What made Triang more successful than Hornby Dublo and Trix?

[sagaguy]

16 minutes ago, GoingUnderground said:

Meccano bought "Circuit 24" in from the French manufacturer Etienne Jouet from mid-1962 onwards with a view to acquiring the rights to manufacture it in the UK, which some reports suggest would have happened in 1964. It must have been a good system as "Circuit 24" is said to be as synonymous with slot cars in France as Scalextrix is in the UK.

The failure of Circuit  24 was in the title,it ran at 24v ac,all other systems were 12v dc, also power units wouldn't give enough amperage, certainty non standard. 

 

Ray. 

[Haddocksrock]

Talking of slot cars I had one of these back in those days. The novelty soon wore off unlike the Hornby Dublo

[GoingUnderground]

Brighton Toy Museum implies that the name came from the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race, https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Circuit_24.

 

Using 24V AC would explain why a 1963 Meccano sales leaflet said "Circuit 24 racing cars can be operated only by Circuit 24 Power Units and Accelerators, which your local dealer can supply." I can't recall ever seeing Circuit 24 on sale, and Scalextrix was also largely unknown to me. But then I was in to railways and when my brother and I got slot cars they were Triang's Minic Motorways.

 

I wonder why Meccano went for Circuit 24, or had they already approached Wrenn for their Formula 152 system https://www.wrenn152.com/ and been turned down?

[St Enodoc]

Just now, GoingUnderground said:

Brighton Toy Museum implies that the name came from the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race, https://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Category:Circuit_24.

 

Using 24V AC would explain why a 1963 Meccano sales leaflet said "Circuit 24 racing cars can be operated only by Circuit 24 Power Units and Accelerators, which your local dealer can supply." I can't recall ever seeing Circuit 24 on sale, and Scalextrix was also largely unknown to me. But then I was in to railways and when my brother and I got slot cars they were Triang's Minic Motorways.

 

I wonder why Meccano went for Circuit 24, or had they already approached Wrenn for their Formula 152 system https://www.wrenn152.com/ and been turned down?

Was it Circuit 24 or Formula 152 that let you have more than one car per lane and also overtake?

[sagaguy]

5 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Was it Circuit 24 or Formula 152 that let you have more than one car per lane and also overtake?

Wrenn Formula 152.

 

              Ray.

[GoingUnderground]

Formula 152 as it had 4 pickup strips, 2 on each side of the slot. I don't know the details, but it sounds like one contact strip was the common return and each of the cars used one of the other strips, a variation of the Trix Twin railway track design.

[railroadbill]

9 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

 

 

 

 

I wonder why Meccano went for Circuit 24, or had they already approached Wrenn for their Formula 152 system https://www.wrenn152.com/ and been turned down?

Interesting site on Formula 152.  Another AC vibrating motor like Circuit 24 (later changed to DC motor). I remember this being around but went for Scalextric at the time  which was a better bet as it became more popular and crucially you could race your cars on your friends layouts (more likely to be Scalextric or at least 1:32nd scale) and vice versa.

 

This page https://www.wrenn152.com/years-later/    on the site was also interesting as having some information about what happened after the end of Wrenn.

Edited July 13, 2021 by railroadbill

[railroadbill]

 

Hornby vs Tri-ang:...  had a look in the box and think the Hornby Dublo accessories like signals had the edge, seem a bit closer to scale. The Hornby signals in top row have finer arms and posts than the Tri-ang one bottom left (the bottom right is actually Crescent when I looked underneath).  On the other hand the Hornby ones never had ladders, which Tri-ang did (bottom left one is missing its ladder).

The H-D water crane with its rotating arm looks authentic and that lives on the current layout.

 

 

[BernardTPM]

The next generation of largely plastic Tri-ang signals were, if anything, a little more overscale. They did have clip fit to the track, of course.

[Il Grifone]

The Crescent signal looks like the end of a gantry?

Zinc pest makes them rather fragile. I made a bracket signal from a junction signal with a broken main mast.

Signals seem to be an accessory where the elastic tape measure is evident.

The Dublo ones are rather on the small side, but most are generously dimensioned.

The Ratio ones were the first scale models AFAIK, but started at 7/6d and were GWR only (not that this was a negative factor!)

