John R Smith

A very good point. The reason I might bother to clean the track at all is simply that it would seem the black goo builds up on the wheels, and after a time (months? years?) forms a horrible lumpy crust on the wheel tyres. I know this, because with every vintage B-L wagon I obtain, I have to spend a happy half hour or so chipping the hardened goo away with a screwdriver blade and then finishing the job off with a wire brush. True, but my problem is not tarnish. A control section of B-L track left out but with no stock running on it stays clean. It might be tarnished, but no black goo wipes off with IPA and a cotton bud. It sounds as if oil is at the root of this problem. I must admit, I do tend to be generous with the lube on my clockwork mechs . . .

I expect that you, like me, have got used to the ritual of cleaning the track before each operating session. It's not too dreadful a task these days, as I no longer have a very extensive layout, but it is still a bit of a pain. I had always accepted the published wisdom that the black scum which builds up on the rails (and the wheels too, eventually) was to do with electricity and tiny sparks arcing away between the wheels and track, producing a sort of carbon deposit. So when I began my coarse scale O gauge project I was looking forward to the end of these domestic chores and track cleaning woes. Why? Because electricity, volts, amps and watts are banished forever from my new layout, which is powered entirely by clockwork (or Spring Drive, as Jack Ray would have preferred). Therefore, with no arcing between rail and wheel there should be no carbon deposits, right? Imagine then my horror when I found that my rails got just as black, just as quickly, as on my fine-scale electric setup. I can scrub all the track sparkling clean with IPA, wire-brush the wheels, and within a few days the the black scum returns. So this is obviously nothing to do with electricity at all, but if not, what is the cause? For your reference- my rails are brass, and the wheels are a mix of mazak (wagons and locos), cast iron (coaching stock) and a bit of steel (a few wagons). I seem to have been cleaning track for almost as long as I can remember. The only layout where I never used to bother was my dear old Horby Dublo 6x4, where it appeared to be self-cleaning, somehow. There's a lot to be said for centre third . . . J

Have you read the description on this listing? What a load of total codswallop! Gets my b***cks of the week award . . .

I have also been refurbishing some elderly track just recently. Older chairs can be very fragile and on one of my lengths every chair was broken in two, not at all obvious until the rail was removed. If the holding pins are steel they can be a swine to get out, as they rust firmly into place (thank heavens Bassett-Lowke used brass pins, which are easily removed). I ended up with several pins which defeated all attempts to remove them, this on Milbro track.

Congratulations for joining the Coarse Scale Brigade! It looks like you have plenty of experience in other model railway scales, so you must be well prepared for the challenges you will face. The first of these would seem to be the conductor rail chairs. As far as I am aware, nobody still makes these (or the ordinary running rail chairs either). I have managed to salt away several hundred ordinary chairs from good old eBay (although it took some time), but I have no use for the third rail chairs as my setup is all clockwork. I can't say I have ever noticed any of the special high chairs for sale on any of the usual classic O gauge sites. As you say, packing up the standard chairs to the desired height would work, but it would be a bit tedious. Do keep us up to date with your progress! John

Very nice little engine that you built there, Fred. And a well-chosen soundtrack, as always - sounded like a baritone sax solo at the end, shades of Gerry Mulligan perhaps?

That Aster Schools is a really nice runner, isn't it? You lucky man, Fred . . . .

Interesting. As you say, nobody it seems has ever attempted to represent how the the old BR diesels really looked. A bit like steel ships, where the frames telegraph themselves through the outer skin. And of course, our model diesel bodies are far too thick for this to happen - and if they were thin enough, you could never pick them up. Equally, I have never seen a convincing model of an unrebuilt Bulleid pacific - most of the ones I remember looked as if the depot staff had been throwing rocks at them! Air-smoothed casing? Anything but, by the mid 1950s.

It does look really nice, Howard. There is one thing bothering me, and has been from the outset of this project - is it terribly wise to have such a tall structure at the very front of the layout? It does look so vulnerable to a careless impact from a distracted operator / onlooker . . . Let us hope I am being an over-cautious killjoy. It is now a very impressive brewery!

Sadly, this is true unless you get lucky at a local auction house. On eBay, a G1 B-L Peckett 0-4-0 tank sold for £600 on a Buy it Now recently, and it went very quickly. This for a loco which was at the cheap end of Bassett Lowke's Gauge One catalogue at the time.

