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My Childhood Train Fantasy - Blown Away!


Woody100
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Who'd of thought it, the darn charlatans! I've just taken (what i thought was going to be) a trip down memory lane into the glorious late autumn of 1974, with the prospect of Slade and Wizzard and instantly flammable Christmas tinsel sat patiently waiting to adorn the house again. A flick through the 1974 Hornby catalogue in excited anticipation of the big fella popping down the chimney seemed like just the way to begin the yuletide build-up. But I find that Hornby doctored the images in the catalogue. 

I never knew! 

Where can I go from here! All those  boyhood imaginations blown away! 

Here's the evidence in 3 damning exhibits:

 

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Edited by Woody100
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Lol these were the days . These catalogues seldom left my side for the year!  That particular one had lots of layouts from the forthcoming 3rd edition of the track plans book . The thing was you only saw part of the layout , so your imagination had to fill in the blanks .

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Going slightly off topic,  after the 1970 catalogue with lots of buildings,  overhead electric locos and big selection of locomotives not to mention minic roadway the mid 70s ones were quite lean 

I seem to remember them not been too colourful either 

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Yes the electric locos  disappeared in 71 or 72.   But the great catalogues were 73 with the new Black 5 and 74 (as pictured) with all these lovely layouts .   75 was retrenchment in range which had pretty much recovered by 77 with Class 25s , the new Duchess  and big 4 coaches .

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Now I still drool over these titans of the decade that brought us Brotherhood of Man, Abba and the HST and i'm an avid collector of the contents of catalogues 19 to 27. But, did anyone in Margate realise someone had dropped this open wagon prior to photographing? 

Or that using this Brush 4 image for a model that clearly looked better than this beast when finally released made sound business sense? 

 

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3 hours ago, Legend said:

Yes the electric locos  disappeared in 71 or 72.   But the great catalogues were 73 with the new Black 5 and 74 (as pictured) with all these lovely layouts .   75 was retrenchment in range which had pretty much recovered by 77 with Class 25s , the new Duchess  and big 4 coaches .

 

Then Mainline, Airfix and to a lesser extent Lima made them all look like toys and the illusion was shattered. :(

 

I remember first seeing the Mainline catalogue with the J72 and comparing it with Hornby's J83 which appeared at about the same time. Even as an seven year old there was no comparison.

 

Here's the Mainline catalogue from the same era.

 

http://www.mainlinerailways.org.uk/Catalogue No1.htm

 

 

 

Jason

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4 minutes ago, Woody100 said:

Now I still drool over these titans of the decade that brought us Brotherhood of Man, Abba and the HST and i'm an avid collector of the contents of catalogues 19 to 27. But, did anyone in Margate realise someone had dropped this open wagon prior to photographing? 

Or that using this Brush 4 image for a model that clearly looked better than this beast when finally released made sound business sense? 

 

IMG_20191127_164751.jpg

IMG_20191127_164944.jpg

Years before CAD/CAM and 3D printed samples, the catalogue photos for new models were often the hand built prototypes used as samples to give an idea of what the finished product would look like. In the case of the Brush Type 4 the sample clearly didn't need the heavy plastic ridges that the production one required to mask the different colours. The bogies look closer to Class 37 pattern too, ironic as the actual Hornby 37 never did get the correct sideframes.

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They also occasionally would show a model on a layout in the catalogue that you couldn't actually buy. I remember one year a black ivatt 2mt being on a layout but not sure if it had actually even been announced in green 

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Brilliantly evocative intro.

 

One of the great lessons I learned, possibly a few years earlier than that, was never to trust model train catalogues, when Wrenn announced the Adams Radial 4-4-2T, which then never, ever appeared.

 

I couldn’t have afforded it at the time it was announced, but was still b annoyed about the whole affair!

 

Much more recently, I’ve seen the actual model they photographed for the catalogue, which IIRC was a K’s kit.

 

Still goes on today, of course, but mock-ups have been superseded by CAD rendering.

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I still have the original Mainline catalogue, along with several Hornby ones from the late '70's / early' 80's. They aren't in great condition now because of the amount of times they were pored over.

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22 hours ago, russ p said:

Now you say I think it was.

Was the ivatt two a reasonable model? Always looked odd to me and you don't often hear of it been super detailed 

 

I seem to recall it was quite poor. Crownline did a detailing kit for it and a conversion kit for the BR version. However I think you ended up replacing most of the model.

 

I reckon it's in the Sir Dinadan category of "looking like" what it was supposed to be rather than being a scale model.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/69181/hornby_r857_ln_ivatt_class_2_locomotive_46400_pre_owned_like_new/stockdetail.aspx

 

 

 

Jason

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You think that's bad, what about Lima putting oversized couplings on their OO gauge models to advertise the forthcoming N gauge J50 and King...? Later howlers would include hastily prepared samples in adverts at the back of Rail Enthusiast, it was always fun to see if the loco was derailed or with the body not fitting properly as often happened.

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8 minutes ago, 298 said:

You think that's bad, what about Lima putting oversized couplings on their OO gauge models to advertise the forthcoming N gauge J50 and King...? Later howlers would include hastily prepared samples in adverts at the back of Rail Enthusiast, it was always fun to see if the loco was derailed or with the body not fitting properly as often happened.

 

 

They also had a catalogue with some nice semaphores and a V2 which never saw the light of day 

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On 27/11/2019 at 08:43, Mick Bonwick said:

 

Lots of those, these days! :D

There was even a tv quiz called Blankety Blank.  Check it out on YouTube and realise how lucky we are to have TOWIE...

 

On 27/11/2019 at 17:07, andyman7 said:

The bogies look closer to Class 37 pattern too, ironic as the actual Hornby 37 never did get the correct sideframes.

IIRC they were originally used on the class 31, which was a pretty old model even then...

 

On 27/11/2019 at 18:04, russ p said:

Was the ivatt two a reasonable model? Always looked odd to me and you don't often hear of it been super detailed 

No, even by the standards of the day.  Very few dimensions were even a near miss for scale, and the tender was much too long; I think it used the chassis from the BR 3MT.

 

2 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The Lima N gauge King has to be the biggest joke. In every catalogue as 'NEW' from 1972 to 1983 and it never happened.

I reckon the prize has to go to Peco's 'roadrailer', which kept appearing in catalogues year after year but never materialised in the shops for about 30 years...

 

Triang and Triang Hornby models of this era sit too high on the chassis, apparently due to clearance issues with the tension lock couplers on curvature that coincided with changes in gradient with the supplied gradient and bridge piers.  It looked particularly odd with short wheelbase wagons, and of course showed up against other companies' stock that had the correct ride height.

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The origin of the topic was not to knock the quality of the models. To do so further erodes the romance of the memories. Just for balance, here's some wonderful imagery from '74, one with a young man who was probably envied more than Marc Bolan.. 

 

 

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7 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I reckon the prize has to go to Peco's 'roadrailer', which kept appearing in catalogues year after year but never materialised in the shops for about 30 years...

I think the difference is that they did actually make them at the start, just left them in the catalogue until they ran out of stock (the trailer kit was 'last man standing'). I doubt many shops actually bothered to order them on the off-chance of selling them. I did buy one (I think from 'Ace Supplies' in Manor Park) circa 1970ish.

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