Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Nearholmer]

This is all getting terribly serious, which is my fault.

 

To bring us back on-topic without leaping directly to the colourful, here are some sober toy trains.

 

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

55 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

To bring us back on-topic without leaping directly to the colourful, here are some sober toy trains.

 

43871? Who are they kidding?

[Metropolitan H]

I'm afraid all this talk of Longmoor and the use of cranes by the military has reminded me of Messrs. Lockhart and Lennox - both having started their railway engineering careers as "Premium Apprentices" under Gresley at Doncaster - in the mid-1930s - before spending WW2 in the Royal Engineers in Africa and the Middle East. They then went off in separate directions - still involved with Railway Engineering - till they both ended up in the London Transport (Railways) CME Dept in the early 1970s.

 

Andy Lennox spent most of the war and subsequently with the East African Railways - till independence happened and the Chinese influences grew, when he and Mrs Lennox came back to UK. He was an interesting character, but not directly relevant to the rest of this story, so I won't say more about him.

 

Michael Lockhart had a very different set of experiences germain to this thread. Having been released from his apprenticeship into the RE Railway Engineers, he was sent to Egypt and then as the Allied Forces went forward in the Middle East he went with the railways to ensure the lines of supply were maintained and eventually ended up in Austria getting the railways going after the cessation of hostilities. Two of the tales Michael used to tell were:

• About building and operating a supply railway along the top of the beach up the eastern shore of the Mediterranean - sensible because it is relatively level and stony, with little tidal range to worry about. But there were some severe curves and the beach ballast wasn't that secure - so there were points where locos working hard would fall over and lay on their sides on the beach. To keep the traffic going it was normal practice to leave the loco where it lay and slew the track clear of obstructions and then carry-on till you ran out of room to slew the track - then they got the heavy lifting gear in and picked up all the locos (as many as 5 in one place??) and reset the track on the original alignment.
• When he was taken to a marshalling yard in Vienna that needed clearing up and getting working again. The trouble was that as the result of Allied bombing there was a huge pile of twisted rails and wagon parts strewn across the middle of the yard - that would have taken many months to clear by normal means. His decision was to commandeer 5 or 6 large 2-10-0 locos coupled together and hitched to a big and long steel cable made fast to the top of the pile - the area was cleared, the "Go" signal given and the pile was brought down to ground level where it could be quickly and safely (relatively??) cut-up and cleared.

 

Following his wartime experiences, there was no vacancy for Michael at Doncaster, but he got a job at Brighton with Bulleid, where he was involved with testing the Leader. His career then led him eventually to Gorton as Technical (?) Director at Beyer-Peacock when the "Hymeks" were being built. Then B-P went into liquidation so Michael went to LT - where he was my boss for a number of years - till he retired and took on the job of Inspecting Officer for the Isle of Man.

 

I got the impression from Michael that althought the RE used the Austerity locos, they would happily use - and repair if necessary - local equipment.

 

So in the picture of the Dean goods being lifted at Longmoor - was the crane an Army asset or was in on loan from a mainline railway for training purposes??

 

Hope this isn't to much of a deviation from the topic

 

Regards

Chris H

[Northroader]

There’s a site running, which looks a bit esoteric, but you may find something to help:

http://www.bdca.org.uk/forumtwo/viewforum.php?f=8

[Metropolitan H]

Northroader - Thanks for that info, which suggests that the crane at Longmoor was definitely an Army one - possibly from the dates quoted :

"Cowans Sheldon; one of two built in 1942 for the Ministry of Supply.
Steam 30T 6-4W CS 7869 -70/42

Recorded at Longmoor ( 1955 and 1965 ), Marchwood and finally Shoebury as 62007 ( 1981-2; scrapped ca. 1986 ). I do not think that a topple at Shoebury in the 1980s helped its future?"

 

Cribbed from http://www.bdca.org.uk/forumtwo/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=257&sid=6098d666d444af11eaa29f7239781da6

 

That is a fascinating site, but I don't think I will be delving too deeply - life is too short and current diversion is the LBSCR Overhead Electrification, along with others!

 

Regards

Chris H

[St Enodoc]

3 hours ago, Metropolitan H said:

a topple

More common that you would expect - or like. Often "backwards" due to releasing a load too suddenly.

Edited January 15, 2021 by St Enodoc

[Metropolitan H]

Now back to couplers, like the replacement (?) one on the Bing MR Coal wagon.

 

I have this morning taken a few pictures of my HAG loco and coaches. First here is one end of each of the five vehicles (loco / van / 3x coaches).

 

You will note:

• The loco  and coach at the other end of the line are both fitted with the BUCO / HAG style coupler, with a fairly conventional hook and a drop link that will couple directly with a hook or a standard Maerklin type coupler.
• The van and the the coach the other side of the centre vehicle both have the standard Maerklin type couplers - with the slot in the droplink which will engage with the hook on the BUCO type (or on ACE / Darstead / Hornby / etc. types).

