NORTHDUK

First, my thanks to everyone who replied. It has been an education! When I went looking for 14 foot containers I thought, for some reason now forgotten, that this was the most common size for containers. The Merit model seemed to me to be ideal and I thought the Bachmann models were either over-scale or represented some other type of container. My ignorance of the subject was extensive. Armed with the information now provided, I need to re-think the possible uses for the Bachmann models. I've been thinking of converting the Merit kit of the Thornycroft PB lorry to the versions with more conventional cabs as used by the GWR, for example. Photographs in Kelly's book show these PB 4-tonners carrying containers which overhang the rear of the bodies by a couple of feet or so. If I can replace the corrugated end of a Bachmann container with 20 thou card scored to represent narrow planking, it would be a suitable load for the model. Otherwise, I have a Dapol / Airfix Scammell Scarab in the loft and might put a Bachmann container on that. The Merit container will join the scrap pile unless anyone can suggest another use for it. Thanks again for the useful information. Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

Some years ago, I looked for railway containers that I could use as loads for lorries in 1/76 scale. I was sold a pack of three containers made by Bachmann. Two of the containers were finished in the liveries of pre-war railway companies and the third was left in bare grey plastic. They were nice mouldings but scaled out at 16 feet long whereas I wanted a 14 foot container to fit a model I was working on. I later bought a Merit container that scaled out to 14 feet and suited the model. I came across the Bachmann containers in the loft a while ago and I now wonder if they actually represent any form of pre-war or later container and, if so, when it was in use and who would have used it. They might form loads for 6-wheeled lorries. Does anyone have any information? Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

I'm glad to see that the list of Airfix Magazine articles was of interest. At a loose end yesterday, I scanned the articles onto my computer with the idea that any interested parties could e-mail me for scans of any that they thought might be useful. As the magazine ceased publication, for the second time, decades ago and the articles are c45 years old, I don't suppose anyone would mind this arrangement but if anyone feels that there is a legal or moral objection to my making them available, I'd be grateful if they'd let me know. Failing that, I'll make them available from Monday. E-mail me directly at my address below to avoid cluttering up the thread. The Cuckoo - You make a very good point about the lack of material available for the early periods of transport modelling. I'm surprised to hear that there's a shortage of GWR models, though, as I had always thought that the GWR had a very wide enthusiast following. I have the same difficulty in finding useful material for the earlier periods of road vehicle history but I've found a good many pdf files of early books on the subject on the Internet Archive. There seems to be a lot of railway material there and it might pay you to take a look if you haven't already. Here are two links to searches for GWR titles: https://archive.org/search.php?query=Great%20Western%20Railway https://archive.org/search.php?query=GWR If you use these links, remember that a proportion of the titles relate to the Great Western Railway of Canada and a few entries are for a railway in Ireland. Il Grifone - Your 43XX models seem to have followed the same path as many of my Airfix Mag conversions. Mine were mostly military vehicles and were scrapped when later sources revealed how inaccurate some of them were. Some of Chris Ellis' guesses were very wide of the mark. Even so, a few remain in the scrap box in the loft as souvenirs of a simpler time. RJS1977 - Your Aberdare conversion looks as if it turned out well. The photograph presumably shows it in undercoat. Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin northduk@googlemail.com

