Hornby Prototypes/Unproduced Models

[Allegheny1600]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Wasn't H0 invented in the US?  

Sorry old bean but H0 is a very British invention!

Aparently, by none other than Bassett-Lowke himself who had been thinking of cutting 0 scale in half since the early years of the twentieth century. There is a topic all about it somewhere.

 

Now back to Hornby and others prototypes!

Ive often wondered about Limas steam locos, they look to have had quite an ambitious range at some points but then seemed to concentrate on diesel outline, presumably because of the easy profits from doing so many reliveries?

Cheers,

John

 

[The Johnster]

Fair play, doesn’t get much more British (damnit, Carruthers) than Bassett-Lowke!

 

You may be right about Lima’s moving away from steam outline chasing livery profits, not that it ultimately did ‘em any good, but they were much better at diesel outline than steam.  Their strength was in producing cheap but accurate and quite well detailed plastic mouldings, and their diesel and dmu mechs could be made to run well with scrupulous cleaning and careful driving.  Their steam mechs were appallingly crude compared to concurrent Airfix and Mainline offerings, and Triang Hornby’s ran better.  The models reviewed badly as a result. 

 

I still have a Lima dmu, a 117 bodged by yours truly into a passable 116, which runs reasonably well if a bit noisily by modern standards.  I also have a Lima 94xx body running on a Bachmann 57xx chassis; it’s original chassis filled the cab with motor, had no attempt at brake or any other detail, and had an incorrect fluted coupling rod which did not drive the centre wheels, which like the others were solid backed and had no balance weights.  The spur gears were visible on the drive side below the cab, and the slowest I could get it to reliably run was about a scale 40mph; it was, in short, rubbish, and has been thus been given the opportunity of an exciting new career in the landfill industry.  

 

The 117, and a Western I once owned, ran rings around it in every way!

Edited May 23, 2019 by The Johnster

[BWsTrains]

On 22/05/2019 at 23:11, Phil Parker said:

 

So why hasn't the hobby died out?

Because one of humans' great attributes is compromise. No scale model can "scale" perfectly however fine a modeller one is, hence the modeller's decision is always "how much compromise will I accept?". As these pages amply demonstrate, that level varies very widely. Many are mostly happy, I suspect some never will be.

 

Fortunately for a large number of us, our eyes are "OO" tuned and can get by ok.

 

The scale debate, while OT, reminds me of the line in "Hitchhiker's Guide" about Humans. Something about being unhappy, mostly over little pieces of green paper, which was surprising because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

 

Might the same be said of the Scale debate to put it in perspective?

 

 

 

 

[D9020 Nimbus]

Always thought HO and OO were invented by Henry Greenly. HO is half of British O gauge. Note American O is incorrect as 32mm represents 1536mm — 5' 0.5" — whereas the correct gauge is 1435mm (4' 8.5"). The German scale of 1:45 for O is the nearest to being correct.

[paulbb]

Perhaps the best choice would have been American OO gauge with its 19mm track -near as dammit to P4/S4 ?

[The Johnster]

Opportunity lost a very long time ago, sadly.  But H0 is also a compromise; it looks better in terms of track gauge, but is no better in rail profile, and coarse overscale wheel profiles, flanges and flangeways, and set track curves mean that clearances behind cylinders must still be out of scale and couplings must be on bogies, a very major compromise to appearance on locos with fairings.  Splashers are less common outside the UK, but hiding motors behind high running plates on steam engines becomes more of an issue.  Coarse scale 19mm gauge 4mm scale would suffer the same compromises if set track is to be used, and the major RTR players will never tolerate anything else.

 

The traditional UK approach has been to make 4mm closer to scale with EM or P4, and the advantage of these disciplines is that you can build a model according to the drawings and lay track according to the plan in the knowledge that it will run reliably, but you have to use scale size curves, which have enormous radii to the 00 setrack eye!  And the finer flanges and wheel profiles demand compensation to be able to cope with track joints.  Sideplay must be compensated as well; all must be as on a real loco because the model has to cope with the same problems in the same way; 'slop' cannot be tolerated. 

