RedGemAlchemist

Right, my livestock vans have arrived.

The two with grey roofs are old Triang with thick wheels, which again concerns me that they won't be good runners considering Moxy's warning and the warnings of others; though one has white-lined wheels. Don't know if that makes a difference (hope so - the brake coach for the branch train has them as well!). The third one with the white roof, however, is a late-run Triang with modern wheels from just before they became Triang-Hornby. They'll be painted in a variety of browns to make them all look different. 

So, I managed to get two of the blood-and-custard coaches fixed. 

They're still a little banana'd but I can live with it as it doesn't seem to affect them rolling, though those old Triang wheels still concern me somewhat. I like them much they way they are. In fact I'm probably not going to repaint them, or if I do it'll be into something similar, like a carmine and white combo or something.

You might find that the older truck chassis with the open ended axleboxes have much thicker wheels than more modern types and might not run on modern track.  Although it can be done, they are not that easy to re-wheel.  It might be worth getting hold of some wagons with the newer chassis/wheels & swapping the bodies over.

Sorry, I'm probably overreacting slightly. But best to be careful after this comment by Moxy (now I've given myself the time to mull over said comment.)

Triang ones can be in Kelsby's coach shed whilst Hornby/Bachmann's can be in service? Do you plan on cobbling any of these?

Not the stock really, no. Issue is MOST of my stock is Triang. Half of the branch line train is Triang. Bulldog is Triang. Most of my freight stock is Triang.

Not that I have the necessary bogies to do so even if I wished to.

As a replacement for the van's pot belly stove, I think it's overkill...

Yes, it is a bit excessive in that regard

Ok, the four blood-and-custards arrived today... No photos because it's NOT pretty. There's some serious banana syndrome going on which I'll need to try and fix. 

Also with my propensity for collecting old Triang, and considering a previous comment when I was doing those old Triang trucks a couple weeks ago, a question comes to mind. What track would be good for a collection of both semi-modern Hornby/Bachmann and vintage Triang and Triang-Hornby?

I think my workbench needs a title like that, should get more attention!

No need to copy me mate! I know you're a fan and all but it's starting to get a tad creepy now!

I've seen your models and they looks great . You are not a failure, you're learning all the time and getting good - and so am I.

Thanks for the support, but the title is meant to be funny. I don't so much think I'm a failure as much as I have a naturally self-deprecating sense of humour. You are far from the first to get the wrong end of the stick. That said I know I'm far from the most talented person on here. Good life lesson, mate: always best to stay modest and know how to mock yourself than be arrogant and have people laugh at you rather than with you.

Just a thought: This would make a good cobbling project, maybe for a passenger train?

Hmm. Maybe. Nevertheless, not something I'm really interested in making at least not at this time. I can see someone of far more skill than I, maybe Corbs or relaxinghobby, or someone really out there like Nile, attempting this, but not me. I'm content cobbling together my little backwater light railway can-do trains rather than anything coherent. Much more fun lies in madness

Ok. I stand corrected. 
 

Can't believe it's referred to as 'a very old book'.  1979 was only a couple of years ago wasn't it?

 

Seems like it anyway............................

Considering 1979 was 14 years before I was born and I am 24 at the time of writing...

I thought this was an old book, but my copy was published in 1951! Found it when I was researching card building techniques...

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Wow. Nice.

Would be far easier to make your own, to me the cab looks far too big for a small loco. would have been better giving it a bigger bunker and reducing the length of the cab

Well (UPDATE) I've just gone back and bought it now (found I had a bit of cash to spare), so I will see what I can do. Besides, I want it to be big.

Somebody went to the trouble of adding an air brake pump to the side of the smokebox, so presumably, whatever it was meant to represent was from an air braked railway.

 Hmm, yes. Bit odd that. Then again my own Wild Rover also has a Westinghouse pump so there

In other news, PatB and Nearholmer identified what the mystery red tank engine is when I posted it on the Modelling Questions board. It's an old Hornby Dublo starter locomotive, which explains why I didn't recognise it (HD isn't one of my areas.) Excellent, now I know what I'm looking for with that. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've found our No.4. 

