Kings Cross Model Shop

[adrianbs]

     Hi  All    My white Granada !!  ah yes, happy days, I really knew I had arrived when I bought that, brand new for cash !!. A little aside, when I went to buy it my

  first port of call was the Ford agent, English's  jointly owned by none other than Ronnie Hoare, of RJH fame later, but also the owner of the Bromford and High Peak

  7mm layout with all the lovely Beeson, Vic Green and other tasty locos, not to mention the Ferrari concession.The Layout was in a shed behind the filling station

  fence next to the showrooms at that time.  I breezed in with my work clothes on and asked if they had a white Granada estate and the saleman said no, there were

  none  there and suggested there were none in the area so it left me the choice of a blue one or another colour which I did not like.  I asked if I could have a test

  drive and  was told that unless I wished to buy the blue car that was not going to happen. I said I could not make my mind up but would like a drive and was refused. 

  I walked out, drove a mile to the Hendy-Lennox Ford agent and was most courteously received, shown 2 white Granadas and offered a drive before I had a chance

  to ask. They then offered me way more than expected for my Cortina Mk 2 estate which was full of rust so I drove home in a new car for the first time in my life.

  I mentioned this to Hugh Joslin in passing as he was the Poole and District Model Railway Society secretary and also looked after the Layout for Col. Hoare. He

  must have passed this on to the Colonel who apparently dealt severely with the salesman.  

       Brian should have been glad the bogies were in pairs, a major encouragment for the modellers to come back for a second twin set !!  By the way the Granada

   didn't do a lot of "chugging", not with it's 2.6  V4 engine it did'nt but it did get through a lot of petrol. Driving all round London on a delivery day when I  might well

   drop off 7 or 8 orders from Mill Hill to KX to Hobbytime and various points between and then back home it only averaged about 18MPG in town and maxed at 25

   on a long trip.!!!        That's all for now   adrianbs 

[coachmann]

There's a blast from the past, and i was thinking of smokebox darts in tiny clear plastic sachets, they must have been from yet another supplier? Yet seeing the white box above does strike a chord, weren't these tiny little boxes, about half-an-inch across? Some memories are a bit hazy, well it was 30+ years ago. Thanks for digging out and snapping.

 

As an afterthought, are the darts in plastic sachets inside the white boxes? If so, we must have removed them from the boxes in the shop.

You are right....Inside the box is a little clear sachet containing a 'dart'. Johnny gave me loads but I'm down to my last half dozen now. 

Edited February 8, 2014 by coachmann

[2512silverfox]

Larry

 

I am still using Britrail screw couplings having been given some many moons ago by Peter Everton. Peter built several locos as demos for the Far East to show what was required.

 

Nick

 

ps How's the op going now - had mine 28 years ago!

[coachmann]

Larry

 

I am still using Britrail screw couplings having been given some many moons ago by Peter Everton. Peter built several locos as demos for the Far East to show what was required.

 

Nick

 

ps How's the op going now - had mine 28 years ago!

I was recently offered Britrail screw couplings by a well known trader ex of Eames. But it would mean blackening the unpainted brass.

 

The Op is going well thanks......Apart from stressing the chest bone were it was stapled together. It gives me jip but I'm hoping it will get stronger. I've stopped taking one of the pills too that was affecting my head and vision.

[Il Grifone]

I wonder if the later "Sprat and Winkle" coupling was inspired by the Acro, they seem similar? Most of us were aware of the steel shortage after WW2, but I never realized that it extended to brass (with the draconian word "prohibited"), perhaps it came under precious metals for the export drive? That bogie tank wagon still looks pretty good for sixty years ago, many thanks for scanning the old ads. Converting a SR L1 to a LMS 2P using thin wood is certainly pioneering stuff, i can't recall the Bakelite Stanier coaches, although they no doubt passed through KX secondhand, how good were they? I saw a wooden Ratio kits Class 114 DMU (Derby Heavyweight) once, it made MTK look good!

 

Lastly, i'm getting confused. Were the original Acro/Nucro wheels made from aluminium alloy, due to the aforementioned metal shortage? Why did we refer to the Jackson-Romford alloy wheels as "Nucro" in the late 70s/early 80s, before they went back to using brass? The same alloy bogie/trailer wheels found their way into the later "K's" kits, was there a connection or previous takeover? Perhaps the "cro" part of the name suggests a Chromium alloy?

 

                                                                Brian.

