Jon Harbour

Out of interest, any suggestions for suitable figures for the autocoach driver in the 1930s period? Thanks! Jon

I'm sure I've seen a photo somewhere of a four autocoach sandwich... with a 64xx providing the power. I'll have a dig around.

Guilty as charged M'lud.... didn't mean for things to go in that direction, but I suppose it was inevitable....

The other thing I'd really love of course is a decent 14xx / 48xx.... Let me just try to put the lid back on that can of worms!

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I'm trying to figure our how to get inside one of these Hornby Autocoach models to populate it?

Does anybody think there is a likelihood of Dapol re-running their OO gauge 14xx any time soon? Having recently started collecting OO as well as N, this is one locomotive missing from my stable. I keep hunting for a good second hand one... but not having any luck....

Thanks Martin - that's a great find! It's kind of what I thought would be the scenario - mill out a space in the weight for the decoder. My challenge is somewhat different- I've got a sound decoder, stay-alive, firebox glow LED and speaker to fit! Clearly not going to fit in the locomotive without radical surgery. It will go in the DCC-ready version if the decoder socket is removed and the screws the socket fitted to are milled down. However, that isn't going to fly for this version! Looks like the tender option will be the go, but the firebox glow LED may have to be sacrificed! Before the locomotive arrived, I found a sound install guide for the DCC Ready version - YouChoos guide to fitting sound and firebox glow to 2251 Collett Goods - but unfortunately the model I have is not DCC ready. It's going to be an interesting challenge...

I thought I'd expand upon this to show what I found upon taking the locomotive apart. Firstly, the fully assembled locomotive and tender: The above image of the locomotive doesn't do it justice - I probably need to load another. It doesn't really show how the interior weight forms part of the boiler shape or the crude means of connecting the locomotive and the tender. The locomotive body came away easily enough via two screws, one at the front of the body that does into the weight and one at the rear that goes into the cab interior. Here's the inside of the body. You can see the two holes front and rear where the screws come through from the chassis and fix the body to the chassis. The middle hole houses a screw that fixes the weight to the locomotive body. Here's a close-up of the rear hole that goes into the cab interior. Next is the cab interior itself. According to the service sheet I have found on-line, this is supposed to separate from the locomotive body, but it appears fairly firmly attached to me and up until now I haven't plucked up the testicular fortitude to start surgery! Any ideas on how it can be removed without the need for radical surgery? I'd like to remove it to paint it and I also want to fit an LED for the firebox glow. The interior weight is removed via another screw, leaving a nice big space (but no weight) and another hole where the weight is attached to the body. And here is the weight itself, which cleverly forms part of the underside of the boiler. Just like Eric and Ernie (you can't see the join)! One option I'm considering is milling away much of the weight (fully aware of the potential impact to haulage capability) to make room for the decoder, stay-alive and speaker. This loco will never haul more than three coaches and a few wagons, so the loss of weight may not have too much of a negative impact! Here's the bare-bones chassis. Actually hooking up the decoder will be simple once I figure out where to put it and what to remove from the interior! Whilst I had my screwdriver out, I took the tender apart as well - again two screws - very easy. The inside of the tender body looks a possibility to hold all the DCC sound components, but the question of connecting to the motor in the locomotive when there is no electrical connectivity between tender and loco and a very primitive hook arrangement to connect tender and locomotive is pertinent here. I confess the tender approach is tempting. It might lead to me removing the plastic coal load and putting real coal in its place as well! Would welcome advice / suggestions from the collective wisdom of the forum. I've done a google search for fitting DCC to this model but drawn a blank. When I do figure all this out, I will post details of what was done. Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to provide? Surely somebody has done this?

Morning everyone, I recently bought a Bachmann 32-304 Collett 2251 class locomotive second hand and on arrival found that it did not have the 8 pin DCC socket I thought it had. Is there an install guide anywhere for this locomotive? I get the feeling some surgery involved as the space I've seen on DCC ready versions of this model show the socket in the boiler. In the model I have, that space is occupied by a significant weight. Pictures to follow of what I mean. I will also document what I do to get this working in this thread. Thanks in advance if you can help!

If I recall from my last visit to Paddington station in 2017, platform 1 would have the corridor facing south. Is that correct? I remember getting a photo of my daughter with Paddington on platform 1!

Very cool. It was a very different way of working, wasn't it? Thanks for the suggestion.

