Were any of them any good?

[coronach]

I recently purchased a second hand Mailine Siphon G with the intention of giving it an upgrade. It looked a bit naff in glossy chocolate brown with yellow G W lettering but after cleaning it and giving it a spray of Halfords grey primer, I realised that it is pretty good with lots of fine detail. I’ve decided to simply repaint and weather it - an excellent layout vehicle. To be completed ……

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by coronach

[SM42]

Can I offer into the mix the Tri ang single bolster. 

 

Apart from the underframe. 

 

The body is pretty close to scale, looks the part and warrants a bit of an upgrade in my opinion. 

 

 

Andy

[The Johnster]

17 hours ago, MikeCW said:

sometimes wonder if the high-fidelity models of today will prove as robust and last as long as these Binns Road products.

 

Names withheld to protect the guilty (and anyway you'll all know who I'm talking about), but of the two main RTR contributors' to my loco stock's 'current standard' items, one has proved very robust despite featuring a good bit of separate component small detail.  Only one though.

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, coronach said:

I recently purchased a second hand Mailine Siphon G with the intention of giving it an upgrade. It looked a bit naff in glossy chocolate brown with yellow G W lettering but after cleaning it and giving it a spray of Halfords grey primer, I realised that it is pretty good with lots of fine detail. I’ve decided to simply repaint and weather it - an excellent layout vehicle. To be completed ……

 

 

Replacement cast whitemetal buffers with the correct diameter heads are well worth the investment for this model (and the Lima G)

[Northmoor]

On 13/09/2023 at 14:36, Hroth said:

Oh yes, and the Triang 31....

I've nothing against the appearance, and the motor bogie has decent pulling power, but its fake centre wheelset is as bad as the flangeless wheels that Hornby supply on their current Pacific pony trucks.  The funny thing is, the Airfix version of the 31 also has a fake center wheelset on the power bogie too...

I've never understood people's problem with the centre wheelset on the 31s, you can barely see it from most viewing angles.

 

As for the Tri-ang/Hornby 37, there are some excellent upgraded ones on RMWeb; yes it takes a lot of work compared to buying a Bachmann one but that's why we're here isn't it?

 

I've not got beyond page 2 on this thread - has anyone slagged off/praised the Tri-ang B12 yet?  It was one of our first locos (had to be, Dad started his spotting years at Norwich in the 1950s); it's crude yes  - ours was unpainted black with NE on the tender - but the proportions look OK to me.

 

[MikeCW]

Another 60 year old model which hasn't made the good/bad/ugly lists in this topic is the Hornby-Dublo Class 20, the first diesel locomotive in the Dublo range. The two-rail version had electrical pick up problems arising from a combination of traction tyres and a tendency for the torque of the power bogie to lift one of the wheelsets under load.  But the three-rail version was a big seller, a good runner and, like the "Castle" garnered a lot of favourable press for its accuracy.

 

Here is one of mine, a battered, non-running example which I stripped down, repainted and repaired.  The only differences from the Binns Road original are the green paint (Hornby-Dublo relied on the moulded green plastic) and the replacement of rusty handrails with stainless steel ones in matching wire gauge. Unlike the Dublo Deltic and Co-Bo, I think that this model stands up well when compared with the next generation of models from Airfix and Mainline.

 

  

[Hroth]

12 minutes ago, MikeCW said:

Another 60 year old model which hasn't made the good/bad/ugly lists in this topic is the Hornby-Dublo Class 20, the first diesel locomotive in the Dublo range. The two-rail version had electrical pick up problems arising from a combination of traction tyres and a tendency for the torque of the power bogie to lift one of the wheelsets under load.  But the three-rail version was a big seller, a good runner and, like the "Castle" garnered a lot of favourable press for its accuracy.

 

Here is one of mine, a battered, non-running example which I stripped down, repainted and repaired.  The only differences from the Binns Road original are the green paint (Hornby-Dublo relied on the moulded green plastic) and the replacement of rusty handrails with stainless steel ones in matching wire gauge. Unlike the Dublo Deltic and Co-Bo, I think that this model stands up well when compared with the next generation of models from Airfix and Mainline.

 

  

 

The HD 20 is a lovely model, though the underframe detail is very impressionistic.   Mine is 3-Rail, and runs very smoothly.