Kevin is absolutely correct. There have been no clockwork Gauge One locos produced since circa 1940 if not earlier, and the youngest will now be heading for 90 years old. So such clocky locos as do survive are now a) very desirable collector's items, and b) not something that you would give your children to play with. As I expect you know, Gauge One almost died completly after WW II because Bassett Lowke ceased mass production for that scale. If it was not for G1MRA (the G1 Association) and the Tenmille company it probably would gave vanished as a practical modeller's choice, other than for the live steam boys. I got involved back in the early '80s and it was a rocky time - but now you have track, rolling stock kits and locos too. Not cheap, but it is doable. John

Thanks, Fred. Great music, as ever - that piano player is seriously good! J

If I may quote from this excellent article, this concluding passage seems to sum up the author's points very well, and is perhaps also the most contentious - "The conclusion here is that the three key factors, size, gauge and scale came in that order. The sizes of toy trains dictated their gauges, which finally set their scales. This is the reverse of what ‘should have happened’ from the scale modeller’s point of view. However, readers of this magazine should think quite the opposite. Toy trains would not have been toy trains had scale ruled and the magnificent leaps of imagination that characterise the best of what we collect been subjugated to some idea of scale prototype representation. That 4mm remains dominant in the UK, despite it being a dog’s breakfast of all three factors, is a small beacon of hope in a world of ‘scale models’ that is increasingly anodyne and un-toy like." A "beacon of hope", indeed? I wonder what the P4 practioners would have to say about that?

Fred I stand corrected. My only defence is that I got that spelling from an old 1950s copy of the Model Railway News . . . John

That was fun , Fred. I have never seen or used a Walker-Reimsdyk clockwork engine, but I have read that they were perhaps the most controllable of spring-drive locos. Perhaps Nearholmer can tell us more?

I am sure that I have already mentioned my good times years ago at our local model railway club. The club was the Kingsbridge and District Model Engineering Society, the years ago were the early 1960s, and the place was the Old Vicarage in Stokenham. My father was a leading light in the club, and of course once I was deemed old enough I was taken along every week to the club night. We had two O Gauge coarse scale layouts - one indoors in our club room above the old stables, and the other an outdoor line in the Vicarage garden. We had a splendid assortment of Bassett Lowke, Hornby, LMC and heaven knows what else, all pre-war and all two-rail clockwork or live steam. Volts and Watts did not intrude into our pleasant hours spent fettling the B-L "Enterprise" or loading up a "Royal Scot" with an improbably long train, which would rumble out from the club room and rumble back again from the outside return loop on a rainy evening with the carriages glistening wet. Just like the real thing, thought I, caring little for the likely corrosive consequences to the club's prized Exleys. One of our clockwork engines was my especial favourite. It was a Hornby No 2 Special GWR 4-4-0, the "County of Bedford". Being a GW man anyway I fell for the taper boiler, copper-capped chimney and all the Swindon flourishes. But it was also a superb runner - it had this wonderful ability, loaded up with six or eight coaches, of taking off from rest almost imperceptibly and then very gradually accelerating up to speed in a wonderfully prototypical fashion. When the club had to leave the Vicarage in the mid-1960s, most of the stock and the track was sold off. At the time, this engine was the one item I wished that I had been able to keep. Almost sixty years went by, and many layouts and scales came and went into and out of my life. I had never even thought about trying to find another Hornby "County". Until now, when for some mad reason I had started my 1930s O Gauge project . . . It turns out that these O Gauge "County of Bedfords" are now quite scarce - not quite as scarce as an "Eton" or an "L1", but still hard to find, especially in good condition. So I think I did quite well to come up with this clockwork example - Straight away, I have to confess this engine is not in original condition. It is a restoration, carried out in 1980 by a gentleman called John Metcalf (about whom I know nothing, but perhaps somebody here can provide some background). Whatever, the work has been done well and she looks very splendid. Her elegant proportions make a nice antidote to certain rather ungainly brutes in the same roster. And it is all rather nostalgic and heart-warming, just like meeting up with an old friend. This one is a very fine runner, too, although until I get a continuous circuit I can't really test her hauling capability out. Of course, once I had got this fine old lady I had to get a couple of nice chocolate and cream Exleys to go with her, so here she is at Kingswell Street on the 1.45 pm to Stratford on Avon. Nostalgia rules!

I find it much easier to think in terms of scale ratios. Hence, 1/4" to 1 ft is 1/48, 17/64" is 1/45, and so forth. O Gauge is actually 1/43.55 (thanks, Mr Greenly). The currently accepted standard for diecast cars in this scale area is 1/43. Why Binns Road should have had such a fluid attitude to scale ratios beats me - I did not realise it was all so well documented, so thanks very much for the Meccano Ltd memo.