 

I believe the metal shortage had something to do with warmongering in Korea, which followed on from the 'export at all costs' mantra' of the forties. (The opposite of today's solution to our economic woes!). The truce declared in 1953 enabled production to get back to normal.

 

I don't know if Jackson - Romford - Nucro wheels are in fact the same, but I certainly lump them all together as identical in appearance and performance. The aluminium ones I always assumed* to date from the Korean war period (no brass available) - these don't run as well (too light) and pick up muck.

 

*A guess and possibly completely wrong.

 

The Acro coupling operates in a similar manner to the Continental loop coupling, but upside down and lets the buffers do their job rather than the coupling doing it for them. I've never tried it, but imagine large radii are necessary.

 

I missed out on a pair of 'Coachcraft' coaches in my youth. One of the joys of acquiring a wagon kit from ERG was the list of 'goodies' for sale that came with it. One had these, described as plastic LMS coaches, on it. Payment was was speedily sent, but not fast enough they had been sold already!

 

Re big Fords, I seem to recall that 18mpg was the expected mileage for the earlier MkII/III six cylinder Zephyrs and Zodiacs - I used to get 25 from my Mk II Consul (same engine but only four cylinders I did manage 28 on a long run once! (That's all we got from our firm's 'dogbone' Escorts in the 70s - a rather smaller (and crawfuI) vehicle.)

Edited February 8, 2014 by Il Grifone

[adrianbs]

Hi  All  The Ali wheels must have come much later than  '53 as I was buying them to put in my kits, very reluctantly,  no earlier than about 1973.  I had never

 seen any ali wheels by Romford etc before that and the only others were the Stephen Poole kits that I can remember using it    I will have to give Frank at

 Romford a ring to get the story on Jackson etc etc.

    My first car was a sit-up-and-beg Ford Pop which had an 1172cc engine but refused to exceed 55mph down a steep hill with following wind. At that point

 the steering became unstable and frightened the life out of me.  It only did about 30MPG driven at 40MPH and burnt out the valves at 5000 mile intervals !!!

 The following "Woody" Cortina estate was luixury by comparison.  

   Ernest Rankine Gray  of ERG used to call round  for years after selling the business, he built W/M kits for people and would bring the scrap bits round  when

 he wanted to buy things to get a discount. !  His "partner in crime" Hugh Wild was a member of our GOG group in Wimborne and scratch built O gauge locos to

 supplement his pension until he passed away.  The two of them built the huge OO model railway in Boscombe which I first saw when on holiday from London in

 the late '40s early '50s.  They built everything from baseboards to auto control electrics to locos and rolling stock and scenery themselves.!!  Although already

 a Hornby O gauge Tinplate owner that layout probably was a major influence on my later activities. 

    With reference to my wheels, which also appeared in O gauge for the same reason, they would have been done with metal tyres as the mould and the design

 was already sorted but I could just not afford the investment for the quantities  required and still live.  A pity really but I was not prepared to gamble with Bank

 loans with so little assets behind me.  Soon after that the brass wheels returned followed by MGW etc etc so I might not have been able to recoup my money.

        Regards  Alll     adrianbs

[5050]

I remember aluminium 'Jackson' wheels in the 70's, introduced possibly by a shortage of brass?  Or maybe as an answer to the then fashionable Stephen Poole aluminium tyred driving wheels?  The SP wheels weren't very succesful as they picked up dirt like crazy.

[Brian Kirby]

Perhaps there were two distinct periods when alloy coach/wagon wheels appeared, the early 50s through shortages, and the early 70s through cost-cutting? At KX we had dedicated drawers for wheelsets, each type had it's own devoted section in the drawer.

There were certainly plenty of alloy types around in the 1970s, as mentioned before, everyone hated them, until sanity prevailed with the re-introduction of brass. The alloy types were always referred to as "Nucro", but now i'm wondering if it was more of a generic nickname, as a nod to the earlier versions?

 

I've often wondered how the flat spokes were created on the brass or alloy wagon and loco bogie wheels, were they punched, or were they cast and then turned? Either K's or Romford introduced a black plastic insert to improve the flat spokes, they were better, but not perfect. By the 1980s, Jackson-Romford had replaced these with better profiled cast whitemetal?/mazak?/gunmetal? spokes. BK

[The Stationmaster]

Perhaps there were two distinct periods when alloy coach/wagon wheels appeared, the early 50s through shortages, and the early 70s through cost-cutting? At KX we had dedicated drawers for wheelsets, each type had it's own devoted section in the drawer.

