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Halvarras

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    Close to 84B
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    Main line = diesel hydraulics, with branch lines into Scottish and Southern territories. Cornwall's railways in general. Walks with a sea view.

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  1. That 5-pole motor certainly delivered, provided the rest of the drive train was up to scratch - I had one which was a good 'un, I repainted it as 5557 in green full yellow with cabside double-deckers around 1981. Sadly too many of them were "noisy runners". When Hornby first released the ex-Lima 31 in the Railroad range as blue 31256 my initial pleasure at seeing the original bodyside details became dismay upon removing it from the box and finding it with refurbished cab fronts!? I contemplated back-dating these but remembered that I had an unpainted Airfix body so ended up putting this on the Railroad chassis instead. This was slightly too long so I sawed off the bufferbeams and used these to replace the plain Airfix 'beams. I also changed the engine exhausts to EE type, fitted an etched roof fan grille I had in stock and filled in the missing upper bodyside band sections across the cab and engine room doors with 10thou plasticard. The short centre valances remain however as I couldn't see how to fix these in a way which wouldn't be subject to repeated breakage. I also excavated the moulded cab door handrails but haven't resolved how to attach the wire replacements inside the body yet as the project has stalled for several years 🙄. Hopefully this year I'll get 31294 in green livery finished at last.......
  2. The hinges are there but 'incomplete' - the engine access panels should be four, two per side not one long one per side. Division missing. The triple ribs on the engine exhaust panels.....?? To me the Heljan windscreens look a little too deep. The original Tubby Duff also had moulded bufferbeam corner steps - keeping them attached was not easy......
  3. Certainly no earlier as the loco was a 1968 early blue repaint with D prefixes and these have already been painted out, which is why the number appears misaligned with the double-arrow logo. This hadn't become widespread practice at depots by January 1969 (works output only) but it took off that spring.
  4. I'm not seeing that on the window frames themselves - but perhaps the fit of the glazing in the top corners gives that impression? I believe the standard depth of BR headcode characters is one foot - do they measure 4mm on this model? They certainly look bigger than Bachmann's (which may be smaller than this of course). The Class 47 headcode panel did have a sizeable black margin around it, as clearly seen in @50A55B's photo but Heljan's headcode panel, although neatly done, just seems a little.....exaggerated.......
  5. Curiously with these units there was a very brief return to unlined dark green just before BR blue arrived - since both liveries shared small yellow warning panels, white cab roof domes and red bufferbeams, only the body colour varied. On 15th June 1967 W50865/59372/50921 was working the Par - Newquay branch services in very clean unlined dark green ('Branch Lines to Newquay', Middleton Press), yet despite its excellent external condition I noted it in blue livery on 1st November 1968. The Western Region didn't hang about repainting its DMUs into the new corporate colours and I believe all WR DMUs were blue or blue/grey with full yellow ends by the end of the 1960s. What looks like a mid-60s photo of another Class 116 in unlined dark green appears on page 59 of 'British Railways First Generation DMUs in Colour - For the Modeller and Historian', but I don't think there could have been many like this before being subsumed in a sea of blue. I've created a Class 118 from the Lima Class 117 with additional body parts and have often considered doing a Class 116. The centre car always puts me off but oddly enough I was checking the drawings in 'A Pictorial Record of British Railways Diesel Multiple Units' (again) just a few days ago and came to the conclusion that the best way to create a TS would be to use a pair of Class 117 TCLs and join the two 'non-toilet' halves together, which would avoid the difficulty of neatly removing the toilet filler pipes on the roof (the roof ribs are part of the problem, unless one is prepared to remove all ribs from all three vehicles.....) An additional internal partition would be necessary, which would require one of the large windows on each side being divided, but panels to achieve this could be cut from one of the spare TCL ends. The other panels to create the DMS would come from the same source. I have the necessary models in storage, and a set of headcode and destination panels fashioned from 10thou plasticard while making these for a Class 122 conversion years ago, just in case - when I've worked my way through a pile of other projects I'll maybe go looking for the necessary round tuit!
  6. My Falcon sightings were always very hit and very miss! First time was a pure stroke of luck, passing it heading west between Taunton and Exeter while travelling in the opposite direction behind D821, on 23rd May 1969 - we were only going as far as Taunton to see an expected Peak working an ECS IIRC, so headed straight back to Exeter in time to see D0280 come back up from Paignton. We missed D28 but never mind! My attempt at a photo was compromised by D813 parking itself right in the way at the wrong moment, hence to this day it is still my least favourite Warship! Next time should have been during the weekly Wednesday afternoon Swindon Works guided tour on 29th July 1970, but a late-running train meant we didn't get there in time. Oh well, at least I had finally copped D7000 a few hours earlier it had already been a good day....... I started my working life a few miles from Swindon on 6th September 1972 so missed 1200 Falcon on the Paddington - Bristol workings by a matter of weeks if not days (this was also exactly 3 weeks after the RTC's Class 17 8598 had visited Swindon Works to collect Test Car Hermes, on 16th August 1972 - I only learned that about 25 years ago! But it was a work day anyway so I was unlikely to have seen it even if I'd arrived a month earlier). After that I occasionally noted Falcon in South Wales while travelling from Swindon to Cardiff, usually parked as it was always on a Saturday, but struck it lucky one last time when I found it resting on Swindon Stabling Point on 9th February 1974, when I managed to get my only photos of it in blue.