 

[The Johnster]

11 hours ago, Southernman46 said:

I actually can't remember the first time I looked at a model and became aware of its inadequacies.

 

I can.  It was xmas 1957 and I was in my sixth year, and was given a Black Princess set.  I was over the moon with it, best present I've ever had in my life by miles, but I knew that the loco and coaches were too short, I'd never seen coaches with sliding window ventilators like that, and the curves were much, much, too sharp.  It didn't matter much, but I was aware of it, and as I grew older, noticed more detail about real railways, that aspect of the model became more of a problem.  I sort of accepted for a while, as the other layouts I saw were just as bad, but the first major realisation that there was a better way to approach this was probably about five or six years later, and the epiphany was in Hamley's toy shop on Regent Street in London.  Hamleys had a big circular open well in the centre of the store with three or four floors as balconies around it, and one floor had a 00 railway around the edge of the balcony.  This was probably about forty feet in diameter, and there were eight running lines, two at the back at higher level with a retaining wall, featuring overhead wires.

 

I was blown away by this.  Here were scale length trains running at scale speeds around gentle curves in a plausibly realistic setting; me wantee!!!  There was a 009 track on the outside of all this with an Eggerbahn tank plodding around with a couple of coaches; they'd only just been made available in the UK and I was unaware that such a thing was possible.  It took about twenty minutes to go around the circle! 

 

This revelation was of no immediate practical use to me, as there was obviously no way that I could recreate anything like this in a home environment, but not long after that came the second epiphany, Model Railway Constructor.  This had photos in it, and what are remembered from those days were the remarkable cover shots of trains in realistic settings.  I particularly recall one with a weathered Trix 5MT on a steel viaduct blasting up a bank with a goods, exhaust photographically shown, with a shot inside of an Hornby Dublo 8F banking the train, an LMS brake van creeping into frame.  Another was a telephoto front-on shot of a four-track main line with a steelworks backdrop; a Trix Western on a passenger was overtaking a Triang 37 on a coal train.  If you wanted the hook the attention of a South Wales enthusiast you could hardly have done better; Llanwern and Margam are very much like this!

 

Here were trains I could buy in town with my paper round money in settings I might, with skill (when I'd learned it) and ingenuity, be able to emulate!  Then I read  the magazine, and learned about scenery, layouts that weren't on big baseboards but on shelves at the sides of rooms, flexible track, turnouts with better radii than I knew about, cab control, how to make models of stuff that wasn't in the Triang Hornby, HD, or Trix catalogue, and much else.  Again, my poor little mind was blasted apart!  RTR models were less than perfect, but there were things you could do about it.  Setrack was rubbish but you didn't need it.  There were much better controllers out there.  Stuff could be automated with relays and microswitches.  Point motors could live under the baseboard.  You could make scenery with flock powders, and ballast your track properly.  There were kits that were more realistic than most concurrent RTR, with better wheels, gears, and motors.  Fiddle yards could represent the rest of the universe.

 

MRC featured layouts unlike anything I'd ever seen before.  I remember one, set on a GW main line in West Wales, with a photo of a 43xx hauling a K's plastic kit B set over a plate girder bridge with a central stone pier, hills rising each side of it and the sea beyond.  It looked utterly believable!  MRC also published an article detailing how to convert a Black Princess into a Black 5, which was probably a crime against modelling, but I had a go at this.  MRC had articles about GW branch lines by some bloke called Chris Leigh which had a big influence on me. 

 

So I started trying to do some of it.  Still tryin', sixty years on.  Even started to get a little bit better at it...

 

I built some awful rubbish, but I was modelling, and eventually became a little bit better at it.  My layouts started to be representations of real areas of the country at specific periods.  I learned that track looks better if the sides of the rails were painted, to my parents' outright horror, heightened when I started taking hacksaws to stock and drilling holes in it to replace the buffers with better versions, and when I chucked Winston Churchill's bodyshell to replace it with an Airfix Biggin Hill in the spirit of improving it, and when I started painting locos and coaches to get rid of the Triang Hornby finishes.

