John R Smith

Wow! That is just brilliant, in particular the use of 3D printing to resurrect the works of this engine. The last time I was personally involved with battery power was back at our club in Devon, where we had a coarse scale O Gauge L&Y 2-4-2 tank, with quite a large war surplus motor in it. This was coonected to a large Ever-Ready torch battery concealed in an LMC bakealite van. In the cab of the loco was a simple rheostat control with forwards/backwards from a central off position - no R/C for us! It all worked very well, but of course the battery could not be re-charged, so we had to buy a new one at regular intervals. I think that Greenly gets far too much criticism for his rather cavalier attitude to scale and gauge, and not enough recognition for his pioneering work back in the formative days of model railways.

That is fabulous. You have brought something back to life which could so easily have ended up in a skip, and the old girl is looking great! The coaches are amazing too, considering the state they were in. There can't be many Gauge '2' locos, let alone roling stock and track, left in the country. Does this call for a Bassett-Lowke Society sub-group?

If the seller had not mentioned the problem with the chassis block, and had said something like "used in good working condition", then you should return the item for a full refund as "not as described".

There are actually quite a few people still supplying parts (including wheels) for our old clockwork locos and rolling stock. So the drastic option of setting up your own foundry, machine shop etc may be a little bit over the top. For Bassett-Lowke, joining the Bassett-Lowke Society will give you access to a wide range of wheels and other parts. For Hornby, this is a good place to start - https://oldtintoytrainparts.co.uk/ As always, Google is your best friend . . .

This poor little Hornby tank is for sale on eBay at the moment. Caveat emptor . . .

A brilliant photo, and absolutely fascinating. I did not realise that they started out with "little" milk tankers, more or less the same size as petrol ones. But we notice that these 4-wheelers have vacuum hoses and steam heating pipes, so they were actually passenger rated stock from the outset. I would guess that the six wheel chassis were introduced to improve ride quality and raise permitted speeds. When I knew them, from the 1950s onwards, the Kensington milk ran at passenger train speeds and did not require a brake van. But where did the guard ride, in steam days? When I was involved in the 1970s the guard rode in the rear cab of the diesel loco (usually a "Western").

Thanks for the link. My experience of milk tanks was somewhat later than 1927, but I should have known there would indeed be a historical precedent! (incidentally, because we had no station pilot or shunting engine at Totnes, when we needed to move a milk tank we had to do it by hand, with a pinch bar under the wheel. You might not believe this could work, but if you lean on the bar long enough she will just move off, almost imperceptibly . . . this is actually very dangerous, because although the tank is moving very, very slowly, if you get in the way of it, it is not going to stop).

Nice photo! Now if I right-click and "Open Image in New Tab" I can really study the detail differences between the original and the Leicester redux. The most glaringly obvious is the simple difference of height over the top of the tank. And I have to say that this is one thing that ETS got right, because the real milk tanks are very low vehicles (and of course they do have six wheels, but we will ignore that). Otherwise we can see some changes ETS made to simplify the design and cut costs - the tie rods are truncated and have no nuts, and there are no outlet valves. By the way, your original B-L tank is one of the nicest I have seen and if you got it for anything less than £200 you did very well indeed!

Good grief, I hadn't thought about chairs - what a nightmare.

I am sure that this is not a new concern for many here, but although I came across the problem many years ago it was not until I got started on my vintage O Gauge project that it reared its ugly head once again. Just in the last three weeks I have encountered Bassett Lowke locomotives with serious mazak deterioration in their driving wheels. The first was a pre-war clockwork 0-4-0 tank engine (see photo 1 below). This LH front driver was expanding and cracking, with the wheel boss so far gone that it was completely loose on the axle and so had a very interestingly variable gauge. The other wheels were also affected to varying degrees. This one went back to the seller. Photo 2 is another auction listing for a six-coupled B-L clockwork mech, and in this case the driving wheel is actually falling apart. The same seller has an 0-6-0 tank from the 1950s with the same issues and a fracture in one wheel. The problem is caused by contamination of the zinc alloy with impurities, so it is possible to get one bad batch of wheels in amongst many good ones. Bassett Lowke electric engines should all be OK, as they have cast iron wheels. Anything else I should watch out for? How about coach and wagon wheels?

