Hornby dublo

[Il Grifone]

I have had 10 Dublo coaches behind a 3 rail Duchess, but  five or six is more normal. The coaches are quite heavy and not all that free running. My 3 rail R1 could only manage three!  There is plenty of torque from the motor, the problem is wheelslip.

I have always wanted to measure the actual  frictional difference between a modern R-T-R coach and a Dublo one. It should be about 3 to 1 in favour of the pin point bearings. I did once measure a Dublo coach as needing 8 grams to make it move but my measuring equipment left something to be desired. I need a decent device capable of measuring to the nearest gram or better.

[Wolseley]

My Hornby dublo 0-6-2 is having trouble. It only moves if you press it down on the rails. Any thoughts?

 

Dirty wheels,dirty track & collector shoes may need cleaning & polishing.

 

                    Ray.

 

Another possibility is that the rail joiners or perhaps the centre rail connecting tabs are a bit bent or damaged and are not making proper contact.  You need to buy another loco to test your track 

[sagaguy]

I wouldn`be without my trusty multimeter for faults like this.

 

                          Ray.

[ddoherty958]

I discovered the fault. One of the wires have snapped and they were being pressed together when I pushed down. Won’t take too long to fix

[Il Grifone]

 

 

 

Another possibility is that the rail joiners or perhaps the centre rail connecting tabs are a bit bent or damaged and are not making proper contact.  You need to buy another loco to test your track 

 

 

Two then leads to three which leads to.... 

[cypherman]

Hi all,

Well my collection of Hornby Dublo  is this.

A4's x3

Castles X3

West Country class X2

0-6-2's x2

2-8-0's x2

2-6-4's x6

Duchess's x2

Class 20's x2

0-6-0 diesel shunter x1

about 50 assorted wagons and 12 coaches

I know this my sound heretical to some, But all engines and wagons are converted to 2 rail. The coaches just sit in a box.

[Il Grifone]

I daren't list all mine in case SWMBO finds out....  

[Golden Fleece 30]

Hi all,

Well my collection of Hornby Dublo is this.

A4's x3

Castles X3

West Country class X2

0-6-2's x2

2-8-0's x2

2-6-4's x6

Duchess's x2

Class 20's x2

0-6-0 diesel shunter x1

about 50 assorted wagons and 12 coaches

I know this my sound heretical to some, But all engines and wagons are converted to 2 rail. The coaches just sit in a box.

There is nothing wrong with 2-railing them or modifying them to what suits you. I 3-railed a lot, destroyed the insulation, stripped and repainted very good locos, fitted Kadee couplings, and, on some coaches including the S/D restaurant car fitted Bachmann bogies. It is all about what gives you pleasure not what others think.

 

Garry

[Golden Fleece 30]

I daren't list all mine in case SWMBO finds out....

Ha ha, nice one David, I don't even know what I have. Jackie says I am the one who keeps the postman working in our village. Even our 95 year old neighbour has to take parcels in for me. Even now we have just come back from holiday and our neighbour called round with 2 and the Post Office has 3 for me.

 

Garry

[Wolseley]

I think I said recently that I had 28 locomotives, but I have a feeling I missed a few when I was counting them - and I recently purchased another one, so that I must have 30+.  And that's before I add in about half a dozen unbuilt whitemetal kits....

[sagaguy]

I can`t resist a bargain,Hattons,The armature has been removed & is in the box,£75 + postage.

 

                               Ray.

 

 

                     

[Golden Fleece 30]

That looks in nice condition Ray, the chassis alone is worth it so good buy.

 

Garry

[sagaguy]

Hi Garry,yes,even if it needs a new armature,it`ll still be a cheapish chassis.

 

                    Ray.

[sagaguy]

 

The layout is finally coming to it`s final design(I hope),trains are beginnig to run albeit with a bit of track clesaning.I managed to squeeze in my goods depot & all those HD switches i have bought over the years,mainly in the 1980s when they wern`t the price they are now.I`ve had to box up some of my locos & stock as it was getting a little crowded but it means i can ring the changes,at the moment,it seems to have a Southern theme.

 

 

                   

 

 

                   

 

                                 Ray.

 

[sagaguy]

 

 

I always think of Hornby Dublo as a toy railway as opposed to scale railways.The board that this layout is on hosted a large N gauge layout,scale length trains a large area of trackwork.& buildings.It ran for about 20 years but eventually needed too much maintenence.These trains had been packed away,some from childhood but mostly from the 1980s.

 

                            Ray.

[Golden Fleece 30]

 

 

 

I always think of Hornby Dublo as a toy railway as opposed to scale railways.The board that this layout is on hosted a large N gauge layout,scale length trains a large area of trackwork.& buildings.It ran for about 20 years but eventually needed too much maintenence.These trains had been packed away,some from childhood but mostly from the 1980s.

 

                            Ray.

 

They were "scale" of their day Ray and really even now can fit in with "scale" railways whether classed as toys or not.  There were in the old days some nice 3-rail layouts with scenery which to me straight away takes the "toy train" title away.  Even now Andy Millers "I ad that" layout takes away the toy train title as his layout runs just the same as many others with just trains running around and changed in the storage yards, at least he also moves locos around the shed and has a shuttle train.

