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Show us your Pugbashes, Nellieboshes, Desmondifications, Jintysteins


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I sort of 'get' why Triang, Triang Hornby, and now Hornby have never provided proper slidebars. pistons, and crossheads on these starter models; they are not intended for 'serious modeller' use and must be resistant to less than sypathetic handling from kiddywinkies playing with them.  There was a lot of historical prequel to them when they were first brought out, with Hornby tinplate 0 and Trix Twin models being similar.  The idea seemed to be that children would start clamouring and badgering their parents for xmas train sets at about the age of 3 or 4, and in 00, were not capable of putting bogies or pony trucks on the rails, so 4 wheelers were the order of the day.

 

I suppose the trend started, so far as Triang were concerned, with Nellie/Polly/etc, a credible attempt for those days in many ways.  Simple, robust, mech, no outside cylinders, and a plausible locomotive.  You could draw comparison with the NER Y4 as a vague prototype, and the locos were brightly coloured, popular, and a good entry level point.  Then they were replaced, presumably for cost reasons, by Smokey Joe/Desmond.  This was, to my mind, a backward step; I thought that, from 'our' ('serious modellers') point of view, the big problme with using Polly etc. as industrials was that very few industrials had inside cylinders (I'll come back to Dowlais in a minute).  This is becasue most industrial customers did not want to dig inspection pits and needed to get at everything from ground level, so an industrial 0-4-0 was an outside cylindered saddle tank in most cases.

 

Along comes Smokey and his chums, outside cylindered saddle tanks, but 'all wrong' as 'serious' industrials even though the top half was credible as Nielson; too long in the wheelbase, driving wheels too large, and toy cylinders and motion.  The mech reappeared underneath the Holden, 'Tarmacadam', and others, but the issues remained.  We got the Dowlais, and a Bagnall type diesel, but they still had the long wheelbase and oversized drivers.  Matters were made worse by the uncontrollable Scalextric mech and the spurious liveries.  There were so many of these that I cannot now state with any certainty that the Dowlais ever appeared in GKN livery, and TTBOMk the Holden only ever had 1942-7 GWR livery which it never carried in it's short life.

 

Now, of course, we have a decent number of 'proper' RTR industrials at our disposal, Hornby Pecketts, Hattons's ABs, Hunslet 18" 'austerities', and more on the way.  But I still think Hornby (or anyone else with the nounce and facilities) have missed a trick by never making an upgrade kit for the starter 0-4-0s; replacement wheels with packing pieces to allow for height at the buffers, and a proper cylinder and motion set.  The later mechs are reasonable slow performers, and the locos have unrealised potential IMHO.

 

Much of what has been posted on this thread is evidence of this!

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Slightly out on dates. The GWR Holden Tank was the first available in 1978 and carried proper GREAT WESTERN 1906 livery suitable for a lesser locomotive. It's debatable that it ever carried a livery though. Photos suggest it was plain green.

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_year_details.asp?itemyearid=15

 

The CR 264 didn't appear until 1980. Length wise it's about 6mm too long in the tank department. Branchlines do a conversion kit with replacement chassis.

 

Prototype for Nellie was the LSWR C14. Even has the same toolboxes.

 

spacer.png

Ben Brooksbank Wiki

 

 

Jason

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Nellie was apparently ‘based on’ the C14, though never TTBOMK claimed to be even a ‘representative‘ model of it.  I’ve always thought the Y4 was closer in appearance, as it was an inside cylinder loco.  C14 has a longer wheelbase than Nellie; again, the Y4 looks closer, though tbh I’ve no idea how the measurements stack up.  
 

When Nellie first appeared, early 60s IIRC, and for probably a decade or so following, I was unaware of the existence of either of these prototypes and assumed the loco to be completely freelance.  Correctly or not, I tend to think of the model as based on the Y4 because in my mind, you can’t have a model of an outside cylindered loco without the cylinders, so I can’t accept it as a C14…

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2 hours ago, John Besley said:

Wasnt Nellie once produced with a Lord of the Isles dome...

 

It was, in red as '25550,' which if the story I have heard is true, was supposed to be Hornby's Margate telephone number at the time.

 

There is a thread here about updating a Nellie.

