MikeCW

And a very nice job you have made of it too, Jim. Have you broken the insulation on the RH drivers or otherwise enhanced 3-rail electrical pick up? I understand that one dodge is to retain the 2-rail wiper pickups but re-route the wires to the chassis. I see too that you have neatly lined the splashers. I decided not to, in part through idleness, in part because I was keeping to the style of the Binns Road's paint finish. One detail which I've puzzled over in these repaints has been the colour of the valence or footplate angle. Now I know next to nothing about GWR or BR(W) liveries but my reading, and photos of preserved engines in BR guise, suggests that in BR days these were painted green. My original pair of "Bristol Castles" have them painted black. On my "Castle" restorations I have kept them green and painted only the top of the plate black. I suppose if I had kept to the Binns Road standard they should be black. Or if I had gone the whole hog, perhaps the valence under the tender body should also be green? In the scheme of things I don't think all this matters as much as a neat paint job that captures the spirit of the original model - and you've certainly done very well indeed there. Is that a Trix 4472 in the background? Mike

My latest restoration (in fact reassembly was completed only this afternoon) was the mechanical refurbishment, complete cosmetic restoration, and conversion to 3-rail, of a previously "improved" Cardiff Castle. The engine was an impulse buy, at a reasonably low price, from John Winkley. The locomotive had been renamed and numbered "I K Brunel", given some additional shaky lining, then varnished with some thick compound which certainly didn't enhance the overall appearance. Mechanically 5069 seemed fine, but a complete paint strip and repaint was required. Here it is after much work. I think it's an improvement and confirms for me that the restoration was worth the time, effort and cost involved. In summary the motor was stripped, cleaned and lightly lubed, and the ringfield magnet turned 180 degrees. The magnet was given a belt on my Ronald Dodd remagnetiser, which certainly improved noticeably the "pull" exerted on a screwdriver laid next to the motor. The holes in the tender floor were reamed for a force fit of reproduction plunger pickups sourced from the ever-helpful John Holland of MainlyTrains in Clitheroe. I left the radio suppression fittings on the motor rather than transfer them to the tender. After airbrushing the body and tender with my own brew of BR Green, black areas were brush painted (Humbrol Enamel 85). Rather than use a silver paint on the buffer heads and cylinder covers, I opted for Humbrol Gunmetal, giving a slightly less "fairground" effect. The reversing rod had been painted and showed considerable rust when the paint was removed. I decided to nickel plate it, putting a few other small items through the plating bath at the same time as it's too much of a faff to set the system up just for one tiny piece of steel. Not seen on the photos are the buffers on the engine. The originals had been replaced with what I assume were GW style buffers. One had been badly bent in a fall and I replaced them with original Hornby-Dublo buffers from a redundant "Castle" body shell. I haven't broken the insulation on the RH driving wheels, instead opting to replace the plastic wheels on the original bogie with uninsulated "Duchess/Castle" wheels to give some more electrical paths from the running rails. This seems to work fine although I would still like to find a set of uninsulated wheels for the tender. Fox transfers provided the lining and early BR Crest. One of the cabside number plates was missing so, rather than fork out for a full set of nameplates and numbers, I ordered 3D printed number plates from Railtec (excellent service) and resurrected the original name plates. These might possibly be those early Jackson Evans type which had to be snipped from a sheet. They were slightly irregular and certainly not identical in shape each side. The etching was very shallow and, after tidying them up, cleaning them with paint stripper and spraying them black, even a very gentle wipe with 1200 grit wet and dry (used dry) stuck to a small block of wood was enough to start eroding the black background. However, they pass muster and saved me a tenner in sterling. An overall spray with satin polyurethane completed the paint job. ln fact the finish turned out rather matte and I prefer a slight sheen on these old models, but I decided not to risk another coat. Stainless wire handrails and 1mm split pins from ModelFixings completed the job. My next project is a tad more daunting: a "Silver King" bought off the local internet auction site, without front bogie or tender. I have a front bogie from the spares box, a very battered tender (dent removal already started), reproduction tender top and, after finding a few odd screws, the parts list seems complete. Mike

I agree. I have had to develop some dexterity in matching modern decals to Hornby-Dublo cabs and tenders. An example is this repainted "Castle" (fitted with Romfords) where both cab and tender lining was fabricated from curves and straights from the Fox range. On the much-more-than-life-size photo the joins are indicated with the red dots. I found the Fox decals to be both accurate in register and reasonably easy to slide into position.

