Bachmann 94xx

[The Stationmaster]

My interest in the 15XX is linked to the foray of the class into South Wales - 1508/9 spent their entire working lives west of the Severn and 1506/7 had also gone there for a while when new.  However as 'Johnster' has said the 94XX were both far more numerous and widespread (although some spent time in store immediately following delivery) and one was a regular on our local branch prior to the arrival of dmus - and of course they also saw use on passenger work in South Wales and on the 'Cheltenham Spa Express'  (between Gloucester and Cheltenham).

 

So as far as I'm concerned both have their attractions but the 94XX would be far more useful.

[Horsetan]

Come to think of it, even the driving wheels of a 15xx were different to those carried by most Panniers, having the crankpin on the spoke instead of in-between, despite having the same overall diameter.

 

Awkward sod to model, but no less attractive for all that.

[Liam]

I was lucky enough to drive the sole survivor for a short distance a few years back - wobbled a bit! Its livery of colliery days looks quite interesting, I saw a colour photo in Steam Railway a few months back.

 

If Bachmann released a model I would definitely be interested, it could be the basis for a micro layout just like the Heljan AC Railbus in O gauge was.

[Blandford1969]

I was lucky enough to drive the sole survivor for a short distance a few years back - wobbled a bit! Its livery of colliery days looks quite interesting, I saw a colour photo in Steam Railway a few months back.

 

If Bachmann released a model I would definitely be interested, it could be the basis for a micro layout just like the Heljan AC Railbus in O gauge was.

1501 is a cracking engine, the only time a wobble is really noticeable is when its light engine. It will pull the back of a horse. I think a new kit or ready to run would be lovely. I've currently got a built 15xx from the estate of a late friend who I agreed to sell but its tempting to buy it myself.

[Budgie]

1501 is a cracking engine, the only time a wobble is really noticeable is when its light engine. It will pull the back of a horse. I think a new kit or ready to run would be lovely. I've currently got a built 15xx from the estate of a late friend who I agreed to sell but its tempting to buy it myself.

What scale is it? If it's OO and you are going to sell it, I'll buy it.

[The Johnster]

I'm as guilty as anyone, but we're getting off topic...

[gwrrob]

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/gallery/image/41686-1501-at-coventry-colliery-1967/

 

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by gwrrob

[Ian Hargrave]

My interest in the 15XX is linked to the foray of the class into South Wales - 1508/9 spent their entire working lives west of the Severn and 1506/7 had also gone there for a while when new.  However as 'Johnster' has said the 94XX were both far more numerous and widespread (although some spent time in store immediately following delivery) and one was a regular on our local branch prior to the arrival of dmus - and of course they also saw use on passenger work in South Wales and on the 'Cheltenham Spa Express'  (between Gloucester and Cheltenham).

 

So as far as I'm concerned both have their attractions but the 94XX would be far more useful.

Memories of Paddington in the 50's and early 60's are of these awkward looking Hawksworth tanks at the buffers of the departure platforms as we waited to board our train....an indelible memory for those of us who remember it.and the carriage headboards that sang...."Paddington-Newport- Cardiff and Swansea " etc..No contest....one of these waddling in with its rake of coaches destined for far off seemingly magical places please.

[Steamport Southport]

I'm as guilty as anyone, but we're getting off topic...

 

Nah. Pannier tanks all look the same....

 

 

 

 

 

Jason

[The Johnster]

Except the ones that look different.

[bike2steam]

Sorry, but I've just seen this thread, and considering my sense of humour, something made me smile namely the title of this thread;- 'Bachmann 94xx, started by On The Branchline', given the route restriction of the class !?!?

 

edit, thanks Mike, so that's the reason why I never saw 1508/9 at Old Oak.

Edited July 1, 2017 by bike2steam

[griffgriff]

Except the ones that look different.

I believe they are called saddle tanks

 

Griff

[The Stationmaster]

Sorry, but I've just seen this thread, and considering my sense of humour, something made me smile namely the title of this thread;- 'Bachmann 94xx, started by On The Branchline', given the route restriction of the class !?!?

 

edit, thanks Mike, so that's the reason why I never saw 1508/9 at Old Oak.

 

One of the 94s was a regular engine on our branch for several years and they were used on some branches in South wales (the east end of the country) on passenger trains.  But these examples were I suppose in many respects the odd men out although it poses an interesting question - which Class was the 'typical' branch passenger engine on the GWR and which Class was the typical branch freight engine?  

 

Answers on a postcard - a very large postcard I suspect.   But whichever, virtually all of them for the Post-War era are available r-t-r in 4mm scale with only the 94XX and 16XX missing. 