 

 

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15 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I sort of 'get' why Triang, Triang Hornby, and now Hornby have never provided proper slidebars. pistons, and crossheads on these starter models; they are not intended for 'serious modeller' use and must be resistant to less than sypathetic handling from kiddywinkies playing with them.  There was a lot of historical prequel to them when they were first brought out, with Hornby tinplate 0 and Trix Twin models being similar.  The idea seemed to be that children would start clamouring and badgering their parents for xmas train sets at about the age of 3 or 4, and in 00, were not capable of putting bogies or pony trucks on the rails, so 4 wheelers were the order of the day.

 

I suppose the trend started, so far as Triang were concerned, with Nellie/Polly/etc, a credible attempt for those days in many ways.  Simple, robust, mech, no outside cylinders, and a plausible locomotive.  You could draw comparison with the NER Y4 as a vague prototype, and the locos were brightly coloured, popular, and a good entry level point.  Then they were replaced, presumably for cost reasons, by Smokey Joe/Desmond.  This was, to my mind, a backward step; I thought that, from 'our' ('serious modellers') point of view, the big problme with using Polly etc. as industrials was that very few industrials had inside cylinders (I'll come back to Dowlais in a minute).  This is becasue most industrial customers did not want to dig inspection pits and needed to get at everything from ground level, so an industrial 0-4-0 was an outside cylindered saddle tank in most cases.

 

Along comes Smokey and his chums, outside cylindered saddle tanks, but 'all wrong' as 'serious' industrials even though the top half was credible as Nielson; too long in the wheelbase, driving wheels too large, and toy cylinders and motion.  The mech reappeared underneath the Holden, 'Tarmacadam', and others, but the issues remained.  We got the Dowlais, and a Bagnall type diesel, but they still had the long wheelbase and oversized drivers.  Matters were made worse by the uncontrollable Scalextric mech and the spurious liveries.  There were so many of these that I cannot now state with any certainty that the Dowlais ever appeared in GKN livery, and TTBOMk the Holden only ever had 1942-7 GWR livery which it never carried in it's short life.

 

Now, of course, we have a decent number of 'proper' RTR industrials at our disposal, Hornby Pecketts, Hattons's ABs, Hunslet 18" 'austerities', and more on the way.  But I still think Hornby (or anyone else with the nounce and facilities) have missed a trick by never making an upgrade kit for the starter 0-4-0s; replacement wheels with packing pieces to allow for height at the buffers, and a proper cylinder and motion set.  The later mechs are reasonable slow performers, and the locos have unrealised potential IMHO.

 

Much of what has been posted on this thread is evidence of this!

 

 

After the Triang Connie/Nellie style loco came the continental style dock shunter (I am not referring to the diesel loco. This was a very cheaply made little steam loco and one year they tried using square axles on it. It was of a similar design to the later 0-4-0's but I felt that the later 0-4-0's like "Smokey Joe" were of better quality build when it came to the way they had been designed.

Smokey Joe style bodies were certainly not the first to use the chassis. The GWR 101 Holden design bodies predate the saddle tanks by a couple of years as they came out in the late 1970's while the saddle tanks came out in the very early 1980's. 

 

Also, in regards to design, the majority of Hornbys market in those days were the younger generation which is why it took a long time before Hornby decided to make serious attempt as super detailing their models. If tey had done this in those days (Which they could have easily done as they certainly had the expertize) then they would have had had to raise the retail price which would have lost them a sizable chunk of their sales as adult collectors hardly existed, and adult enthusiasts who actually ran their models were a smaller percentage of Hornbys market. (The large kit market available in those days was thought of as being the realms of the more serious modeller. How times have changed now that we seem to want ready made ready detailed models and we call ourselves serious modellers! It is why I really love this tread as I can watch some really nice attempts of good modelling being done. To me, I actually prefer freelance because one has to learn how the real things worked where if one was copying an actual prototype one just copies. (Ok, in many ways freelancing is easier but this is not always the case as one has to learn what to include and how things worked to make ones model convincing).

 

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10 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Nellie was apparently ‘based on’ the C14, though never TTBOMK claimed to be even a ‘representative‘ model of it.  I’ve always thought the Y4 was closer in appearance, as it was an inside cylinder loco.  C14 has a longer wheelbase than Nellie; again, the Y4 looks closer, though tbh I’ve no idea how the measurements stack up.  
 

