Robin Verth

These are the couplings my Bachmann 56xx takes, the part number is 36-061 for a packet of 10, when I am in the Model Shop I always pick up a couple of packs. I would be interested to how you fitted the Bachmann chassis as a number of years ago I acquired a Bachmann 56xx chassis to replace the one in my Mainline 56xx, I found that the Bachmann chassis would not fit the Mainline body, I eventually found a spare 56xx Bachmann body and resurrected a Bachmann 56xx for less than the Mainline 56xx cost when I brought it (£24.99), the Mainline 56xx is now my sole remaining Mainline loco and is still in running order. I put down the body not fitting to Bachmann re-tooling the body.

During times of low demand Private Owner wagons would be hired out, loads carried varied sugar beet, potato's, sand, gravel, stones, shingle, soil, bricks, iron ore, oil drums, building rubble, manure& treated sewerage (anyone remember Morganic fertiliser), almost any load is possible, During World War 2 there was a shortage of bolster wagons for the carriage of timber a number of private owner mineral wagons had there end doors removed and were permanently coupled end door end to end door end for carrying timber, others had the top plank over the wagon door reduced in height, these were supposed to be used as merchandise wagons and not be loaded with coal, there is photographic evidence that some were loaded with coal. The charges would be levied via the Railway Clearing House.

To be honest I did not know what product was originally used to strip the paint off the 700 class, I had assumed it was something like Detol, it may have been a harsher commercial paint stripper that affected the composition of the plastic mouldings, though some of the plastic parts were unaffected, I have since used Detol on some China produced models with no problem.

A Word Of Warning I use Detol to strip old paint from older models, but I am now wary of using it on the more modern models, I acquired a Hornby 700 class pre owned, in the advert picture it looked as if had been poorly re painted with tar brush strokes visible, when the model arrived on inspection the model looked to be poorly painted, loco body & tender top removed and put into the Detol bath, checking regularly every 20-30 mins there was no progress on paint removal after 12 hours the plastic parts of the loco body and tender were removed from the Detol bath, they had gone soft, and what I had thought was poor repainting brush marks were damage to the plastic, it looked as if the previous owner had used Detol or something similar to remove the paint, the parts were duly consigned to the scrap bin, luckily within a week a certain auction site had a listing for a Hornby 700 body and tender at a reasonable price as the chassis from the original looked unused, I ended up with a Hornby 700 class for under £50 an a valuable lesson learnt not to use Detol on Hornby China produced models, lucky I was not out of pocket over this incident.

I have pre-ordered for some time now, the lack of a local Model Shop is one reason and of the two nearest one only stocks Hornby, the other does not stock every make, in the past I would wait until the model arrived and then buy it, often they had sold out to pre orders on one occasion I was told that they had ordered 50 of a certain model and had been sent 5, even pre ordering does not guarantee getting the order, some time back I put in an order for Hornby's rebuilt LSWR suburban coaches on the day they were announced, when they began arriving at the shops I got an email telling me my order had been cancelled as the manufacturer has reduced their order and they had insufficient stock to complete all the orders, on checking I found they were however available direct from Hornby. I have just checked and I have 21 items on pre-order for my credit cards sake I hope they do not all arrive together. Also pre-ordering gives the retailers and manufactures some insight on how popular a model is going to be and how many to make or as in some cases if there is insufficient interest the project is shelved or cancelled.

OO works have announced that their next loco for 2023/24 is a ex L&Y Aspinall Class 27 0-6-0.

I have two Hornby S15's, one early crest and one late crest, I pre-ordered both, they were both run in on a rolling road and then DCC fitted, after a short time I noticed that one was speeding up and slowing down at random (I can not remember which one), looking on the web I found out that there was a problem with some S15's motors failing the first signs being speeding up and slowing down before eventual failure, I sourced replacement motors for both models, as of yet I have not replaced the problematic motor, a change in my modelling meant that the largest engine in use would be a N class, I think the problem maybe with the early production models, I seem to recall the Box Shifters offering big discounts on the S15's not too long after its introduction.

