orford

Sorry - Maybe I didn't make it clrear. In my post I was referring to the use of Kadees exclusively with steam-era stock, which is my only experience. I couldn't comment on their use with diseasels because I wouldn't be seen dead with any of them on my layouts. Ever. But let's not go there. That would be a different discussion altogether (!) No.5's might well be perfectly good for fitting to those.

Kevin - That is the whole point of adding the weight to NMRA standards. It removes that problem completely.

Paul - To answer your question above about robustness, the short answer is 'don't worry'. Kadees are extremely robust. The very worst that could happen is that you pop a spring out, and those can readily be replaced. but even that is fairly rare.

I have used Kadees exclusively and with complete success for over 40 years now and confess that I am finding some of the advice on this thread to be rather misleading..... However, agree totally with all Matt says above (and also with one or two others - ie Dunsignalling, 47137, etc) - and in my own experience I would also offer the following: Do NOT use No.5's for UK rolling stock (or any other 'medium' or 'short' shank types!) No.5's may be the 'old original' - but they were originally designed for USA stock, which does not have side buffers and they are no good at all for UK stock. The reason is that to operate correctly - and also to avoid the possibility of buffer lock - the rear flat inside face of the knuckle must be flush (or fractionally in advance of) the vehicle's buffer heads. Using No.5's in that alignment results in a dirty great big section of the rectangular 'draft gear box' poking out from underrneath the buffer beam of the vehicle - which looks extremely poor at best and ridiculous at worst. In my experience, you need only 5 types of Kadee to cover ALL UK coaching and wagon stock (locos sometimes do need other types, or a little more ingenuity)..... Kadee No.146's fit ALL standard UK 4 wheel wagons, simply by removing the original tension locks and their mounts (just carve them off with a sharp knife) and glueing the draft gear box directly to the underside of the wagon floor with styrene solvent, with the head of the coupler positioned as above in relation to the buffer heads. This automatically puts it 'spot-on' height-wise in 99% of cases....but do double check with a Kadee height gauge - odd vehicles may need shimming. Ensure no solvent leaks into the draft gear box, as this will glue the coupler up solid .....this is why the 146-type 'whisker' couplers are much better than the old No.46's (different and better sealed draft gear boxes). You will need to file off the top plastic 'ridge' at the front opening of the draft gear box (it's the ridge on the 'lid' of the box), so that the box will fit flush against the underside of the wagon floor. Kadee No.141's fit 95% of all bogie stock (wagons and coaches) on the assumption you are going to fit them to the bogies - non-prototypical but will then operate better as (for example) they will couple on sharp curves, which body mounted Kadees will not on long bogie stock. The cranked shaft of the 141's will swing clear of the slightly deeper buffer beam found on most UK coach models. I find mounting to most bogies is quite simple, sometimes with the assistance of a bit of plastikard and/or Kadee delrin screws. If you prefer a body mount then either 141 or 146 will do the trick (but may need a little plastikard shim or packing piece). If your vehicle is fitted with NEM pockets, then as mentioned earlier in this thread, Nos. 17, 18, 19 & 20 are the ones to use - although in practice I have found that Nos. 18 and 19 alone cover 95% of UK-outline models. Personally, I don't like the NEM couplers as they look bulkier and (to me) less realistic. So I personally tend to remove the NEM pockets and replace with the 146's and 141's, as above - except on locos, where they are a Godsend, operationally. As I say - this is only my own long experience of using Kadees. Others may think differently. But it is what I would personally