Well, there you go. All my good intentions blown clean out of the water. You may remember that my latest coarse scale O gauge project was intended to be ultra-purist - all the rolling stock to be genuine Bassett-Lowke, the period to be pre WWII, nothing later than ca 1950 to be allowed, no plastics, only metal chaired track on wooden battens etc etc. Up until last week all was going quite well. Then I saw a certain auction site listing. I had already managed to amass about a dozen wagons, all genuine B-L, but of course the one I could not afford was the United Dairies milk tank. They are not only scarce, but usually in lousy condition and crazily priced - £250, £300, or even more. And I like milk tanks, perhaps because I often saw the evening milk train running through Devon in the 1950s and '60s, but also because in 1974 I was a shunter at Totnes and my job was to shunt the up and down milk trains (depending on which shift I was on that week). Then I saw this listing. Not really Bassett-Lowke, of course, but B-L under Corgi. Not even made in Leicester, let alone Northampton, but in the Czech Republic. Hmm, well, yes but it did look nice and - the rest was quite predictable. So today I eagerly unpacked a reassuringly heavy box, lifted out the object of desire and it placed upon my table top layout. Guilt aside, I think I did alright for forty quid. See what you think . . .

Fred I always enjoy your videos. Not just the trains, wonderful though they are - but the music is always brilliantly chosen, too. Who is the guitar player on this one? Whoever it is, is just amazing . . . John

Well, I still do use Imperial - I wouldn't dream of using anything else for carpentry or woodwork, for example. I think, because I grew up with Imperial, I just can't visualise metric dimensions. However, horses for courses, so when working on my classic Ducati motorcycles, which were of course built in metric, I had a metric toolkit and all metric nuts, bolts etc. My Italian classic bicycles are an interesting mix of metric and BSC (British Standard Cycle) parts which are in threads per inch (!). When you come to think about it, what a desperately horrible scale O Gauge is. Seven millimetres to one foot, or 1:43.5 for heaven's sake. The Americans were much more sensible and went with 1:48. After all, if you are modelling railways in the British Isles from a period before say 1965, you are inevitably making models of rolling stock, buildings, signals or whatever which were designed and built in feet and inches. How much easier and intuitive it would be to think of 6 feet in O Gauge as 1 1/2 inches rather than 42 mm. John

I have a feeling that an awful lot of this Bassett Lowke stuff was built in imperial, not metric dimensions. If I just check over some wagons, or points, or whatever, simple imperial measurements keep cropping up. Like the B-L points I have - at first I thought the distance over check and wing rails was 26 mm, but then I realised it wasn't, quite, measured again and realised it was 25.4 mm or one good old inch. Then the tinplate rolling stock certainly is not built to 7mm scale, but something quite other. I am in the fortunate position of having a good deal of quality finescale wagons, vans etc, and if you place a B-L van or open next to a finescale one the differences are obvious. The tinplate one towers over the FS upstart, being higher and wider, and the solebar and buffer heights do not match. This difference is the more obvious the further back in time we go - so a 1921 Bing for B-L coach looks enormous next to a modern Dapol FS one. The Exley coaches are a lot nearer scale, to the extent that visually things get a bit uneasy if you start mixing them up with the tinplate stuff. Back in my younger days at the club, we had some Marklin tinplate coaches with opening doors which were so huge they were almost Gauge 1 (they would probably now be worth a fortune). None of these discrepancies matter one jot, of course, in fact it all adds to the fun. But it does make a bit of a nonsense of Bassett-Lowke's proud claim of "Models to Scale", at least as far as their O Gauge product line is concerned. John

Well, I'm measuring metric ones because my calipers don't have inches on 'em.

Very useful table, that, I don't seem to have it in my 1942 edition of the Handbook. Anyhow, the dimensions given for 0 gauge wheels are exactly what all my B-L rolling stock in fact has. Some of my pre-WWII ones have an even tighter b-t-b, a shade under 27 mm, more like 26.8 or so. They are all pretty scary to look at when you are used to 7mm fine scale. If I try running some of my FS wagons through the B-L turnouts they just crash and burn, which is quite amusing and proves the point (dreadful pun intended).