 

Now, I ain't no hero.  This is a fairly typical modeller's progress for kid of my generation.  There were rites of passage; building Airfix kits with working Walcheart's, lining out shorty clerestories or Ratio 4-wheelers, motorising an Airfix kit, kitbashing (43xx from an Airfix CoT and 61xx motion & leading pony with 2h Black Princess chassis was my first, and successful, attempt), ballasting a Peco turnout that still worked afterwards, that sort of thing.

 

My first 'proper' layout, Blackwater Harbour, was a WR/SR North Devon Irish ferry terminal, loosely based on Ilfracombe.  It was continuous run with a proper fy, single track main line.  It incorporated much of what I'd learned in MRC, but was my last ever continuous run layout; the other thing I learned from MRC, and CJL in particular, was BLTs. 

 

Funfunfunfunfun!

 

..

[The Johnster]

58 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

I've never understood people's problem with the centre wheelset on the 31s, you can barely see it from most viewing angles.

 

This dodge is used by Five79 on their 6-wheel LMS van kit, and it is not obvious on my minimum 2' radius turnouts.  I would worry a lot more about not being able to see through the bogie sideframes on the Triang 31 than the centre wheelset.

[The Johnster]

15 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

It has quite a pleasing shape I think.

 

 

You've certainly improved it's overall proportions, NotJeremy, not that you could have made them much worse...

[number6]

I hunted out my Triang Hornby Book of Trains. Because there is an image in this that rounds up lots of previous posts in this thread.
 

It is from a slightly odd era because Hornby Dublo had been folded into Triang so the Dublo buildings were part of the catalogue. Somehow these more ‘grown up’ designs in plastic suited the more everyday Triang models. This photo spread of a station and sidings was very much in the Meccano Magazine style of suggesting how to set up a railway. And very much based on the prototype.

 

There is an interesting bit of text suggesting that although the first coach is Maroon - “it would be quite normal railway practice if the second coach was in blue, green or crimson and cream.” Extraordinary suggestion and very contrary to the usual Brake 3rds and Composites only matching rakes usually presented!

 

Very mid 60s transition era. Blue and Grey WCML as well as late steam and mixed rakes of liveries. Note the dreaded Triang diesel shunted looking fine at the platform end and that good looking Hymek.

The other interesting image is the AL1 shot with a telephoto lens under the catenary. With the Jinty in the background very West Mids 1964. 

 

Finally the illustration of the Super 4 track and ‘RTP’ signal box and platform sections lovingly illustrated looking very respectable. 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, MikeCW said:

The two-rail version had electrical pick up problems arising from a combination of traction tyres and a tendency for the torque of the power bogie to lift one of the wheelsets under load. 

Same bogies used on AL1 (incorrect) which suffered likewise, driving only one axle is not a recipe for success.

Prodigious hauling power in one direction, couldn't pull  the skin off a rice pud in the other!

(It was however a better quality bogie than Triang's.)

 

The AL1 body is also crude, with poor pantographs and roof detail.

One hoped a moulded body would've had more detail than diecast but not with HD.

 

HD's motors were certainly powerful and with the metal bodies the steam outline locos would completely outclass Triang locos haulage.

I had an AL1 and a Castle with a cab full of Ringfield. With 6 flanged Romford near scale driving wheels and decent bogie wheels, it looked much better.

I later removed the ringfield as part of an "upgrade" using a Mashima motor, leaving the cab space free for a floor & backhead, never got around to finishing it.

 

Their plastic wagons were quite good and several formed the basis of Dapol's wagon offerings with new chassis.

[The Johnster]

34 minutes ago, number6 said:

I hunted out my Triang Hornby Book of Trains. Because there is an image in this that rounds up lots of previous posts in this thread.
 

It is from a slightly odd era because Hornby Dublo had been folded into Triang so the Dublo buildings were part of the catalogue. Somehow these more ‘grown up’ designs in plastic suited the more everyday Triang models. This photo spread of a station and sidings was very much in the Meccano Magazine style of suggesting how to set up a railway. And very much based on the prototype.

 

There is an interesting bit of text suggesting that although the first coach is Maroon - “it would be quite normal railway practice if the second coach was in blue, green or crimson and cream.” Extraordinary suggestion and very contrary to the usual Brake 3rds and Composites only matching rakes usually presented!

 

Very mid 60s transition era. Blue and Grey WCML as well as late steam and mixed rakes of liveries. Note the dreaded Triang diesel shunted looking fine at the platform end and that good looking Hymek.

