HELJAN UNVEILS ‘OO’ GAUGE 25/3 AND ‘ETHEL’ FOR 2019

[Hal Nail]

1 hour ago, Pedro32 said:

Just got round to testing out my BR Blue LMR version 25093. Upon going to fit some couplings I noticed these circular stubs underneath the buffers. Any idea what this is supposed to be?  
 

As it’s fouling any coupling on either end... or does it pull off- apologies if this has been mentioned before.

see page 43/44

[w124bob]

Well back in March I posted pictures of my first(off 6) class 25's with a comment about getting back into the club for some more pictures well...... 25321 passing through Dewsbury Midland, a replacement for a Bachmann class 25 of the same number.

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by w124bob

[SHerr]

23 hours ago, w124bob said:

Well back in March I posted pictures of my first(off 6) class 25's with a comment about getting back into the club for some more pictures well...... 25321 passing through Dewsbury Midland, a replacement for a Bachmann class 25 of the same number.

 

 

 

Great to see Dewsbury Midland still about, I’d subconsciously assumed it had died a death. Are there any up to date threads with the layout? It was always one of my favourites when in ‘blue era’. The 25 looks good as well.

[w124bob]

Very little has happened to Dewsbury Midland, other than running on a club night, all the OO modellers have dodgy hips, knees and backs so it's unlikely to appear at any shows any time soon! I'll not say never though. Here are a couple of links with more of DM including a trip by Ivo Peters.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/28630680@N06/albums/72157717082301503

and more of my own loco's

https://www.flickr.com/photos/28630680@N06/albums/72157713850164572

 

 

[The Black Hat]

I know this has probably been mentioned but is there any chance of these being done with a headlight?

[sulzer71]

3 hours ago, The Black Hat said:

I know this has probably been mentioned but is there any chance of these being done with a headlight?

Why? I have never seen a headlight fitted 25?

[woodenhead]

4 hours ago, The Black Hat said:

I know this has probably been mentioned but is there any chance of these being done with a headlight?

 

43 minutes ago, sulzer71 said:

Why? I have never seen a headlight fitted 25?

25278 / 7628 on the North Yorkshire Moors has a headlight, it works on National Rail routes.

[sulzer71]

17 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

 

25278 / 7628 on the North Yorkshire Moors has a headlight, it works on National Rail routes.

Never knew that although I have very little interest in the real railways tbh

[Covkid]

9 hours ago, GordonC said:

 

its not a separately fitted headlight like you might be expecting, one of the tail lights has been swapped to maintain the appearance

 

25059 on the KWVR also has a headlight at at least one end, but again, it is a preservation fitting, and didn't feature during it's BR era

 

http://ukrailways1970tilltoday.me.uk/Keighley_and_Worth_Valley_Railway_diesels.html

[PeterH]

Does anyone know if there is an ETHEL specific DCC sound chip available or looming? I am aware some Class 25 sound chips have an ETHEL mode but it seems a waste when you’ll only use that one function!

[Covkid]

On 29/07/2021 at 19:12, PeterH said:

Does anyone know if there is an ETHEL specific DCC sound chip available or looming? I am aware some Class 25 sound chips have an ETHEL mode but it seems a waste when you’ll only use that one function!

 

I would say the opposite.  The Ethels were a waste of a good loco !!! Seriously though my memories o fthem are that they ran at around half max rpm constantly.  So a Sulzer engine thrashing away continuously on half power would be the equivalent.  Maybe you could pick up an old ESU v3.5 or v4 and maybe alter the CV settings. It would be a waste to use a V5 in it.  Not sure if the Ethels ever ran their air compressors, as theoretically all air would come from the "mother" 37 on the front.  Cetainly no vacuum exhausters so very little auxilliary noise apart from maybe the rad fan. Just the six pot Sulzer spluttering away   

Edited August 2, 2021 by Covkid

[TRAILRAGE]

On 26/07/2021 at 14:54, GordonC said:

 

its not a separately fitted headlight like you might be expecting, one of the tail lights has been swapped to maintain the appearance

 

Interesting. Was that a recent modification? The latest pic I can find of 25278 is 209 still carrying its Headlight.

 

25278 / D7628 Sybilla | Seen at Whitby Station 11th May 2019… | Flickr

 

Cheers Trailrage

[50A55B]

D7628 doesn’t have a high intensity headlight in a tail light mounting, it has a central headlight of the 1980s style. D444/50044 had a tail lamp conversion to headlight.