There were certainly plenty of alloy types around in the 1970s, as mentioned before, everyone hated them, until sanity prevailed with the re-introduction of brass. The alloy types were always referred to as "Nucro", but now i'm wondering if it was more of a generic nickname, as a nod to the earlier versions?

 

I've often wondered how the flat spokes were created on the brass or alloy wagon and loco bogie wheels, were they punched, or were they cast and then turned? Either K's or Romford introduced a black plastic insert to improve the flat spokes, they were better, but not perfect. By the 1980s, Jackson-Romford had replaced these with better profiled cast whitemetal?/mazak?/gunmetal? spokes. BK

The spokes looked to me as if they were punched out as there could sometimes be a bit of a rough finish on the edge of them.

[Il Grifone]

Hi  All  The Ali wheels must have come much later than  '53 as I was buying them to put in my kits, very reluctantly,  no earlier than about 1973.  I had never

 seen any ali wheels by Romford etc before that and the only others were the Stephen Poole kits that I can remember using it    I will have to give Frank at

 Romford a ring to get the story on Jackson etc etc.

    My first car was a sit-up-and-beg Ford Pop which had an 1172cc engine but refused to exceed 55mph down a steep hill with following wind. At that point

 the steering became unstable and frightened the life out of me.  It only did about 30MPG driven at 40MPH and burnt out the valves at 5000 mile intervals !!!

 The following "Woody" Cortina estate was luixury by comparison.  

   Ernest Rankine Gray  of ERG used to call round  for years after selling the business, he built W/M kits for people and would bring the scrap bits round  when

 he wanted to buy things to get a discount. !  His "partner in crime" Hugh Wild was a member of our GOG group in Wimborne and scratch built O gauge locos to

 supplement his pension until he passed away.  The two of them built the huge OO model railway in Boscombe which I first saw when on holiday from London in

 the late '40s early '50s.  They built everything from baseboards to auto control electrics to locos and rolling stock and scenery themselves.!!  Although already

 a Hornby O gauge Tinplate owner that layout probably was a major influence on my later activities. 

    With reference to my wheels, which also appeared in O gauge for the same reason, they would have been done with metal tyres as the mould and the design

 was already sorted but I could just not afford the investment for the quantities  required and still live.  A pity really but I was not prepared to gamble with Bank

 loans with so little assets behind me.  Soon after that the brass wheels returned followed by MGW etc etc so I might not have been able to recoup my money.

        Regards  Alll     adrianbs

 

 

Hi Adrian,

 

You must have been unlucky with your Ford Pop. My Dad had one from new (She replaced a 1936 Model Y) and I learnt to drive in another (If you can drive this, you can drive anything!", as Dad said!). I then had a 1947 Prefect (much the same, but a bit more de luxe inside - leather seats). All would do around 35 mpg and never burnt valves, though the Prefect did repeatedly suffer from clutch slip and blown head gaskets - she made a chuffing noise like a steam engine! (I think we got done on a replacement engine - an '8' instead of a '10' for a start!) all would get to 70* downhill apart from the Y which only managed 60 (or perhaps Dad chickened out - cable brakes.......). They took a long time to get there however!

 

* 'On the clock' - probably only 65! The needles used to flicker somewhat!

 

Don't take too much my suggestion of Korean war for aluminium wheels - I did say it was only a guess (based on other weird products of the time - Dublo track with steel rail and cardboard insulators rather than nickel plated brass and paxolin for example

[coachmann]

Stephen Poole aluminium driving wheels were a disaster. George Mellor produced his LNWR Super D 0-8-0 on the strength of the SP 'H' spoke drivers but they arced and pitted something terrible. One of those good ideas that hits the hobby once in a while. I was buying Romford loco, coach and wagon wheels in the early 1960s. I'd tried Hamblings driving wheels but Romfords were so much easier.

[5050]

Stephen Poole aluminium driving wheels were a disaster. George Mellor produced his LNWR Super D 0-8-0 on the strength of the SP 'H' spoke drivers but they arced and pitted something terrible. One of those good ideas that hits the hobby once in a while. I was buying Romford loco, coach and wagon wheels in the early 1960s. I'd tried Hamblings driving wheels but Romfords were so much easier.

I think there was an article in Model Railways (probably, they did this sort of thing, most likely in Roy Dock's period) when they tested loco drivers for conductivity etc. and the SP ones came out of it quite well.  Something to do with the grade of aluminium used.  Somewhere I'll have the mag in my 'archive' (ie, the pile of old mags in the corner!)  However, as is usual, the theory didn't match up to the actuality and locos ground to a halt very quickly.

