Hornby Railways Catalogue and Box Art - An Advent Calendar Lookback

[Hroth]

4 hours ago, Legend said:

Well as it’s coming to Christmas , everybody deserves a Hornby Trainset .

 

I always buy myself something train-orientated which I wrap and put under the tree.  Last year it was an N gauge Dapol 2S-007-014 Pannier Train Pack that Hereford Model Centre have on offer (they still have plenty...). 

 

This year I got a Hornby R3397 LMS Suburban Passenger Train Pack when Kernow had them on offer (none left of that!) So I'll have the pleasure of opening a trainset on Christmas Day!

 

 

[Legend]

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

I always buy myself something train-orientated which I wrap and put under the tree.  Last year it was an N gauge Dapol 2S-007-014 Pannier Train Pack that Hereford Model Centre have on offer (they still have plenty...). 

 

This year I got a Hornby R3397 LMS Suburban Passenger Train Pack when Kernow had them on offer (none left of that!) So I'll have the pleasure of opening a trainset on Christmas Day!

 

 

Always  a good idea . I had kind of planned a Heljan 86/2 but it seems Santa got delayed 

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, banburysaint said:

 

 

 

 

 

Did that have Right Said Fred on the B Side.... 

 

For those of a different generation this is one of the adverts. Just click the YouTube link and the rest are there. Including the record I think.

 

 

[banburysaint]

8 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Did that have Right Said Fred on the B Side.... 

 

For those of a different generation this is one of the adverts. Just click the YouTube link and the rest are there. Including the record I think.

 

 

for the record. Thank you for suggesting that it was on YouTube I never thought of looking there. I don't own a record player so this is the first time I have heard the recording 

[Legend]

Love the adverts .  That big layout has trains running , would have loved to have seen it in detail 

[Ruffnut Thorston]

10 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Yes but it was a bit hit and miss, the shunters wagon that came with an uncoupling hook was in a windowless box for example.

The window boxes didn’t replace the solid boxes, especially for wagons.

 

locomotives and coaches tended to switch to window boxes, but a lot of wagons were in solid boxes even in Hornby Railways days...even some Silver Seal wagons were found in solid boxes.

 

The same wagon can be found in both window and solid boxes, of the same era...

[Hroth]

Another useful record, produced by Triang was the RT395 sound effect record...

 

http://www.tri-ang.co.uk/record.html

 

Side 1
Steam Loco shunting
Journey on a steam locomotive hauled train
Side 2
Journey on a diesel-hauled train

 

 

[Hroth]

9 minutes ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

even some Silver Seal wagons were found in solid boxes.

 

I've got the Silver Seal "SR Sheep Wagon" in a solid box.

 

I rarely kept things in their boxes...

 

[Legend]

12 minutes ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

The window boxes didn’t replace the solid boxes, especially for wagons.

 

locomotives and coaches tended to switch to window boxes, but a lot of wagons were in solid boxes even in Hornby Railways days...even some Silver Seal wagons were found in solid boxes.

 

The same wagon can be found in both window and solid boxes, of the same era...

Yep , quite right Ruffnut , I remember receiving a blue circle wagon from main range , Minera Lime wagon and Birds Eye van , all around 74-75 and all were in small boxes . The only difference being Silver Seal ones had a silver seal!  Somewhere along the line they seem to have moved back from window boxes to plain . Window boxes  for wagons reappeared in 1976 with the new branding 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Legend

[Steamport Southport]

4 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Another useful record, produced by Triang was the RT395 sound effect record...

 

http://www.tri-ang.co.uk/record.html

 

Side 1
Steam Loco shunting
Journey on a steam locomotive hauled train
Side 2
Journey on a diesel-hauled train

 

 

 

 

What's that sound?

 

It's your now ex girlfriend slamming the door after agreeing with the suggestion to go back and listen to some records....

[Ruffnut Thorston]

The soundtrack off this record was available on the internet, but I’m not sure where now...