[The Johnster]

Memories of Paddington in the 50's and early 60's are of these awkward looking Hawksworth tanks at the buffers of the departure platforms as we waited to board our train....an indelible memory for those of us who remember it.and the carriage headboards that sang...."Paddington-Newport- Cardiff and Swansea " etc..No contest....one of these waddling in with its rake of coaches destined for far off seemingly magical places please.

I am liking your categorising of Newport and Swansea as 'far off seemingly magical places'; 'seemingly' is the key word here.  Cardiff, is, of course, quite magical, in the sense that it is sometimes difficult to believe...

Edited July 2, 2017 by The Johnster

[The Johnster]

One of the 94s was a regular engine on our branch for several years and they were used on some branches in South wales (the east end of the country) on passenger trains.  But these examples were I suppose in many respects the odd men out although it poses an interesting question - which Class was the 'typical' branch passenger engine on the GWR and which Class was the typical branch freight engine?  

 

Answers on a postcard - a very large postcard I suspect.   But whichever, virtually all of them for the Post-War era are available r-t-r in 4mm scale with only the 94XX and 16XX missing. 

 

Along with 54xx and 74xx, but that's splitting hairs.

 

it is difficult to define the term 'branchline' with any precision; we all know exactly what we mean by it, and we all mean something different.  The concept of a branch being a feeder or distributor service to a 'main' line, whatever that is, is a very broad church.  Was there a branch from the South Wales Main Line at Cardiff to Merthyr, in post-grouping days, or was it the ex-TVR main line, in which case was the Rhondda Branch of that railway the real main line after it began to carry more traffic than the original Merthyr route?  Was the Brecon and Merthyr section from Bassaleg to Pant a branch to Brecon from the SWML at Newport, or was it a part of a network of secondary main lines serving the more central parts of rural Wales?  Does a branch line have to end in a terminus?  Is the South Wales Main Line a branch to the Great Western at Swindon, or the Liverpool a branch to the WCML at Weaver Junction or a branch to the L & M at Edge Hill?  If the Shelwick Junction-Worester route is a branch to the North to West main line at Shelwick and the OWW at Worcester, which end is the terminus?

 

In South Wales terms, Abergwynfi was about as branch as it got, perhaps except for Cowbridge, but saw 42xx on mineral workings, not your 'go to' branch freight loco!

 

Not so easy, is it?

 

Personally, I find it hard to think of 94xx as branch line locos, but they were the standard loco on the Machen-New Tredegar "Old Rumney' branch for it's final decade, and did passenger work between Risca and Tredegar as well.  It is probably as well to not get too bogged down in this sort of semantics and get on with the modelling!

[Budgie]

What I remember of the 1950s is that the ex-TVR lines used 56xx 0-6-2Ts for minerals and passengers, with 64xx on auto-trains, whereas the other line down the Cynon valley used panniers on passenger and all sorts of stuff on minerals/freight.

 

But I never thought of those lines as branchlines.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Budgie

[Ian Hargrave]

What I remember of the 1950s is that the ex-TVR lines used 56xx 0-6-2Ts for minerals and passengers, with 64xx on auto-trains, whereas the other line down the Cynon valley used panniers on passenger and all sorts of stuff on minerals/freight.But I never thought of those lines as branchlines.

But they were used on passenger work on the Vale Of Neath line between Pontypool Road,Aberdare and Neath and onwards between Neath and Swansea.

[Ian Hargrave]

I am liking your categorising of Newport and Swansea as 'far off seemingly magical places'; 'seemingly' is the key word here.  Cardiff, is, of course, quite magical, in the sense that it is sometimes difficult to believe...

But you can read a lot into the word "etc.".....Landore Viaduct for example...

[Joseph_Pestell]

As the Western prototypes diminish decade by decade, Bachmann might well consider limited production runs (500-ish) of certain Western models. Say, 813 (Hudswell), etc. The limited edition would guarantee a sell-out, despite the neer-sayers complaining bitterly that the rivets are out by a scale 20thou.

 

Off the top of my head are:- 813, 450, 426, 298, 373.

 

By my reckoning, that's about 100 years of announcements...

 

Ian.

 

Take the full development costs of a loco model and divide by 500. That's a big sum of money before you add manufacturing cost, profit margins, distribution, etc. Not a runner.

 

"Limited editions" are only possible off the back of a longer run of what is basically the same loco, preferably with just a few livery changes.

[Budgie]

But they were used on passenger work on the Vale Of Neath line between Pontypool Road,Aberdare and Neath and onwards between Neath and Swansea.

You're right, as this dreadful picture shows:

 

[Ian Hargrave]

Well that certainly is a call from my own past for sure.What a bizarrely shaped platform arrangement that was.Any idea of the date ?