[GordonC]

Sorry, I was thinking of 25059 at Keighley

 

 

 

[tlm]

Shades of Blue

 

I hope this 25/3 topic will turn out to be a long-running topic, doubtless with considerable additions once the SLW version is released. Some of the details in previous posts have been most interesting and illuminating.

I am going to confine this post to shades of blue on three locos, one of which is Heljan's D7661, although adding one other subtle livery issue on that loco as running in 1969. I'm afraid the shade of blue Heljan have used is just plain wrong, being far too dark. By comparison, Bachmann made the same mistake in the limited edition Modelzone Class 25/1 D5218. Phil Sutton on the other hand got the chromatic blue shade just about right in my opinion on the SLW Class 24 D5021. Hopefully Hornby have the chromatic blue Class 31 D5578 up their sleeve for release at some stage, hopefully with small yellow panel, although it ran without them for a while.

I confess to being old enough and sad enough to have seen both D7661 and D5218 running in chromatic blue with small yellow warning panels in the late 1960s. 7661 was normally pottering around between Willesden and Euston, and I normally saw 5218 at Cricklewood. There was however one occasion I recall vividly in 1969 when we were stuck on board a Euston train for over an hour just south of Wembley, and right beside us were 7661 and 5218 buffered together but not coupled. To my eternal regret I did not have a camera with me, and of course those days were light years before the always handy mobile phone camera that inevitably we have with us now. There are however some excellent colour pictures of both locos on the net from this period which are easy enough to find; if anyone would like links, simply post a reply to this and I will post them.

Those links do however confirm what I knew from my own photos taken of 7661 at the time, and that relates to a small error by Heljan that I have pointed out to Phil Sutton (not of course that he didn't already know !) hoping that it won't be repeated on the SLW version. The Heljan model correctly shows the second man's side window surround on number 2 end in bare metal. However, as my photos and the online photos from 1969 show quite clearly, the bare metal surround was on the second man's side only, and not on the driver's side at number 2 end; an odd curiosity that I noticed for the first time when I saw it one evening at the buffers at Euston. This is an interesting livery variation on several other members of the class, and on some locos (D7666 (25 316) for example), all four side window surrounds were bare metal at least for a time.

While not difficult to correct the extra bare metal window surround on the model, correcting the shade of blue on the Heljan model is simply beyond my level of expertise. The finish is so good on the model itself that I simply haven't got the heart to consider a full repaint, although I am toying with full yellow ends and a renumbering to D7662. I will wager that Phil Sutton gets it right however (I have no links with SLW incidentally other than as a very satisfied customer).

 

Happy modelling.

[John Tomlinson]

22 hours ago, tlm said:

Shades of Blue

 

I hope this 25/3 topic will turn out to be a long-running topic, doubtless with considerable additions once the SLW version is released. Some of the details in previous posts have been most interesting and illuminating.

I am going to confine this post to shades of blue on three locos, one of which is Heljan's D7661, although adding one other subtle livery issue on that loco as running in 1969. I'm afraid the shade of blue Heljan have used is just plain wrong, being far too dark. By comparison, Bachmann made the same mistake in the limited edition Modelzone Class 25/1 D5218. Phil Sutton on the other hand got the chromatic blue shade just about right in my opinion on the SLW Class 24 D5021. Hopefully Hornby have the chromatic blue Class 31 D5578 up their sleeve for release at some stage, hopefully with small yellow panel, although it ran without them for a while.

I confess to being old enough and sad enough to have seen both D7661 and D5218 running in chromatic blue with small yellow warning panels in the late 1960s. 7661 was normally pottering around between Willesden and Euston, and I normally saw 5218 at Cricklewood. There was however one occasion I recall vividly in 1969 when we were stuck on board a Euston train for over an hour just south of Wembley, and right beside us were 7661 and 5218 buffered together but not coupled. To my eternal regret I did not have a camera with me, and of course those days were light years before the always handy mobile phone camera that inevitably we have with us now. There are however some excellent colour pictures of both locos on the net from this period which are easy enough to find; if anyone would like links, simply post a reply to this and I will post them.

