PatB

As I recall, the introduction in the MRC annuals always stressed that the content was heavily skewed towards articles for which there hadn't been room in the magazine. As such, I wouldn't be particularly surprised if the layout hadn't previously featured in the regular magazine.

I've got that MRC Annual, and like the layout a great deal. It's an excellent, and surprisingly late ( the annual was between 1978 and 1982, I forget exactly which), example of the "system" layout concept, which was once very popular but which has since fallen from favour somewhat. I'm not sure if I'd have the chutzpah to use the prototype names though . The mention of the "closure" article sounds more like Weybourne to me (another layout I liked), but maybe such fancies were popular amongst "modern image" Southern modellers of the time.

They do rather look it, don't they? Except Marx went one better and made their flanges massively thick, as well as deep, at least on these older chassis. Some later engines got the "double reduction" motor, whose final drive gears didn't extend to the edges of the flanges. Although not actually rare, the double reduction mechs are sought after as they pull better and will run through other makers turnouts without problems. And in the Lima tradition, there's no connection by coupling rods. The axles are, however, geared together, so at least everything purporting to be a driving wheel actually is one. Later mechs got "Baldwin" (sorta Boxpok) wheels instead, similarly uncoupled. Diesels got identical mechs, but the unsuitable wheels were largely hidden behind dummy truck frames.

Et voila! A useable Marx 897 emerges from a battered chrysalis. I'd be the first to admit it's a long way from perfect. I suspect perfect was not available from a body as cosmetically far gone as this one was. I'm not bothered in the slightest. A near scrap engine is back in service for a truly negligible outlay of effort and money. It may not be the shiny object of wonder that it was (probably) one Christmas morning 80 years ago, but it's not bad, and that is very satisfying. Here's the cleaned up mech, complete with supplementary wiring harness and bridge rectifier (the rectangular lump hanging off the back). And here's the finished beastie.

Fortunately, even a bozo like me can do pretty much anything necessary to a Marx loco using only these. And so I did. The mech got a thorough scrub with cotton wool buds and meths, paying particular attention to the motor brushes, springs and commutator. The headlamp got an el-cheapo LED replacement bulb and I bypassed the mechanical reverser with a bridge rectifier to allow running on DC with direction changes by reversing the traction supply polarity. Meanwhile, I dismantled the body into its 3 component parts and chucked them into a plastic storage box full of thinned treacle to deal with the rust. This was my first attempt at derusting by chelation and I must confess myself impressed. Where the rust was just a brown film in areas where the litho was worn the surface was back to clean, grey metal inside a day. Deeper, crusty rust took rather longer. Maybe 3-4 days, with a daily inspection and a good scratch with a thumbnail to expose as much new surface to the treacle as possible. In truth, I probably should have left it for quite a bit longer, given there's no risk of overdoing it, but I got impatient. After derusting, rinsing and drying with a hairdryer it was time to tidy up the severely scratched litho. For this, I used a black Sharpie marker pen to fill in the scratches, rubs and gouges. Someone of greater artistic ability could probably use different coloured pens to recreate some of the rather nice shading on the print, and replace some of the detail that wear, rust and time had obliterated completely. As it was, I just made sure the bits that were supposed to be black were black and decided to rely on the whole giving a good overall impression rather than worrying about detail that I can't do. After the marathon colouring in session, I gave the whole thing a good coat of cheapo gloss clearcoat from a rattle can ($5 from the next-door car shop) and, after waiting 48 hours for it to harden off a bit, put the body together again.

And another post's worth of pics to show the dodgy reattachment of the smokebox door pressing.

Having had it maturing in a box for several months, I finally decided to do something with a cosmetically decrepit Marx 897 tinplate loco that I got off Ebay last year. As you can see, the poor thing was suffering the ravages of rattling around in several generations of toy boxes for the past 80ish years (the 897 was only produced between 1939 and 1942, so this old girl is at least 79). The litho was badly scratched, there were significant areas of rust, some previous owner had had the 3-piece body apart and butchered it on reassembly. Altogether, not a promising start. On the plus side, when given some volts, the mechanism ran well. Astoundingly well, in fact as, even before cleaning and lubing, it ran perhaps the best of the half dozen Marx mechs in my possession. A slightly clattery sewing machine of a motor, if you will.