A very nice job indeed. The lining along the footplate edge is especially well done. Is it a decal or a paint job? I find that getting tidy lining along this edge can be a challenge on "Montrose" and "City" body castings with the moulded ridge which, I assume was a painting guide for the orange and straw lines respectively. It can be especially difficult to achieve a tidy finish when this ridge gets chipped and dinged with hard use by careless previous owners.

I acquired a Hornby-Dublo "Sir Nigel Gresley" with a horseshoe magnet chassis which had been modified to accept a large block neo magnet. In my view the magnet was just too strong and my solution was to replace it with a stack of small button neo magnets as in the photo below. I'm sure a similar arrangement could be sorted for X03/X04, or other open-frame, motors. Later I embedded the magnets in body filler to make a more workmanlike looking ensemble, but that's unnecessary of course. The chassis rolls along smoothly pulling just under 0.6 amps which, in my experience, is about par for these old, vertical armature Hornby-Dublo chassis

Your comment sent me to check the setting on my airbrush pressure gauge. The airbrush set up is mounted on the workshop wall and consists of: a detachable feed from the workshop compressor tank (set for 50psi) which is 20 metres of hose away; a pressure gauge; a moisture trap; and then 5 metres of hose to the airbrush, the first 2 metres of which run up the wall as a further moisture trap. A squint at the airbrush pressure gauge on the wall showed it set for 25 psi. Given the 5 metres of hose between pressure gauge and airbrush I suspect that barely 20 psi makes it to the Badger nozzle. So my spraying pressure isn't that much higher than yours. Also, I'm not spraying in close in a spraying booth. I generally stand in the sun at the open workshop roller door with the locomotive bodies suspended on wire, and blast away from a few inches further out than I suspect is the accepted standard. I then hang the parts in a sunny spot in the workshop to dry and, in colder weather, sometimes give them gentle encouragement with a heat gun! I'll send you a PM about electroplating old motorcycle parts. Cheers Mike

Track and Dead Frogs. Il Grifone’s comment about the problem of converting Peco points for 3 rail operation without relying on an electrically dead crossing or frog set me, first, thinking and, second, out to the shed to check on my 3 rail test track. The latter has two aged Peco points – one insulfrog and one electrofrog – in the formation. Both work fine. The crude sketch below shows what I understand to be the conventional way a scratch-built, 3-rail turnout would be wired. There are no doubt other ways of doing it. Black – negative. Red – positive. Blue – no power. Stock rails A, D and crossing/frog F are all wired up together. Stock rails and closure rails A/B and C/D are not electrically bonded. The insulating gaps between closure rails B and C and the crossing/frog F is set close enough to the crossing to avoid 3rd rail collector shoes or plungers touching the crossing F. When the turnout is set for the straight road as above, closure rail B is powered either by blade/stock rail contact or by supplementary switches on the point motor. Closure rail C is unpowered. My adaption of an early Peco Code 100 electrofrog point for my three rail test track involved some minor modifications. In addition to installing the third rail - soldered to tiny staples fitted through pre-drilled holes in the sleepers - the modifications were (a) breaking any wire connections between stock and closure rails (b) wiring together the crossing/frog and stock rails and (c) cutting insulation gaps between frog and closure rails close to the frog as indicated by the yellow arrow in the picture below. Set for the diverging road the point shows live positive rails red; live negative rails black; and unpowered rails blue. It’s all pretty straightforward, and easier to do than describe. The frog/crossing is always live; no polarity changing switches are required unless you want to avoid relying on blade/stock rail contact for electrical continuity, in which case the supplementary contacts on your favourite point motor can be used to power the closure rails. I didn’t bother. The suggestion that phosphor bronze wire can be used as a third rail is an interesting one. My initial reaction is that it would have to be reasonably thick or well-supported at close intervals to avoid sagging as a result of the constant passage of shoes and plungers. Plungers particularly seem to rely on the third rail being at, or even a whisker above, the running rails. But, as always, I stand to be corrected. Mike