 

If you build models of these sorts of sizes and want them to run reasonably realistically, then the less fine scale your standards the more compromises you have to make; imagine a T scale model scaled up to 4mm.  It would look very crude and toylike, no better than a Rovex Black Princess and it's stubby Stanier coaches.

Edited May 26, 2019 by The Johnster

[D9020 Nimbus]

Recent practice in European HO seems to be generally frame-mounted couplings using the close-coupling mechanism, but fairings remain a problem. Also axle placement can be an issue, leading to couplings sticking out too far (c.f. Oxford's N7) or to the use of NEM363 rather than NEM362 fittings—more compact, but much less choice of available couplings (Roco seem keenest on NEM363, of the larger manufacturers).

Edited May 26, 2019 by D9020 Nimbus
Clarification

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Opportunity lost a very long time ago, sadly.  But H0 is also a compromise; it looks better in terms of track gauge, but is no better in rail profile, and coarse overscale wheel profiles, flanges and flangeways, and set track curves mean that clearances behind cylinders must still be out of scale and couplings must be on bogies, a very major compromise to appearance on locos with fairings.  Splashers are less common outside the UK, but hiding motors behind high running plates on steam engines becomes more of an issue.  Coarse scale 19mm gauge 4mm scale would suffer the same compromises if set track is to be used, and the major RTR players will never tolerate anything else.

 

The traditional UK approach has been to make 4mm closer to scale with EM or P4, and the advantage of these disciplines is that you can build a model according to the drawings and lay track according to the plan in the knowledge that it will run reliably, but you have to use scale size curves, which have enormous radii to the 00 setrack eye!  And the finer flanges and wheel profiles demand compensation to be able to cope with track joints.  Sideplay must be compensated as well; all must be as on a real loco because the model has to cope with the same problems in the same way; 'slop' cannot be tolerated. 

 

If you build models of these sorts of sizes and want them to run reasonably realistically, then the less fine scale your standards the more compromises you have to make; imagine a T scale model scaled up to 4mm.  It would look very crude and toylike, no better than a Rovex Black Princess and it's stubby Stanier coaches.

I doubt the opportunity ever really existed in the first place. Had early OO (or HO for that matter) been made accurate enough to satisfy finescale modellers (at the time or now) its USP of fitting into much less space than O Gauge would not have been realised and Hornby Dublo would not have succeeded commercially. I suspect one reason N Gauge thrives where British TT-3 didn't is that the latter's space requirements didn't "undercut" OO sufficiently.   

 

In any case, even if British makers had considered HO technically achievable at mass-market prices in the early days, and OO had never happened, the sort of debates we have about OO/EM/P4 would still be going on, they'd just be about HO and P87 instead. 

 

I'd say the major r-t-r players wouldn't dare tolerate anything else. The vast majority of their customers are accustomed/resigned to (and some unaware of) the set of compromises inherent in OO and aren't willing/able to take on board the alternative set necessary when adopting EM and P4. However much many of us would like better looking individual models, the payback in the form of limitations to layout design rules it out for many.

 

Some years back, Alan Gibson was asked in a magazine interview how the sales of his loco, coach and wagon wheels were split between OO, EM and P4. Of course, his customers didn't represent the whole 4mm market, rather a self-selected cohort with finer-scale inclinations. His experience therefore omitted those content to keep the OO wheels that came with their r-t-r products. His ball-park figures were OO: 95%, EM 4% and P4: 1%, but the overall total was probably a tiny fraction of the total number of "standard" OO wheels running around.

 

The good news for those to whom it most matters, and who do have the space to accommodate the sort of layout they want in one of the truer gauges, is that it seems to have become much easier to convert most r-t-r locos than it used to be, and that must involve Hornby, etc. bearing that market in mind at the design stage as well as the efforts of the aftermarket suppliers.