[Budgie]

August 1961

[The Johnster]

Now, this is a very, very, sweeping generalisation so give me a bit of wobble room with it, guys, but the rule seemed to be that the GWR's lines in South Wales that dated from before the grouping used locos that had not been specifically designed for South Wales work but were Churchward standards such as 45xx, 42xx, 5101, and their varinats, with 43xx and 28xx on the Pontypool-Neath route (later cameo appearances of Stanier 8F and Austerity 8F), backed up by the usual pannier suspects, whereas lines acquired at the grouping, TVR, RR, B&M, R&SB etc tended to accumulate 56xx and 64xx which were Swindon's post 1923 specific response to South Walian conditions as their native 0-6-2s were thinned out.  The 94xx fits into this scene as part of Swindon's long ongoing programme of replacing Welsh museum pieces with modern locos made of Swindon standard parts; they were at least partly intended to replace the likes of TVR 04 and some of the Alexandra Dock sort of exotica.

 

Please note the use of terms such as 'generalisation', 'seemed', or 'tended'; this is not a hard or fast rule, and is well proven by the large number of exceptions.  For instance, the R & SB were supplied with 3 brand new 45xx small prairies from Swindon, painted in their very smart dark red livery, and 're-absorbed' fairly seamlessly into GW stock in 1923.  In a similar vein, the Barry Railway borrowed several brand new large prairies, which were IIRC similarly re-absorbed in 1923, in order to have loco with water capacity to work through from Cardiff (Riverside) to Bridgend via their Vale of Glamorgan route.

 

Note the use of corridor coaches in Budgie's not that dreadful and actually very informative photo in post 70; Pontypool-Neath through trains took more than 2 hours to complete their journey, and were thus provided with main line stock that had toilet facilities and corridor connections.  This also applied to Newport-Brecon trains, which might turn up behind a 2251 or Ivatt 2MT mogul, but were often hauled by 57xx/8750 panniers, not normally locos associated with main line stock on runs of over 2 hours.  This was not the cascaded Edwardian time served fare you'd expect, but quite new Collett and Hawksworth stuff.  Brand new  Hawksworth all-steel auto trailers, still being built in the early 50s, could be seen alongside matchboarded ones that had begun life as steam railmotors 40+ years earlier  South Wales is different!

Edited July 3, 2017 by The Johnster

[Captain Kernow]

Nah. Pannier tanks all look the same....

 

 

 

 

 

Jason

I think that about the engines of the LNER.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Captain Kernow

[Ian Hargrave]

Now, this is a very, very, sweeping generalisation so give me a bit of wobble room with it, guys, but the rule seemed to be that the GWR's lines in South Wales that dated from before the grouping used locos that had not been specifically designed for South Wales work but were Churchward standards such as 45xx, 42xx, 5101, and their varinats, with 43xx and 28xx on the Pontypool-Neath route (later cameo appearances of Stanier 8F and Austerity 8F), backed up by the usual pannier suspects, whereas lines acquired at the grouping, TVR, RR, B&M, R&SB etc tended to accumulate 56xx and 64xx which were Swindon's post 1923 specific response to South Walian conditions as their native 0-6-2s were thinned out.  The 94xx fits into this scene as part of Swindon's long ongoing programme of replacing Welsh museum pieces with modern locos made of Swindon standard parts; they were at least partly intended to replace the likes of TVR 04 and some of the Alexandra Dock sort of exotica.

 

Please note the use of terms such as 'generalisation', 'seemed', or 'tended'; this is not a hard or fast rule, and is well proven by the large number of exceptions.  For instance, the R & SB were supplied with 3 brand new 45xx small prairies from Swindon, painted in their very smart dark red livery, and 're-absorbed' fairly seamlessly into GW stock in 1923.  In a similar vein, the Barry Railway borrowed several brand new large prairies, which were IIRC similarly re-absorbed in 1923, in order to have loco with water capacity to work through from Cardiff (Riverside) to Bridgend via their Vale of Glamorgan route.

 

Note the use of corridor coaches in Budgie's not that dreadful and actually very informative photo in post 70; Pontypool-Neath through trains took more than 2 hours to complete their journey, and were thus provided with main line stock that had toilet facilities and corridor connections.  This also applied to Newport-Brecon trains, which might turn up behind a 2251 or Ivatt 2MT mogul, but were often hauled by 57xx/8750 panniers, not normally locos associated with main line stock on runs of over 2 hours.  This was not the cascaded Edwardian time served fare you'd expect, but quite new Collett and Hawksworth stuff.  Brand new  Hawksworth all-steel auto trailers, still being built in the early 50s, could be seen alongside matchboarded ones that had begun life as steam railmotors 40+ years earlier  South Wales is different!

And might indeed have had a good deal longer to complete their journey to their their eventual destination.The afternoon service from Pontypool Road was destined for Carmarthen.Recently constructed Stanier vestibuled stock was used on the Vale Of Neath line from the early fifties .As for motive power,anything went,including for a short period in the mid fifties,Manors. .43XX were regular performers