I confess that I've never seen the plastic inserts for Jackson bogie and tender wheels "in the flesh". I recall an article in the model railway press, perhaps in the 1960s, suggesting that the rim of the plastic inserts could be cut away between each spoke, effectively lengthening the spokes and doing away with the over-thick look of the tyres when the plastic inserts were used "out of the box". On track matters, I thought at one point that I might make a simple circular 3-rail layout using Peco Code 100 track and points to avoid the fearsome radius and other disadvantages of Hornby-Dublo's 3-rail pointwork. I went so far as to build a test bed out of recycled track to prove the idea. It works well but age and too many other projects have effectively overtaken the idea. Mike

Found them! "Launceston Castle" was another cheap buy from Hattons. It was painted in an odd olive green shade, fitted with Romfords and those old-school Jackson bogie and tender wheels which, as always, were missing the plastic spoke inserts. Rusty handrails were in the plain brown box and "Launceston Castle" nameplates were stuck to the motor magnet (!?). I kept the Romfords but replaced the bogie and tender wheels. It was a non-runner and the restoration would take too long to describe. It runs through Dublo points but would be, and look, happier on a layout with more sweeping curves and l larger radius turnouts. Ignore the two-rail track in the photos of the finished article. The engine was parked there for the photo-shoot. When the photos of the restored model were taken it was awaiting 3D printed decal numberplates from Railtec, since fitted. The replacement wheels show to advantage just how good this model was for 1958. Mike

Thank you for your kind comments on my work. It doesn't always go according to plan but I seem to get there in the end. There's nothing original about my approach. Pretty much all my repainting of H-D BR Green engines is done with good quality, domestic gloss enamel, apart from the black for cab roofs, smokebox, running plate etc which is Humbrol enamel No 85. The latter have disappeared from the shelves as we know but I still have a couple of tins in stock. On the left is the "Rainforest Green" which I let down slightly with the "Royal Blue" to make BR Locomotive Green. The polyurethane happens to be the brand I'm using at the moment - an Australian-made product available through the local home improvement store. (I'm in New Zealand and these brands are unlikely to be available in the U.K.) All these are traditional enamels and thinned with regular mineral turpentine (including the Humbrol paint). Most of the time I don't bother about a primer. But if the body casting is really pitted then Tamiya fine primer in a spray can is my choice. The base colour is sprayed with an airbrush, a Badger "Patriot"; the black is brush painted with a quality synthetic brush. Larger areas of black, such as tender chassis, are sprayed. The paints are mixed in a small jar and screened through fine mesh to remove all lumps and nits. The mesh is life-expired nylon tights donated by my wife. If the paint and varnish won't go readily through this sieve, then it's too thick. I thin the paint using a trick I read many years ago. The jar in which the paint is mixed and thinned has a lid. Thinner is added bit by bit. At each step the jar is capped and shaken and only when the sides of the jar start to run clear as the paint settles after the shaking is it thin enough to spray. This can seem much too thin but it works every time for me. I spray at about 30 psi on a fine spray setting, taking my time and steadily building up colour. After the transfers for lining and numbers have been applied - either Dennis Williams/Dublo Surgeon reproductions, or Fox Transfers "scale" transfers - I varnish with good quality domestic satin polyurethane. Depending on how thick the well-stirred varnish is straight from the can, I thin it from 30% to 50% with mineral turps. I let this varnish coat harden off for a week or so before fitting handrails. Chemical blackening is with Birchwood Casey Super Blue, used on firearms and available in the UK from "outdoors" stores. It works cold but even better if the item to be blackened is warmed up. There is one more restoration process I have used on H-D engines - nickel plating. Another interest is vintage motorcycle restoration and I have the ability to nickel plate steel at home. It is a faff to set up the "plant" for a couple of bits of wire but I have done it on this "Castle". The nickel plating on Dublo valve gear can be very thin and wears away to reveal the brass as on this Romford-fitted example I restored. I decided that it would annoy me every time I looked at it and that it had to be re-plated. Herewith the result. I added only a few microns as I didn't want to seize the crosshead/con rod joint. I think it looks better. You can see in the top photo where, on this engine, "Launceston Castle", I have broken the insulation of these early Romfords at the rim. This is very noticeable in the photos but not at all visible in practice. "Launceston Castle" was a battered, 2-rail, non-runner, already fitted with Romfords, which I brought back from the brink and converted to three rail. If I can find a decent photo of the finished project I'll post it here. I hope this answers your questions. Mike