thoroughly recommend. I would also offer the following advice: (1) Plan your uncoupling locations very carefully in advance, unless using Kadee electro-uncouplers. You will need to plan carefully, to avoid some of the common pitfalls - such as uncoupling vehicles further back in the train unintentionally if you have two or more uncouplers in a single stretch of track. For example - if you have a magnet designed to take the loco off at the platform end of a terminus, ensure that any additional uncoupler magnets further back along the same platform track do not end up directly under the ends of coaches or wagons which are further back in the parked train! It's not that hard to work out placements - but it does need some careful forward planning. Consider too what trains you are actually going to be running - this can impact on the same thing. Sometimes, say two coaches (a GWR 'B' set would be a good example), or several wagons in a 'bulk' train can be 'permanently' coupled simply by chopping off the coupler 'trip pins', to avoid any problems. But don't forget to leave a trip pin on the two extreme ends! (2) WEIGHT all goods rolling stock to NMRA standards! This is in my experience the single most helpful thing for successful and totally flawless Kadee operation, yet is something I have never seen mentioned in any of the articles about using Kadees in the British modelling press. We have to remember that Kadees were originally designed to be used with American outline stock - which is almost exclusively of the bogie variety and by definition much heavier than our little 4-wheeled wagons. Whilst Kadees are usually fine just as they are for UK outline locos and bogie passenger coaches, they will almost always give trouble with short lightweight UK outline 4-wheeled goods stock, when used with permanent and 'delayed' uncoupling magnets, either by uncoupling when not required due to the wagon's axles being attracted over the uncoupling magnets, or by refusing to uncouple when this IS required (for essentially similar reasons). The simple solution is to weight ALL such wagons to NRMA standards. These standards can be found online but essentially, the vehicle weight should be half an ounce for each inch of the wagon's body length PLUS one ounce. Therefore a 4" long wagon should weigh 4 x half-ounces (=2 ounces) PLUS one ounce - so 3 ounces altogether. On this basis, a typical UK outline 4-wheeled box van should weigh approximately 2 1/8 ounces, or thereabouts - doesn't sound much but this is 3-4 times the weight of a typical Bachmann/Hornby RTR wagon, as supplied. I can say with absolute honesty that since I weighted all of my UK outline rolling stock to NMRA standards about 4 years ago now I have never had the slightest reliability issue with Kadees, have NEVER since that time had any unwanted uncoupling and have NEVER since that time had a failed coupling or uncoupling, or failed delayed uncoupling. Prior to doing this, I had plenty. (All this assumes of course that everything else is also set up properly - such as coupling heights, freedom of swivel, etc). But seriously - adding weight to these standards has made the most remarkable difference to the reliability of operation with Kadees for me....even if it did take me the best part of 40 years to finally work out the blindingly obvious! As a bonus, the additionally weighted wagons tend to 'ride' more solidly when weighted to NMRA standards, much more akin to the way a prototype wagon rolls. Try it on a few vans - you will soon start to appreciate the difference. Self adhesive weights of 5gm and 10 gm can be bought on eBay and are ideal for most wagons (open and flat wagons sometimes require a little ingenuity - but box vans are easy). For tank wagons, use 'liquid lead' poured in through the tank filler (they can usually be carefully prised off fairly easily), followed by a shot of 'white' glue through the same hole to bond it all in place - it will set up in 24 hours or so. Hope all this helps. As I say - just my own personal opinion ...but one based on many years experience.