The other interesting image is the AL1 shot with a telephoto lens under the catenary. With the Jinty in the background very West Mids 1964. 

 

Finally the illustration of the Super 4 track and ‘RTP’ signal box and platform sections lovingly illustrated looking very respectable. 

What was it, I wonder (and, to be fair, wondered at the time), with Triang Hornby’s insistence that the Hymek, a vacuum braked loco that was eventually withdrawn in part because it could not be equipped with train air brake equipment, should haul air-braked Freightliner flats.  They even sold a train set with these items…

[The Johnster]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

HD's motors were certainly powerful and with the metal bodies the steam outline locos would completely outclass Triang locos haulage.

 Absolutely, especially the famous cab-filling Ringfields.  Triang’s answer was ‘Magnadhesion’, which was at least better than traction tyres (one of my pet hates, satan’s expectorant, ruins pickup and leaves crud all over your track!).  Only worked on steel rails of course. 
 

The hobby went through a motor/gearbox ‘dark age’ of pancakes, splitting plastic spur cogs, and traction tyres during the ‘Mainline/Airfix/Lima’ period, joined 

enthusiastically by Hornby.  Current practice, can motor/worm driving idler reduction gear, delivers enough grunt to dispense with satan’s expectorant and improve slow running!  

[SD85]

Johnster's original post mentioning the Hornby Dublo 8F makes some good points. Obviously given that it's a model that was introduced in the 1950s it has certain compromises, but it gets the character of the real thing in a way that the subsequent Hornby models never seemed to. It just has this certain weight and power to it (probably being made of metal helps, an appropriate construction method for a heavy freight engine).

 

I actually think it's still the best RTR 8F so far, and it also manages to replicate the pulling power of the prototype.

 

Rather surprised TBH that someone like Bachmann or one of the more niche manufacturers haven't produced their own version as the lack of the regular appearance of the more modern Hornby version in the catalogue over the years has surely left a gap in the market. As it is, if you want a decent RTR 8F the best option is arguably to get an HD/Wrenn example and rewheel it (and if you have the confidence to replace the valve gear with something of finer detail). Just rewheeling can really bring the appearance up a lot.

 

I'd also like to nominate the Class 20 for the other truly great Dublo loco; a very good representation of the prototype.

 

Still undecided on the HD rebuilt West Country - it almost works but the compromises are a bit too hard to ignore compared to the 8F.

 

Triang's L1 deserves a mention too, despite the reuse of the 3F tender.

Edited September 15, 2023 by SD85

[Steamport Southport]

8 minutes ago, SD85 said:

Johnster's original post mentioning the Hornby Dublo 8F makes some good points. Obviously given that it's a model that was introduced in the 1950s it has certain compromises, but it gets the character of the real thing in a way that the subsequent Hornby models never seemed to. It just has this certain weight and power to it (probably being made of metal helps, an appropriate construction method for a heavy freight engine).

 

I actually think it's still the best RTR 8F so far, and it also manages to replicate the pulling power of the prototype.

 

Rather surprised TBH that someone like Bachmann or one of the more niche manufacturers haven't produced their own version as the lack of the regular appearance of the more modern Hornby version in the catalogue over the years has surely left a gap in the market. As it is, if you want a decent RTR 8F the best option is arguably to get an HD/Wrenn example and rewheel it (and if you have the confidence to replace the valve gear with something of finer detail). Just rewheeling can really bring the appearance up a lot.

 

I'd also like to nominate the Class 20 for the other truly great Dublo loco; a very good representation of the prototype.

 

Still undecided on the HD rebuilt West Country - it almost works but the compromises are a bit too hard to ignore compared to the 8F.

 

Triang's L1 deserves a mention too, despite the reuse of the 3F tender.

 

A gap like this? It's in the current catalogue.

 

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/lms-class-8f-2-8-0-no-8310-era-3-r30281

 

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/br-class-8f-2-8-0-no-48518-era-5-r30282

 

Has it's flaws and is dated, but I'm afraid it's light years ahead of the HD version.

 

 

 

Jason

[SD85]

1 minute ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

A gap like this? It's in the current catalogue.