Presumably it worked. There's no record of one ever being sunk by enemy action.

A lot of the issues that seem to arise in 3D printing, IMHO arise from the (strong and understandable) temptation to try to print a complete model in one go, when, often, a more appropriate approach would be to print something more akin to the sprues of an injection moulded kit and then assembling the individual bits.

"Exhibition standard" is a bit of a move able feast. Clearly, anything hoping for a spot at one of the UK's finescale shows, or the more prominent general exhibitions, would need to be a bit special. OTOH, here in the Antipodean boonies, where the organisers of our one annual exhibition clearly struggle to get enough layouts together to fill a reasonable program, anything that can be physically moved to the venue, with almost enough operators to cover the 3 days seems to be regarded as good enough. I actually think that, depending on what it is intended to demonstrate, it is entirely possible to build an exhibition standard layout with rtr/rtp bits. Timetable operation, signalling, and automatic control, for example, can all be demonstrated to a high standard using RTR stock of pretty much any vintage, from pre-WW1 onwards. In the context of current trends, of making realistic 3D moving pictures, I would argue that it is still possible to produce a layout to a standard worthy of public display. The trick is to select era, locale and operating scenario with care, and then choose rtr/rtp products meticulously to suit and arrange them in a manner based upon prototype observation, rather than making a model of someone else's scenified train set and then run "one of everything from the Bachby catalogue", which is what seems to be more common. It can be done, but the fact that it's rare enough to be quite notable when it happens suggests that it's quite difficult.

Mazak seems to be one of those proprietary names that has become so synonymous with its subject that it's become used as the generic term for any similar zinc alloy. I've certainly used it as a convenient shorthand for the past 40+ years. Which seems appropriate, as the material itself is a convenient shorthand for proper metal . If I may be forgiven for a further thread divergence, zinc pest was certainly well recognised in the US in the 1930s. Rampant rot in die castings had helped in seeing off one of their major toy train manufacturers (Dorfan) and, probably as a result, Marx were very conservative about using zinc alloys. Their mechs had die-cast wheels and Idler gear, using what appears to be a high quality alloy that doesn't seem prone to rot, even after 80+ years. At the end of the 1930s they introduced 2 locos very close together. Similar size and general configuration. One was tin litho, the other die-cast. I've seen it said, and agree, that the tin litho loco looks a lot like an insurance policy so that Marx would have something to sell if the die-cast version had problems. Notably, when production resumed after WW2, the tin litho loco was not reintroduced in its original form, although its tooling was used to produce an economy, all black engine for the lower end of the market.

Another gorgeous Collectors edition from Franklin Mint.

As an engineer I tend to agree, but an awful lot do seem to be made from various zinc alloys, in all sorts of applications, and mostly seem to last "well enough". In the case of old US toy trains, the mazak bits seem to only wear out in the most extreme cases of use and neglect.

For my modest, but expanding, collection of US made Marx 0 gauge stock, I've taken to using the same fully synthetic 5W30 oil that my van requires, because I've always got some lying around. I apply it with a small, squeeze plastic bottle fitted with a blunt medical needle (20g I think) , both bought in bulk off AliExpress for use in MrsB's art business, and nicked by me out of the box. Gears get a dose of a white grease that I used to buy for doing the driveshaft splines on my BMW motorcycle, and of which I have enough left to lubricate every toy train gear I'm likely to ever own. Both seem to work very well. I've no idea whether they're plastic-safe, but, as I'm specifically collecting items which contain little or no plastic, I don't anticipate any problems. The only plastic bit in a Marx mechanism likely to come into contact with the oil is the brush plate/non-drive side motor bearing, which seems immune to the vast array of ghastly witches' brews that owners have applied in greater or lesser quantities over the course of 85 years. I figure that if it's survived that, anything I can apply is unlikely to cause problems. There are urban legends of modern synth oils dissolving mazak gears, but I really can't see how. I'll believe it if I see it.