We probably did, Larry. I encountered Cyril again many years later when he was Editor of the Swiss Railway Society magazine (I was a member) and to be fair to the guy, he was always great company.

And that was mainly down to Cyril Freezer's plan books. I met him decades ago at the old UMIST Manchester show and he positively deluged me with fanatacism & spittle about how wonderful it was to have trains (and I quote) "popping in and out of little tunnels all over the place". That was one of the best lessons I ever learned about model railways and from that day I vowed never to do it. And thankfully, I never have. But he was a character for all that and did much for the hobby.

Larry Makes a fair point about the wheels and no - I had not looked hard enough at the pictures (my apologies, Larry) - but I was still told by a friend at Hornby that the production model will have 'better' wheels. Let's just wait and see - after all, the thing is still a year away yet. It's a pretty pointless argument to be having at this early stage. Meantime, whilst the original Triang version was indeed too short and boiler too small, no-one has yet mentioned that its body also sat/sits some 2.5mm too high on it's chassis, in order to clear it's motor. It was probably this more than anything which gave it its top-heavy appearance. But things could be done with it for all that if you were prepared to live with the short length.........here's mine as currrently running on Orford. It began life as a Chinese 'blue' and is fitted with a Portescap RG4 in the original white metal Triang chassis (after much filing out of the block), enabling me to lower the thing to the correct height. I did change the bogie wheels (Markits) although the drivers remain the original Chinese version ones. The 'shortness' remains obvious...as does the unsightly 'skirt' under the boiler - but it'll do until the new one arrives, after which it will no doubt find its way onto my scrap yard diorama! It can be seen in action here (9 minute video clip) if anyone is interested.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNaGisprWyc

Russ - Inverurie painted some 20 of its B12s in this livery after WWII but Stratford just one, so most of them were in Scotland. BUT - unfortunately none of the are even remotely correct for the Hornby version. All of the Scottish B12's were of the small boilered variety with Belpaire fireboxes, of which nine were subesquently rebuilt with a round topped firebox but still retained the much smaller boiler. At least four of these also ran attached to redundant B17 tenders later in their lives - but still in the apple green 'British Railways' livery. By way of examples, the former included 61552 and 61539, whilst 61507 was one of the latter. The boiler was VERY different (and very obviously different visually), being MUCH smaller and without the characteristic straight 'cut off' below the smoke box door which is so obvious on the B12/3, as being produced by Hornby. There were also several other noticable detail differences as well, so you would need a pretty severe model rebuild to produce one which you could justify in that livery. So unfortunately, the short answer to your question is "no". Having said that, there were certainly some B12/3s (as Hornby) painted lined black with BRITISH RAILWAYS in full on the tender - for example 61565, 61556 and 61533. It is also worth mentioning that only a very few B12/3s ever received the final 'late' BR crest on the tender, examples which did being 61580 and 61572. Some also remained in unlined black after the war with the early crest, for example 61514, which was never lined right up to withdrawal. It is very dangerous to rely on preservation examples of any locomotive as there is a regrettable (to me) tendency to paint many of them in liveries which they never actually carried in service, simply because the owner likes it! OK - it's his engine, so he can paint it yellow with pink spots if he wants to ....but it doesn't help when producing a model.

Here's another couple of pre-production pictures - bear in mind it will NOT have the wheels shown here (which are from the old model). Note the LNER version has the covered front steam pipes, whereas the BR version does not - as per prototype.....although these look wrong to me, more like the inaccurate ones on the old Triang model than those on the prototypes.

I think the talk here about wheels is perhaps a tad premature. If you study the pre-production photos which are clearly of a 3D printed mock up, it is quite obvious that Hornby have put it onto the wheels from an old Triang Hornby B12 - presumably just to get something into print by way of a pre-announcement. My sources at Sandwich assure me that it will have much finer and much more accurate scale wheels by the time it eventually hits the shops. Will be a more or less identical technical specification to the recent D16/3. Let's cut the guys a bit of slack here. They've obviously busted a gut to get an early announcement out. Give them time to develop the thing properly and I don't think that we will be disappointed.

Methylated Spirit (the purple stuff) also works well.

Had mine fitted with a Zimo sound decoder within 45 minutes of it's arrival from Hornby on release day. No problems, although I did severely modify the interior space of the tender (my own personal choice - I usually do) in order to fit a big capacitor alongside the MX645 decoder. This could be avoided with hard-wiring as the plug/socket invariably takes up a fair bit of space. Sounds great.

No problem whatsoever in this department on any of my 3 J15's

Mine too - I just fitted a shorter wire super-glued in place and then painted.