Although I visit RMWEB from time to time to see how thw GBL thread is progressing and to see what others have been doing with the models, I don't usually post anything as I don't have any useful contribution to make to the thread. Mention of the release of City of Truro, however, reminded me that Airfix Magazine had quite a lot of articles in the mid-1960s on the conversion possibilities of the Airfix (ex-Kitmaster) kit. I indexed my copies of Airfix Magazine shortly after I retired and I thought I'd post a list of these articles in case it might be useful for anyone thinking of conversions using the new GBL model. Some of the articles involve the use of parts from the Prairie Tank kit which is now £10.10 from Dapol so they might be rather an expensive proposition for a static background model. In addition, the different breakdown of parts between the kit and the new model would probably require a different approach. Even so, the articles might provide a useful starting point and the magazines are currently very cheap on E-Bay UK. Anyway, here's the list: AIRFIX MAGAZINE ARTICLES on CITY of TRURO KIT CITY OF TRURO DETAILING FEBRUARY 1967 CITY OF TRURO KIT REPRESENTS LOCO AS APPEARED IN PERIOD DEC 1956 TO 1962/3 P318 JUNE 1965 (LETTER) CITY OF TRURO MOTORISING JULY 1965 GWR 43XX CLASS MOGUL CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO & PRAIRIE TANK KITS Pt1 THE LOCO MAY 1967 GWR 43XX CLASS MOGUL CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO & PRAIRIE TANK KITS Pt2 MOTORISING THE MOGUL (TENDER MODS & MOTOR) JUNE 1967 GWR 93XX MOGUL CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO & PRAIRIE TANK KITS AUGUST 1967 GWR ABERDARE CLASS LOCO CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO SEPTEMBER 1967 GWR BIRD CLASS LOCO CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO KIT MARCH 1968 GWR BULLDOG CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO KIT & PRAIRIE TANK WHEELS DECEMBER 1967 GWR COUNTY CLASS CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO NOVEMBER 1967 GWR CURVED BULLDOG CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO FEBRUARY 1968 GWR DUKEDOG LOCO CONV FROM CITY OF TRURO & PRAIRIE TANK KITS APRIL 1968 GWR FLOWERS & ATBARAS - FLOWER CLASS LOCO CONV FROM CITY of TRURO JUNE 1968 The letter in the June 1965 issue makes the point that the kit represents the locomotive as it appeared in the 1950s and 1960s and this might be worth remembering in relation to the GBL model. I hope this is of some use. Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

TheWeatheringMan, Il Grifone and Jamie92208, Thanks for your explanations of the scale versus gauge question. As a maker of purely static models, I hadn't considered the practicalities of fitting motors into the locomotives but it makes sense now. I was most interested in the historical accounts of the emergence of HO and OO. It would be interesting to know more about the history of scale models generally, especially as it would probably differ widely from one subject area to another. I must admit that I've found this contact with railways and railway modelling very interesting. Railways have such an attractive combination of colours, textures and activity that I find it easy to imagine the fascination of setting up and running a scenic layout. In particular, railway layouts tackle the modelling of townscape to an extent that is usually ignored. It has only been in very recent years that the emerging interest in models of commercial vehicles has produced any other attempt to represent the industrial urban scene in model form. The availability of more plastic kits of non-railway buildings would be a great help. WeatheringMan, Thanks for your reply to my post. In all honesty, I doubt if anyone would learn much from seeing my attempts at improving the Mallard but I'll certainly try to get some photographs taken when I eventually finish it. At my present glacial rate of progress, it could take me a good while to start the work let alone complete it! Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