 

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/lms-class-8f-2-8-0-no-8310-era-3-r30281

 

https://uk.Hornby.com/products/br-class-8f-2-8-0-no-48518-era-5-r30282

 

Has it's flaws and is dated, but I'm afraid it's light years ahead of the HD version.

 

 

 

Jason

 

Yeah it's in the current catalogue, but I think it hadn't been in the range for some time prior to that.

 

I still don't understand why no other manufacturer has bothered to make one. One of the most numerous British heavy freight classes, surely there should be some demand for a super detailed model, just as Hornby certainly thought that it was worth their while making a 9F to outdo Bachmann's offering.

[MikeCW]

On 14/09/2023 at 23:13, Steamport Southport said:

 

Yes. Of course they will. If they are treated right. Don't forget that many of the "super detailed" models are now getting on for twenty or thirty years already, with Mainline and Airfix being over forty years or so.

 

If you consider that most of those old HD and Triang models are usually in terrible condition. Just look at the bargain bins at exhibitions and on eBay. There is also the fact that they made a lot of them. The ones that are in good condition are ones that have been looked after or in some cases hardly ever used.

 

 

Jason

I appreciate the point you make Jason but I'm not entirely convinced.  I think there are two factors at play here (if a factor can be at play🤔): engineering robustness and delicacy of detail. As you stated in a recent post, many of the forty year old locomotive models from Mainline and Airfix, which set new standards for detail and prototype fidelity, had poorly performing pancake motors, plastic gears and axles prone to splitting, plating on wheel treads which quickly wore away, and other design or material deficiencies.  Bye and large, Hornby-Dublo engines have already shown themselves more robust than these.  I know little about Margate's offerings of the 1950s and 60s so can't comment on Triang/Triang Hornby robustness.

 

In the last 20 years or so the major manufacturers have, as you note, addressed these engineering problems, although I've  read about  failures in some models, and have friends who have returned their hi-fi locomotive purchases for repair of detached driving wheels, failed gear trains and unreliable electronics.  But I assume that, in the main, these are production quality issues which can readily be dealt with.

 

As to delicacy of detail, I don't think I'm particularly ham-fisted but have struggled at times to dismantle some modern locomotives for servicing or decoder fitting without breaking off some fine, glued-on detail. Will they last another 40 years? Probably if, as you say, they are looked after. 

 

That brings me to what I see as the major distinction between the railway models of today and those of the 1950s and 60s. As a rule, the Binns Road and Margate products were intended to be bought for children, able to be run on temporary track on the living room floor as well as on the iconic 6' x 4' board. They had to be robust.  It's obvious that many of the Hornby-Dublo models which I have rejuvenated have at some stage been dropped on a hard floor but, as in the old Timex watch advertisement ("Give it a Lickin' and it Keeps On Tickin') they keep on ticking or need very little work to get them running again. Prototype fidelity became an increasingly important competitive point, but not at the expense of making these models "Wee-Johnny-proof".

 

Today's models aren't aimed primarily at the juvenile toy market.  They're aimed at middle-aged blokes who should be able to care for them as scale models rather than toys.

 

The reason that Hornby-Dublo and Triang models end up in bargain bins in "terrible condition" is, in my view, because they were toys and took a beating from many of their juvenile owners, and were then stored loose in boxes for a generation or so. But the terrible condition is often more cosmetic than mechanical and Hornby-Dublo locomotives, which are near bomb proof, can usually be brought back to life, often with no more than a few basic tools.  (Remagnetising the motor is usually the biggest challenge but I'm fortunate to own a remagnetiser.)  Some before and after examples:

 

A poorly repainted and renamed Castle, barely running when acquired, given a full repaint, a heavy service and a remagnetise to get the motor running. It has been converted to 3-rail with plunger pick-ups in the tender as per the original 3-rail Castles. It's now a fine runner and looks good.

 

A Golden Fleece "kitset" rebuilt as 22 at the time of the post-war locomotive exchanges.  Despite the appearance the motor ran well but a spare set of valve gear was required. The tender required some miniature panel beating work.

 

This "West Country" was bought on the local internet auction site.  It ran sluggishly and appeared to be covered in some scrofulous substance.

 

And the Duchess of Montrose in the condition these are typically found.  The rebuild has yet to have the orange line applied along the running plate.