I have one for sale, never seriously run, except for testing along a 2 foot length of track (I have no layout). - Ixion factory painted - blue. - Light/mid weathering. - Brass etched number (No.1), name (Ladysmith) and correct 'MW' works plates (red). Note: Works plates added since these photos were taken. - Crew (2) fitted. White metal. - Fitted with Full ZIMO DCC & SOUND using MX645 decoder with ESU speaker in enclosure fitted (invisibly) between the frames. Plus large capacity 'stay-alive' capacitor in smokebox. - Currently fitted with Dingham auto couplers ....but original 3-links can be refitted for sale if required. PM or mail me for further details, etc., if interested. Can upload video to YouTube showing it in action with sound, if required. Guide price: Offers in the region of £550. Post free. Don Mason - Nottingham

I confess to being generally rather bemused by this thread. Other than the Halfords primers (which are absolutely fine provided they are applied very sparingly), and the matt black (which actually dries with a bit of a sheen), I would not recommend rattle cans of any kind for painting railway models for the simple reason that car paints tend to be ultra-high gloss, which just does not suit railway models. Much better in my opinion to use a decent quality air brush with properly matched Precision or Railmatch paints, which are a joy to apply and dry just right. More to the point, the spray is also very much finer and infinitely more controllable. Finally, the colours from the above two manufacturers are carefully researched, avoiding the need to find a 'similar' car paint. Other than for priming, I am at a bit of a loss as to why anyone would want to use car paints and rattle cans in the first place on a precious model which may have taken many, many painstaking hours to build.....after all, everything is in the finish - and if we are talking locos here, a decent airbrush probably costs less than the model.

Absolutely NO. The normal Halfords primer is absolutely fine. I have used it on plastic locos/rolling stock for years with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Modelling or renumbering to a specific engine was always going to be a bit of a 'challenge' with the D16's - There were just so many variations and modifications over the years, valances, no valances, piston valves, slide valves, different frames, different diameter boilers, different length reversing rods, hand holds on the firebox sides or no hand holds on the firebox sides (this is the one detail which most people miss) and heaven knows what else varying from individual loco to individual loco. That's to say nothing of all manner of liveries - 'British Railways', BR early crest unlined, BR early crest lined, BR late crest (lined only), black, green with LNER style linin .....and so on. But we only had 21 months or so from 'announcement' to 'delivery' to research all of this and thus make sure we pre-ordered the right version! ONLY JOKING GUYS (sorry, couldn't resist) - although there is an element of common sense there somewhere which I didn't necessarily even follow myself....I actually changed my pre-order twice during the 'wait' as I gradually gathered/acquired all the D16/3 information I could find......I got quite the wrong one on order originally. But surely this is all part of the fun.................isn't it? - Don

Well, I can't say for sure about the situation in LNER days but by 1947 the following D16/3's were certainly allocated to March shed: 62540, 62542, 62548, 62579, 62584, 62589 and 62605. March was also the LAST shed (so mid-late 1950's) for the following D16/3's: 62517, 62529, 62530 (the actual Hornby lined BR example), 62542, 62543, 62589, 62605, 62613, 62615 and 62618. So although not all of these are of the type modelled by Hornby (some of the above had fancy valances), I would be surprised if you can't find one to renumber, even in LNER days. Failing that, there is always 'modeller's license'! - Don

Be a bit experimental when adding additional weight to the tender. I don't much care for the Hornby system whereby the tender wheel sets effectively run in 'slots' or 'channels' over almost their entire length, rather than having pin-point bearings and actually running from the side frames. The Hornby method imparts a lot of inherent 'drag' - hardly helped by yet more drag imposed by the addition of pickups, which between them can stop the wheels from running freely. Whilst adding weight can help with the pick-up drag, adding too much weight just makes the tender axle-channels bear down more heavily on the axles themselves and thus makes a pretty efficient brake. It is a rather delicate balance and I assume that Hornby have scientifically sized their tender weight to provide just the right amount of down force without adding a 'braking force'. Also by adding weight to the tender it just gives the engine more load to pull - it's perhaps rather like adding another 4-wheeled van......so you may end up reducing the number of coaches which it can haul. So I would certainly experiment carefully when considering weighting the tender.