"Launceston" is a conversion of a 2-rail Hornby-Dublo "Barnstaple" to 3-rail. The engine was bought on the local internet auction site for the equivalent of around 50 GB Pounds. At some time in its life it had received etched nameplates from, I suspect, Fox Transfers. That, and the fact that it ran, were about the only good things to say about it, as can be seen from the photo which accompanied the auction listing. The seller wasn't even sure which way round the tender should face. This one required more than a sensitive cosmetic make-over. Getting out the heavy duty paint stripper was the first step towards a complete repaint. Surprisingly the tender body and paintwork were in good shape. So I simply cleaned the tender body and donated it to the "Dorchester" refurbishment described above. I repaired and repainted the tender body from "Dorchester" and used it in this much more thorough-going restoration. Herewith the finished article: 3-rail pick-up fitted; insulation broken on the driving wheels as on "Dorchester" above; magnet turned 180 degrees for "right way" running; remagnetised; cleaned and serviced. Machine screws and hardware were polished and chemically blackened if the original nickel plating was completely degraded. The engine and tender received a complete repaint with my own brew of BR green. The basis is a locally produced gloss enamel called, I recall, "Forest Green". As this is a slightly yellow shade I add Royal blue, drop by drop, until I get a match with the Hornby-Dublo paint. This mix has served me well for several repaints of "Castles" and "Duchesses". Stainless handrails, Fox lining and etched nameplates and a spray of satin polyurethane completed the restoration.

I haven't posted on here for quite a while but David's comment on the affordability, or rather lack thereof, of a H-D "Dorchester" prompted me to provide photos of my example. This was an original "Dorchester", with box, which I bought from Hattons, less VAT plus pre-Covid postage, for 68 GB Pounds. But there were several problems. The engine had been converted to 2-rail, "detailed" with real coal on the tender, vac pipe though the front buffer beam, and Wrenn bogie wheels, and had suffered some other brutalities. It was also filthy. But with cleaning and careful, minimal cosmetic restoration (such as Dublo-style lining transfers on the cylinders), an original 3-rail pick-up, mild mechanical overhaul, and the swapping of some parts with my other more "restored" H-D and Wrenn West Country Pacifics, I have a near-original "Dorchester" on the shelf at a budget price. The one major departure from stock (as the Americans would say) is that the locomotive retains insulated drivers on the RH side. I broke the insulation by drilling through the insulated bush and driving a brass pin between axle and wheel, This can just be made out, under zoom, at the 1 o'clock position on the rear driver in the last of these three photos. I have no intention of passing it off as an unmolested example and have a piece of paper in the box describing its provenance. If anyone's interested I can put up some photos of some other Dublo restorations and repaints. Some are recent, some may have been posted here a few years ago but have been lost in the great cataclysm. Mike

