Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Simond]

For shame!  
 

Ermintrude is not there!

 

bah

[Nearholmer]

We seem to have drifted to the extremity of the toy end of model trains, which is sometimes an interesting place to go, at least for a short excursion. It must be thoughts of christmasses past that are taking us there, in which case others might also enjoy this thread https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/160176-Hornby-railways-catalogue-and-box-art-an-advent-calendar-lookback/page/2/&tab=comments#comment-4218775

 

It seems to take-off where this one nominally finishes, somewhere around 1960, and I suspect that it is going to come right up to date, but only the ThreadMeister knows at this stage!

 

Has anyone still got a complete, old-fashioned tinplate toy train-set from their childhood to show us, I wonder? 

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Well I think I will stick with live steam, as after over a year of struggle, my Bassett Lowke Mogul is finally running correctly. It’s currently pulling my first and currently only LMC vehicles, a LMS van and B&C wagon. 

Douglas 
 

 

[Edwardian]

18 hours ago, Ben B said:

 

I've often wondered if Ivor was based on one of the Hornby clockwork 0-4-0's, maybe they used one as a drawing model?  It would be easy to imagine the stories with a little green tank loco, one or two items of stock, and complex. tightly-curved tracks being inspired by a childhood tinplate set.

 

Shameless thread-hijack, but I couldn't resist with the talk of Hornby clockwork and Ivor the Engine:

 

 

One of my projects to keep me sane in Lockdown Part One...  Entirely the fault of this thread though.  I fell in love with the idea of having lots of clockwork trains, then realised I didn't have the budget or space for 0 gauge.  But the spiritual successors to all this wonderful tinplate are the cheap-as-chips starter locomotives produced by Triang-Hornby, Playcraft etc, so I started buying some of them, and as I already had a circuit of ridiculously tight-radius Welsotoys track from childhood, a micro layout seemed a good project.

 

I was reading the Ivor stories to my youngest as the book at bedtime, so leant into the 'short trains, tight curves' thing and built Ivor.  Fittingly perhaps, he's built around a knackered clockwork Thomas the Tank Engine, with a load of plasticard and scrap bits

 

Apologies for hijacking with all this talk of cheap plastic clockwork...  I'll let you get back to proper tinplate now

 

 

 

 

I love that you've done that.  O also love the way that you've done that, capturing the essence of the book illustrations and the drawn TV animation.  Brilliant stuff. 

 

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

... the acid-trip-style loco that appeared in The Magic Roundabout. 

 

For those with time on their hands https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=magic+roundabout+train&&view=detail&mid=531E04C60E8C742CE336531E04C60E8C742CE336&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dmagic%2Broundabout%2Btrain%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

 

This toy looks rather good!

 

 

I loved the magic roundabout.  The whole thing was so obviously meant to be an acid trip, yet nobody seemed to mind at the time. 

 

'Psychedelic Roundabout, more like, and Dylan and the sugar addiction. I mean, come on!

 

Don't let anyone ever tell you the French don't have a sense of humour!*

 

And what a great toy!

 

* See the French 1996 film Ridicule, set in Ancien Regime Versailles, for a superb take on the difference between wit (French) and 'umour (English)!

 

 

 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Edwardian

[St Enodoc]

17 hours ago, APOLLO said:

I bought one of these for the kids many moons ago - still have it complete in box. It's a very well thought out engineering wise and fascinating thing to watch.

 

 

I'm going to put it out at Christmas !!

 

Brit15

I wonder why the first thing I thought of was The Mouse Trap Game?

[Nearholmer]

As readers of this thread, you will be among the twenty seven people on the planet who find this exciting ....  

 

I have sourced a ‘new old stock’ 1970s hand drill, in original packaging!!!

 

Talk about a sewing machine compared with that modern Stanley rubbish. There is <0.5mm rock on the wheel, and no detectable slop in the shaft, all lovely steel, whereas the Stanley one had c3mm rock and another 3mm slop in it, and is I suspect aluminium.

 

 

 

 

[F-UnitMad]

53 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I have sourced a ‘new old stock’ 1970s hand drill, in original packaging!!!

 

Talk about a sewing machine compared with that modern Stanley rubbish.

Nice to know the '70s wasn't all bad!!

Remember to wear your flares & tanktop when you use it....

[Annie]

59 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I have sourced a ‘new old stock’ 1970s hand drill, in original packaging!!!

Oooooo nice, old tools are always the best.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

On 09/12/2020 at 15:48, F-UnitMad said:

Nice to know the '70s wasn't all bad!!