  7. I bought these as they were released - at a time when virtually nothing else was published on BR rolling stock they were absolutely invaluable, inspired a few projects such as converting an Airfix cattle wagon kit into the panelled-in general traffic version and a scratchbuilt all-steel Lowfit wagon on another very old cattle wagon kit chassis survivor from my yoof*, and ensured I numbered these and a collection of other kit-built wagons correctly. When Airfix and Mainline launched their OO ranges it was clear from some of the selected running numbers that they found these books invaluable too! The other essential softback book collection was Brian Haresnape's 'BR Fleet Survey' series, the first of which I recall finding at the October 1981 Barrow Hill Open Day. Both of these sources became well-read and well-thumbed. The latter was only supplanted 20 years later by the 'Modern Locomotives Illustrated' series (of which I collected anything 'First Generation'), yet I still refer to the earlier books from time to time. *I also scratchbuilt a Holman's compressor trailer as a load for it, remembering these regularly heading through Truro in the up 6B59 afternoon freight service, having been loaded at Camborne (I suppose this train at least did stop there Wednesdays....) and I still have that, now mounted on a different wagon.
  8. In both guises the engine room window at No 2 End driver's corner was deleted. I took some photos of 47901 in 1984, while commuting from Swindon to Bristol by train for 4 months.........I suppose 40 years on I should give the modelling a break and finally get around to scanning all the photos I took then, other than 50007 a sea of BR blue - it's all historical now!
  9. Nice - I was aware of the different cantrail grilles on the centre section as they were visible from ground level, but I didn't realise the roof panel between them looked this different from the standard design, so that's a revelation. I did wonder at the announcement whether this variation was worth the effort for just five locomotives, but now I've seen the finished article I've changed my mind! Would the Class 48 TOPS hole have been plugged if Heljan hadn't launched their Mark 2 Class 47? Probably not, so we should be thankful that they did.
  10. I do understand, and it wasn't a serious suggestion! I'm wedded to OO myself and collected decent models of everything I require to achieve my goals before I retired nearly 5 years ago. By decent I mean run well and look the part - that's all that matters to me. I'm a happy resident of DC-land and don't need every detail to be present and correct and only my relatively few 1980s era models need working lights, so my pensions aren't stressed by constant £200+ purchases. I think I can still count the number of locos I've bought brand new for over £100 on the fingers and thumbs of both hands (the unavoidable pre-order for Rapido's Port of Par twins may bury that achievement........unless they represent the thumbs!) and as a result I don't break into a sweat when I modify and renumber/rename locos to represent those required for personal/nostalgic reasons and the results turn out less than 100% perfect. Of course I do admire the fantastic products now being offered (including N where it's lately become difficult to tell the scale in magazine photos at first glance) but I really don't think I'd be upgrading everything even if finances were less of an issue. In the end it's 'Horses for courses', innit?!
  11. I don't have one of these but I'd assume that the grey side vents are holding the roof on, in the same way that Lima used the glazing for the same purpose on their BR CCT / GUV and LMS 42' parcels vans. If you can press these in a little to release the roof (try one side at a time) you'll be able to look inside and hopefully figure out how to get the body off the chassis. The rivets may simply be holding the ballast weight in place.
  12. The 'Winter 1960-61' Ian Allan ABC shows the Class 46s running up to D199 then continuing with D1500 to D1513 - total = 20. There were 20 'generator' Brush Type 4s so it's clear what happened........
  13. Ah, you need to move up to OO, then you could tell one diesel loco from another 😜!!
  14. Reference to split drive gears usually involves the old Mainline Warship where it's near universal - however last summer while rebuilding a Heljan 47 using bogies with the old blackened brass wheels I was concerned to discover that each bogie had one driven axle with a split gear. Luckily I had some spares left over from other conversions to the shiny wheels but I did panic a bit and checked all of my other older Heljan locos - no problems, phew! Then early last month I retrieved an original Bachmann Class 08 (blue 08623) for a makeover and a test run quickly revealed.......a split drive gear. This one cost me around twenty quid for a complete new wheelset. I had no idea either of these models were prone to this problem, but when plastic drive gears are force-fitted onto axles and thus put under permanent tension perhaps it's not surprising this can happen in some instances over time, especially if the gears were moulded with a slight imperfection which the tension exploits.
  15. Agreed, but in my ageing case it would be more than "slightly" 🤓 !
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