I have just read TheWeatheringMan's Post No. 348 and thought that I would add my own comments. I agree that the comments made by Chris116 seem to be determinedly negative rather than objective. He is entitled to his opinion, of course, and may have intended his remarks to be polemical rather than a literal statement of his feelings about the GBL models. Some time ago, I contacted this forum to say that I had bought the Mallard model although I'm not a railway modeller. I asked for information and received some very helpful replies. Since then, I've visited the forum occasionally to see what other people think of the later models and to see what people have been doing with the Mallard. As an impulse buyer, I'm probably part of the target market for GBL and I take a different view from Chris116. Although I'm not a railway modeller, I've been making models since the late 1950s. I must have built hundreds of plastic kits as well as carrying out conversions of varying complexity and a certain amount of scratch building. This means that I'm not uncritical where models are concerned but I'm also realistic in my expectations. I rarely encounter a plastic kit that is entirely accurate or convincing despite the fact that the manufacturers market them specifically to modellers and often stress accuracy as a selling point. As a rule, I buy a kit in the expectation that it will need some degree of correction and some refinement or replacement of detail. This also applies to resin and white metal kits and aftermarket parts. Even so, I'm no more than an average modeller of ordinary dexterity. The first stage of any model is the research needed to evaluate the kit and decide what needs to be done to bring it up to scratch. When I bought the Mallard model, I didn't expect it to be any better than most plastic kits and I understood that a pre-assembled and finished model would include some compromises for practical and financial reasons. I consider the standard to be reasonably good as far as the plastic mouldings are concerned. The metal parts will need cleaning up and I felt that they were a weak point. Nevertheless, some rather tedious work with a flat file will put them right for a static model. After reading the booklet that came with the model and doing some research on the internet, I can see what will be needed for my purposes. In particular, some painting in the cab and tender, the addition of the fabric canopy attached to the cab roof, adding the cab side panels (doors?) making the steam pipes that run along beside the front bogie, adding plastic card flanges to the rearmost bogie wheels and some cleaning up in places. If I were a railway modeller, I might see more work to do but this will do for me. I've never understood the question of scale track gauges where the running gear is a different scale from the rest of the model but I can easily live with the 16mm on the Mallard. If I were not a modeller and had bought the model because it was cheap and looked nice, I probably wouldn't worry about scale accuracy at all and would simply take pleasure from the attractiveness of the model as an object. There is no legitimate objection to that and and the buyer would be happy with his purchase. These models are certainly cheap but I wouldn't call them nasty and I cannot see how they could bring railway modelling into disrepute. A modeller would understand the factors involved and approach them accordingly. A casual purchaser wouldn't see much wrong with them anyway and wouldn't condemn railway modellers on the strength of these models. Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

69843, Brian and SAC Martin, Thank you for the detailed replies to my questions. It looks as if I can content myself with a little detail work and a simple scenic base, possibly based on the display plinth provided. The research involved will be interesting and a complete change from my usual areas of interest. With my best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

Brian, Thanks for your quick reply to my question about Mallard. Apparently, it's a more complicated project than I had expected but an interesting one! Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin

SAC Martin, Thanks for your reply. If I understand you correctly, the model represents Mallard as it is now and not in the form in which it broke the record. Does this mean that the tender as supplied is of a different pattern altogether or would it be possible to convert it to the original type? Would it need much work to convert? If it's a practical proposition to back-date the tender, is there a readily available paint to match the colour on the locomotive? For that matter, does the locomotive itself need to be back-dated? Gordon McLaughlin

Although I'm not a railway modeller, I bought the GBL Mallard this week with the intention of tidying it up and possibly making a small scenic base for it. I'm fairly pleased with the model so far but it has been rather sloppily assembled. Most irritatingly, the connecting rod (if that's the right name) that fits onto the rear driving wheel on one side has been forced into place and has broken as a result. With luck, superglue will deal with it. The magazine seems to be pretty good; I found it well written and informative as I have no railway references to work from. This leads me to a question about the model. The magazine mentions that the tender was so arranged that relief crews could make their way forward through it to reach the cab. There are no photographs of the rear of Mallard's tender in the magazine and I can't find one on Google Images but photographs of other A4s show a bellows-like arrangement on the rear face of the tender, like those seen on corridor carriiages. Neither the GBL model nor the Hornby model as seen in on-line photographs has this feature and there seems to be nothing on the model tender that would allow the crew to enter it from the rest of the train. Is this correct for Mallard's tender or should it have some additional details that the model doesn't represent? Now that I've seen this first model, I'm tempted to buy the second release, the Coronation. I can't justify buying any others at £8.99 though. This is the second partwork that I've bought recently for the first issue "loss leader". My main interest is in road vehicles of all kinds, military and civilian. A partwork dealing with military vehicles appeared a few weeks ago and offered a 1/72 scale American Gun Truck as used in Viet Nam for £1.99. I bought one and measured it. It turned out to be remarkably accurate and quite well made. By removing the gun truck fittings and the winch, I'm well on the way to converting it to a cargo truck that I've long fancied. The only plastic kit of the truck is at least £10.00, which is a bit steep for what it is, so I've saved myself some money and embarked on an interesting small project. The magazine, unfortunately, was poor with no evidence of proof reading or editing. It went into the bin but I'll keep the Mallard magazine. Best wishes, Gordon McLaughlin