Remember to wear your flares & tanktop when you use it....

 

I suspect mine is older than the 1970s...fashion advice welcome:

 

Had completely forgotten I had this until recently.  Too cold today for a test run (it was in an external garage), but from memory was probably last used years ago for drilling wiring holes through a baseboard after track had been laid - a job where care is much more important than speed.

 

(I don’t have any Coarse O Scale, but I do enjoy this thread - it’s nice to have something to share!)

Edited October 7, 2022 by Keith Addenbrooke
Reinstating photos

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, F-UnitMad said:

Remember to wear your flares & tanktop when you use it....

 

I wasn't going to go for the whole Seventies re-enactment thing, but I do have a photo of me with big bushy beard, horizontally-striped tank-top, and brown needle-cord jacket with unfeasibly wide lapels to refer to if necessary. Or, we could go for regulation green trainee's boiler-suit and DMs.

 

Keith's drill looks a bit 1960s to me, so probably best worn with that perennial Man About Shed favourite, cavalry-twill trousers, and a tweed jacket with a 6" steel rule and several pens in the top-front pocket. Unless a kaftan seems appropriate.

[Keith Addenbrooke]

19 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I wasn't going to go for the whole Seventies re-enactment thing, but I do have a photo of me with big bushy beard, horizontally-striped tank-top, and brown needle-cord jacket with unfeasibly wide lapels to refer to if necessary. Or, we could go for regulation green trainee's boiler-suit and DMs.

 

Keith's drill looks a bit 1960s to me, so probably best worn with that perennial Man About Shed favourite, cavalry-twill trousers, and a tweed jacket with a 6" steel rule and several pens in the top-front pocket. Unless a kaftan seems appropriate.

Both my steel rules are 12” - could poke my eye out!

[andi4x4]

Enjoying the '70's chat ! Brings back memories of my father and grandfather using similar hand tools (and teaching me to use them too ).  I recall my grandfather having a black and silver hand drill that was almost as tall as four year old me !

 

It was my 50th birthday on 30th November - so my memories are of the very late '70's, but, for my birthday, my sister gifted me a coffee mug with photos from about 1974 of me sporting a similarly horizontally striped tank top and brown shorts - no beard though !

 

As for steel rules - 6", 8", 12" & 24" and a folding, wooden, 3 foot rule that was my grandfathers ! 

 

Andi

 

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by andi4x4
spelling !

[Nearholmer]

Delving a bit, the Footprint No.160A drill was introduced in 1974, and the company are so proud of it that it figures as a 'milestone' on the history section of their website. Apparently it was the first hand drill in the world to employ a Jacob's keyed chuck.

[Simond]

I’m in the process of house clearance, and suspect my dad’s old Stanley drill will turn up at some point.  
 

I never really worked out why they were made with three handles.  I’ve not yet met a three-handed chippy.

[Nearholmer]

The side handle lets you use it as a very light-duty breast drill (a "belly drill"?) , and "back in the day" you could buy a variant of the design that was a proper breast drill. In practice, the main use of the side handle is to hold the chuck key when you're not using it, so that it doesn't get lost, the key handle being shaped for that purpose (not as shown on the box). Its all very well thought-out.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Simond]

Ah, now, a breast drill, no issue with that, nature having thoughtfully equipped me with a pair of each, I can hold one handle with each hand and press my panting breast (well, presumably one of them) on the thoughtfully designed pad.

 

but the standard hand drill handle?  There was never a comfortable way of usefully pushing on it whilst holding the side knob.  Maybe it was because we only had blunt drills.  My dad taught me to solder, but I had to teach him how to sharpen drills, and I had to learn first, by which time Black & Decker was a household name.

 

I do recall him getting our first electric drill.  I guess about 1970, so I’d have been 12-ish.  The comprehensive kit included a paint stirring attachment, a sort of slotted 2” disc on a foot-long axle, which we soon discovered was a very effective slitting saw for paint cans.  That caused a bit of panic as the newly laid vinyl floor acquired an even layer of old-English sheepdog gloss white.

 

and it’s not as if you keep a spare empty paint can lying around for such eventualities...

 

happy memories!

Simon

Edited December 9, 2020 by Simond

[Ben B]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As readers of this thread, you will be among the twenty seven people on the planet who find this exciting ....  

 

I have sourced a ‘new old stock’ 1970s hand drill, in original packaging!!!

