Hornby BR Black 5 R3323

[robmcg]

I notice the Hornby website now shows R3323  Black 5  44694 with a flat-top dome the right-way-round.  A much nicer image than hitherto.  £101 to club members outside the EU too..

[robmcg]

It's a nice picture too..

 

even if on most of the models advertised the dome is backwards and sloping...

 

 

 

 

 

[No Decorum]

Thank you for your experiences, gentlemen. It seems some domes are lightly glued on, some not. I phoned my usual supplier and explained the problem. Only two were left in stock: one with the dome the right way round and the other with it the wrong way. One arrived with me yesterday and very handsome it looks. The retailer returned the other Hornby.

[farren]

With out going of topic to much another mistake Hornby tend to make. Is the union link and combination lever quite often gets put on the wrong side of the cross head. I've noticed it mainly on the princesses coronation models. But I have had one with this mistake on one black5. Just wondering how many other people have had to put this silly mistake right.

[robmcg]

With out going of topic to much another mistake Hornby tend to make. Is the union link and combination lever quite often gets put on the wrong side of the cross head. I've noticed it mainly on the princesses coronation models. But I have had one with this mistake on one black5. Just wondering how many other people have had to put this silly mistake right.

 

That 'wrong way' is shown even in some catalogue pictures, including a Princess class 4-6-2, I have received one or two like that, new and second-hand over the years, and was able to fix them more by force and luck than any skilled method.  It's pretty rare though. 

 

Thank you for your experiences, gentlemen. It seems some domes are lightly glued on, some not. I phoned my usual supplier and explained the problem. Only two were left in stock: one with the dome the right way round and the other with it the wrong way. One arrived with me yesterday and very handsome it looks. The retailer returned the other Hornby.

 

Indeed an attractive model, I pity retailers! In some ways I pity Hornby who are trying to get things assembled well and save money at the same time.

[farren]

Force is one way I haven't tried. I tend to just undo the centre nut screw. picked up a nut Driver of eBay which comes in very handy.

[steves17]

Sorry if this is lame question but does Hornby's Super Detail tooling divide into the Short Firebox and Long Firebox batches? I'm aware that they do have domeless boilers, rear topfeed boilers and forward topfeed boilers but I can't tell by eye if there are any other external differences. I was planning to get No 5000 as I want to model an early Crewe batch but I can see it is paired with a welded tender instead of the riveted Mk1 type it was built with. 343theletterbetweenB&D mentioned Jubilees and a few other LMS classes on p2-are these actually the same Mk1 4000gallon prototype, meaning I can just swap it (ignoring the electrical side of things for now)? Oh just to point out the engine will be repainted anyway so it doesn't mater if the shades of black ( or even Crimson ) match. 

[robmcg]

I think the Hornby tooling is all the same with the fireboxes with two plugs each side of the top, one thing to look out for is that Hornby do the taller chimney on 5036 and others of the 5020-69 Vulcan engines, they were built with gravity sanders and I think they all had crosshead vacuum pumps, but tenders, boilers, fireboxes, all varied a great deal even in the 1930s . The Irwell book on Black 5s 5000-5-74 takes many pages to describe the many detail differences, including tender designs and swaps. 5000 started in 1935 with tender 9002 built for the Royal Scot 6100 for the Chicago World Fair, received welded tender 9252 in 1943. Vacuum pump removed in 1939, steam sanding added at the same time. The 'standard' Crewe 4,000 gal rivetted tender had small differences to side-plate tops and axlebox covers depending on manufacturer and tender swaps were common.

I'd be inclined to base a model on a known photo if you can find one.   Even the Irwell books don't claim to be gospel, but list the main recorded changes.

[farren]

The Hornby model of LMS 5036 has a short fire box! Mine will get renumbered to br at a later date if any made it into br. Will have to check on that.

 

I can look at my others over the weekend.

[steves17]

Ah ok then, good to know. As I couldn't seem to find a production list of Hornby's Black 5 variations I've basically been using Olivia's Trains to make observational comparisons.

 

http://www.oliviastrains.com/trains/mt/Hornby-steam/Hornby-steam-black-5-class/

 

They don't list 5036 so obviously there are more releases out there but I thought I noticed that 5055 had the tall Vulcan chimney ( mind you the number and the proud topfeed piping is a clue too ). Do all the post 2002 Super Details have sprung buffers, or just some?

 

As my intended Five is for a fictional layout I don't have a number to cross check per say but basically i'm trying to look up the first 20 Crewe engines in 'as built condition'. I do already own 'Power of the Black Fives' but while it has some nice pics ( mostly from BR period ) it is sporadic in terms of years and batches. I also own the Essery & Jenkinson Illustrated History of LMS Locomotives series, this is pretty handy and Vol 5 has provided me most of what I have to go on but it only covers them for a chapter. I had actually ordered both vols of 'A Detailed history of the Stanier Class 5' last night as i've heard good things about it but reading the above i've got the first Irwell book on the way now too, so I should be pretty covered by next week. 

 

I'll be sure to look out for those variations in the standard riveted tenders you mentioned Rob.

 

Cheers 

[farren]

All my black 5 SD locos have sprung buffers.

[Hilux5972]

I would say the only Black 5's post 2002 that don't have sprung buffers would be the railroad version.

[cb900f]

Try purchasing

STANIER LOCOMOTIVE CLASSES A.J POWELL.

 

3 on e bay at the moment (5 quidish) .  Gives a good account of all the Stanier classes.