Britain is not alone in this. Rivarossi signals are well overscale (compounded by undernourished buildings) and I have a Maerklin Märklin* 'Hauptsignal' which is giant sized.

 

* Sorry about this. I'll do it properly as soon as I can figure out how to produce an 'umlaut' on an Italian keyboard!

The 'cross out' function seems to have disappeared?

 

EDIT

Apparently ALT and 132, but you need a numeric keyboard....

Sorted with the character map (as usual).

 

EDIT2

 

Probably atypical as it's GER but the dimensions are here:

https://www.eorailway.co.uk/enthusiasts/departments-diary/replacing-a-signal-arm/

 

Taking great care with tapered planing (which no-one could see anyway)  and then fitting a green spectacle glass! I believe the GNR actually used green.

A solution to the problem is here (Western Region...):

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

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Il Grifone

[railroadbill]

Ratio signal kits look good imho.  H-D also made colour light signals, I think.

 

Your link to the Epping-Ongar railway signal restoration was very interesting, David, surprised me that the arm was wood though, thought it would have been metal.

 

It is odd that the ASCII codes for special characters need a numeric keypad to input , ok if you're using a laptop or desktop computer of course but a fiddle otherwise.

[sandwich station]

1 hour ago, railroadbill said:

  H-D also made colour light signals, I think.

 

So did Triang.

[Il Grifone]

All three makes had colour light signals.

The Trix are single aspect illuminated by lamp bulbs in the base and through a 'light pipe' in the mast. Red and green (home) and yellow and green (distant) were available. Both bulbs on together in the home version give yellow,  of course, but it does run rather warm as the bulbs consume 75mA each.

 

The other two makes have bulbs in the head. Replacement Dublo bulbs are now rare and expensive, but can be replaced with LEDs (with advantage at the cost of originality). Cunning use of transistors and/or diodes in the base saves on switches and wire. (This probably applies to the Tri-ang version too, but I have never tried.)

Edited July 16, 2021 by Il Grifone

[Il Grifone]

Signal arms were originally wood, but later (twenties?) were replaced with metal as and when they wore out, or had money to spare for modernisation.

Someone had the bright idea of making the arm drop vertically and disappearing into the post (IIRC the 45° position indicated caution). Coupled with the daft (to be kind) 'normal' position of indicating clear, this led to at least one disaster when the arm froze into the post.

[sagaguy]

Dublo colour light signals were much neater than the clunky Hornby versions,the lamps last for years if you run them at 9v as here supplied by a laptop power supply rated at 5 amps protected by a 3 amp fuse.Trix colour light signals are also very neat,14v bulbs in the base with coloured plastic sleeves which disintegrated over time,i replaced them with 12v coloured lilliput leds as in picture two.Not to be forgotten are the Trix lighted semaphore signals again with a lamp in the base which illuminates the spectacles,again,i replaced the filament bulb with a white LED.The problem now is that i don`t think you can get these particular LEDs,the new ones appear to be prefocused LEDs  which won`t shine up the post.The Trix signals wer available in the 1950s so there is nothing new under the sun.

 

   Ray

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, Il Grifone said:

 

Taking great care with tapered planing (which no-one could see anyway)  and then fitting a green spectacle glass! I believe the GNR actually used green.

A solution to the problem is here (Western Region...):

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

 

 

Most railways used blue, not green for the spectacle glass. The reason being with the yellowish glow of an oil lamp through blue glass, made them look green!

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, sagaguy said:

Dublo colour light signals were much neater than the clunky Hornby versions

The first Tri-ang ones were quite overscale, but their 1970s Hornby replacements would have suited the Big Big Train range better!

[railroadbill]

Extra point for Hornby Dublo there!!

[Il Grifone]

The Dublo signals are quite good apart from the bulbs sticking out of the spectacle plates. This is easily cured with a couple of 3mm LEDs!  I justify this with the excuse that Meccano Ltd. would have used them had they been available.

[sandwich station]

4 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The first Tri-ang ones were quite overscale, 

 

No more so than the Dublo ones.

[GoingUnderground]

21 hours ago, BernardTPM said:

The first Tri-ang ones were quite overscale, ....