 

The increase in complexity and prototype fidelity from the pre-war A4 and Duchess designs (the Montrose body was a slightly modified version of the Atholl casting which, designed pre-war, wasn't released until 1948-49) to the 1958 Castle and the late 1961 West Country is noteworthy. The A4 and Duchess can't be regarded as scale models.  Fitted with near full-size driving wheels, the Castle and West Country could be. I haven't tried to make any of them into silk purses or scale models but painted them in the Hornby-Dublo style as if they were Binns Road products. 

 

But the main story here is that, with heavy and well engineered chassis, simple and owner-serviceable motors, and cast bodies, it took a lot to get a Hornby-Dublo locomotive past the "point of no return".

 

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by MikeCW

[The Johnster]

Stanier's Black 5s and 8Fs were the most common engines on BR, and got everywhere.  It is to my mind a little surprising that only one RTR company is involved in their production to current standards, and that it took so long for an RTR example of a Black 5 to appear at all after the demise of Graham Farish's model, which was hardly 'mainstream'.  If we take what might be regarded as the diesel equivalents, the 37 and 47, pretty much everyone's had a shot at those...

 

Hornby's Black 5 and 8F are not bad models, but went through a turbulent development involving pancake motors and tender drives, but I would suggest that a retool to the best current standards would repay any company that put the effort in.

 

Graham Farish have been absent from this thread, but were a player, perhaps not a major one, but a player.  King, 81xx, 94xx, and Black 5, odd angular fireboxes.  There was also Gaiety, but the only model I'm aware of that they provided was a 57xx, of sorts, not a very good one.  And Stuart Reidpath, who did an 08.

[jjb1970]

Another model which was very good except for...... was the Hornby Class 86. The pantograph was terrible (even when released European HO models came with pretty good pantographs) yet in other respects it was an excellent model for its day and scrubs up very well with a new coat hanger on the roof. So much so that despite much nicer underframe detail and several decades of progressively higher standards I really didn't find the first version of the Heljan 86 moved things on much and that in some respects Hornby had captured the overall look just as well or better.

[Not Jeremy]

Quote

Triang's L1 deserves a mention too, despite the reuse of the 3F tender.

 

I agree, a lovely looking thing-  one of the two locos I had in my youth. Having converted mine to a 2P, I bought this rather nice example some years ago at a 009 bash.

 

 

 

[Tony Wright]

10 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I've never understood people's problem with the centre wheelset on the 31s, you can barely see it from most viewing angles.

 

As for the Tri-ang/Hornby 37, there are some excellent upgraded ones on RMWeb; yes it takes a lot of work compared to buying a Bachmann one but that's why we're here isn't it?

 

I've not got beyond page 2 on this thread - has anyone slagged off/praised the Tri-ang B12 yet?  It was one of our first locos (had to be, Dad started his spotting years at Norwich in the 1950s); it's crude yes  - ours was unpainted black with NE on the tender - but the proportions look OK to me.

 

Good morning Rob,

 

'has anyone slagged off/praised the Tri-ang B12 yet? '

 

I don't know, but this is what an 'infant' Iain Rice made of one over half a century ago...............

 

 

Regards,

 

Tony.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Tony Wright

[paul.anderson@poptel.org]

It's a bit late for the time frame, but the Hornby J52 can also be turned into a very decent model with a little body modification, a new chassis and a Mainly Trains body details kit. Another Iain Rice inspiration:
 

 

[kevinlms]

12 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

I can.  It was xmas 1957 and I was in my sixth year, and was given a Black Princess set.  I was over the moon with it, best present I've ever had in my life by miles, but I knew that the loco and coaches were too short, I'd never seen coaches with sliding window ventilators like that, and the curves were much, much, too sharp.  It didn't matter much, but I was aware of it, and as I grew older, noticed more detail about real railways, that aspect of the model became more of a problem.  I sort of accepted for a while, as the other layouts I saw were just as bad, but the first major realisation that there was a better way to approach this was probably about five or six years later, and the epiphany was in Hamley's toy shop on Regent Street in London.  Hamleys had a big circular open well in the centre of the store with three or four floors as balconies around it, and one floor had a 00 railway around the edge of the balcony.  This was probably about forty feet in diameter, and there were eight running lines, two at the back at higher level with a retaining wall, featuring overhead wires.