When Nellie first appeared, early 60s IIRC, and for probably a decade or so following, I was unaware of the existence of either of these prototypes and assumed the loco to be completely freelance.  Correctly or not, I tend to think of the model as based on the Y4 because in my mind, you can’t have a model of an outside cylindered loco without the cylinders, so I can’t accept it as a C14…

 

Hmm......being unfamiliar with the Y4 I went off to find photos, but all those I could find were outside cylindered. Ignoring the running gear, in my view the 'body' for Nellie and her siblings was clearly based on the C14 - perhaps rather than trying to design their proposed new starter set 0-4-0 themselves from scratch Tri-ang flipped through a copy of 'The Observer's Book of British Railway Locomotives' 1958 edition (mine is a treasured possession and one of the oldest things I own) for a suitable subject and simply liked the proportions of the C14. Everything below the footplate was irrelevant. Having the above book means I spotted Nellie's clear similarity to the C14 more years ago than I'd care to admit to :rolleyes:! But you can take an educated guess.......half a century? Yeah, and the rest!!

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Whatever one might think of the relationship between Nellie and the C14, there's no doubt she had the distinctive Drummond look. I'm not quite sure of the order of events but about the same time Triang produced an M7 and the Caledonian 123* so the design team was familiar with Dugald Drummond's fingerprints.

 

*The exact parentage of 123 is still debatable but there's no doubt Nielson's intent was to produce a locomotive in the style of Drummond's 66 Class 4-4-0s, a batch of which they had built.

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21 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Whatever one might think of the relationship between Nellie and the C14, there's no doubt she had the distinctive Drummond look. I'm not quite sure of the order of events but about the same time Triang produced an M7 and the Caledonian 123* so the design team was familiar with Dugald Drummond's fingerprints.

 

*The exact parentage of 123 is still debatable but there's no doubt Nielson's intent was to produce a locomotive in the style of Drummond's 66 Class 4-4-0s, a batch of which they had built.

Nearest I can make it out, Nellie first appeared in 1960 and the M7 appeared under the Triang Hornby banner in 1967 https://www.keymodelworld.com/article/tri-ang-connection

 

That sounds about right to me. I had, for many years a Triang Nellie which was bought by my late father, who died in 1962. I remember seeing the M7 featured in "new products" in Railway Modeller, which would place it in the 1966-70 period when I built and operated a layout primarily based on the surviving elements of my father's layout. 

 

I also seem to remember that the M7 was an early offender, having "glowing firebox"...

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29 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Nearest I can make it out, Nellie first appeared in 1960 and the M7 appeared under the Triang Hornby banner in 1967 https://www.keymodelworld.com/article/tri-ang-connection

 

That sounds about right to me. I had, for many years a Triang Nellie which was bought by my late father, who died in 1962. I remember seeing the M7 featured in "new products" in Railway Modeller, which would place it in the 1966-70 period when I built and operated a layout primarily based on the surviving elements of my father's layout. 

 

I also seem to remember that the M7 was an early offender, having "glowing firebox"...

 

And opening smokebox door I think

 

It also featured on the front cover of that years catalogue  - was it a Cuneo painting?

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5 hours ago, John Besley said:

 

And opening smokebox door I think

 

It also featured on the front cover of that years catalogue  - was it a Cuneo painting?

 

It certainly had an opening smokebox door by the 1980s, though I'm unsure whether that was a later embellishment.

 

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16 minutes ago, Ben B said:

I'm finally able to post something in this topic :)

 

I entered the Hornby Summertime layout competition, and built a miniature railway using G figures and 00 stock.  I'll post more on the layout at some point in the future (it's scheduled for the virtual show in a few weeks, and then again in BRM next year), but anyway, I found myself needing some reliable motive power when Phil of this Parish wanted me to film the layout.  The ancient Triang Transcontinental stock I'd hacked and chopped for the layout were playing up a bit, so very much overnight I raided the spares box to throw together two new locomotives that might stand half a chance of running decently for the filming the next morning.

 

First up, a works diesel (inspired very much by the little blue Hunslet on the Fairborne).

 

BEN_BUCKI_Hornby-Holidays_Layout_Shunter_01.jpg.4eb82c41393d075b3e7cba91fe4d0663.jpg

 

A straightforward bash of the Barclay 06, with some slightly gratuitous gluing-on of bits from the spares box to try and make it a little less 'straight out of the box'

 

BEN_BUCKI_Hornby-Holidays_Layout_Shunter_05.jpg.17a5e4b90a0bcfdb6584efc86a78761f.jpg

 

The seat is laser-cut, a spare from the coaches.  The cab is actually too tight for many of the figures to sit in it anyway!