Are you sure you've got that the right way round? As the Triang RT.405 colour light signal was intended for use with both the OO and TT systems, (the "RT" catalogue number was only used for items that were applicable to both systems), Triang were criticised by some in the model press at the time for making it to a compromise scale, too small for OO, too large for TT. The heads look to be comparable in size whilst the Dublo support column is clearly taller. But I have never seen the two side by side for real.

 

Also the Triang one had, to my eyes, a much neater base, which clip fitted to the track, and very cleverly concealed the terminals. the plugs on the end of the supplied wires simply slid horizontally into the holes provided in the base. On the other hand, the Dublo one needed a heavy base for stability with space for fixing screws, and has 3 unprototypical screw terminals projecting from the top.

 

Here they both are, the Triang RT.405 on the left, and the Dublo 5045 on the right. Judge for yourselves which looks better, or does each have its strengths and weaknesses?

 

 

Side by side, for me the Triang one wins.

 

Trix were unique in offering searchlight colour light signals, but they too had the heavy base which also had to house the bulb and filters.

 

The Triang offering was, IMHO much more presentable than either the Dublo or Trix ones. Dublo did have a distant colour light signal as wel las a two head junction signal, whilst Triang had the double track gantry version. I think Triang missed a trick with the gantry version, they should have made the heads easily reversible so that they could have been used as starting signals at terminus stations. I know that it is possible to turn a signal head round, but it is difficult and risks damaging the gantry, IIRC.

 

I completely agree that the Hornby Railways era R.406 is just gross, but that was probably driven by the availability and price of sub-miniature bulbs.

Edited July 17, 2021 by GoingUnderground

[BernardTPM]

I think the low post height emphasises the size of the head, but I'd agree the head part was not really any more overscale than the Hornby Dublo and it does have much neater wiring. The lower height does mean the Triang one wouldn't look too tall if platform mounted as some colour light signals were.

 

Regarding the humongous R406 I think it's time they upgraded to 'R407', more to scale with LEDs.

Edited July 17, 2021 by BernardTPM

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Apparently, the big headed Hornby made in China signal does now come fitted with LEDs…

 

Also, it seems to have retained the same R number, making for more confusion.

 

There were already two different types of incompatible bulbs and bulb holders! 
 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by Ruffnut Thorston
Typo

[Il Grifone]

The Dublo signal has spring loaded terminals - it is only necessary to press down and insert the wire. The semaphores have screw terminals. Tri-ang need the proper wire with a brass ferrule.

If the Dublo terminals offend (or are damaged), it's quite easy to remove them and solder the wire underneath.

The shorter Tri-ang signal would be more suitable for platform mounting, but it's base may make this difficult?

 

The appropriate switches were all different between makes even in the colours for each function. Trix are red - section (on-off), black - impulse (for solenoids), and yellow (two way on-off for the colour light signals)*; Dublo black, red, and green respectively; Tri-ang ? - I haven't got any. (I was at a  fair - pre-Covid remember them?) and a seller had a box of the things and told the person in front of me, "15p each" ! The Grifone ears twitched, but I got outgriffed. He bought the lot! I did get a nice factory building at a bargain price though.)

 

I prefer the Trix switches (I bought a load at 50p each some time ago). Inside they all the same two bits of springy metal (only one for the red one) and the lever makes contact with either depending on the setting. The black has a notch for centre off (There is a pre-war design (watch out for the pest!) with different internal design and a long throw). They all plug together to make a bank of as many as required. Dublo can be mounted together with 'switch grouping rods' in banks of four or eight. Two lengths of blackened threaded rod (8 BA IIRC) available as an extra. These were quite economical** back in the day, but like hen's teeth today. Tri-ang, I believe, have a plastic base?

 

*I believe Trix Express had a green one, but I have never been able to confirm either it's existence or function.

 

** Unlike the switches themselves, which were exorbitantly expensive (this applies to all makes). I used light switches from Woolworth's at 7d each!

[sagaguy]

Arggh!,spring loaded terminals,invention of the devil.Touch the signal and the wire fall out even if you bend the wire to fit round the back of the terminal.

 

Trix switches as bought these days are likely to need cleaning.The levers have to be removed and polished in a drill and the contacts gently bent to make contact along with the pins that slot into the next switch.

 

                            Ray.