Ever-Ready 1950s 00-gauge underground train: Belongs down a drain....

[Captain Slough]

this came up briefly in a mention from Grifone a few days ago so I dug mine out, mainly to be shocked again at how bad it is: the Ever-Ready underground train , the battery maker's 1950s entry into railway modelling and the only model they ever produced

these 5 vehicles all came from different sources and mine since the mid 90s when they were already 40+ years old.   I've restored the red paint, preserving original decals where they were still present. Since going into storage in 1998 the wheels have started to break up (being Mazak) but the rest of the body is stamped metal and shows no sign of corrosion. Neither power car has a power bogie - one was present and very incomplete but it crumbled away to dust and I can't find the remains of it. I think the Hornby B4 bogie was there so it could sit in a station platform on my layout for a while without sagging.

 

The modelmaking is crude but the biggest insult is that the design is clearly OVS Bulleid Southern Railway ("Waterloo and city") 1940 stock so the red livery is wrong, as is the Stanmore destination on the only one to have a surviving front decal

 

If anyone would like to take these on as a project, let me know

[Captain Slough]

for a "sense of scale" check, heres my scratchbuilt (plastikard, 1997) Northern Line 1938 driving car with one of the Ever-ready cars

 

the '38 car was built for diorama use behind a platform in a corner of my layout so is unfinished below the solebar line, but is absolutely to scale apart from the thickness of the window dividers

Edited April 6, 2023 by Captain Slough

[33C]

Are they 00 gauge and would they take a Triang motor bogie?

[Captain Slough]

sometimes I think that your primary interface with the world is to divide everything you see into things that can or cannot fit a Triang power bogie and then to go from there in terms of how you relate to it. So anyway I just borrowed a bogie from one of my Triang R157 metro-cammells to see.

 

Answer: Yes its 00, its already overscale for a tube train and a Triang motor bogie makes it about 4mm higher at the minimum but otherwise would be possible to fit - there is adequate lateral space and only about 2mm too little front-to-back space, and easily enough material there to make it work. It would look wrong though as the car is obviously higher at the motor bogie end

 

If I were going to repower this for 2-rail 00 I'd use a Lima class 20 power bogie and shaft drive 

 

it's 3-rail by design anyway of course so you'd need to rewheel all bogies with wheels that insulated and werent suffering metal fatigue

Edited April 6, 2023 by Captain Slough

[Captain Slough]

I suppose you could always jack up the other end by the same degree, extend the solebars downward with a new skirt of plasticard, repaint it silver and run it as District line C-stock - it would be about right for scale height and length then , if nothing else

Edited April 6, 2023 by Captain Slough

[Captain Slough]

found a guy on Youtube with an ever ready set with a triang motor bogie

[33C]

It has a great sound running round his layout! Could be a bit of fun and a challenge?

[Lazy]

Many years ago I rebuilt some of these vehicles into a Waterloo and City set. Curiously, the original items appear to be to 3.5mm scale (if they can be said to be to scale) with extra doors and ventilation grilles to stretch them to 4mm. The bodyshells appear to be pressed aluminium with steel floor plates. There were two types of motor bogie sideframes - a diecast type and a pressed type. For the conversion, I removed the surplus doors / grilles and fitted BEC motor bogies. It was also necessary to reprofile the roof area to give a more rounded look, which required vast amounts of filling and sanding. By weight and volume, the vehicles are mostly Milliput and Plastic Padding😄

[Il Grifone]

Possibly you could get a Tri-ang bogie in by replacing the pivot with something requiring a bit less height?

Personally I would leave well alone and demote the whole thing to 'Shelf queen'.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Il Grifone

[2750Papyrus]

There used to be a model railway open to the public on Crouch End Broadway - we may have talked about this before.  I can't remember any of the surface stock, but my favourite was an Ever Ready Underground train.                  I had never seen a model of such a train before and it was many years before I saw another, although Hamblings used to sell MERCO lithographed cards of, I think, a Met train .

 

I don't think we should be over critical of this model.  At the time, my train sets were Trix Twin electric and Hornby 0 gauge clockwork. Both had 0-4-0 locos pulling very short (Hornby 4 wheeled) coaches around curves more typical of 00-9.  They are products of their time, as is the Ever Ready set. 

 

I would leave your set "as-is" as a memory from our hobby's history and heritage.

[Captain Slough]

1 hour ago, 2750Papyrus said:

I had never seen a model of such a train before and it was many years before I saw another, although Hamblings used to sell MERCO lithographed cards of, I think, a Met train .

Got those & built.... see last post in this thread....

 

 

[Canal Digger]

On 06/04/2023 at 13:38, Captain Slough said:

 

If anyone would like to take these on as a project, let me know

If this set is still available, how much would you want for it please? I like a challenge

[Nearholmer]

There’s a short article about these in the latest HRCA magazine, wherein the author recommends a Hanazona SWB35 power bogie with 12mm diameter wheels, available from Scalelink.

 

Personally, I think that like most ‘heritage’ models/toys they come up best with a sympathetic restoration, remaining true to the ethos of the period, rather than trying to load them with detail to make them fit the ethos of now. If the paint is beyond it, going green as a W&C set, while not altering much else would be good though, particularly since they periodically emerged from their burrow to go for overhaul at Eastleigh or Selhurst.

[andyman7]

41 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

There’s a short article about these in the latest HRCA magazine, wherein the author recommends a Hanazona SWB35 power bogie with 12mm diameter wheels, available from Scalelink.

 

Personally, I think that like most ‘heritage’ models/toys they come up best with a sympathetic restoration, remaining true to the ethos of the period, rather than trying to load them with detail to make them fit the ethos of now. If the paint is beyond it, going green as a W&C set, while not altering much else would be good though, particularly since they periodically emerged from their burrow to go for overhaul at Eastleigh or Selhurst.

I agree. It would be great if someone with suitable capabilities (i.e. not me) could make some suitable cast replacement wheels and motor bogie frame parts to allow the disintegrated/distorted mazak parts to be replaced, similar to the replacement Hornby Series (O gauge) wheels available to replace similarly degraded originals. It's a relic of its time and best appreciated as such!

[Captain Slough]

11 hours ago, Canal Digger said:

If this set is still available, how much would you want for it please? I like a challenge

 

Sorry, it's already transferred to a new depot allocation

[roythebus1]

1 hour ago, Captain Slough said:

 

Sorry, it's already transferred to a new depot allocation

Vic Berry & sons or Heinz? :)