 

BEN_BUCKI_Holyhead-Breakwater_Article_MODEL_Old-Filter_01.jpg.726c08dc588358d5f2f0b93c72164ec4.jpg

 

It had actually already had a repaint into weathered black for an earlier layout/diorama, to give a quick (entry-level) take on the Holyhead Breakwater and its 01 shunters.

 

Whilst digging out the 06, I found a spare body for a Holden, and decided to quickly produce a steam-outline diesel.  It would allow me to use the heavier running-plate of the 06 and hopefully improve adhesion, as the coaches were all very heavy ex Triang TC boxcars.  The body was modified with a bit of plasticard to just sit on the running plate, no need for dismantling it all for a regular chassis-swap.

 

BEN_BUCKI_Hornby-Holidays_Layout_Wild-West_Lido-Bridge_02.jpg.1bc690534cbc395b655150e7146fe53f.jpg

 

It was -somewhat hastily- modified to look like an Americanised loco; a lot of the look of the railway is based off lines I visited as a child in the 1980's and 1990's where there always seemed to be a US-outline loco or two knocking around.

 

BEN_BUCKI_Hornby-Holidays_Layout_Wild-West_Arrival_01.jpg.987807bb3526bd78b88b3dd6c3471193.jpg

 

Again, I was inspired by Fairborne, in this case the Guest loco that was Americanised back in the 1980's.  With mine, I wanted it to still recognisably be a British-outline loco underneath the cosmetic bits like the oversized lamp and balloon-stack.  The cowcatcher was from a cheapy wind-up toy, the lamp off a G-scale loco, the chimney is a Playmobil oil can, the bell on the cab is from a Lionel RTP loco I've been working on.

 

BEN_BUCKI_Hornby-Holidays_Layout_The-Tunnel_01.jpg.4c65e4852acfa04227d1c141e74b27b8.jpg

 

I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out, given they were made pretty much over the course of one busy evening, but in the event they still didn't manage to perform brilliantly, unable to properly shift the heavy rolling stock.  I'm hoping I can do a better detailing job and repaint on them at some point in the future for a possible layout.  But there is something to be said for just how relaxing and fun modifying these simple little base models can be!

 

 

I am loving this, the Holden looks superb! I can smell the sea and taste the sand! Fairground/seafront trains rock! (I want a stick of rock now......) :sungum:

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On 11/11/2021 at 17:12, The Johnster said:

There were so many of these that I cannot now state with any certainty that the Dowlais ever appeared in GKN livery,

There was one that depicted King George V in a rather simplified version of the livery with what appears to be a brighter shade of green than they wore in real life.

 

There were other versions which appeared to be inspired by the real life engines, but aside from the names and numbers, the liveries were entirely freelance. When I was a kid, though, I had both, plus a Desmond and a Polly. As they were all the exact same shade of red, I said that was the livery of my freelance light railway.

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On 10/11/2021 at 23:48, Mountain Goat said:

 

They are a simple push fit.  The new Chinese chassis take some tugging to pull them out. The older versions of the chassis were easier to take the crank pins out.  The whole wheel centres (The plastic part) can also come out. 

 

While the older versions were very easy to dissasemble and assemble, the recent versions can be a pain as they have a new design of pick up which needs about three hands to put the things back into place. They do run better though! Oh. And on the old versions the motors simply unclipped with that wire clip. The new ones both had the wire clip and now have a sticky substance to hold the motor moee firmly in place. Not a problem though, as one can stick the motor back where it was. The new ones also have soldered wires to the pickups. The old ones were not soldered. They simply had the pickup design touch the motor terminals so did not need it. 

 

Thank you very much for the information, that's very helpful.

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On 10/11/2021 at 23:48, Mountain Goat said:

 

They are a simple push fit.  The new Chinese chassis take some tugging to pull them out. The older versions of the chassis were easier to take the crank pins out.  The whole wheel centres (The plastic part) can also come out. 

 

While the older versions were very easy to dissasemble and assemble, the recent versions can be a pain as they have a new design of pick up which needs about three hands to put the things back into place. They do run better though! Oh. And on the old versions the motors simply unclipped with that wire clip. The new ones both had the wire clip and now have a sticky substance to hold the motor moee firmly in place. Not a problem though, as one can stick the motor back where it was. The new ones also have soldered wires to the pickups. The old ones were not soldered. They simply had the pickup design touch the motor terminals so did not need it. 

Concur.

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