thestourbridgelion

Thanks for the responses so far. I have attached a Scarm sketch of what I plan. I am having garage refurbished so have had holes cut in as shown in photo. The challenge is I can’t quite think of the best method of constructing the outside section. Marine ply with a removable lid is best I can come up with but it’s likely to be heavy and need support. . ( At one end of the garage I would occasionally be required to remove the “ outside bit”) Some sort of PVC electrical trunking is another thought but they don’t make this curved as far as I can see.

I am planning a 7mm layout in the garage. It is planned to be a oval with half of the layout “off scene”. In order to make the most of the space I am planning to hide most of the curved section outside of the garage envelope in some sort of temporary structure. ( Think the well known modeller Ken Payne did something similar years ago) The temp. structure I have in mind is some sort of rectangular box section with removable top. Possibly made out of marine ply. Has anyone any experience of doing anything similar and if so can they share detail.

Not much success with a 21 pin loksound decoder. It keeps tripping out so suspect it’s the motor current so now going to go for a Loksound L. Had a real game also with the back of wheels pickups as they were hardly touching. Removing the 4 screws that hold the base plate on gave me access to the wheels. Re tweaked the pick ups so they make more positive contact and refitted wheels by sliding a shim of nickel silver onto the pick up while wheels replaced. Fiddly but my avo and a bright light now says all wheels are making contact. There is space for a 23mm circular speaker in the chassis-pity this is not bigger. I am abandoning the idea of a stay alive in the bunker as the loksound L has stay alive built in plus running the cables to the bunker, even very fine cables, seems problematic. So a pretty negative day I am afraid. Think the Loksound L is the way forward.

Thanks Focalplane. I wouldn’t say the coal comes out easily but if you remove the lamp iron guard (pulls out vertically) and make sure the snug fitting pipe, on the right looking at back of bunker, is clear using a scalpel then it was possible to ease it out starting at the back in the middle. As I already have a 21pin decoder I do want to use that. Luckily I have an ESU decoder mounting plate with tails which I now think can be fitted reasonably ok. I will keep an eye on the website in case some revelation appears!

Received my model today. Un numbered early BR crest as requested. First impressions good heavy model. Quibbles-the moulded tank lifting eyes on top of the tanks, screw which holds bogies on quite small but hopefully ok, wheels look pretty good but delicate-think they would be on last turning size if this was a prototype. Within half an hour of opening the box had it to bits ( what are we like eh!) Came apart easy. Coal came out ok (the bit that protects the top rear lamp comes out which makes removing the coal load easier) and space underneath for a stay alive capacitor. I am, however, quite perplexed by the fitting of a sound chip. I am not usually phased by these things but not come across quite this arrangement before and the instructions don’t say much. I assume the chip needs to be hard wired and soldered to the plate which had the blanking plate attached to? ( If anyone has any guidance would appreciate it) Unfortunately the chip I have is a 21 pin but I do have an ESU mounting plate for a 21 pin with tails so guess I should be able to do something just not sure that’s the most elegant method.

I was lucky to have a Dublo R1 Train set as my first followed by a City of London. Well lucky in one way but unlucky in that my family couldn’t sustain the financial outlay required to continue with Dublo and we switched to Triang making my early modelling attempts a totally unsatisfactory mis match. There is no doubt about it the new Triang catalogue was eagerly awaited each year but there was always something that attracted me back to Dublo. Maybe it was the complexity that appealed. Maybe the mystery-no one had Dublo but everyone had Princess Elizabeth. I can remember being disappointed at the dummy centre power bogie wheels on a CKD EM2 (how I wish I had that now!) when the Dublo Co-Bo in the toy shop window down the road clearly had proper centre wheels on the power bogie. Silvered as well-not prototypical but made the model look well engineered. The underframe on the Dublo SD Restaurant Car was a proper restaurant car underframe not a generic underframe, there was even a deal of satisfaction in actually getting a live frog point to work. These Dublo people seemed to know something about how model railways should be done that we could only aspire to. There was something quaintly British about Dublo in my mind; expensive, mysterious, complicated, duplicated and doomed. I think this is what gives it its appeal to me over its rivals when looking back with hindsight. Yes Triang appealed to kids more in its day, I think, but I find it difficult to see that any other companies offering will ever have such long term appeal again. Like model railways of every type-nostalgia plays a huge part.

Interesting thread. Does anyone know anything about H&M the company? Surely they made other electrical items other than Model Railway controllers. When did they start out and when did they go bust (I assume they stopped manufacture before Hornby took the name)

A friend has passed me his Hattons 14XX as it’s not running well. I am a 0 Gauge modeller and not familiar with the Hattons decoder that’s fitted. Does anyone know if it can be fitted with Stay Alive capacitor (if I can find where to locate such a device!) A call to the shop drew a blank.

While C.J. Freezer plans are always interesting just be aware that he crammed a lot in and you may find in practice that you need slightly more space than the plan states to get everything in comfortably and workable.

Think I managed to attach time!

Further to my previous comment I attach a photo of 0940 Crewe to Cardiff formed of a 120 with buffet in use. I snapped this in June '73 at Ludlow. It's not easily seen but the centre trailer has the word "Buffet" in corporate blue/ grey style plus a red line above the buffet area. It's most frustrating as I actually took a specific photo of the trailer but can't find it!

The buffet cars were in use for a few years, but only a few, on the Birmingham to Cardiff service. They were reintroduced on selected blue/grey livered sets, complete with short red cantrail stripe in early 70s on the Cardiff to Crewe workings after regular loco hauled services were switched to other routes. When in green livery the trailers had the word " buffet" written in the middle. Some of the later sets ( think the 3 car sets with 4 digit headcode) had non buffet trailers built. These differed in window spacing (I.e. They didn't have the blanked out section at the back of the buffet) and also didn't have a roof fan and no propane gas cabinets underneath or refrigerator equipment cabinet. It will be interesting to see what sort of job Helgan make of the interiors as they were quite distinctive with curtains at every window and mirrors on all the bulkheads. All quite reproducible in 0 I would have thought. The first generation DMU's were much maligned but the 120's and 119 were extremely comfortable even if the performance was not great by today's standards. Interestingly I have never seen a 119 with working buffet and don't know if they had the word " buffet" on the side when painted green as photos of 119 trailers in green seem few and far between.Westdale make a 119 and I had considered getting one of these and converting to a 120, guess no need now!