BEGIN THE HUNT.

EDIT: The hunt is over. The lot was still there, and having a spare £15 or so to spend on it I just straight up bought it. The Red Engine plus about 8 other bodies and a tender to do stuff with. I feel so... creative all of a sudden

Also, here. A bit of history of KLR No.3. Sorry Edwardian, but the implicits speak for themselves... 

KLR No.3 "Peter"

Built in 1896 by Hudswell Clarke, Peter is not only the line's smallest engine but also its oldest. This miniscule saddle tank began its working life on a railway a bit further up Norfolk's western edge working as a station pilot before being sold to the KLR in 1919. It has remained there ever since, doing light freight work and, when not doing that, acting as Kelsby Station's pilot. Named for a famous “wild boy” of East Anglian folklore, this tiny black saddle tank lives up to that name by being a temperamental and often unruly locomotive. There are dozens of stories where this little engine has caused minor incident and confusion due to its myriad quirks and foibles. Despite this it's a valued part of the KLR's collection which is popular with local children (the line runs close to the playground of Alnerwick Primary School, so Peter can often be seen running wagons of gravel from the quarry on the other side of the town) and while occasionally unreliable is powerful and far more manoeuvrable than many of the larger tank engines on the tight curves by the quarry.

That's a thought. I keep forgetting that HD did an 0-4-0 starter loco. 

 

I think we have a winner. Note the moulded on pipe just ahead of the cab, amongst other similarities.

By Jove, I think he's got it! A real vintage locomotive then. Makes it even more interesting, and now I know what I'm looking for! 

It was the fat boiler that was the first clue; both HD and Playcraft starter locos had fat boilers, possibly to accommodate clockwork in some versions, as did some Triang locos (or saddle tank, for the same reason).

 

But now I’ve checked, the Playcraft one was more US/Continental.

Wow. Yeah, kind of a beast of mixed heritage then it seems if your hypothesis is correct. Either way it's interesting. And now I want it for the KLR. 

Well, there is a Lima Crab tender top there, so perhaps that loco body is NOT limited to body sections from the Tri-ang range? Could it contain bits of the Lima H0 Crab, especially the front?

HD starter set loco, with the cab extended using bits of ‘Nellie’? Or a play raft starter set loco ditto? Mostly ‘nellie’, with an extended cab and lowering?

Hmm. All interesting suppositions. Sadly, as already noted, I do not actually have the model in question to analyse more closely.

AT LEAST NOT YET.

I have made it a bit of a mission to track down this locomotive again, purchase it and find out what it is. Also maybe use it for my own ends.

So, here's Hewe.

Not really sure what else I can add to it at this point. There's not a gargantuan amount of space in such a small station without it falling off the embankment.

That looks suspiciously like Nellie's cab and side tanks, with bits of a second cab inserted in order to make it look really awkward. The boiler and smokebox look too big in diameter for Nellie so may have been donated by something else (Triang 3F?). I'm pretty sure it's a bash based on Triang parts anyway.

Hmm. Suppose he might have been correct after all. If you're reading this Sandhole, sorry mate for doubting you. Still was good to get a second opinion. Either way it's an interesting looking beast. Would make for an interesting goods tank if I can get my hands on it; maybe find an 0-6-0 chassis or maybe a 0-8-0 or even a small 0-10-0 as described on my workbench to slap under it. Assuming it's still on eBay. Oh, the perfect vision of hindsight!

I have a question to ask the board, seeing as I apparently do not have as much knowledge of vintage 00 as I thought. I was scouring the vastness of eBay a few days ago while looking for parts for my usual RTRbashing adventures and came across this chunky burgundy tank engine shell amongst a job lot of 00 gauge body shells.

I am relatively knowledgeable in old Triang, Wrenn and Hornby but am not familiar with this tank engine. I did not purchase said lot (choosing instead to buy four Triang blood-and-custards to modify into workable coaches), but the question nagged at me for a bit so I posed the conundrum of its origins to the regulars on my workbench thread. Sandhole suggested it was maybe a bash of several shells but I am not totally convinced, to me it looks too clean. So I ask you for a second opinion, and maybe even a positive identification if you can. I will, however, certainly be buying it next time should I see this thing again.