 

The other side of the cover...

 

http://www.45cat.com/record/record-76

 

 

There was also a record of car racing sounds for Scalextric sets, called Roar... 

 

 

 

http://www.45cat.com/record/record-16

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Ruffnut Thorston
More added

[Ruffnut Thorston]

 

Then there is this little collection...

 

 

[Steamport Southport]

The real classic.....

 

 

[LNWR18901910]

Day 20

Industrial Freight...wow, what an exciting name. Yes, while doing my research, I am totally aware that this is not the only time Hornby re-used this name, but we'll get to it later. Right now, let's focus on the box.

 

What a charming site to behold - on the bottom right, a horse-draw wagon ambling along on a railway platform (which you don't see nowadays except probably in certain parts of the world like India or Africa or New Zealand, maybe) and on the top left, something they took from a cookbook or something, I don't know. The wagons in question are something you may or may not have seen IRL (a 7UP plank wagon, a Pepsi tanker wagon, a Tango box van) - when did they actually exist?

 

Okay, I get it - It's supposed to appeal to kids and modellers of all ages (some who feel almost like kids again but I'm not gonna judge, I'm not lethious). The locomotive No. 105 is quite nice and is almost a simplified version of the Midland Railway crimson lake but on a GWR locomotive. It's like in Thomas & Friends where Duck's GWR green livery is in a brighter green like in the original illustrations (mainly the Dalby one) and the same was applied to Oliver as well!

 

Sorry for going off-topic, there, but those are my thoughts on it so far. However, I totally have nothing against this set. To re-introduce the Kit-Kat box van in the range, would that be out of the question? Still, it would be nice for kids to have on their layouts as well as use in double-advertisements (because hey, if they can do it with Yellow Pages, they can do it with Kit-Kat). Also, when I said at the beginning about the set name being re-used, well...this explains it.

Yes, no kidding. Remember how BR thought about red wheels on their locomotives? That's what they didn't go for. Also, the box van is just a generic red van, so chances are maybe they couldn't find a suitable product brand to advertise or just simply left it as is, I guess? The thing about motion-blur on these boxes is that the wagons are hard to make out and read what they say. Unlike this recent incarnation:

Two GWR wagons, a PO Wagon and, what's this? LMMR? What's that stand for, Liverpool, Manchester and Merseyside Railway? No? How about London Midland & Merseyside Railway? I've no idea. If Hornby wanted to make up railway company names, well, congratulations goes out to them - well done!

 

So, there you have it - the many guises of Industrial Freight. Oh, how we hardly knew thee... I'll leave it off with some other variants I just found. Caley Pug 0F ahoy!

 

N.B: Special thanks very much to those who liked and agreed with my thoughts as well and enjoying them, I really do enjoy yours, too! Thanks goes out to those who shared memories and fun facts as well as photos and memories and such. Hroth, thanks for sharing the album with us, this would have been the grand-daddy of DCC sound before there was such a thing! Imagine a kid wanting to play it and run trains at the same time unless their poxy, poncy pimply-faced brother or sister was hogging the record player (imagine running trains while rocking out to Elvis, Cliff or The Beatles, that would be interesting yet surreal). So, I hope you enjoy this amusing post, I'll be back with another one tomorrow - I Can't Believe It's Christmas (a great title song for anybody who wishes to try and create another Christmas single even with a slim chance of entering the Top 10 Charts and played over and over every year again along with Slade, Bing Crosby and The Jackson Five, please go ahead and use it anyway). See you all tomorrow, stay safe and healthy and Merry Christmas, y'all!

[Steamport Southport]

Funnily enough there was a railway called the L&MMR which later became part of the GWR.

 

The Llanelly & Mynydd Mawr Railway.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanelly_and_Mynydd_Mawr_Railway

 

[Hroth]

11 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

The real classic.....

 

 

 

Bill: Who was on the phone?