That implies a practice of arrival and departure platforms I guess... Not sure it's always feasible, but possible I suppose. It certainly makes it a little more convenient for people when boarding the train.

Thanks! Makes perfect sense now! So that means that a rake of thee should be considered as LH Brake - Non Brake - RH Brake in order to maintain the corridor being on the same side.

I'm in the process of acquring stock for an OO gauge GWR 1930s layout and was looking at the Hornby bow ended Collett coaches. Please forgive my lack of knowledge, but what is the difference between left hand and right hand coaches? Thanks in advance!

Good to know that the support for NCE is being improved. I bought myself an NCE Powercab many years ago and also my local club uses Powercab / Powerpro set-ups on all their DCC layouts. Hence I'm not very keen to invest in a different DCC system to support the use of iTrain. However, at this stage, I am a very long way from having a working layout at home, let alone one that supports computer control! It's academic interest at this stage!

Obvious really! I can be a at times! D'oh!

Quick question n these pickups. Are the two wipers electronically separate? It looks like they are. By that I mean that you can run a wire off each side to provide the anode and cathode of a circuit - for example linking to an LED with a resistor. Thanks!

When I saw this advertised at £79.50 on the Rails web site like GWR-fan I couldn't resist. I got the shunting bug whilst helping on my local club's layout at the last exhibition held in Sydney before COVID-19 shut everything down and this seemed like the perfect loco for a smallish shunting puzzle type layout (which I have yet to start building of course). I have only had one chance to actually run my 1363, but my intitial impressions are very favourable. It is heavy, so haulage should not be an issue, but then it is likely to be moving no more than a few four or six wheel wagons at any given time. It ran quite smoothly from the start and given a bit more time for running in (I only had time for a few minutes "testing" on a friend's layout) I dare say it will prove to be an excellent runner. One thing I did notice though is that it featured a lot of pre-fitted detail items (very nice too!) but they actually interfere with the movement of the couplers. I've fitted Kadee 18s to it as I want to be able to shunt hands-free and am considering minor surgery to ensure the couplers have unrestricted movement! Overall though, very happy with my purchase.

Not a bad idea, but to be honest I was after the specific wagon and they were ordered from a well-known Liverpudlian on-line retailer and I live in Sydney, Australia. I recently had one particularly well-travelled package from Sheffield arrive - it had left the UK in March, returned to the UK mid-April and returned on another trip to Sydney in late April to arrive in my grubby mits on Friday just gone! Worth the wait though...

Here are two examples of what I was talking about... they are exactly as GWL described. The screw in coupling is easy enough... but I suppose my question is how easily the couplings handle corners. With the GMR type, my concern is how much force is needed to get the original coupling out! Wary of breaking anything...

Hello everyone, I've just started to expand into OO gauge from N gauge and have found that some of the wagons I have bought amongst my first set of purchases don't have NEM-362 coupling sockets. My planned layout is to be a shunting puzzle set firmly in Era-3 and I am planning to convert all of the stock I purchase to Kadees from the outset. NEM-362s are obviously very easy, the Kadee 18 appears to be the weapon of choice. However, the three non-NEM wagons have left me wondering what are the options. The three wagons in question are: R6816 6 plank wagon "Crynant Colliery Company" - this has a screw mounted tension lock. R6812 7 Plank Wagon "John Vipond" - this has a different mounting that appears to be of an older design. R6813 7 Plank Wagon "Philips, George and Co" - this is the same mounting as R6812. Unfortunately, I haven't got access to my local model railway club at the moment due to COVID-19 temporarily closing it down, so I thought I'd try the collective RMWeb brains trust for advice. This is a very basic question I know, but I have not touched OO gauge stock for more than 40 years (gulp!) and would welcome some advice. Thanks! Jon

I was there will the Hills Model Railway Society - we were showing our layout "Springfield Junction".

We at Hills Model Railway Society cancelled our show - I think you have it down as Blacktown (May 2nd - 3rd).

So glad I found this thread. It had one sketch that I was really interested in - #23 - Neopixel addressable LEDs. Just what I was after for my terraced houses. They are low relief with an upstairs front room, a downstairs front room and a fireplace. Thanks Rudy - fantastic thread and I have now started following your blog.

Love it Bernard! Prototype for everything... The Magnorail idea with the bikes is very cool.