Brillant stuff, Fred. I loved the Train of Cranes! And the music is just great too. This fascination with cranes is intriguing, but obviously you have been well bitten by the bug - what a collection! In practice we very rarely saw the rail-mounted type in action, usually they were based at a major MPD (down here at Laira), and only came out in action at times of serious derailment, like this - This was near St Dennis in the china-clay district, about 40 years ago. Unfortunately the steam crane is not in the picture, but just out of shot. This is the only major derailment that I have been involved with (but I did not cause it, I hasten to add!). Buffer stops seem to work quite well on model railways, but not in this full-size case - the remains of the stops are that pile of scrap to one side of the track just below my viewpoint. All the wagons were recovered except for the wooden bodied clay hood, which was cut up on the spot.

Many thanks for that information. The print I used has no credits regarding the artist. The landscape depicted is actually north Cornwall, looking out to sea from somewhere like St Minver, perhaps, or St Endellion maybe. In any case, not really appropriate for my imagined location somewhere in Gloucestershire! I think the idea of using a painting in this style was basicaly a good one, just a pity about the horizon line . . . When you could keep the horizon level with the camera, it looked quite nice - So I am back to a plain white wall again, now . . .

Well, the station on my period shunting plank just had to have some signals - and of course, to go with them, a signal box. This was made more difficult by my very early acquisition of the glorious Bassett-Lowke engine shed, which forms an impressive focal point at the northern end of the station. The B-L shed is made of wood, with real glass windows, and I quickly found that I had painted myself into a corner by using it. When it came to finding a signal box, the obvious choice for a classic coarse scale O Gauge layout was of course the Hornby Number 2 Cabin, which are plentiful in the market and very reasonably priced. I obtained one, and found that being tinplate it just did not sit well alongside my wooden engine shed. There was a clash of textures and finish which just did not work for me. So I needed a wooden signal box, and in a similar style and colour to my engine shed. Easier said than done. After a great deal of internet trawling I eventually came up with this - This is definitely the right sort of box, and it fits in really well, but I have no idea who made it. Looking through the catalogues of the 1930s, B-L did make cabins very like this, but I don't think it is quite well made enough to be B-L. Other firms made remarkably similar signal boxes, like Milbro and LMC, or it could be Hailey. There is no stamp or maker's mark inside. So, a mystery box, but it looks the part. Then, of course, we needed some signals. I tried, I really did try, some B-L signals, which are correctly to scale for Gauge O. The problem I had was that set against my massively timbered track and lumbering overscale engines they just looked too small. I already had a few Hornby tinplate signals, and somehow they work better, for me. They are grossly overscale (and would in fact be about right for Gauge One), but they look great - and just as important, work great too. There is a factor here which is most important and which some people call "Play Value", but for which I am going to invent a term - "tactile coefficient". You need to spend a bit of time with these old Hornby signals, adjusting the balance weights and operating wires to be perfectly free, and adding a drop of Singer oil to all the bearings. Then the arms move with a satisfying weightiness and a "clunk" as the go down, with even a bit of bounce if you have got it right - So in my judgement they have a high (and most satisfying) tactile coefficient. It is all very hands-on, this antique gear. You use your fingers to close the couplings, your wrist to wind the engine, your fingers again to apply the brake or reverse the gears, and again to change the points or set the signals. It is most important that all those points of contact work well and smoothly and feed back a sense of quality that comes from fine engineering of an age when even toys were built to last. The engine shed and the signal box are certainly two key buildings which give my tiny layout some life and substance. Another vital structure is of course the station platform, and this has really caused me some grief. Of which, more another time. So for now I shall leave you as Hornby GWR tank no 2221 departs Kingswell Street with the evening pick-up goods, having collected the token from the signalman and with a clear road ahead.

Anyhow - many thanks to everybody who has replied to this thread. I am a bit surprised by the number who felt that there really was not much of a problem, or that I was making too much of it - I was really expecting more along the lines of "hard luck John, what a clot you are, just rip it all down and bin it, better luck next time dimwit" or perhaps variations on that theme. Or it may be, of course, that the RM Web chaps are just far too polite to give me the hard truth. This is not the first time that I have used flipped L-R prints to build a frieze style backscene. It's a bit off subject, I know, but I used the same technique on my finescale 7mm diorama to build an urban backdrop - These are actually the houses to the rear of the station at Wadebridge, combined with some stone walling along the same street. I printed all the components out and built them up into a collage of some thirty pieces of paper! Everything behind the seated young lady is 2D, including the wall and pillars. The total depth is six inches. As usual, the problem is in the transition to the sky at the top of the scene, but the perspective is working quite well.

With all due respect - what the photo needs is a custom rotate of 1.25 degrees left. Then the sea horizon will be level. The building fronts are actually not vertical, but that is because the camera lens is below their centre line. You would require a rising front on the camera to correct this. For many years I earned a living recording historic buildings, so I am sure I am very over sensitive to all this stuff, and far too picky, but that is my cross to bear . . .