Hello everybody And many thanks for all of your thoughtful and very useful replies. It has made me realise that I was making quite a few rather foolish assumptions while diving headlong into a rather different area of railway modelling. The last time I was close up and personal with coarse scale 0 gauge was in 1964, and since about 1971 I have been dabbling on and off with fine scale 0 using a bit of Peco Streamline and more often my own home built track. I have always used the Gauge 0 Guild fine scale track and wheel standards, and everything has always worked brilliantly - I have had great reliable running and no derailments. So, I suppose rather unwisely, I had rather thought that there would be a similar simple set of standards for coarse (or "standard") scale 0. I am not too bothered about the errant performance of my new parcels van. I do realise that you cannot just push the wheels in to reduce the b-t-b, because as you say a narrow wheel profile will then give trouble at the crossing. The thing that would be nice would be simply to re-wheel it, but now I have not the faintest idea what to re-wheel it with. My first thought was Slaters, but perhpas they too are now 28 mm b-t-b for coarse scale? I can find no info on their website to tell me. I have managed to purchase some really nice genuine B-L sectional track in 18 inch lengths, a lot of it brass rail, including two beautiful RH and LH points. It is all like new, some in the B-L boxes, so I am determined to use it for the station part of of my planned small layout. If things won't run on it, then they don't get run. So far, everything I have got together has run through the points just fine, except for my miscreant van (which, as Nearholmer says, is probably not an Exley but a Westward or Westdale kit build, and so too late for the project anyhow). The idea is that you should be able to look at my set piece and see only what you would have seen on an 0 gauge model railway of the period say from 1930 to 1950 (and then along came W. S. Norris). As so often happens, when I started out on this mad project I had at first some amazing beginner's luck - I got a gorgeous B-L compound in fabulous condition in the original box, then I stumbled on the B-L track as mentioned above. Since then, of course, it has been mostly down hill and I have had some real rubbish not only from the Bay but also from traders who shall be nameless. But undaunted we shall travel on! John

Thanks, Fred. Gosh, that Duke of York doesn't hang about, does it? I think, that although the prospect of endless plain line is quite attractive, I do want some sidings and a bit of shunting to keep me happy. So B to B is going to have to be wrestled to the ground! Best, John

Good afternoon from Cornwall, where it seems that summer has passed us by. I'm rather new to this vintage model railway lark (although I did quite a bit of dabbling some 60 years ago now, when it wasn't called vintage at all but just old junk). So a bit of background - for a while now I have put my fine scale 7mm modelling on hold, and have been collecting together the nucleus of an 0 gauge project layout which will consist in the main of Bassett Lowke rolling stock, buildings and track from the inter war period, 1930s mostly. Perhaps it might have a tiny garnish of Hornby, but only a garnish. (Bassett Lowke because my grandfather worked there, and my mother's family all come from Northampton). Motive power is intended to be solely clockwork, with no wires or electricity to worry about. Banned on this layout will be any and all plastics and anything made after Bassett Lowke ceased 0 gauge production in 1965. So as we have full-size heritage railways, this will be a heritage model railway - and no, I am not claiming that this is a new idea and I am a great admirer of the Brighton Museum. The idea is that the layout will be a continous circuit in a spare room, and the visible part or station area will be laid in Bassett Lowke battened track. So at present we have some of said track on the kitchen table and a core collection of rolling stock, which is all good fun and takes me right back to the heady days of the early 1960s when we spent happy evenings in a vicarage garden chasing after an Enterprise which only seemed to have one speed - flat out. Anyhow, already a snag has reared its ugly head. Most unwisely I have already broken my own rules and acquired a bogie parcels van which I thought was Exley but is probably later kit-built. The first thing it did was to jump off the rails at every opportunity when traversing my B-L LH turnout. It would seem that the check rails are failing to do their job and check the wheels from going the wrong side of the crossing nose. So out came my dial calipers and I realised that there was a problem with standards, hence this post. Having checked all the wheels I have, here are my findings - The pre-war Bassett Lowke wheels have a back-to-back of 27.0 mm. My post-war Exley wheels have a back-to-back of 27.5 mm (also given in the 1957 catalogue). But the Gauge 0 Guild standards give a back-to-back of 28.0 mm for coarse (or standard) scale. Oh dear. The parcels van which is giving the problems has a B to B of 28.0 mm , which is actually wider than anything else I have even though it is coarse scale according to the G 0 G. Have others here encountered these problems? And what B to B does current trackwork like Tenmille 0 gauge or Maldon track expect? Should have stuck to fine scale, shouldn't I ?