 

I was blown away by this.  Here were scale length trains running at scale speeds around gentle curves in a plausibly realistic setting; me wantee!!!  There was a 009 track on the outside of all this with an Eggerbahn tank plodding around with a couple of coaches; they'd only just been made available in the UK and I was unaware that such a thing was possible.  It took about twenty minutes to go around the circle! 

 

This revelation was of no immediate practical use to me, as there was obviously no way that I could recreate anything like this in a home environment, but not long after that came the second epiphany, Model Railway Constructor.  This had photos in it, and what are remembered from those days were the remarkable cover shots of trains in realistic settings.  I particularly recall one with a weathered Trix 5MT on a steel viaduct blasting up a bank with a goods, exhaust photographically shown, with a shot inside of an Hornby Dublo 8F banking the train, an LMS brake van creeping into frame.  Another was a telephoto front-on shot of a four-track main line with a steelworks backdrop; a Trix Western on a passenger was overtaking a Triang 37 on a coal train.  If you wanted the hook the attention of a South Wales enthusiast you could hardly have done better; Llanwern and Margam are very much like this!

 

Here were trains I could buy in town with my paper round money in settings I might, with skill (when I'd learned it) and ingenuity, be able to emulate!  Then I read  the magazine, and learned about scenery, layouts that weren't on big baseboards but on shelves at the sides of rooms, flexible track, turnouts with better radii than I knew about, cab control, how to make models of stuff that wasn't in the Triang Hornby, HD, or Trix catalogue, and much else.  Again, my poor little mind was blasted apart!  RTR models were less than perfect, but there were things you could do about it.  Setrack was rubbish but you didn't need it.  There were much better controllers out there.  Stuff could be automated with relays and microswitches.  Point motors could live under the baseboard.  You could make scenery with flock powders, and ballast your track properly.  There were kits that were more realistic than most concurrent RTR, with better wheels, gears, and motors.  Fiddle yards could represent the rest of the universe.

 

MRC featured layouts unlike anything I'd ever seen before.  I remember one, set on a GW main line in West Wales, with a photo of a 43xx hauling a K's plastic kit B set over a plate girder bridge with a central stone pier, hills rising each side of it and the sea beyond.  It looked utterly believable!  MRC also published an article detailing how to convert a Black Princess into a Black 5, which was probably a crime against modelling, but I had a go at this.  MRC had articles about GW branch lines by some bloke called Chris Leigh which had a big influence on me. 

 

So I started trying to do some of it.  Still tryin', sixty years on.  Even started to get a little bit better at it...

 

I built some awful rubbish, but I was modelling, and eventually became a little bit better at it.  My layouts started to be representations of real areas of the country at specific periods.  I learned that track looks better if the sides of the rails were painted, to my parents' outright horror, heightened when I started taking hacksaws to stock and drilling holes in it to replace the buffers with better versions, and when I chucked Winston Churchill's bodyshell to replace it with an Airfix Biggin Hill in the spirit of improving it, and when I started painting locos and coaches to get rid of the Triang Hornby finishes.

 

Now, I ain't no hero.  This is a fairly typical modeller's progress for kid of my generation.  There were rites of passage; building Airfix kits with working Walcheart's, lining out shorty clerestories or Ratio 4-wheelers, motorising an Airfix kit, kitbashing (43xx from an Airfix CoT and 61xx motion & leading pony with 2h Black Princess chassis was my first, and successful, attempt), ballasting a Peco turnout that still worked afterwards, that sort of thing.

 

My first 'proper' layout, Blackwater Harbour, was a WR/SR North Devon Irish ferry terminal, loosely based on Ilfracombe.  It was continuous run with a proper fy, single track main line.  It incorporated much of what I'd learned in MRC, but was my last ever continuous run layout; the other thing I learned from MRC, and CJL in particular, was BLTs. 

 

Funfunfunfunfun!

 

..

Here's a photo of a cover for you Johnster. I suspect that Chris Leigh might know something about this.

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by kevinlms
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[kevinlms]

3 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

I agree, a lovely looking thing-  one of the two locos I had in my youth. Having converted mine to a 2P, I bought this rather nice example some years ago at a 009 bash.

 

 

 

With a double chimney!