Well, there you go. Sometimes it seems that great ideas turn out to be not so great, after all. For some time I had been pondering the potential for a backscene at Kingswell Street, as an alternative to the default expanse of white-emulsioned wall. I did go so far as to purchase a commercial photographic scene from Gaugemaster, and although it was well produced and for a fair price I found it much too dark overall and rather gloomy. Just a big expanse of dark green woodland, really. So a bad choice on my part. In any case, it was a modern scene, and shall we say, too realistic - which jarred with the definitely unrealistic foreground. So I pondered long and deep, and came up with the following mantra - my 1930s layout should have a 1930s backscene. Amongst my collection of railway prints and posters I discovered this GWR poster from the period, which has the advantage straight away of being a painting, not a photo, and hence rather more suited to my antique collection of classic O Gauge bits and pieces - Having scanned the postcard into my PC, the hard work began. In Photoshop, I desaturated and lightened the painting to give a feeling of distance. I then made left and right versions by flipping the image. Now the L and R prints could be joined together seamlessly, because the joining mirror images would match along each edge. I then uploaded the images to a firm called Printpond, who did a super job of printing the files to A3 size on heavy paper and winged them back to me securely packed by express post. Now I had enough A3 prints for my nine feet long layout, and I set to work hanging them on the wall. At first, I was rather pleased. The backscene did seem to give a feeling of depth and space to the setting, was not too dark, and the style of the artwork did sit quite well with the Bassett-Lowke and Hornby rolling stock. So I thought that I would take a few photos to check my work. Then alas, the truth was revealed. It had been a big (huge, massive) mistake to include a ruler-sharp sea horizon line in the backscene. The only way that can work in the photos is to shoot exactly at 90 degrees to the wall and level the camera accordingly. Otherwise, move the slightest bit off angle, and you get something like this - And if you think that you can straighten things up a bit in Photoshop, it just results in this (with a four degree correction) - Oh dear. A choice of sloping sea, or collapsing 0-4-0 tank. Well, it didn't cost much, and I learned a lot. Any thoughts?

Perhaps it is time for another update from my tiny coarse scale O Gauge museum layout, which is rapidly becoming a rest home for elderly engines. When I started this mad enterprise I only had one loco (my B-L Compound), now we are up to six and counting. The youngest is in its late seventies, the oldest is now ninety, and so far they are all still functional. As they are also all clockwork, I am probably really tempting fate with that last statement. Ho hum. One of the more recent acquisitions is not Bassett Lowke, but Hornby - the Hornby No 2 Special 4-4-2 tank, GWR version. The Number 2 Special was introduced by Hornby in 1929 to replace the No 2 tank (which was in many ways a lot nicer looking loco) and offered in LMS, LNER, GWR and SR liveries. In fact, this later version is to be frank, rather a hulking brute. Perhaps because of this, prices are quite reasonable with a plentiful supply in the marketplace. The usual problem to beware of is disintegrating wheels (both large and small) suffering from Mazak Rot. This is surprisingly common and an issue which some sellers are quite blind to. My example is a late version (circa 1936-40) with the GWR monogram and numbered 2221. When she arrived she was rather neglected, and the overall finish was dirty and dull, but there was no damage and everything was present and correct. As it turns out, this Hornby No 2 Special mechanism is a real beauty and 2221 is one of the very best runners we have at Kingswell Street. She is heavy and very solid, and runs through the tight curves and turnouts as smooth as silk. One of the joys of clockwork is that it is silent, and so the noise is just the wonderful clatter of wheels thriough the joints and crossings in the track. She is also powerful and will shunt heavy old Exleys around at low speeds with the unstoppable assurance of the real thing. So it was time to clean her up and put a shine back on her paintwork. This took a couple of evenings of patient work, but she scrubbed up quite well. The process was helped by these engines being enamelled rather than litho tin-printed, which allows you a lot more options when it comes to refurbishment. So here she is now on a (very) short pick-up freight, 8.30 am to Gloucester - Something I forgot to mention is that I am pretty sure she has had all new wheels, which is a real bonus. Strangely I now have three B-L locos, and three Hornby ones, not planned but just how things have turned out. More news to follow . . .

Yes indeed. We should also note how beautifully presented the whole thing is, with the pelmeted curtaining etc. The people putting it together must have had tremendous fun with it. It is "pure tin toy", but that just goes to show how coarse scale O Gauge is actually a very broad church. Further still towards the toy spectrum was a lot of early Bing and Bub material, but then Bing did also make some very fine scale locomotives in the larger scales (Gauges One and Two). We should remember that coarse scale O also includes the higher end Bassett-Lowke output, Edward Exley's coaches and Hornby's own No 2 Special tender locos and the "Eton" of course. And I don't think anybody would have criticised Jack Ray's "Crewchester" or Norman Eagles' "Sherwood Section" for being too 'scale'.