The middle coach has the same Maerklin type coupler at the far end, but as seen in the next picture the near end has an unusual type of drop link on the Maerklin type coupler.

 

But it can still couple to a BUCO type coupler,

 

or a ACE / Darstaed type - should you so wish!

 

I know they are not perfect pictures, but hopefully they show the differences. So finally having received an IXO 1:43 scale model of a similar vintage Swiss Post Bus I staged an "Alpine station meeting" (at Gutter Lane).

 

Have fun. I think this should help to get you back on topic!

 

Regards

Chris H

Edited January 15, 2021 by Metropolitan H
Removal of duplicated photo and correction of vehicle numbers - can't count!

[Nearholmer]

Thank you, even a bit of colour creeping back in now.

 

That last, sort-of-universal, coupler looks very similar to the Bing ones that do the same job - I will see if I can find one, and the oddity on the Fandor coaches too, later.

 

A lot of little grey cells were devoted to trying to circumvent  coupler patents, or to finding universal solutions, methinks. Might have been simpler just to agree a standard, but I guess "automatic" was a selling point, until you bought one and discovered that eight million independent variables had to align to allow it to work properly.

[Nearholmer]

Here we are:

 

Fandor

 

Bing

 

There were oodles of different ‘tinplate’ couplings, so depending upon who chips-in, this could go on a bit.

[St Enodoc]

10 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Thank you, even a bit of colour creeping back in now.

 

That last, sort-of-universal, coupler looks very similar to the Bing ones that do the same job - I will see if I can find one, and the oddity on the Fandor coaches too, later.

 

A lot of little grey cells were devoted to trying to circumvent  coupler patents, or to finding universal solutions, methinks. Might have been simpler just to agree a standard, but I guess "automatic" was a selling point, until you bought one and discovered that eight million independent variables had to align to allow it to work properly.

I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

[Simond]

I’m no fan of tension locks, but it has to be admitted, they are robust and they work.

 

and Peco - Pritchards Patent Product Company - was based at least in part on the Knuckle coupler fitted to Hornby Dublo, so there must have been money in inventing the better mousetrap coupler

 

atb

Simon

[Nearholmer]

I succumbed.

 

Another very nice model. It is definitely <1:43, probably 1:48, but will be OK at the back of the layout.

 

 

The BR ones were actually painted crimson and cream - about 25 years ago I encountered one at Newton Heath that was used only about once a week for shifting wheel-sets about indoors and it was still in 1957 showroom condition.

 

Happily, these common Supertoys can be found easily at reasonable prices. This one had its original price marked-down from 10/9 to 8/-, so must have been hard to shift c1969.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Long, and I think ultimately inconclusive, discussion here that challenges the Peco/HD coupling story and thereby part of the Peco foundation-myth.

 

I actually like the Bassett-Lowke and similar drop-link couplers that are the de-facto standard for British coarse scale, although a lot of the modern ones are needlessly large - it looks fairly like a proper railway coupling, and makes no doomed-to-failure attempts to be automatic, so you have to shunt properly. A half-again-as-big version of the HD one would probably be OK too, but I'm not sure anyone ever made such a thing.

[andi4x4]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

......  A half-again-as-big version of the HD one would probably be OK too, but I'm not sure anyone ever made such a thing.

 

Both Lima and Triang (and the various Triang copies)  used something similar to what you describe above, albeit probably far too big for what they needed to be.

 

Regards

 

Andi

 

 

[Metropolitan H]

Also look at what ETS use on their native Czech trains, it is very similar to the Trix / HD / Peco type writ large - but most people I know who have encountered them have found them good at automatic un-coupling, normally when you don't want them to!

 

Regards

Chris H

[Simond]

Interesting tale about the couplings, I didn’t know about the other patent.  Given the nature of patents, for a second one to have been granted, there must have been an inventive step, something new, but I have not discovered what that was, the centring spring, perhaps.

 

Peco’s patent is here https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/010343011/publication/US2558383A?q=pn%3DUS2558383A

 

interestingly, he thought it sufficiently valuable to apply in the US as well as the UK.

 

and people are still patenting model railway couplings!  There’s a 2017 application for a magnetic three-link, which might be interesting.

 

thanks for the rabbit hole!

 

on the crane topic, I’m still building a D&S kit for a 15t Cowans Sheldon crane at the moment.  
 

Atb

Simon

[Nearholmer]

45 minutes ago, Metropolitan H said:

Also look at what ETS use on their native Czech trains,

 

Er, um, yes ....... including daughter's one that is on my railway!

 

I really should have thought a bit harder!

 

Now, does anyone know of an on-line listing of the scales used by Dinky for their Supertoys? I had to resort to buying a book to find out the scales of their military models - not expensive, and well spent money, because it saved me buying things that are 1:59, rather than even vaguely near 1:43.

