Turning the Clock Back

Looking good.

 

Thanks for the generous comments.

 

It would be a ****** if Hornby did redo these coaches. They are about 40 year old mouldings, good in their day, but a bit lacking now.

I'm amazed that no one pulled me up on my statement about the number of truss rods - its a bit of an obscure topic though!  When I looked at the MRJ article on the A28 & A30 auto-trailers, I was gob smacked to see only two (outer) truss rods in the under frame details, because I had assumed (assumptions are bad) that all GWR coach under frames had four trusses ... not so it seems.  A hurried search through every photograph in my Russell GWR coaches volume two showed .... two truss rods on every 57' and 61' Collett coach (as far as could be told allowing for the Swindon habit of blanking out backgrounds in official photos which can loose vital details).  However FOUR truss rods are a feature of the 70' 1922 stock (understandably its longer and heavier) and the articulated 1925 stock.  OK it will be out with the knife when I can bear it :-( .....  (photographic evidence suggests that all 70' stock had four truss rods, 57' and shorter had two in general).  Under frame detail - a nightmare!

this blog entry just might be incorrectly shown as new .... I've been adding header photos to my old entries and accidentally ticked the 'publish now' box. it dates from march 2016! ... i'll try not to do that again.  Still getting to grips with the new system!

17 hours ago, pbkloss said:

this blog entry just might be incorrectly shown as new 

 

Well, I'm grateful it is being shown as new, having missed it in 2016. Looking forward to seeing those superflous truss rods disappear!  Btw, Tim V's B-set page was imported into gwr.org when his webspace got taken away:

http://www.gwr.org.uk/b-set-notes.html

 

The error list in the Airfix should perhaps include the incorrect bowing of the headstocks.

 

Your reference to 1'8" short buffers (in your text file) on the outside ends is interesting, but seems to contradict this blog's "replacing the outer end ones with long square shank buffer castings". Must admit I had previously assumed the outer buffers would be standard 1'10.5".

 

 

Edited February 26, 2019 by Miss Prism

Miss Prism you are absolutely right about the buffers and I have  a set of sprung square shank buffers awaiting a swap with the rigid ones currently fitted.  And yes if I hadn't mentioned those awful curved buffer beams on the old Airfix chassis I certainly should have done! (I haven't checked that text file for a long, long time!!)

 

I am so glad that gwr.org.uk rescued Tim Venton's notes, they are such a useful guide as there seems little else about B-Sets out there!!

 

Now all I've got to do is pull them out of the box and finish them off (It was the bogies that I was going to do a bit more to, I wasn't happy with the mods I had done so far to those somewhat skinny (underweight might be more like it) Airfix mouldings and the replacement tie bars need to be higher up ....

Edited February 28, 2019 by pbkloss

I've updated the text file following Miss Prism's comments!

Well I was going to mention the number of truss rods, but you beat me to it. Insert an emoji with a halo here, because I can’t. This issue has cropped up in another blog ( can’t remember which), so I happened to be passing Didcot one day and came to the same conclusions as you: two truss rods on ‘modern’ coaches of 61’ or less. One of the O gauge suppliers has incorporated 4 truss rods in their B set, so you’re in good company!

Truss rods !!!

 

Well it`s four from me !!!!!

 

Poor picture , but my vote is there is a hint of more than  two truss roads here ......

 

 

...and my  1980`s O gauge RJH  coach kits catered for four.......

 

 

...as does the Dapol/Lionheart  RTR in O gauge......

 

 

John

Oh dear - truss rods!! Shame none of the originals have survived into preservation.  And yes that broadside picture of the E145 looks like there could be four. I've now cut the extra ones off!!!!