Here are a couple of photos of the use of heat shrink insulation for plunger pick-ups in a Castle conversion to 3-rail. In the first photo the insulation has been shrunk on to one of the plunger tubes. The other is ready to fit. In the second photo, the insulated tubes have been pressed into the holes in the tender chassis. Mike

That's a nice conversion. Like you I was puzzled why I couldn't force the reproduction plunger pick-ups into the holes in the tender chassis in my two "Castle" conversions to 3-rail. (There is a third one in the erecting shop at the moment,) My instinct was to blame the quality of the pick-ups but they had garnered excellent reviews and were otherwise very well finished. I opened the holes out, first with a drill, about 1/64th of an inch larger than the diameter of the hole as I recall, then reamed them, very carefully, with a taper reamer, alternating the entry of the reamer between top and bottom of the hole, constantly checking the fit. My solution to insulation, rather than use the wrapping material that came with the plungers, was electrical shrink wrap. It all worked out well. Did you reverse the magnet so that the engine would run "right way" i.e. not run in reverse when all the other original 3-rail engines ran forward? With the 2-rail Castles having plastic bogie and tender wheels, and driving wheels insulated on one side, when converted to 3-rail and without further modification, pick-up from the outside rails will be from the uninsulated driving wheels on one side only. That may well be enough - after all the wiper pick-ups for 2-rail running bear only on two driving wheels. In my conversions I have replaced the bogie and/or tender wheels with metal, uninsulated wheelsets, adding more paths for keeping the chassis live to the outside rails. Another dodge is to keep the 2-rail nickel-silver wipers in place but connect the plastic coated wire from the pick-ups to a convenient spot on the chassis. Mike

Phil, I think there's a difference between, on the one hand "banging on" about an issue (or descending into the nasty, personal attacks which are too often a feature of social media) and, on the other, objectively recounting an experience with a retailer so that others can make a decision whether or not to buy from them. Personally, I have valued the stories of poor service. They have confirmed that my own bad experience with Modelmaster was not a one-off, and have also confirmed my decision not to buy anything from this retailer again. It's a fair suggestion that the dissatisfied could or should take action, singular or joint. However, some other factors come into play here. There are three responses customers can make to poor service: (1) take action by complaining, agitating, initiating legal action and so on; (2) walk away and shop elsewhere; or (3) a bit of both. How long one is prepared to engage in the first depends on the likelihood of getting any redress or significant change, and how much time and emotional energy one is prepared to commit. For me, I've spent time chasing up an order and trying to communicate with Mr Grindlay. I have come to the conclusion that further efforts will be fruitless and too costly in my time and emotional energy. So I will walk away, inform others of my experience, and leave it at that. But the fact remains that I have paid 56 pounds to a mail order retailer from whom I have since heard nothing. Mike

I bought some items from Modelmaster in 2019. They arrived here in New Zealand in good time. In late 2019 I placed another order and paid 56 pounds via Sagepay. After a month or so of silence I sent Mr Grindlay two very polite emails (to two different email addresses I found on his website) asking if the items had been despatched. Further silence. In January 2020, three months after placing the order, I sent him an airmail letter (remember them?), enclosing copies of the emails and the original invoice, expressing my sympathy and best wishes as I had read on his website that he had been involved in a motor accident, and asked yet again a simple question - has my order been despatched. I'm still waiting for a reply and for the goods. I didn't follow up as I thought that my order had perhaps gone astray, that it might eventually turn up, and that mine must have been an unusual or exceptional experience. Having now read the posts on this (and the previous) thread, I'm apparently in good company. I appreciate that Mr Grindlay may be struggling but the fact remains that he has taken 56 pounds of my hard-earned cash and hasn't produced the items I bought from him. It seems to me that a person submitting and paying for an order from Modelmaster should not think that they are initiating a conventional commercial transaction. Rather, the stories I have read on RMWeb, and my own experience, suggest that he or she is in fact buying a ticket in a game of chance.