The Oxford rail coupling is from the ex GER Van, another difference between Oxford Rail couplings and other makes is the Oxford Rail coupling hook is steel other makes use a non ferrous metal.

Oxford Rail couplings have different dimension to Bachmann, Hornby & Dapol couplings, the NEM boxes are shorter, to show the difference the Oxford Rail are on the right, Bachmann on the left.

I have quite a few Bachmann N class loco's, none of mine have the cab leaning forward, there is one of the Bahmann N class to avoid Cat No 32-50 Loco No. 31813 this suffers from Mazak rot to the footplate this can cause the cab to lean forward, when first purchased mine, the dealer opened the box to take the loco out to test it on the first one the smoke deflectors fell of and was replaced with another loco from stock, the replacement was OK (at first), a few years later it was taken out of its box to have a DCC chip fitted, there was no sign of any deformation to the footplate, the DCC chip was fitted and the loco reassembled and put on the rolling road to program and test the DCC chip, literally before my eyes the footplate started to distort and fall to pieces, at that time Bachmann would supply a new footplate free of charge.

About 30+ years ago there were adverts in the model railway magazines for a track cleaner built into a Lima class 33, One of the women who worked with my wife told me it was her son and his friend were behind the project, from memory the adverts ran for about two years I don't know how well they sold but I have never seen one.

Thanks, I had no idea that the salt wagon uses the same chassis, in the original article (I can not remember where I saw it) the axel boxes were backdated using plasticard.

Hornby, Bachmann & Dapol all supply packs of replacement metal wagon wheels, some years ago I changed out all the plastic wheels on my rolling stock for metal wheels, after the changeover to metal wheels the rolling stock free running improved, the locos could pull longer trains and the track kept cleaner. I had the same problem with some wagons with the wheels being a bit stiff, with these with the wheels in place gently squeeze the axel boxes together and rotate the wheels a few times this usually frees the errant wheels. If I want to replace the chassis on old Tri-ang wagons I use the chassis from the Bachmann China Clay wagons it is virtually a direct fit, I have replaced the chassis on a number of mineral wagons and vans, the donor wagons come from toy fairs or model railway exhibitions, they can often be picked up for £5-£8 a time the last batch a few weeks ago worked out a £7 a wagon.

Out of curiosity I watched the video, I quite liked his interpretation of Percy, in the commentary he says he changed the wheels but not the axels, I have a set of pug wheels in my spares box and looked at their construction with a suitable gear puller it is quite simple to remove the wheel from the axel, I do not have any spare Peckett W4 wheels/axels to check the axel diameter, the video inferred that they fitted with no problems. The video gave me inspiration as I have an ARC kit to build of a Barclay 12in 0-4-0ST which uses the Hornby Pug chassis, this will become "Crossness" one of the locomotives of the Horton Light Railway, now to track down some Hornby W4 wheels for the project, now can the cylinders from the W4 be made to fit the Pug chassis?

Peco produce an adapter track cat no. SL-115 to join Code 83 to Code 75 track.

I have just notice there is a newly listed Crownline kit to convert the LMS 4F to a Southern Q on eBay with a buy it now price of £54.99. I only recall ever seeing one Q class, it was being towed by a diesel at Clapham Junction and was on the Windsor Line side, i think it ended up in the carriage sidings as a stationary boiler providing steam to heat to the carriages stabled there.

In the late 1970's early 1980's I lived in Greenford, a number of times I travelled between Greenford and Ealing by train, there were some sidings just before the line joined the main line at Ealing, there was an ex GWR tender with buffers at both ends amongst the rolling stock stored there, the stock disappeared in the early 1980's, I do not recall the date, my last journey along the line was 1985 after which I left the area, the sidings ere still there and did not appear to have been used since the early 1980's.