You're one of the lucky ones, Stewart. If you were to add sound, requiring a speaker, decent size decoder and capacitor in the tender you actually have to REMOVE the tender weight (or at least just over half of it) in order to fit everything in! That makes it even lighter. I had the same problem with my Sandringham and also my B12 conversion, which uses a Sandringham tender. I agree though, it could do with being heavier ... something I'm still working on. It shouldn't stutter, though, regardless. Check that the tender pick-up wires are correctly & solidly soldered to the underside of the socket board in the tender - mine were not and that caused a big stutter on DCC but only a very small one on DC. Once I connected them properly it was (and remains) absolutely fine, even without some of the weight. - Don

Now THOSE look REALLY nice, Steve. May I please ask what the clerestory roofed coach in the background is - and it's model origin?

I think that's correct. It's just that I personally think that it looks much better filed off and with the bogie pivot plate hard up against the chassis block. I don't seriously think that it has any real spring effect whatsoever. In truth it's a rather clumsy design. Much better in my own humble opinion to add a little weight at the back in that vacant 'flywheel' space. I do wonder why Hornby didn't actually do that if and when they decided to drop the flywheel idea. Would have been a much sounder design from a balance point of view. In fact I'm guessing that the 'balance' of the loco and getting it to work was very probably the whole reason for the greatly extended delay in releasing this particular model. Only guessing - but it's a fair one. Without doubt the balance, or lack of it, would have been the reason for changing the originally designed/proposed 'all-cast-in-one' cab/boiler/smokebox to a shorter cast 'cab & boiler only' with a separate plastic smokebox - which is how it's eventually been delivered. Again I'm only guessing but I suspect that pip was quite probably part of the original design and was then effectively made redundant by that change, which clearly lifted a lot of weight off from the front end and just tilted the balance in favour of keeping all four driving wheels on the track. But we can speculate all we want. Who cares, at the end of the day? No-one knows for sure and I suspect Hornby are not ever going to tell us. The fact is that they eventually delivered a great model, which works well and it is up to individual owners if we want to alter it, add to it, change it, or just leave it as is. Mine works well for me the way I've slightly modified it and that's all that really matters. Don

That's a fair point Phil. Sometimes we modellers forget that if you look at a prototype coach from much more than say, 10 yards away, it's pretty difficult to see the lining anyway. And in scale terms, most model trains on layouts are viewed from much further away than this. Thanks for the kind comments on my own coaches, although in fairness I have to confess that they are Hornby versions - so I already had a fairly decent starting point....although I actually painstakingly removed all the Hornby yellow lining before picking out individual panels in varying shades of Precision Paints 'teak'. The weathering in the panel/door joints, etc., is my own recipe 'gloop' made up from artist's oil pastels. I paint the entire finished coach side with this stuff (turning the whole side almost completely black in the process - scary) and then wipe it off again after about a minute or so, using cotton buds, brushes and rags, so that it settle into the corners and crevices, where it dries permanently overnight. It seems to give the right effect anyway. Here's one of Hornby's 'suburbans', given the same treatment -- but rather more so, as I wanted this one to look a bit dilapidated and worn out. Incidentally, yours look very nice from where I'm sitting. You have captured that rather elusive (in model form) 'look' very well indeed! Excellent stuff. - Don Mason

I'm astonished by this thread. I have been using Humbrol matt enamels for well over 45 years and cannot say that I have ever had a problem with them, including a batch of 10 colours (including matt black) bought fairly recently. I did notice that they seemed to be rather thicker than in the past but I actually saw that as being an advantage as they thinned down easily enough for both brushing and airbrushing (and thereby I reason, will last longer, per given size of tin). Certainly I have had no problems whatsoever with them drying. Used some of the matt black only yesterday in fact on my new Hornby D16/3 - airbrushed on, it was quite dry enough to pick the model up with the fingers 20 minutes later. And yes - I would certainly endorse the 'store the tin upside down' comment. It totally stops the tin drying out in my experience (but do make sure the lid id on properly first). Clearly everyone else seems to know something I don't. I'll keep an aye on it in the future.