One of the by-products of the move from traditional analogue to digital control of layouts, not often discussed, is the occasional loss of such history. A good friend, now deceased, had a fine layout which represented over 50 years of his participation in the hobby. There were kit-built locomotives and items of rolling stock from the 1960s, some of the former on their second or third chassis. These rubbed shoulders with modified and detailed modern proprietary items. Over the years early H & M controllers had been superseded by ECM Compspeeds. H & M point motors were still in use but modifications or additions to the layout used more modern twin-coil machines. Everything was beautifully observed and modelled. Engagement with that modelling history was one of the attractions of visiting David's layout which was, until his death, under analogue control. Although I have far less investment in such history, my locomotive stock includes kit-builds from Ks, Gem and M & L, proprietary bodies on brass chassis, and even a couple of the much maligned Bachmann split chassis still happily rolling under detailed, painted and weathered bodies. When I contemplated a move to digital control I knew that, realistically, I would never fit decoders into all these engines. But I didn't want them to become "shelf queens" as happens to many locomotives as a result of an owner's move to DCC. They are respectable models, they represent considerable investment of time, effort and cash, and are part of my modelling story. Furthermore, occasional visitors to the layout have said that they appreciate the variety of stock in operation. My answer was to set up my existing layout for both analogue and digital train control. This isn't the place for a lengthy dissertation on how I managed this, although it wasn't that difficult. The outcome has been that my "historic" locomotive stock continues to operate under analogue control while new additions (or visitors) can be run under digital control. It has worked well for nearly two years.

Here's my effort - a 2-rail Co-Co converted to 3-rail and repainted in similar fashion to Garry's. It took several days and lots of masking. Another challenge with painting the Co-Co body as a Deltic was, as I recall, the central section of the roof. A stray vent or somesuch on the centre section of the roof just gets in the way of a continuous straight line, from cab to cab, between roof grey and body green, and makes masking difficult. You can just make out where I've cheated and lowered the grey/green demarcation in the central part of the roof, using microstrip to create the prototypical "beading" on this part of the roof. That said, some photos of the real thing seem to show the roof paint following this "step" but the majority (e.g. the bottom photo) show the green bodyside colour continuing in a straight line above the "beading". Mike

New Year's Greetings to All (from the Southern Hemisphere). I endorse the recommendations to leave "Crepello" as it is. It certainly looks to be in very good original condition for a model approaching 60 years old. Another reason for leaving well alone is the difficulty of matching Hornby-Dublo's lower body side colour - at least I found it difficult when I converted a play-worn 2-rail Co-Co to 3-rail and repainted it as a Deltic. (At the outset I should state that I know little about early BR diesel locomotives.) My first attempt at painting the band around the lower body was with Precision "Pale Lime Green", borrowed from a friend. It soon became obvious that I had applied the wrong colour. A knowledgeable friend advised me that Pale Lime Green was correct for Hymeks and others but was not the right colour for the Deltics, and that I should be painting the lower body Sherwood Green, a more olive shade. The Hornby-Dublo colour, as far as I can ascertain from the different colour renditions in photographs of "Crepello" and "St Paddy", looks like an in-between shade - odd as the Binns Road team usually got their colour matches pretty close to the real thing. In the end I mixed my own paint, basing the shade on photographs of the restored D9015, which at least makes my Deltic "correct" for some period of its life. I like Garry's reference to "Dead Flesh" as an option! You may notice in the photos that I didn't pick out the side window frames in silver-grey. I decided that this risked ruining an otherwise acceptable paint finish.