In defence of modern manufacturers, it must be recognised that increased prototype fidelity makes it harder to stock and supply spares. When, for example, all your 6 coupled locos use the same chassis block, coupling rods, often wheels and, of course, motor and gears, it's easy to keep a stock of wearing parts on hand that will cover everything. Not so simple when every loco is externally unique, even if you're able to design in a bit of commonality where it doesn't show.

I refurbished a well battered N2 using the easy method of self adhesive tank and bunker sides, bought off Ebay. Unfortunately, I gather that the chap selling such things has since passed on, and so that route is only available if you're willing to do your own artwork and printing. Which I might contemplate, because it was much simpler than mucking about with transfers. After a coat of varnish, you (well, I) really can't tell how it's been done.

On the point of durability, I think that's a major selling point for 3-rail Dublo and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Triang locos. Get a good one and you have a piece that will last, (and, perhaps more significantly, run) essentially, for ever, short of running it over with a steamroller or dropping it into an active volcano. There is no part of a Dublo mech which cannot be replaced by the ordinary enthusiast working at the kitchen table. There aren't even many parts that can't be made or refurbished with only a little greater effort or skill. I only place Triang and 2-rail Dublo slightly lower due to their plastic bodies being a little more fragile, and their self-contained motors being a bit more sophisticated. The difference, however, is not large.

I must confess to being very puzzled as to why prices for Wrenn locos achieved low Earth orbit a few years ago. They seem to have returned to somewhat saner levels now, which must have upset a few people.

It's been a couple of years since I looked at Dublo prices, but unless things have changed radically, if you stay away from real rarities and are happy with pieces in good rather than mint condition, putting together enough for a modest layout should be quite a lot cheaper than doing the same with modern stock. Especially as you can supement the real thing with homebrew wood, card and paper bodies on salvaged chassis from the junk boxes under swap meet tables. It might not be a bad idea to get hold of some of, eg, Edward Beal's books on rolling stock construction. Whilst pre-1960s, most of the techniques he describes were still in widespread use in the period.

Of course, buildings vary in size, even in the same general location. I remember noticing, when I was living in Newcastle, that, on some of the long streets of terraces sloping down towards the river, the houses (Tyneside flats really) became smaller the further down you went. You didn't really notice unless actually looking for it, as the architecture didn't change, but the facades were considerably narrower at the less desirable end than they were at the top. It's also harder to see nowadays, as so many of the streets have been partially or wholly redeveloped. I've just had a look on Street View and I can't actually pinpoint exactly where I noticed it, 35 years later, unfortunately.

Of course, with modern drawing software, it's not too hard to draw up your own wagon artwork and create "in the spirit of" buildings by scanning old sheets and shuffling the elements around digitally.

Given that there's stuff on there that was being talked about when I was first living in Bristol in 1988, I will personally eat a used oil filter, live on national TV*, if anything resembling that proposal actually comes to pass before 2050. *Terms and conditions apply.

Whether or not it was intentional on Wells' part, I've no idea, but "The War of the Worlds" is a powerful evocation of the experience of many First Nations peoples as applied to the Europeans who colonised them. A society faced with a ruthless, technologically advanced aggressor, with unfathomable motives, collectively unstoppable by the best warriors and highest weapons technology. The only irony is that it's the invaders who succumb to Earth's microbes, rather than the historical reality of it being the other way round. It's pretty sobering really.

The voice of Sunday afternoons of my youth. RIP.

I don't think so. Although I'm not familiar with that particular issue of RM, the Bourne BLT in the book (plan 43s) doesn't include a harbour or dock. Apart from its compactness, it's a fairly conventional terminus of the "loop and a few sidings" variety, although the loop is longer than normal, and is bent around the corner. The idea seems to have been that the main trackwork, platform and fiddle yard are confined to a maximum width of 7", with only the two sidings of the main goods yard extending beyond that limit. Although attributed to Bourne, the plan has clearly been redrawn by CJF. Interestingly, its one of those shown fully signalled, and has appropriately sited trap points indicated.