I can remember seeing a SR utility van at Clapham Junction about 1974, there had been a minor repair to one of the windows, under the coat of grime it was impossible to ascertain the original colour of the van, the new window surround was painted green possibly to match the original paint, this was 10 years into the BR Blue era.

In 1876 when the L&SWR purchased the 330 saddle tanks from Bayer Peacock the L&SWR was using this colour as it's livery, as delivered the class had Bayer Peacock copper capped chimneys these were later changed to stovepipe chimneys, as delivered unlikely they would have had vacuum brakes as the L&SWR adopted the Vacuum Brake some time after these loco's were supplied, I am not sure if was when William Adams was in charge (he had been brought in to sort out the W.G. Beattie disasters), or Drummond I think it was under the latter that both steam heat and vacuum breaking were introduced, only a hand full of this class were fitted with vacuum brakes. The models came from the manufacturer in this colour they were never advertised as being available in L&SWR Beattie livery, I do not know if they were a livery test (there would probably only be 1) then not proceeded with as how many people model the L&SWR as it was in the 1870's or a special commission that was not collected. I am very pleased with the models and will be used on a Light Railway layout I am building.

I've just picked up a pair from a well known auction site in crimson.

Wrenn announced the Adams Radial in their 1974 catalogue, when they ceased trading in 1992 the Adams Radial and a number of ex Hornby Dublo items like coaches, 6 wheeled stove brake van also announced at the same time, a wait of 18 years for models that never materialised.

The motor looks like an Anchorage DS13 from memory they date from the late 1970's to the early 1980's, the motors have not been available for some time, the motor's were supplied by M.G. Sharp of Sheffield, I don't know if they are still trading, I have come across this motor in a number of kit built locos the motor is OK for DC use but a nightmare for DCC one of the brushes is bonded to the motor frame and I have not found a way to isolate the brush, I have 2 remaining loco's with this motor both are waiting in the queue for replacement motors to be fitted.

In Kingston Fyffes bananas had a sliding, the bananas were unloaded through sliding doors into the warehouse, the banana Van's always arrived by special trains usually hauled by a BR Standard class 4 2-6-4T, I am not sure how the doors of the vans were opened, this was obscured by the vans, Southern meat vans were built with sliding doors, it is believed that one or more customers loading facilities could not deal with vans fitted with hinged doors.

I had problems with a Hornby J15 on testing it the motor worked the pickups were working, but it refused to move being totally unresponsive, suspecting the problem was in the tender I sourced another tender for it, it still did not run, I was going to fit a DCC decoder in it, I removed the factory fitted 8 pin socket in the original tender and hard wired the decoder, it worked first time, there was a fault in the tender wiring I never did investigate what was wrong with the wiring. I have several J15's but have only had this problem with one the others worked perfectly straight from the box, The one I had the problems with the loco it was pre-owned and came without a tender, a tender was sourced a few months later, I did not however get round to marring them up until about a year later, and that's when I found the problem. You mention the "Rats Nest" of wires between the Loco & Tender there should only be 4 wires 2 are from the pickups and 2 from the motor.

I have never had a noisy Bachman N class, or wobbly out of quarter wheels, I've had the Mazak rot but that only affected one particular model and Bachmann sent a replacement running board, I have at least 15 N Class loco's 13 are DCC fitted I also have the head code discs to fit and need to acquire crews for most of my loco's, I did pick up a number of Mazak rot affected models very cheaply for their chassis and tenders, two chassis were used to replace ones with broken valve gear on two N class brought in a job lot, another pair donated their chassis to a pair of bodies from another job lot (the tenders were included in the job lot), I have a N1 built from a Wills kit that you can hear it running on the rolling road from 50ft down the garden. The odd separate moulding on the coal I have always thought it was to hold/store the fire irons. The tender has provision for a screw fixing to allow a drawbar fixing, though there is no corresponding fitting on the loco, as far as I know the N class is the only model to have this method of loco-tender coupling or were they planning ahead for two other Southern classes that used the standard tender the L1 and Q classes.