money in one of the old mechanical ones, and turned the knob to start it, you were winding-up a mechanism very similar to that is these locos!

[Simond]

which suggests that, as old fashioned parking meters will have been scrapped for some time, and the last of them will surely be on the way soon, that anyone who has a CW loco should be out looking at getting a few mechanisms for spares.

 

best

Simon

[Donw]

Some 0 gaugers who had clockwork locos adapted the speed governer from as telephone dial to control the speed of locos. My  first loco was an 0-4-0T Hornby clockwork and had no such control but was great fun.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Simon - blowed if I'm going to have to hunt around for 1s 6d to put in a slot every time I want to run a train!

 

Don - yes, telephone dial governors were used, and I think, but need to check, that they are similar in form to the governors fitted to some of the better commercial clockwork trains.

 

The Walker control is derived from another retro-technology: the control of wind-up gramophones. Clearly, they had to run at close to 78rpm, and had various forms of flywheel, governor and/or brake. The better ones seem to have had a bob-weight flywheel, which moved a small disc in and out of contact with a brake, which is exactly what the Walker device does. The amount of energy that it wastes is very small, and it works a treat, but it is complicated and bulky.

 

The Van Riemsdijk is less sophisticated. There is a flywheel, and a brake, but they don't interact from what I can see, so there is no 'closed loop', but the way the brake works again ensures that the energy loss is very small, and the resultant mechanism is much more simple and compact, but just as controllable ...... the downside is that it is also much more fragile.

 

I'm still studying this whole topic, so some of the above might be 'subject to revision in the light of further learning'.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Nearholmer

[ian]

 

Looks as if Purchase Tax was 22.25%, so perhaps not that different from VAT.

 

It depended on just what you purchased. The late Sir Gerald Nabarro MP had great fun in parliament asking questions about the inconsistencies -

 

"I could never understand why the great bulk of these floor coverings manufactured in this country—carpets, rugs, linoleum and so on—were subject to a Purchase Tax which was at the rate of 33⅓ per cent. but was reduced in the last Budget to 25 per cent., whereas a minority of the goods in this classification were exempt from the tax." Parliamentary debate 1954.

 

33⅓% on carpets makes today's VAT look like a bargain!

[Nearholmer]

Self and daughter went to play old trains at Biggleswade this morning, at the excellent event called Trains at Trinity, organised by a couple of men of the cloth. Biggest hit was the Hornby Dublo TPO.

 

The Leeds/Stedman layout is by Rev Dawes. The MGNR loco is a Douglass glass-fibre resin kit from, I think, the 1960s.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Weak at the knees at the sight of that Johnson C Class in Golden Gorse!

 

Glad you both had fun.

[Nearholmer]

I included “that gold engine”, as my daughter called it, not “yellow”, so there is definitely something in the name of the colour, with the thought that Edwardian might like it. Rev Dawes restored it from a badly-made kit in very tatty condition, and hand painted and hand-lined it. It’s a real ‘stand out’.

 

Apparently, it should have brass beads round the splashers, but doesn’t, because when he looked closely he found that each splashers was of a slightly different size, and was afraid that adding the beading would emphasise the fact.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

I included “that gold engine”, as my daughter called it, not “yellow”, so there is definitely something in the name of the colour, with the thought that Edwardian might like it. Rev Dawes restored it from a badly-made kit in very tatty condition, and hand painted and hand-lined it. It’s a real ‘stand out’.

 

Apparently, it should have brass beads round the splashers, but doesn’t, because when he looked closely he found that each splashers was of a slightly different size, and was afraid that adding the beading would emphasise the fact.

[2750Papyrus]

I also attended "Trains at Trinity" in Biggy yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it , though it was small.  In addition to my enjoyment of the M&GN loco, I was very taken with the Carette GN 440s on a static display, a model which I have not seen before.

 

I had concluded from your choice of name and references to Bedford that we must be near neighbours!

[Nearholmer]

Intriguing.

 

The Carette 4-4-0s were very interesting. I think I might have seen pictures of some before, and not taken any notice, but yesterday it was the fact that one was next to a Bing loco that I did recognise that set me asking about them. Then, of course, Mr R kindly pointed all the details out to me.

 

I can’t readily find a picture of one on line, and didn’t take any snaps, so anyone reading this who didn’t attend will have to imagine these locos!

[Nearholmer]

You won’t see this often: Nearholmer’s grass, without a whopping great trampoline obstructing the view to the garden railway.

 

The little people were out assisting with vegetation clearance.

Edited June 11, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Andy Kirkham]

Another random fact is that Mr Van Riemsdijk perfected the mechanism used in parking meters in the UK, taking an earlier US design and improving it, so if you ever put money in one of the old mechanical ones, and turned the knob to start it, you were winding-up a mechanism very similar to that is these locos!

Is he by any chance the same Van Riemsdijk who wrote this book?  https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780906899618/Compound-Locomotives-Pendragon-Books-John-0906899613/plp

 

It says "After the war he manufactured small geared mechanisms for some years, but sold out and joined the staff of the Science Museum in London in 1954"

 

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/nov/27/john-van-riemsdijk

Edited June 11, 2018 by Andy Kirkham

[Nearholmer]

He did write that book, yes.

[Donw]

The railway looks nice. Can you not declare the trampoline a health hazzard and unsafe requiring re-location elsewhere?

 

Don

 

ps You've been framed may supply some supporting evidence.

Edited June 11, 2018 by Donw

[Nearholmer]

Long story there!

 

We ended up getting a NZ-designed one, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfree_Trampoline which is the safest on the market, because I regard them as accidents waiting to happen.

 

My fervent hope is that offsprings(!) will loose interest in it, but there is absolutely no sign of that happening.

Edited June 11, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

“You’re really onto something with this portable layout idea, Nigel.”

[St Enodoc]

“You’re really onto something with this portable layout idea, Nigel.”

That is the old Saffron Walden MRC exhibition layout (and clubroom in the background) and I claim my five pounds. I think the photo was in the Modeller about 45 years ago.

[Nearholmer]

Well done!

 

I was reading the relevant RM yesterday, and rather liked the layout. It was old-fashioned even for its time.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Nearholmer

[Northroader]

No. 3 was the one, mum brought it home after a shopping trip out. It was the first model railway magazine I’d ever seen, and I devoured it. More recently I’ve made the S.P. boxcar from the drawing in it, and I would’nt mind a go at the small Bloomer some time. Then there’s the Irish layout series.

[mervyn]

Bit of "Deja vu" reading the latest  Train Collectors Society Magazine in my lunch hour and there is an article about the MGNJR Loco in it, great article about an unusual Loco and the restoration of it !....never knew there were fibre glass models,seems its now come full circle with 3D printed bodies...