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Halvarras

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    Close to 84B
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    Main line = diesel hydraulics, with branch lines into Scottish and Southern territories. Cornwall's railways in general. Walks with a sea view.

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  1. Just done a trawl of me own photos.....! These are rather small images so not great quality but at least that enabled me to put them all up in one hit! 47099 at Bristol TM (the next loco to appear was Hymek 7017 with its newly-acquired number transfers!) - 1st June 1974: 47178 at Oxford - 20th July 1974: 47264 on Swindon Stabling Point - 1st February 1975 (one of the relatively few LMR 47s with number applied in the WR/ScR position): Two views of 47091 at Swindon, no longer named 'Thor', displaying a touch of weathering (!!) to the same livery I'd first seen it in nearly 8 years earlier, the first '47' I ever saw - 7th May 1975: 47138 at Reading with a blue cab door - 25th July 1975: 47203 acting as Reading Station Pilot two days later - 27th July 1975: Two views at Gloucester Eastgate shortly before it closed - 47267 which took me there from Swindon, and 47262 (2nd coach looks like XP64?) - 9th August 1975: Into 1976 and first up, 47369 at Swindon - 1st May 1976: The ubiquitous 47256 approaching Teignmouth (it seemed to turn up everywhere I was, even Gateshead!) - 22nd May 1976: 47195 at Gloucester - 3rd July 1976: And back to Reading for 47365 - sunset on two-tone green 47s? Well, not quite..........- 27th August 1976: ......and 47256 once again, looking like the Bachmann model with that full-depth Sherwood green cabside and even the headcode on display I believe - 30th August 1976: They were interesting years to me, but not often modelled......
  2. Hymek 7018 heads east through Reading with a 'train' about as long as itself! Date was 1st March 1975 - at the time I thought I'd scored a real scoop with this as, according to my notebook, this was supposed to have been the final day of Hymek operation. Of course it wasn't, as 7011/22 were withdrawn on the 2nd, 7017 on the 13th, and last survivor 7018 on the 19th. As Adrian Curtis stated in his booklet 'Hymek Sunset', it was "Game Over" for my favourite class. Sob!
  3. D3291 survived to TOPS renumbering as 08221 in green with the early emblem. It probably wasn't alone........
  4. Elaine's Trains took in a quantity of Genesis Kits spares and parts just a couple of months ago - the description (for any part listed) says these are the last parts available from this manufacturer. There are four different bogie kits listed, hopefully a solution will present itself, even if it's a full bogie replacement (I'm no expert on Rectanks or modern freight bogies so I wouldn't know if any of the four would be suitable!) They're shown under 'Projects and Parts', scroll down to find them: https://elaines-trains.co.uk/index.php?pg=al Fingers crossed.....!
  5. Which is how the original Mainline examples were printed (I have three of them). The model shown above is Dapol's version of the same livery with the inappropriately larger lettering (I suppose I should add 'as far as I know'....!)
  6. £22 for two wheelsets? I've recently rewheeled two 26s, a 33 and a Hymek with sets which cost £10.50 for four wheelsets. Admittedly they were from Howes several years back - it's just taken me this long to get my act together..... If I need any more I'll look at replacing the old brass wheels on the now spare sets with Hornby coach wheels as suggested above. Although they don't cost £3.50 for 10 any more either......🥴! This is almost certainly due to the pick-ups and wheels parting company on curves when the wheelsets move laterally. Any brass pickup strips which look too straight when viewing the underside are probably misbehaving. During my above rewheelings while I had the wheels out I took the opportunity to bend all pick-ups outwards a little to ensure contact is maintained. It should be possible to tweak them without having to take the keeper plates off (not the easiest of tasks) and removing the wheels, but pulling off the bogie sideframes would assist - try to ease them off and press them back on as straight as possible to avoid stressing the attachment points. Push the wheelsets from side to side and check what happens with the pick-ups - keep the tweezers handy!
  7. Yes, these 'Toton Blue' repaints retained red bufferbeam - AIUI the running gear remained untouched on these locos so you had the rather odd combination of shiny blue bodywork on grotty underframes!