 

Romfords are practical.  I just wish they did a reasonable P4 version, make life much easier.

[adrianbs]

 Hi  All   Aluminium has problems in that it is certainly a very good conductor, they now use it in power transmission cables I believe and it is much lighter and

  cheaper than copper and about the same strength.  It has one awful drawback though if used for things like wheels, it is very reactive and oxidises in a few

  seconds when exposed to air.  The oxide is a very good insulator and that is why they don't collect current well and spark as the aluminium turns to oxide.

   If you can manage to remove the oxide fast enough it will burn in an oxygen rich atmosphere.  Nickel silver on the other hand does not oxidise very easily

  and I believe the oxide is somewhat conductive.   Brass is nowhere near as good as  N/S which is why Hamblings wheels never performed well. It took a

  lot of persuading to get Frank at Romford to produce batches of N/S small wheels for my tram kits but the extra cost was worth it as the wheels  pick up

  far better.  On a 4 wheel tram with only 10.5mm wheels this makes a lot of difference !!  I could never get Hamblings wheels properly quartered even with

  their wheel press and they always seemed to wobble but I could set up Romfords in my  Unimat and get them running square with a dodge I learnt at BAC

  You get them spinning fast on an axle and lightly tap the rim with a pin hammer, after a couple of taps they run true if you are lucky. You then returned

   them to get them concentric but made sure by marking the wheel and axle you could always get them on again in the same position.  The difference in

   running could be dramatic but the quality seems better these days anyway.    Bye for now  adrianbs

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting comment there about Hamblings wheels - I fitted some to my Hornby Dublo 'Castle' when I converted it to 2-rail and had no problems quartering them using the Hamblings wheel press but enormous troubles trying to get thh wheels square to the axles, in fact I never did and and the wobble never went.

[Il Grifone]

Aluminium has about 60% of the conductivity of copper and is used in transmission lines on cost and weight grounds, despite the heavier section required - the strength comes from a steel core.

 

For a model wheel tyre the resistance is irrelevant due to the relatively small quantity of metal involved. Other factors like contact resistance between wheel and rail and resistance to corrosion/oxidation are more important. As previously stated, aluminium is rather poor in these qualities. It is also soft and prone to wear. Brass is better, but still not as good as nickel-silver.

 

I have not had great experience with Hamblings wheels, though I had no no problems building my Wills 1751 chassis, either with quartering or putting the wheels on true. A Dublo N2 tank I bought many years ago had been fitted with them, again there were no problems. I think the proper tool (hard/expensive to find now - like the wheels) is almost essential, used in conjunction with a decent vice.

 

My only complaints would be brass tyres, the wrong number of spokes (like Romford)* and the near impossibility of removing the wheels from the axle, once fitted, without damage.

 

The 18mm wheels I fitted to my 1751 (Must finish this! I never got round to the handrails and over the years odd bits have got damaged/ fallen off) have 16 spokes - fine for a 1751 but most locos with this size of driver have 14 (possibly intended for H0 despite Hamblings being "The home of 00 gauge").

Edited February 10, 2014 by Il Grifone

[5050]

Just in case you've not seen it in the 'Hamblings' thread (and if not, why not ), here's the 1951 wheel advert from MRN showing the method of construction of the wheels - which could be usefully copied by todays manufacturers?

 

Fitted correctly I think they look better than Romfords - but the difficulty was in the fitting.

Edited February 10, 2014 by 5050

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Stephen Poole aluminium driving wheels were a disaster...they arced and pitted something terrible. One of those good ideas that hits the hobby once in a while...

 

I think there was an article in Model Railways (probably, they did this sort of thing, most likely in Roy Dock's period) when they tested loco drivers for conductivity etc. and the SP ones came out of it quite well...  However, as is usual, the theory didn't match up to the actuality and locos ground to a halt very quickly...

But did they ever look good! I found an answer, applicable to locos which are run frequently: put stiff wire pick up wipers where they normally shouldn't run, on the wheel treads. They needed a quick spin to polish up the contact areas after a couple of days out of operation - easily achieved with flying leads direct to the wipers -  and then they ran reliably. And eventually wore out! The only kit loco wheels on which I have genuinely worn out the tyres. The two locos affected now run on Romfords...

[coachmann]

I built a number of GEM G2's after the initial display and box lid model for customers and they really were a trial when it came to running. All was great at the first test run but then the arcing and pitting where the wheel contacted with rails extended to the wire pick-ups as well. I seem to remember Romfords introduced their 'H' spoke drivers soon after....problems solved.