Only a slight Nelliebosh, but I'd say that my own KLR No.1 Bulldog deserves to be on here (depicted here with my B12 rebuild No.2 Wild Rover for scale.)

Opened up the cab, new whistle (from a Smokey Joe, amusingly enough), new paintwork, some minor resculpting on the tanks. Come to think of it, Wild Rover itself has the smokebox from a starter loco and the chimney and dome from a 101, so it kind of fits to be on here itself.

Also, FUUUU-SION! HA! (Automatically dating my own childhood with that reference while making myself look like even more of a dork in front of my peers. Nothing new there.)

No.3 here (shown with Bulldog in an early stage of development) is... (phew...) Smokebox, bunker and whistle from the same 101 that was brutalised to provide a dome and chimney for Wild Rover, and the rest from a cut-and-shut Caley Pug; plus the chassis will probably be from an L&Y Pug. So it's technically a 101-Double-Pugbash. Christ.

You may recognise these photos from my workbench thread. Sorry for the reuse of photos.

This is a Polly Bash from many years ago.

A sawn off Mainline J72 chassis forms the inner works, it does not work at the moment. I think the motor windings are damaged somehow.

The Polly body has had the boiler cut away and a section of the footplate taken out and the buffer beam stuck back on.

The boiler is a bit of plastic tube set lower down than the original Polly one. The inside of the tanks are modelled.

 

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A small loco infront of my industrialised Jinty, my aim was for a boxy tank like the Southern Railway dock tanks.

 

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The insides, some serious hack saw work on the chassis there, some lead inside the boiler. That cheesy stuff is Araditeepoxy glue

 

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A photo taken with a flash light to show the low boiler.

 

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And again with no flash.

Oh wow. I love it! It's utterly adorable! 

I WANT IT.

In seriousness though, great job, man. 

...In NSW we had similar DMU's (called Railmotors), most of which I haven't actually seen in revenue service, but have seen in preservation...

Railmotor, you say?

Another Hewe update!

The station now has a car park... which it shares with the pub. This has been the case ever since the car park was built in the '50s, due to the location of the pub. 

Taking a leaf from the book of my frequent assistant / inexplicable fanboy DoubleDeckInterurban, I've decided to place a lot of my more outlandish or in the least case wildly bizarre locomotive and stock concepts onto this thread here to clear the air in my head a bit. And believe me there's a lot of them. Most of them will be in the form of probably quite bad Photoshop mockups, similar to those some of you may have seen in my Workbench thread.
You are free to attempt to build any of these, so long as you let me know and let others know the initial idea came from this page. The only payment needed is to give credit.
Let's start then with one some of you may be familiar with if you read my Workbench thread. I put this up here again now because... actually, it's quite a good idea, in my mind anyway, and I want to share it with those that might be willing to try and build this little thing. So, men and women of the jury, I present Exhibit A: The Brakevan Tram.

That being said, I could live with one of the older diesels that still have a bit of panache and charisma, like one of the older Class 03 to Class 08 diesel shunters, or even a Metro-Vick Type 2 if I could get one of the hilariously scarce Heljan ones and convert it to have tension-lock couplings.

I could have had electric trains on my layout, you know! Really diesel and electric is what I've grown up with, so that's the main reason I like them. In NSW we had similar DMU's (called Railmotors), most of which I haven't actually seen in revenue service, but have seen in preservation. After I found BR had similar DMU's I was immediately hooked and that's where it all started. We all have our different opinions and interests.

Agreed. My nan's family were all LNER workers so I grew up with stories of them working in the BR steam days. I've always loved steam locomotives, so that's what I work with. That and my great-grandfather, himself an LNER fireman, reading me the Railway Series when me and my brothers were very young. So the KLR is a combination of the East Anglia I love and grew up in, and the steam locomotives I've always been fascinated by but was born in time to see in real action.