Ben: A dratted kid wanting an R186

Bill: Did you tell him it was out of stock and that Hornby wasn't making any more because there was no demand for them?

Ben: Yes, he didn't seem pleased.

Bill: I wish people wouldn't keep asking for the damn things......

 

[Legend]

11 hours ago, LNWR18901910 said:

Day 20

Industrial Freight...wow, what an exciting name. Yes, while doing my research, I am totally aware that this is not the only time Hornby re-used this name, but we'll get to it later. Right now, let's focus on the box.

 

What a charming site to behold - on the bottom right, a horse-draw wagon ambling along on a railway platform (which you don't see nowadays except probably in certain parts of the world like India or Africa or New Zealand, maybe) and on the top left, something they took from a cookbook or something, I don't know. The wagons in question are something you may or may not have seen IRL (a 7UP plank wagon, a Pepsi tanker wagon, a Tango box van) - when did they actually exist?

 

Okay, I get it - It's supposed to appeal to kids and modellers of all ages (some who feel almost like kids again but I'm not gonna judge, I'm not lethious). The locomotive No. 105 is quite nice and is almost a simplified version of the Midland Railway crimson lake but on a GWR locomotive. It's like in Thomas & Friends where Duck's GWR green livery is in a brighter green like in the original illustrations (mainly the Dalby one) and the same was applied to Oliver as well!

 

Sorry for going off-topic, there, but those are my thoughts on it so far. However, I totally have nothing against this set. To re-introduce the Kit-Kat box van in the range, would that be out of the question? Still, it would be nice for kids to have on their layouts as well as use in double-advertisements (because hey, if they can do it with Yellow Pages, they can do it with Kit-Kat). Also, when I said at the beginning about the set name being re-used, well...this explains it.

Yes, no kidding. Remember how BR thought about red wheels on their locomotives? That's what they didn't go for. Also, the box van is just a generic red van, so chances are maybe they couldn't find a suitable product brand to advertise or just simply left it as is, I guess? The thing about motion-blur on these boxes is that the wagons are hard to make out and read what they say. Unlike this recent incarnation:

Two GWR wagons, a PO Wagon and, what's this? LMMR? What's that stand for, Liverpool, Manchester and Merseyside Railway? No? How about London Midland & Merseyside Railway? I've no idea. If Hornby wanted to make up railway company names, well, congratulations goes out to them - well done!

 

So, there you have it - the many guises of Industrial Freight. Oh, how we hardly knew thee... I'll leave it off with some other variants I just found. Caley Pug 0F ahoy!

 

N.B: Special thanks very much to those who liked and agreed with my thoughts as well and enjoying them, I really do enjoy yours, too! Thanks goes out to those who shared memories and fun facts as well as photos and memories and such. Hroth, thanks for sharing the album with us, this would have been the grand-daddy of DCC sound before there was such a thing! Imagine a kid wanting to play it and run trains at the same time unless their poxy, poncy pimply-faced brother or sister was hogging the record player (imagine running trains while rocking out to Elvis, Cliff or The Beatles, that would be interesting yet surreal). So, I hope you enjoy this amusing post, I'll be back with another one tomorrow - I Can't Believe It's Christmas (a great title song for anybody who wishes to try and create another Christmas single even with a slim chance of entering the Top 10 Charts and played over and over every year again along with Slade, Bing Crosby and The Jackson Five, please go ahead and use it anyway). See you all tomorrow, stay safe and healthy and Merry Christmas, y'all!

Good one . I hadn’t realised all these sets were trotted out under the “Industrial Freight” title. I think that in Hornby Railways the freight is shrinking as we have gone from 5 wagons to3 in the later sets . But I am distraught , you mean the Pepsi tanker and 7 Up wagons are not real ? I had suspected that the lemonade would seep out between the planks , but to have it confirmed has totally spoiled my Christmas . You’ll be telling me next that my Polo Mint and Duracell tankers are not real .