 

As an aside, George Mellor (Gem) was a dyed-in-the-wool 'LNWR man' and so when I painted his display model of a Precedent 2-4-0 in LMS lake, he promptly asked me to supply another in the right livery!  Undeterred, I suggested he produce new boiler tops (the two halves of his cast boilers were joined behind the handrails) with Belpaire fireboxes for the Precursor/George V and Prince of Wales for LMS modellers. Ever the diplomat, he switched the conversation to Oldham 'Latics'...

Edited February 10, 2014 by coachmann

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The mention of GEM prompts a question, I had a whitemetal LNWR six wheel brake van to repair about ten years ago. (It had been glued with something that had lost most of its adhesive powers and the possibly shellaced card roof was what I can only describe as 'crazed and rotted'.) Was that a GEM kit: I had never seen one of these before, and GEM is the kit maker one think of with LNWR items?

 

Another kit manufacturer whose product I purchased at this shop would be McGowan. Immensely heavy GNR design vans, thanks to a whitemetal thickness of around an eighth inch. Long gone, along with much else sold in my late teens to a friend who had his marker in for first refusal on them.

[Nimbus]

Just in case you've not seen it in the 'Hamblings' thread (and if not, why not ), here's the 1951 wheel advert from MRN showing the method of construction of the wheels - which could be usefully copied by todays manufacturers?

 

The same rim locking principle is currently in use by Ultrascale and Exactoscale. While Ultrascale have chosen simplified arrangements for the wheel centres, Exactoscale have embellished. The choosy end of the market finds that both produce satisfactory results.

 

The Nim.

[coachmann]

The mention of GEM prompts a question, I had a whitemetal LNWR six wheel brake van to repair about ten years ago. (It had been glued with something that had lost most of its adhesive powers and the possibly shellaced card roof was what I can only describe as 'crazed and rotted'.) Was that a GEM kit: I had never seen one of these before, and GEM is the kit maker one think of with LNWR items?

 

Another kit manufacturer whose product I purchased at this shop would be McGowan. Immensely heavy GNR design vans, thanks to a whitemetal thickness of around an eighth inch. Long gone, along with much else sold in my late teens to a friend who had his marker in for first refusal on them.

GEM did indeed produce a LNWR 6-wheel goods brake. Geoff the pattern maker knew his stuff and compensated when making brass patterns for white metal shrinkage, but of course things can go awry with whitemetal casting. A well know model magazine measured a model and mentioned in its 'honest review' that it didn't match known scale drawings by a millimetre or something. I think that was mentioned in the upper house at Rhos-on-Sea...

 

Geoff went self-employed later on and produced patterns for a Rebuilt Royal Scot; not something one would expect in a GEM listing, but in fact it was for McGowan Models. Sadly Geoff passed away and his widow gave me a box of R/Scot castings. Looking at them, they did not do the beautiful brass patterns justice. 

Edited February 10, 2014 by coachmann

[Il Grifone]

There was indeed a GEM LNWR goods brake van and K's produced a six wheel passenger van (with matching coaches - to go with their 0-6-2T 'coal tank'). I have one of the latter in the 'to do' pile - when I can locate some new axleguards - typically with K's kits some have broken off.

 

The McGowan van is heavy. I never got mine to look right. Recently, I bought a second one. It was only when I got it home I found there was only one side!  - It's a good job I only paid 50p for it! Some scratchbuilding required.......

Edited February 10, 2014 by Il Grifone

[adrianbs]

  Hi  All   I decided to try and get some of the story on Jackson's wheels from the horse's mouth or to be more accurate the mouth of the venerable Frank Harris of

  Romford, still doing a full days work every day at 82 with the able assistance of his young lady of 85 !!!!!   He has no knowledge of Nucro/Acro but did take over

  the Jackson's wheels range  when the latter retired in 1958.  Until 1972 production continued for W & H who basically owned the Romford name and they wanted

  to continue the Jackson name as it had a very good reputation   In 1972 Frank bought out the Romford name and continued supplying to this day.  W & H 

  crashed and burned in the '80s I think and Frank was seriously affected as they were his major customer.   More later  adrianbs

[coachmann]

As you have contact with Romford, it would be handy to know what the situation is with their screw couplings. 

[adrianbs]

Hi  All,    I think you will have to contact Markits for availability of these couplings.  Romford models are now sold through the Markits range and many parts are now

 made by them.   adrianbs