I now little about the real thing but what struck me when I looked at Garry's photos of the three sets (very nice collection by the way) were the different renderings of the underframes. While both the "00" and "TT" Triang sets have basically the same design of underframe, Hornby Dublo has modelled two types. I know that, back then, manufacturers sometimes put different bodies on existing, and incorrect, underframes to reduce the cost of new models, even stretching or shrinking the bodies to fit if need be. (Triang Caledonian coaches on Mk 1 underframes come to mind; or the original short "Margate" Gresleys on a GW (?) underframe.) Does anyone know if the underframes on any of these Pullman cars are nearer correct than others? Mike

Can I endorse the last recommendation. My layout is in a separate room, fully enclosed, lined and insulated, at the rear of an outbuilding on our property. The major part of the building is my general purpose workshop which includes a modelling bench under a large west facing window. Before I partitioned off the layout room from the rest of the building, I removed the fluorescent tubes which the original owner had fitted and replaced them with 6 incandescent, wide beam spotlights focused on the layout. Unsurprisingly, these proved too hot in the enclosed room in the Southern Hemisphere summer so I replaced them with equivalent led spots. These were the wrong colour temperature and some of the scenic work already completed looked, well, dreadful. I now have a mix of warm and cold lamps but the colour balance is still not quite right. As Jonathan said, only some colours were adversely affected, most were fine or at least acceptable. Recently I've been painting a four storey industrial building in weathered brick with stone trim, working, as usual, at the bench under the window. When I achieved a result that I thought looked pretty good I took it into the railway room to place on the layout. As soon as I walked under the leds the building changed colour and looked a mess. I'll do some more experimenting with different bulbs but this trial and error is getting expensive as the stockpile of redundant led lamps grows. My conclusions if using leds are, first, to get a colour balance in your lighting as near as possible to natural light so your models are not, effectively, prisoners of one lighting environment; and, second, to take the time to get this right at an early stage to save cash and annoyance later. And I fully agree with Jonathan's earlier comments and concerns about integrated, non-replaceable led lamps. Mike

You'll note on the drawing towards the bottom right that Roche (correctly) specifies M/TE/25, his drawing of the ten ton type for non-streamlined Duchesses, as the tender for this engine. As you say LMS2968, the Kitmaster combination is all a bit of a mystery.

The Kitmaster Duchess in the photos referenced by David is beautifully finished. I noticed that, although the model has the continuous, curved dropped running plate at the front, the smoke deflectors are the abbreviated type used on engines which have the "utility" style break in the running plate i.e. the smoke deflectors have no lower extension following the curve of the running plate. This (incorrect) combination features in the Roche drawing of a non-streamlined Duchess. So perhaps this was the source of the Kitmaster mouldings? Probably we will never know. Mike

In my photo of 6231 ("Atholl") put up a dozen or so posts back I'd cropped out the tender as the discussion was about the relative positions of locomotive body and chassis. I've included the tender in the picture below. From your comment quoted above I'm assuming that this must be a 1946, or soon after, photo as she is pulling a partly "de-streamlined" tender, as well as being very scruffy? (Aside from the more obvious give-aways, the height of the tender side above the front handrail, pointed out by LMS2968, is very apparent.) For me, there is a judgement call about how far one goes in modifying a Hornby-Dublo "Duchess" (or other Hornby-Dublo locomotive). It depends on what one is aiming for on a scale between a Hornby-Dublo "might have been" at one end, and an accurate model at the other. My own preference is to keep any modifications both modest and in the spirit of Binns Road. These days, if I'm after an accurate model for my "scale layout", I'll start either with a kit or a good proprietary model and a Brassmasters detailing pack. But, as always, each to his or her own. Mike

Near the bottom of page 83 82 of the thread about the retooled Hornby Coronation Pacifics https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/117259-Hornby-princess-coronation-class-duchess/page/82/ Robin Brasher has helpfully posted a photograph of the current Hornby "Duchess of Montrose" compared with Hornby-Dublo's 1950s product. Zooming in on the modern model shows clearly that Hornby have modelled the safety valve area as a "cover with four holes" rather than the "open-topped recess" of the Hornby-Dublo model. "You pays your money....." Mike