  8. Looks like a cross between '0O00' and a 'domino' (and more effective than either of them!) One of these late survivors - 47356 I think - was numbered at both ends but one number was on the cabside and the other on the bodyside! I can't recall which way round (I should have the photo somewhere) and no idea whether this was on one side only (like 47146's D prefix......!!)
  9. That has always been my assumption with the Hymeks. I don't think the demoted D600 Warships were ever likely to get maroon like their 8-wheeled brethren and repainting one of my two Kernow models to see what they'd have looked like is definitely NOT happening! 71 of the 74 Westerns got maroon in the end - those that didn't were D1004/36/37 which went straight from green into blue ('04 the only one of these into blue full yellow). And 32 Warships, between September 1965 and November 1966 (D838 was fully repainted into maroon full yellow in September 1968, for reasons which have never been fully established, but it had entered Swindon already in maroon syp livery).
  10. I've just found this photo of my first Tri-ang Hornby Hymek, purchased when the model first came out in 1967 (8th September to be precise - the instruction leaflet is date-stamped 30th August). It's one of those models that I've long had no use for but would never get rid of for sentimental reasons, so what to do with it? Use it for an UNrealistic what-if, of course! I didn't want to give it a fictitious number (in any case D7101 was already running around on an island with a certain famous tank engine for company......!!) so I chose D7100, the last one, because the 101st Hymek always seemed to me to be the 'odd one out' - why build 101........ of anything?! Spot the Peco track pins! The motor bogie was fitted with Millholme 14mm turned brass wheels when these became available in the 1970s, with Romford 14mm wheels at the trailing end which has additional pick-ups fitted. Back then, even if it had occurred to me that the standard Tri-ang 2mm excess buffer height had now been increased to around 3mm I wouldn't have had much idea what to do about it! The model was brush-painted with Humbrol BR Maroon in the 1990s and it was one of those rare occasions when the paint went on so smoothly you'd think it had been sprayed. It's not spray-varnished, honest. If only all enamel paint was like that........ The number transfers are silver rub-down type from a sheet made by Peakside Products in the late 1970s - I mail-ordered the first sheet direct in February 1979 (not from memory, that's the franked date on the envelope I still store it in!) then found another on sale in a shop (Trents in Swindon, which later became Beatties) a few years later. These two sheets are still working and I used the second one to renumber a Hornby Class 50 just last week, only because the first had no '4s' left on it!
  11. Heljan's guttering above the windscreens is surprisingly poorly defined on D1960, and although this time they have tooled the earlier pantograph wipers, and correctly applied these to D1526 and the Model Rail Class 48s, they appear confused about the timing of the switch from these to single-arm type on the prototype, which occurred during the early 1970s. This makes D1960 and D1969 incorrect - the latter still had pantograph wipers in July 1971 by which time it had lost its D prefixes (its data panels are also missing the blue background). It took me minutes to check this on the 'class47' website so I can't help wondering why Heljan didn't do the same........
  12. Yes, the Mainline coupler despite being a bit chunky went partway to reducing the intrusive appearance of the oversized tension-lock (although shortening the buffers to get stock closer together was an unwelcome throwback to Hornby Dublo) but Airfix went full-on pseudo-Fleischmann, which was a brave move at the time and unfortunately the market wasn't ready to follow their lead. When Airfix was forced to backtrack at least the clip fitting avoided expensive tooling changes and made swapping to their larger couplers easy, but making them that large, when Mainline had paved the way for something smaller, was a missed opportunity. Dapol later showed how it should have been done.........albeit with very poor hooks which required filing to a functional shape 🥴! When I was putting some stock together for exhibition use in the early 1990s I had noted the brake shoes aligned with the wheels and finer buffers of Airfix wagon underframes and embarked on a program of mounting all kinds of wagon bodies from Mainline, Wrenn (unpainted, £1 each!) and Hornby Dublo on these - which allowed the use of the small couplers. Removing the hook from one end also removed the need for them to swivel, which meant they could be rigidly attached to other stock too - HD Presflos / Traffic Services tanker and Wrenn milk tankers required nuts and bolts through the original coupling boss, Mainline BR brake vans and shock wagons they were screwed to plastic mounting blocks. I bought these couplers whenever and wherever I found them, usually on club stands at exhibitions. Uncoupling was by magnetic shunter's pole - except for a few early couplers which I discovered had brass hooks! I also used them on Lima Class 117 DMU conversions (and will shortly use four of my remaining stock on a newly-acquired Class 101). Coaches and parcels stock used Dapol couplings and locos a mix of various solutions, some homemade involving a soldering iron, but always ensuring the single-ended hooks were bent or assembled in a central position. Happy days, and I still have them all, long since rewheeled with Hornby metal wheels when they were £3.50 per pack although they haven't been to any shows lately. Well, for nearly two decades actually.......