 

A lot of my 00 stock is Dublo but does not look like a toy train with the track changed to Peco and scenery used.

 

Without getting into any big debate all models including Chinese Hornby etc to me are still "toy/model" trains.  A scale model is one that is scaled down from full size which mean it is still steam powered and not run by an electric motor. Others will disagree but that is my opinion.

 

Garry

[cypherman]

thought I would show a couple of my Hornby dublo repaints. Not quite the high standards I have seen here, but not too bad.

[Golden Fleece 30]

thought I would show a couple of my Hornby dublo repaints. Not quite the high standards I have seen here, but not too bad.

They look fine to me.

 

Garry

[NCB]

Always wanted a 2-6-4T, but never got around to it; they had a certain presence. In fact all the Dublo stuff did to some extent.

 

Re toy trains, I still have some Meccano Magazines from the 1950s, and in the Dublo section thought they were pretty good at putting stuff in realistic scenic settings. The scenes tended to "tell a story" supporting whatever article was being written.

[sagaguy]

If you like a bit of nostalgia,have a look here,hours of reading & a look back to simpler times.

 

                                 http://meccano.magazines.free.fr/covers.htm

 

 

              Enjoy,Ray.

[Golden Fleece 30]

If you like a bit of nostalgia,have a look here,hours of reading & a look back to simpler times.

 

                                 http://meccano.magazines.free.fr/covers.htm

 

 

              Enjoy,Ray.

Thanks Ray,

 

I have only looked at a small handful but there are lots of nice 3-rail scenic layouts in there with high level tracks, trees, bridges, cattle docks and all sorts of other things to take away the "toy" look as such which is mentioned.  One even has a Tri-ang water tower in the sheds.  These are what set track layouts should look like.

 

Garry

[sagaguy]

I think the subject falls into two camps here.Yes,there were scenic layouts using 3 rail track but the track was the problem being tinplate & 3 rail & that was the problem.When Dublo was designed,it was intended to lay iot on the kitchen table after dinner & then taken up at bedtime.The locomotives were works of art at the time & remained so until the mid 70s onwards when more manufacturers came on the scene,Lima & Airfix locos spring to mind,the wealth of detail put Dublo locos & coaches to shame.Unfortunately,these locos were only skin deep,the mechanisms were deeply flawed.The one good thing out of this was that Triang had to up their game to compete,Meccano sadly couldn`t compete with this progess so went to the wall.Wrenn are the flag wavers of Dublo although they are not currently made.I wonder where all the tools are now,i know Dapol bought them but were they destroyed in the fire at his factory?.Todays scale railways are things that could only be dreamed of in the 30s,40s & 50s.

 

                           Ray.

[Golden Fleece 30]

I know some tooling is with Maurice Gunter but how much survived I have no idea. Obviously some wagon tooling exists as Dapol still use them although I think modified to fit their own chassis. Only a few years ago I bought some unpainted wagon bodies of which some like the cattle wagon were Dublo origin.

 

 

Garry

[Il Grifone]

The patent for the coupling states that its held by Peco for 'scale' railways and by Meccano for 'toy'. Thus we know how Meccano saw their product. However it was better than a lot of the 'scale' productions of the time, apart from a (probably unrequired) liking for underlength rolling stock with underscale wheels (shared by Tri-ang, but they eventually grew out of it).

 

As to realism, I'm attempting to catalogue my locomotive collection (taking advantage of SWMBO and daughter being in Italy at the moment taking advantage of the Italian health service which is rather better than ours (no appointments (now unobtainable at our local surgery in Thurrock! ) needed to see the doctor for a start*). The result with have to be kept well hidden as they already think I have too  many, but don't realise just how many.... )

I 'm sorting out my diesels and have a Hornby class 35, GBL class 55, Dublo class 20, Tri-ang class 31 and Lima and Dublo shunters on the table in front of me   ( I use TOPS codes for convenience rather than accuracy, as they are all green!) . All look close enough to their prototype to satisfy even the picky Grifone.

The Dublo 08 looks better than the Lima (allegedly an 09 but the difference is only internal AFAIK) because of her separate handrails and ladders, albeit overscale. She has had her puny buffers replaced  by decent ones and some fetching wasp stripes added (by a previous owner) and the 35 has been lowered on her bogies** but these are only relatively minor points. It has to be said that the GBL Deltic (copied from Bachmann I believe***) is streets ahead of Dublo's effort, which relied on brute force as a selling point. For steam, the Dublo A4 for 1938 is outstanding and captured the subtle curves of the casing rather better than some later attempts.

 

*In Italy just turn as it used to be here. Now we have a system where you ring the surgery and it is assessed whether they need to see you or not.... (No further comment required!)

 

**Tri-ang's love of an extra 2mm (almost 20% error!) on the buffer height really annoys me. The excuse of negoiating their elevated sections is BS IMHO.

 

*** I must to something about the hideous yellow (rather than lime green) stripe however. When I get around to motorising her??

[ddoherty958]

thought I would show a couple of my Hornby dublo repaints. Not quite the high standards I have seen here, but not too bad.

 

You like model planes too?