[Northroader]

Way back, the son of a family friend had a kit for an Airfix tank wagon, which I made up and ballasted for him. The rest of his stuff was Hornby Dublo, so I cut a matching coupler out of a sheet of tin, and I was quite pleased to see how it worked. I was hovering on the brink of 00 myself for a time, and quite interested in fitting the Peco couplers to some stock. For me the very big plus is that you can lift a wagon out of a train without everything tangling up, as tension lock do. I’ve got some 0 ETS stock with their couplers, but I take them off, they’re just too big and intrusive.

[Nearholmer]

Too busy today to play trains, but I thought I’d post a ‘test card’ picture.

 

After Ace made the 4-4-4-T and 4-4–2T Hornby replica tanks that I so like, their next loco was this, inspired by the Hornby No.2 4-4-0. It wasn’t Ace’s finest hour, in that these locos were factory lubricated with thick ‘marmalade’, which will cause the mechanism to self-destruct if not washed-out. The aesthetic wasn’t popular either, so the secondhand market is now awash with them.

 

 

This one has never turned a wheel, bought reasonably cheaply, and not used pending a wash out, which I never get around to. I put it on the plank to remind me to deal with it when I get a few hours to take it all to bits.

 

Entirely freelance, of course, and a pity it has paddlebox splashes, because otherwise it is only 10 000 miles from a Brighton B2X, rather than a million.

 

 

[brianusa]

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

After Ace made the 4-4-4-T and 4-4–2T Hornby replica tanks that I so like, their next loco was this, inspired by the Hornby No.2 4-4-0. It wasn’t Ace’s finest hour, in that these locos were factory lubricated with thick ‘marmalade’, which will cause the mechanism to self-destruct if not washed-out.

In my enthusiasm for a big loco for a fair price, I was one of the many 'first' buyers of the LMS version.  On first sight, a good example except for the noisy gears (in spite of the 'marmalade') and it even tried to get around Lionel 031 curves which I believe was advertised as being able to accomplish.  Not so much so on Lionel 031 points but eight out of ten isn't bad, I suppose.  Hauled the Pines Express, eleven bogies quite well but was just not old Hornby, nor did it look like it.  So it remains a shelf queen along with other enthusiastic mistakes!

      Brian.

[Annie]

9 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

After Ace made the 4-4-4-T and 4-4–2T Hornby replica tanks that I so like, their next loco was this, inspired by the Hornby No.2 4-4-0. It wasn’t Ace’s finest hour, in that these locos were factory lubricated with thick ‘marmalade’, which will cause the mechanism to self-destruct if not washed-out. The aesthetic wasn’t popular either, so the secondhand market is now awash with them.

I own a Hornby original 4-4-0 in LNER black livery, - clockwork of course, but no tender unfortunately.  It was found in the rafters of a barn sitting all on its lonesome on a cross beam and no-one much seemed to want it when it was offered for sale so I purchased it.  Who knows why it was left up in the rafters of that barn, - perhaps a sibling playing a mean trick and hiding it, - or perhaps it was just a plaything that got forgotten, - but after considering what to do with it I decided to leave it how it is.  It would need complete dismantling and cleaning, the clockwork mech looks like it needs work, and one of the alloy driving wheels has a flange rotted away so it wouldn't be any kind of a quick restoration.  I'm not up to doing things like that anymore anyway so it's possibly best for me to keep in the warm and dry where it won't come to any more harm and eventually find it a new custodian.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Annie
more to say

[Nearholmer]

The trouble with resto projects is that it’s easier to acquire them than it is to finish them, especially if, like me, you aren’t a ‘completer/finisher’ by nature.

 

Here is my Hornby No.2, nestling in its old shoe box, which I still can’t decide whether I should subject to a full resto, a minor fettling, or use as the basis for a flight of fancy - I dismantled it ages ago, and then stopped due to indecision!

 

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[St Enodoc]

30 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The trouble with resto projects is that it’s easier to acquire them than it is to finish them, especially if, like me, you aren’t a ‘completer/finisher’ by nature.

 

Here is my Hornby No.2, nestling in its old shoe box, which I still can’t decide whether I should subject to a full resto, a minor fettling, or use as the basis for a flight of fancy - I dismantled it ages ago, and then stopped due to indecision!

 

 

I'm surprised that there were nearly 3000 parts...

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, brianusa said:

nor did it look like it

TBH, I don’t much like the shape of it either. I can’t put a finger on why, but the proportions don’t work, whereas those of the original No.2 do. That’s probably why it forever falls to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list.
 

But, once cleaned-out, they do run quietly, and are amazingly strong haulers.

[sncf231e]

21 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

The aesthetic wasn’t popular either, so the secondhand market is now awash with them.

 

Being from a country far away I do look at these with different eyes I suppose. I like them, especially the CR version:

 

Regards

Fred