  13. I bought a pair of large MTK 4mm transfer sheets in the 1970s, one for wagons and one for coaches, and put them to good use when there wasn't much else available - the coach sheet included 'ENPARTS' lettering and I've always intended to stick them on something. I finally got around to it last year, but instead of using an RTR vehicle straight out of a box (and all sorts were employed on ENPARTS traffic) I adopted the 'why keep it simple when with a little bit of effort you can make it complicated' philosophy! Also I wanted a small vehicle...... I was aware of a couple of former GWR 'Fruit C' vans in ENPARTS use, DW150355/6. The 'Fruit C' was basically two/thirds, or a 2-door version, of a 'Fruit D'. I had a Dapol 'Fruit MEX' van on the 11' chassis and a damaged HD 'Fruit D' body to hand, so I measured these to check whether the body shortened by one door and neighbouring X-framed panel would fit on the 11' chassis. It did - exactly! Game on then - a Dapol 11' chassis and unpainted 'Fruit D' body were duly added to an order to Hattons (sigh), total cost £8.31! However I was already aware that an accurate model of DW150356 (the only one of the pair which seems to have been photographed, and is now at GWS Didcot) was going to be unlikely, because this vehicle was mounted on a 12' underframe, and had diagonal bracing on the side end panels and a vertical central brace, both missing on the 'Fruit D' which also had ventilation louvres cut into the planking. Also '356 had Churchward brake gear....... When the parts arrived I quickly realised that this was going to have to be a freelance might-have-been 2-door version of the 'Fruit D', with lever brake gear. One up-side of this was that only one footstep was required below each door instead of two. So the body was shortened as described, and so too the roof, conveniently separate on the Dapol model unlike the one-piece Hornby Dublo version - removing a section to retain the roof end strapping and end fit to the body was a better solution than simply cutting the roof to the required length - the join can be seen in the photo, but it's not obvious to the naked eye. I had hoped that the MTK 'ENPARTS' transfers would fit between the doors in one piece, but no way - too spaced out! I had to separate the letters and apply them individually. These transfers are commendably thin but at this age are rather fragile, so I was glad to get them on (initially they go a little 'milky' but dry clear). Also no way was a number as long as 'DW15035x' going to fit onto the end panels unless I used eye-wateringly small transfers, so I scoured my old transfer sheets and found 'DW' and '1400' which did just fit and AFAICT was never used on a real vehicle. Freelance status confirmed!
  14. And I was concerned about running Bachmann Class 42 & 43 Warships together! The earlier buffer height comparison suggests Heljan is correct, but if it's riding a little too low (and the bogie clearance does look rather tight) jacking it up a bit would undo this. The whole scenario beats me....... .......me too, I still have three, so perhaps we should be doing a comparison of both of these against the Lima model to see who's right 😉! (I'm already plotting my escape route......🤭!) Personally I reckon you'd be OK if you run all Bachmann OR all Heljan 47s on your layout, but if mixed don't let them linger next each other and give them their own stabling sidings on different sides of the depot!
  15. The Class47.co.uk website includes photos of 47256 in two-tone green with 'domino' panel and in plain green, thanks to the prolific Brian Daniels! Images on this site are copyright so here's a link to the loco's photo gallery - the captions explain why '256 received the repaint and where, but it didn't last long as it was clearly well overdue a works overhaul. It's a pity the weather was a bit dull and the loco rather dirty as it hides the shade of green which I believe had a rather fresh-grassy look to it: http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_photos_1.php?index=0&jndex=2&kndex=56&s_loco=47256 Chances are that the photo galleries for one or two of the higher-numbered Class 47/3s which survived into 1976/7 will also have photos of 'domino' ttg locos......
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