 

John

 

  

[The Johnster]

That makes good sense, John.  I hadn't considered the point of TT having failed because it didn't 'undercut' sufficiently.  TT of course stood for 'table top', an indication of how firmly Triang, who promoted it, was wedded to the train set concept.  Perhaps it was a few years ahead of it's time as well; N seemed to be the answer to the space problem for a while and some of the models turning up in the shops from the Continent were astonishing for their time and wouldn't have been bad in H0.  Working lights, full valve gear, how do they make motors and gears so tiny; it was all a bit miraculous.  I first saw Eggerbahn H09 running in Hamley's in about 1964 I think; I had never dreamed that such a thing might be possible with such tiny mechanisms.  About a decade later I went through a 009 phase and had a loco with an Arnold 0-4-0 mech with full valve gear, an Avonside Swansea side tank body kit with an Airfix pug cab.  It ran like a little sewing machine, on a par with modern 4mm RTR.

 

When we saw British outline 2mm RTR, prototypes we were more familiar with and more critical of, and that it couldn't even match the not very high standard of concurrent 00 RTR, the cat was out of the bag, and 2mm was very rapidly relegated to 'scenic' models where the landscape overwhelmed the railway and fine detail was distracted from.  Copenhagen Fields, which has been on the go since God was in short trousers, is proof that it can be done properly, but the sad truth is that most N gauge layouts are not very 'scale' and such 3mm as one sees is merely scaled down 4mm; the scale never seems to have developed it's own 'identity' or culture.  Fine scale 2mm exists, of course, and is remarkable, but beyond what I would consider to be the average modeller's ability.  It's certainly beyond mine!

[ianmacc]

On 02/08/2014 at 16:48, hallmodelspares said:

When model rail did an article a few years ago they showed a mockup by Hornby of the clayton engine

with a bodyshell made and using the parts from a class 25 including the sideframes

it said the picture was from a private collectors collection

 

Also of mention was the unreleased version of the triang/Hornby class 37 in br green still but with

fuller yellow ends. a few examples exist with this from the factory including the primitive mask line

put on mold used for the released class 37 in blue. Why did Hornby do a lime green large logo class 37 in the 1980's?

The lime green class 37 was commissioned for a

catalogue mail order company in the 1980s. Freeman’s or something like that.  It was slightly cheaper than the blue one in the main range and they made it green so as not to upset the model railway stockists by undercutting them. 

[D9020 Nimbus]

Triang promoted TT in this country but didn't invent it or name it—it was invented by H.P. Products in the USA at a scale of 120% (the same as in Europe). Did it fail to thrive in this country compared to N? I wonder how its market share in the late 1960s before it was withdrawn compared to N then, and now. Presumably though its market share was falling, and Triang felt they were competing with themselves.

TT has survived in Germany, on the basis of doing well in East Germany, where reliable N gauge models didn't arrive until after unification, by which time it was established. By contrast, H.P. Products in USA and Rokal in West Germany both gave up around the time Triang did; N gauge was well established in both countries by then, but it wasn't really established in the U.K. at that time with only a small Minitrix range and the Peco wagons (the latter are, of course, still available). The N gauge range available in the U.K. probably didn't exceed what Triang made available in TT until the mid 1980s at the earliest; what would have happened had Triang persevered instead of deciding to concentrate only on OO?

[Wickham Green]

On 26/05/2019 at 17:03, Dunsignalling said:

 

The good news for those to whom it most matters, and who do have the space to accommodate the sort of layout they want in one of the truer gauges, is that it seems to have become much easier to convert most r-t-r locos than it used to be, and that must involve Hornby, etc. bearing that market in mind at the design stage as well as the efforts of the aftermarket suppliers.

 

  

......... except that the long established STANDARD of 1/8'' driving axles has disappeared and the aftermarket producers can't keep up with 'special' sizes .............................. not to mention non-standard rolling stock axle lengths from a certain manufacturer not totally unconnected with Hornby.

[RAYTHEROCK]

Going back towards  the original theme I seem to remember H-D advertising an Adams Radial Tank just before they went under?

[Gilwell Park]

I think it was Wrenn. Roger

[Tarnish1]

Yes Wrenn did introduce certainly a parallel boiled Scot. Also some "spam cans". Were the bodies metal? I don't know.

 

Look closely at the Wrenn versions of the late H-D City models. Some significant framing detail above the bogie is missing leaving a weird gap. Very obvious looking at these Wrenn versions from the side. I do believe that the 1938 H-D Duchess of Atholl takes some beating still  (see my earlier posts)l!!