Those links do however confirm what I knew from my own photos taken of 7661 at the time, and that relates to a small error by Heljan that I have pointed out to Phil Sutton (not of course that he didn't already know !) hoping that it won't be repeated on the SLW version. The Heljan model correctly shows the second man's side window surround on number 2 end in bare metal. However, as my photos and the online photos from 1969 show quite clearly, the bare metal surround was on the second man's side only, and not on the driver's side at number 2 end; an odd curiosity that I noticed for the first time when I saw it one evening at the buffers at Euston. This is an interesting livery variation on several other members of the class, and on some locos (D7666 (25 316) for example), all four side window surrounds were bare metal at least for a time.

While not difficult to correct the extra bare metal window surround on the model, correcting the shade of blue on the Heljan model is simply beyond my level of expertise. The finish is so good on the model itself that I simply haven't got the heart to consider a full repaint, although I am toying with full yellow ends and a renumbering to D7662. I will wager that Phil Sutton gets it right however (I have no links with SLW incidentally other than as a very satisfied customer).

 

Happy modelling.

 

 

Following on from other discussions on here, the conclusion was that "Chromatic Blue" was a myth.

 

The early examples painted Railblue came to be referred to as "Chromatic" because of the method of spraying the paint, which gave a matt to satin finish, and also the fact that it faded rather quickly in service.

 

Whilst I respect your memories, I think you'll find that for most human beings the ability to remember a colour precisely is for a time period measured in minutes, not years.

 

The other thing to be wary of is colour in photographs. These have suffered variations of lighting, exposure, film type, processing and printing, and so can't by any stretch be regarded as reliable as a basis for painting our models.

 

You mention D5578 in its early '60's blue scheme. Does anyone know what this shade actually was? The indication from photographs is that it was a lot, and I mean a lot darker than the colour attributed by Lima in the model they did some years ago, but the exact shade I wouldn't like to say. I suspect as well that the similarly pale blue used by Heljan on D1733 as the XP64 shade isn't correct either, being too light, but what precisely?

 

This is a real minefield, and the lesson I've taken over the years is to be wary of judging a colour too precisely as light, dark, or shaded this way or that.

 

John.

[Hal Nail]

31 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

The other thing to be wary of is colour in photographs. 

 

The indication from photographs is that...

I rest his case, m'lud!

 

[John Tomlinson]

3 minutes ago, Hal Nail said:

I rest his case, m'lud!

 

 

Quite so. Hence my use of the word "indication"!

 

The photos that I've seen of D5578 in this condition show a blue to be so dark that it can't remotely be the Lima rendering. In extremis photos are of use, but not for more subtle judgement of shade and tone.

 

John.

[97406]

A full yellow end can make the shade of blue look different to the same shade of blue with a small yellow warning panel. I for one do like the early BR blue liveries with the small panels. Especially the few Hymeks and Westerns that were turned out in that style. A shame in a way that the style didn’t get adopted as standard, my nostalgia for the standard Banger Blue livery notwithstanding.

[John Tomlinson]

1 minute ago, 97406 said:

A full yellow end can make the shade of blue look different to the same shade of blue with a small yellow warning panel. I for one do like the early BR blue liveries with the small panels. Especially the few Hymeks and Westerns that were turned out in that style. A shame in a way that the style didn’t get adopted as standard, my nostalgia for the standard Banger Blue livery notwithstanding.

 

Absolutely so. I thought the Hymeks looked gorgeous with BSYP and white window surrounds!

 

I'm sure any of us who paint our models has had the experience of putting the first colour on and thought "oh dear (or similar), that doesn't look right" only for the whole thing to fall into place when the job is complete.

 

In my post above I didn't mean to sound preachy, although it does read a bit that way, just to point out that absolute statements about a colour being flawed in a particular way can often be somewhat misguided, particularly in respect of times now long ago.

 

John.

[Hal Nail]

3 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

In my post above I didn't mean to sound preachy, although it does read a bit that way

Notwithstanding my joking, I thought your post was fine and I agreed with it!

[E100]

Any news on the second run of these? Got the Ethel on pre-order.

[mallaig1983]

3 hours ago, E100 said:

Any news on the second run of these? Got the Ethel on pre-order.

Me too and was wondering the same.

[w124bob]

Here is my effort at the alternative letter box exhaust and panelling. A very easy conversion of 25252. I spotted whilst doing this conversion that 25102(TMC limited edition) should have the larger panel as seen in two tone green, however there is a seam running across the roof panel. So this only needs an additional pain plasticard piece adding. 

[w124bob]

Here is 25102, a close look at the exhaust panel shows the seam, in blue the smaller panel is visible. A picture paints a thousand words!