 

Pete

[farren]

Some photos. Of some of my Blk5's bargains of eBay the dearest cost £20 so some in need of a bit more TLC and renumbering. All runners now. But will hopefully show chimney firebox boiler differences.

[farren]

Just bought another black five tender. Only a couple more needed before I can go to town on my black 5's. However I know Hornby have done both flush and riveted tenders. Have they ever made the ventless tenders? I think there the Mk2 stanier's. (Don't shoot me books not at hand). They do have vents just they are tucked up next to the back of the coal borde. Know some black 5's had them.

[cb900f]

Farren,

 

The final tenders that you refer to (mk2), are the part welded tenders, 40% of Fives were paired these. However, there were a number of differences to the rivetted/welded tenders.

Comet models produce all 4 type of Black 5 tenders and a downloadable file with a list of tenders initially allocated to each loco.

 

Pete

[farren]

Cheers pete. Will have to make a list of which black 5's I want to model. Hopefully I'll be able to use the Hornby chassis and drop a comet body on to it. Best of both worlds that way.

[Wheatley]

steves17, on 21 Apr 2016 - 17:52, said:

Sorry if this is lame question but does Hornby's Super Detail tooling divide into the Short Firebox and Long Firebox batches?

Not only do they divide into long and short firebox variants, they also tooled both wheelbases in the long firebox version. Beware swapping chassis as the difference is only about 1mm and it's not immediately noticeable if you aren't looking for it.

[farren]

The rear wheel bearing is of set so tournig the braring round 180 degrees gives you long/short. Very simple cleaver idea. So the only thing that needs changing is the wheel couplings

[No Decorum]

My R3323 emitted a click and displayed a hesitation on some curves. Looking closely, I observed that one connecting rod was gently curved outwards but the other was not, resulting in it catching the head of the bolt holding the coupling rod onto the leading driving wheel. I eased the straight rod out and solved the problem.

 

It was worth attending to. I have an older Black 5 with sound which stopped dead and blew its decoder. The motion on one side was a tangled mess, with the connecting rod jammed behind the oil reservoir on the coupling rod.

 

Cripes! Have you seen what replacement rod assemblies cost these days?

[steves17]

Not only do they divide into long and short firebox variants, they also tooled both wheelbases in the long firebox version. Beware swapping chassis as the difference is only about 1mm and it's not immediately noticeable if you aren't looking for it.

 

Oh dear I didn't realise Hornby bothered to retool the chassis for slightly longer wheelbase builds-good to know! Between reading the above and my still incoming books I'm starting to get a bit of a headache now but does anyone know of any early Crewe engines ( or otherwise any of the pre-war batches ) gaining a far forward topfeed in later days? I know x amount were rebuilt with domes and 5002, 5020 plus 11 others had the chassis rebuilt to accept LFB boilers ( plus a few others later on ) but thats as far as i've got for now.

Also as an armchair modeller I'm a bit miffed about boiler replacements in general. Today an engine has a boiler certificate for between 7 to 10 years but what happens then? I thought a new boiler was built to the same pattern in order to replace it, but if that is the case how was 45000 still domeless when it was chosen for preservation? I've heard about boilers being 'reconditioned' but I don't really understand this term. I know its not the same as being re-tubed but I was under the impression that the boilers had to be replaced, as the inside surface corrodes and eventually (scale aside ) the width become reduced to the point that it has to be replaced or otherwise operate at reduced pressure in order to avoid a potential boiler explosion. Again though it is mentioned that only 225 SFB boilers were ever built, so this is throwing off my previous railway knowledge assumptions. 

[Wheatley]

The only way to be certain of topfeed position on the LFB locos is a dated photo, either version could be refitted on overhaul. The main works kept a pool of spare boilers, a loco requiring a new one would have its boiler removed and replaced with one from the pool, and its boiler would be re-tubed, re-plated, welded, re-stayed, whatever, and go back into the pool. It reduced the time the locos were in works, and on the Black Fives the position of the topfeed was not critical when it came to exchanging boilers.

 

A loco sitting in works for weeks while its boiler was repaired was losing money, the railways weren't (usually) precious about an engine keeping all its 'as built' bits throughout its life, it was a machine built to do a job.

 

St Rollox works in Glasgow was particularly fond of fitting the wrong topfeeds, but then they traditionally had a fairly liberal interpretation of painting schedules too.

 

The rear wheel bearing is of set so tournig the braring round 180 degrees gives you long/short. Very simple cleaver idea.

 

Now that is clever, thanks.

[cb900f]

Steves 17

 

Look up www.rail-online.co.uk

There are 615 pics of Black 5s in numerical order, so you should find the answer to your query re Crewe locos.

 

Pete

[farren]

Black fives are a complete nightmare to try to model with out a photo of a particular engine. I have just ordered the second book in the LMS locomotive Profile series to help myself. Has with the swapping of boilers to chassis, one engine 5154.ended up with two builders plates for a while. One one the smoke box. And the other one the frame extensions. And am sure this may happend more than once (this ment the smoke box was swapt to). Also things like 45151 built domless, but in 1951 was domed. And in 1959 was domed with faward topfeed. However the cover was from domless cover. So she looked like she had two doms.

[farren]

After a bit more research it turns out 44766 was seen on shed at Leicester. Which was one of double chimney black 5's. So after moving some bits around, I now have a surplus tall chimney not needed by myself has all were replaced by the time I model! So if you need one drop me a private message. And I'll post it to you. F.O.C.

 

Gone to the man with the black 5!