 

Talk about a sewing machine compared with that modern Stanley rubbish. There is <0.5mm rock on the wheel, and no detectable slop in the shaft, all lovely steel, whereas the Stanley one had c3mm rock and another 3mm slop in it, and is I suspect aluminium.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm envious... my Dad has, and still regularly uses, an identical one.  I wish I'd nicked one of the three we had at my last job, nobody but me ever used them!

[Donw]

I am still using a qualcast clipper on a regular basis (the last three days in fact on baseboard work). It does have a plastic handle though. However for drilling mygrandfather would use a brace and bit. Particularly when cutting big holes you could get some force into a brace and bit.  With adjustable bits you can cut holes to size very useful.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Yep, I've got a very good 1970s one of those too, also bought for me by my father. In fact, most of my really good larger hand tools are from the 1970s, either from the set my father assembled for me, or from BR stores. The "top of the crop" is a set of  very unusual parallel-jaw mole grips, which are the tool to end all tools when it comes to shifting badly corroded nuts - came in very useful when I had old Landrovers.

 

Perhaps we should re-title this thread, but we'd better be careful how.

[Donw]

I do feel that the use of these tools does feel deliberately old fashioned. 

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

Not at all - good, solid tools last a lifetime, so there's no point buying new ones, especially if, like the brace, they are things that I only use maybe a couple of times a year. I do have a power drill, but that really only comes out if I need to fix things into brick or concrete, because its got a very good "hammer" function.

 

My modelling tools follow the same logic: buy the best you can afford (or find secondhand) and it'll last forever. Even my clamp-on-the-table mini vice is probably as old as I am, the Univice V6 with 2" jaws, which lasts forever because it is cast steel/iron, whereas modern mini-vices are aluminium or monkey-metal. Piercing saw? An ancient Eclipse No.50, because it is fully adjustable, so takes broken blades as well as new ones.

 

I could go on. What, I already have? Sorry.

 

Promise we'll get back to toy trains soon.

[Donw]

There are some tools I was happy to replace. You may remember the old fashioned Rawlplug tool a triangular shape shaft with a tip which you hit with a hammer and twisted to make a hole for a Rawlplug. Usuful where masonary drills proved fruitless. Since I bought an SDS drill making holes is no longer a problem well unless the hammer action smashes up whatever you are trying to drill.  Mine cost about £40 and has been used for all sorts of jobs driving a 1m long 25mm drill through a stone wall, thee 4 inch hole drill has only a 1 ft shaft so had to be used from both sides on stone walls and the drill hammer action has also been used to breakup concrete. If you do that do it in short burst to avoid "White Finger".

[Simond]

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that modern tools can be mind bogglingly more efficient, more capable and more expensive, than those which were the norm only a few years ago, there is still a huge underbelly of overpriced, underprecise, cheap, nasty, gimmicky nonsense waiting to trap the unwary.  I do like the term “monkey metal”, I shall use that...

 

there are also lovely, well-used, solid, heavy, precise, well-made items around, indeed the fifty year old monkey metal junk is already melted down and recast as today’s rubbish, but it was on sale back in the day, remember the classified ads?

 

it is, as ever, a case of knowing which brands can be trusted.

 

atb

Simon

[Nearholmer]

And so, back to toy trains .....

 

Nothing has happened to either the GWR No.2 tank, or the condensed milk van this week, because I’m still waiting for paint to arrive, and because a combination of a little bit of paying work, painting the hallway, and the children have between them claimed most of my time. But, with the clerestory 6-wheelers, to my tiny mind they do evoke the GWR pre-WW1.

 

While nothing is happening, this can serve as a ‘test card’. Nice bit of period-style drawing. It’s from a book within which all the engineering drawings are by Eleanora Steel, Henry Greenly’s daughter, but I’m not sure whether this is hers or not.

 

 

 

 

 

[St Enodoc]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

And so, back to toy trains .....

 

Nothing has happened to either the GWR No.2 tank, or the condensed milk van this week, because I’m still waiting for paint to arrive, and because a combination of a little bit of paying work, painting the hallway, and the children have between them claimed most of my time. But, with the clerestory 6-wheelers, to my tiny mind they do evoke the GWR pre-WW1.

 

While nothing is happening, this can serve as a ‘test card’. Nice bit of period-style drawing. It’s from a book within which all the engineering drawings are by Eleanora Steel, Henry Greenly’s daughter, but I’m not sure whether this is hers or not.

 

 

 

 

 

Fascinating. Looks like a lino cut to my untutored eyes.

 

H A Blunt & Sons was , of course, my local model shop when I was growing up in Mill Hill. Peter and Alan (the "Sons") were running it by then and two nicer gentlemen you could not have wished to meet.