 

Still come to think of it my 70s wagon collection did seem to be consistent with contents of the larder ( for you youngsters that’s what we used to have before fridges) . Prime Pork, Fine Fish, BirdsEye , Kellogg’s and Cadbury’s and ......Blue Circle , a reminder of the porridge that was served up . 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by Legend

[Nearholmer]

Good play-value sets these, following a time-worn formula.

 

No.40 plus many additional wagons was among the big boxful of clockwork trains that was handed-down to me by the youngest of my uncles when he was 16yo and I was 3yo. 
 

Hours of fun transporting knights in armour, cowboys and Indians, Britain’s farm animals etc. (Native Americans weren’t called native Americans until a bit later!).

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Legend]

Another page of the 73 catalogue , this time from the back .  Pictures of a Country Station , the Flying Scotsman must have got lost , the Motive Power Depot and a Hump Marshalling yard . 
 

lovely stuff , again stared at for hours . My current mpd certainly owes much to this one . And finally I have all the models pictured .A pipe dream for me back in 1973 . 

[Hroth]

In the 7th edition of the Triang catalogue (the one with Britannia running across the front of the Palace of Westminster...) the "Countryside" range of trackside buildings was on offer.

 

 

 

Latex rubber buildings. Who'd have thought it?

 

I had R.362 and R.367 but they crumbled quite badly in the end...

(Blue door and pink windows???)

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by Hroth
ruddy typo...

[BernardTPM]

Some of those were quite characterful. They also produced gradient and level emabankment sections, a pair of cutting sides and a tunnel, all in the same material. The little detail accessory pack, moulded in flexible black plastic, was rather neat.

[Hroth]

36 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

Some of those were quite characterful. They also produced gradient and level emabankment sections, a pair of cutting sides and a tunnel, all in the same material. The little detail accessory pack, moulded in flexible black plastic, was rather neat.

Those were on the righthand page to the buildings.  The cutting was a little odd, rather brief; it might have bèen more useful if treated in the same way as the gradient and embankment with rising/falling sections and a middle bit.

 

The same page offered the new smoke units for upgrading your locos.

 

[BernardTPM]

Yes. I suspect box size may have been a deciding factor in the cutting design. In a way it's a shame they didn't continue, perhaps in a different material, that embankment idea. Looks so much better than suspending track on a few piers, even those with sidewalls.

Edited December 21, 2020 by BernardTPM

[Steamport Southport]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Bill: Who was on the phone?

Ben: A dratted kid wanting an R186

Bill: Did you tell him it was out of stock and that Hornby wasn't making any more because there was no demand for them?

Ben: Yes, he didn't seem pleased.

Bill: I wish people wouldn't keep asking for the damn things......

 

 

Still available from Gaugemaster.

 

Although now seems to have acquired SR livery...

 

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magento/model-railways/gm-structures-brand5/gaugemaster-gm402.html

 

The real one is the one from Dunster (now at Minehead) on the West Somerset Railway. I can't remember the GWR "type".

 

http://cgibin.wsr.org.uk/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?h=Snapshot&p=1972/1972_35_njo

 

 

Jason

[Coppercap]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

In the 7th edition of the Triang catalogue (the one with Britannia running across the front of the Palace of Westminster...) the "Countryside" range of trackside buildings was on offer.

 

 

 

Latex rubber buildings. Who'd have thought it?

 

I had R.362 and R.367 but they crumbled quite badly in the end...

(Blue door and pink windows???)

 

 

 

I never knew their origin years ago when I was small (my dad bought me solid, dependable but secondhand Dublo 3-rail. Tri-ang, even the catalogues, was off my radar), and only found out in relatively recent years.

For some odd reason our dentist had some of these among other toys in the waiting room. Probably because little 'uns were unlikely to hurt themselves playing with them (how do you play with a building exactly?) unless they swallowed them whole... I never saw one dunked in the fish tank, but I'm sure it happened. They still had them in 1980, by then looking a bit worn, when I moved away and changed dentist.