[Wickham Green]

1 hour ago, Tarnish1 said:

........ Also some "spam cans". Were the bodies metal? ..................

Yes they were Mazak - and the two unpainted bodies I picked up from Wrenn's 'closing down sale' show no signs of rot, I'm glad to say. Apart from the non-see-through cowl at the front, rather heavy smoke deflector supports and cab width intermediate between 8'6'' & 9' they're not badly detailed .............. must get them finished one day - probably with RT cabs.

[Ravenser]

On 23/05/2019 at 16:16, The Johnster said:

Wasn't H0 invented in the US?  

 

Some Ordnance Survey maps in the first edition of the 'metric' 1:50,000 series back in the 70s, using the old 1:63,360 contour lines, had the note 'contour values are given to the nearest metre.  The contour interval is, however, 50 feet'.  Only in Britain.

 

No - HO was invented by the members of Wimbledon MRC

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, Tarnish1 said:

Yes Wrenn did introduce certainly a parallel boiled Scot. Also some "spam cans". Were the bodies metal? I don't know.

 

Look closely at the Wrenn versions of the late H-D City models. Some significant framing detail above the bogie is missing leaving a weird gap. Very obvious looking at these Wrenn versions from the side. I do believe that the 1938 H-D Duchess of Atholl takes some beating still  (see my earlier posts)l!!

It was about as good as you could expect from a volume produced RTR model in 4mm in 1938, but it doesn't take much beating to be honest; well under scale length and no detail below the footplate, cab full of motor, and no flanges on the centre drivers.  The valve gear of HD's models was an unmitigated joy, though, proper engineering that ran rings around Triang's.

[mogman1969]

On 30/05/2019 at 12:25, Ravenser said:

 

No - HO was invented by the members of Wimbledon MRC

care to tell us more ?

 

[Ravenser]

12 minutes ago, mogman1969 said:

care to tell us more ?

 

 

The tale has already been told elsewhere OO History: I cite the relevant bits

 

Quote

It is at this point that a new strand enters the story, in the shape of three modellers from the newly-formed Wimbledon MRC: A. Stewart-Reidpath, A. R. Walkley, and Michael Longridge. Sometime in 1923 they began experimenting with models roughly half the size of Gauge-0. In Stewart-Reidpath own words (MRN Jan 1925): "A scale of 1/8" proved to be just too small for efficient tractive power and 4mm or 3/16" scale revealed that the saving in space required (which is one of the main objects in the introduction of this new Gauge) would have been considerably less in proportion ... 3.5mm scale has proved to be the happy medium for this small gauge". There is no mention of Greenly or indeed of the exact track gauge, but there is mention - critical mention - of Greenly's wheel standards. "I cannot see the necessity of wheels having treads 5mm wide even for the German-made tin-plate sets ... It is not only unsightly, it is bordering on the ridiculous ... By using built-up permanent way, wheels having treads 1.5mm wide and flanges 1mm deep can be used with confidence, the only important point being that track must be well and truly laid" (the comparative BRMSB dimensions for EM were 1.5mm tread and 0.75mm flange!). Stewart Reidpath concludes with some a statements of principle: "Scale is a thing that matters and it is possible to work to it. Detail is worth the time and trouble it takes - lay your track carefully ... Always work to drawings, and see that they are good ones. And for the love of Mike, never say 'That's near enough'".

In short, we are dealing with the hobby's first fine-scale movement....

….The spread of H0 beyond Britain is difficult to trace. It is almost certain that the Americans imported the concepts from Britain in the period 1926-8. The name H0 and the existence of 'American 00' (4mm scale/19mm gauge) are clear evidence for this - as both originated in Britain in 1926-7;  MRN reported in September 1927, "A name for 3.5mm gauge ( sic) is coming into use in some corners of the model railway world. This is H0 gauge which means half '0' gauge, to distinguish it from 4mm scale, which is adopted in the trade for '00' gauge".

 

 

[mogman1969]

just wondered if you had come across any new information  . i was in charge of the wmrc records for many years . somewhere the club has a large black folder containing all i was able to find out  from interviews with some of the older members most now passed alas . my vote is henry greenly first postulated the idea of ho and the wmrc lads built it