I am not sure if I should try to resurrect this old thread, but here goes anyhow. I have the opportunity to buy an elderly Exley for my O gauge project, and the coach is in very nice condition, except - some of the compartment divisions and seats have come loose and are rattling around inside. So - my question is, how difficult would it be to get inside this coach to sort out the seats and interior? I know that Exley roofs are all in one piece with the body sides, so that you can't just whip the roof off. The coach is an O gauge Exley K5, non-corridor, 50 foot suburban LMS type. Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer! John

Just my two-penn'orth For O Gauge (as that's my scale), and I already have the Dapol 08, Class 122, and lots of wagons - Another vote for the Class 22 in 7mm, as it would suit my location and period (although I hated them at the time, and I think everybody else hated them as well - funny how distance lends enchantment to the view). And for a small branch line steam locomotive, why not the Ivatt Class 2, 2-6-2 tank? These were a jolly handy little engine which would make a refreshing change from the wonderful but boring GWR 45xx tank. And in the early 1960s they turned up all over the place - I had trips behind them from Wadebridge to Bodmin (North), on the Callington branch from Bere Alston, from Halwill Junction to Torrington, and on the old S&D from Highbridge to Evercreech Junction. They were well liked by their crews and were free-steaming modern little engines with a comfortable cab and a smooth ride. Which you would appreciate if you had ever spent much time on a pannier tank. John

Ho hum. Well, I suppose there are two possibilities here, either - All the other Heljan 03s have well behaved buffers, and I was just unlucky, or They all do have wandering buffers, buts nobody is too bothered by it. Whatever, 'tis only a fun pastime and not too serious. Have a great New Year, everyone! John

The station pilot on my Ponteglas O gauge diorama is a Heljan 03 shunter, and vey nice it is , too. However, it has a most infuriating problem. The oval buffers can rotate slightly, which means that they move around in use and are no longer horizontal, but droopy. I have looked, but cannot see any obvious way to dismantle them or how one might correct the fault. Have others here encountered the problem, and more to the point, has anybody managed to fix it?

Well, turns out I couldn't resist it despite the price tag, and I bought myself an early Christmas present. So here it is on the branch platform at Ponteglos. Having had the chance to examine the CCT properly now, it is quite impressive. As happens all too often with some component or other, both the steps on one side fell off as I (very carefully) unboxed it, but there you go. Once they were glued back on, we should note the good stuff, such as all the brake gear detail, nice buffers, and sprung axleboxes. Wheel back-to-back was spot-on. The van has a nice weight, and runs well even propelled through pointwork. Buffer locking could be an issue in tight reverse curves, though. As we have come to expect these days, the lettering and numbering is immaculate and very crisp. This is one of the very few models I have seen which has the white star on the solebar for the vacuum release. I have had a close up personal experience of the real thing, both from the platform side heaving bags and boxes around and down between the buffers at Newton Abbot cutting them off from the back of the Penzance parcels. On that basis, this one from Heljan seems to capture the character of the prototype very well.

Hmmm.... Nice backscene there, Chris. It really gives the layout some depth. Oh, and the CCT looks good too - I am getting ever more tempted, I have to admit, despite the silly money! I notice you have the brakes applied, full marks. We used to do quite a lot of business with Red Star parcels at Totnes, back in the day, but I don't recall there ever being a special van for it. It usually went in with the guard on a regular passenger service.