Halvarras

Many apologies, I should have guessed..... Looking forward to seeing the result - will you post a pic Mike, should be quite an eyeful 😎!

I have a few Hornby Mark 1s of late 1970s vintage resprayed and lined which I will be keeping, and fancied having a go at converting a pair of BSKs into an SK (I've done one from buffet car parts but one can never have too many SKs!) and maybe a BG too if possible, so I was eyeing up a couple of maroon BSKs at £10 and £9 when the Hattons sale kicked in reducing them to £8 and £6, so I took this as a sign of approval from the Universe and placed an order. One was described as "assembled from kit" (CKD) so I expected the bolts to simplify bogie removing/fitting, but both have rivetted bogies......oh well, never mind. The best bit is that both came fitted with Hornby metal disc wheels, one 12.6mm and the other 14.1mm - the reason I chose this pair, as these now cost around £2 per wheelset (35p when they first appeared!) so well chuffed with that. Unfortunately I undermined my smugness by adding a wrecked Bachmann Class 42 Warship with bits missing to the order, hoping that I could use its drivetrain to upgrade a Mainline model. D800 Sir Brian Robertson for £34 should have had big red flags waving, as I knew it was one of those affected by Mazak Rot........yep, and the motor ain't great either, although the central casting it sits in seems sound. Having almost instantly written it off as a lost cause I reckon by adding a spare pair of Mainline wheels and bogie frames and a slightly rattly Bachmann Class 25 motor from the spares box I may yet be able to cobble something together, the ol' grey matter has formulated a plan of sorts but it's now been inserted at the bottom of a long To Do List. At least the body/underframe is in good shape, although glue marks in the nameplate area would probably mean a repaint. Hmm.....maybe one day I'll do that disc-headcode Warship conversion after all......

That looks lovely - but the livery is surely going to be a challenge for Warren if those handrails are all soldered in position......🤔?!

All of these comments on my two photos are most gratifying - I'm so glad I posted them, even if they were a bit rubbish 😬!

In case it's of any interest.... https://www.thejunctionbox.net/items-for-sale/Bachmann-31-360y/ Bit pricey I think but it's a Limited Edition.

Yes I meant to mention that - they look like gunpowder vans to me too, too low to be normal goods vans. I'd never looked at what 6607 was hauling until now!🙂

Lots of lovely and some unusual items here, I must keep an eye on your offerings! I see you are producing replacement air tanks and steps for the Class 08 - have you considered a 4mm Class 03 'flowerpot' exhaust? Reason I ask is because Bachmann appear to have a fixation on the 35 members of the Class with conical chimneys (D2000-32, D2370/71 ex-Departmental 91/92). There were 195 which didn't (although 03129/62 joined the conicals later). So there's a lot of the minority conical 03 models out there - both the earlier and later models - which can't easily be renumbered to the majority flowerpot type - including plain green livery, not so far produced by Bachmann with flowerpot. I have one with a filed-down pannier tank chimney which doesn't look quite right, and another up for disposal with conical exhaust which I wouldn't mind hanging on to if I could find a flowerpot for it! I rest my case M'Lud!🙂

Oh yes, absolutely agree! I wish I'd upgraded from my Instamatic to a Zenit-E sooner than I did and not bothered with the disappointing Halina in between at all. But digital, wow - what a revolution that has been! imagine being able to shoot all the stuff running back then - not just hydraulics - without having to worry about the cost of film and developing exceeding one's pocket money and/or Saturday job earnings! I'd have gone bonkers with it😜!!

Many thanks for all this info @The Johnster, that had me examining my own photos very closely indeed! Not bad considering that I wasn't even sure I'd bothered scanning them some years ago so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that I had - I just hadn't processed them when I had access to Photoshop at work. A good job I left in as much background as possible when tidying them up before posting! Funny how two photos I'd all but ignored for decades suddenly come into their own....... 4/4/72 was a day trip from Truro to Cardiff via Bristol St Philips Marsh (to view the withdrawn hydraulics there). I can see how that would be easy enough at the moment with 'Castle' HSTs and a few 5-car IETs (big swap coming) running between Penzance and Cardiff but how we managed to cram so much in back then beats me - I guess it must have been one of those days with more than 24 hours in it 🤭! I dunno - days seemed longer then than they do now, must be a perception which comes with age. I believe you are a year or so older than me so you'll likely know what I mean! Best not think about it - back to the distraction of the modelling bench 🤪!!

861 had an advantage for modellers of Class 43 based on the Bachmann Class 42 - it had Swindon type roof fan grilles (but you'll already know this Phil!) I think my reluctance to photograph Warships back then was because I didn't find them very attractive to look at, with their bulbous noses (the D600s looked OK to me, but I didn't get a camera until 1968 😕!) It was obvious to the teenage me that the Western class was an updated and enlarged version of the Warship, as confirmed by the intro years in my Ian Allan ABC, but the Western and Hymek were more modern and visually appealing, as was the Brush Type 4 when I first clapped eyes on one in 1967, which was also why I'd choose to use my hard-won film on these rather than Warships. There was also a natural inclination at the time to record stuff one didn't see every day in preference to the stuff one did. The mistake was not taking heed of withdrawals of the familiar, no matter how visually unappealing, and realising that one day I'd be taking nostalgic retrospectives and wishing I'd ignored some of those 47s (which are still here, just about) and photographed more Warships (which bowed out half a century ago), because I got to appreciate them more with the passage of time. Follies of youth n all........ It may have been a slightly different matter if the designers had had their way and the Warship had looked more like a shortened Western with the corners rounded off, as illustrated by the model produced, but they were overruled. Ah well, it's all water under the bridge now, as the say......

To my eternal shame I didn't take many photos of Warships when I saw them every time I went lineside, but here are a couple of b&w Instamatic shots from my yoof - D843 Sharpshooter on the clays at Par in April 1969....... ......and 861 Vigilant on the down 'Cornishman' at Penwithers Junction, date unrecorded but I assume no later than mid-March 1971 since, according to 'The Book of the Warships' (Irwell Press) it was outshopped by Swindon 8/3/71 - since it was still in maroon livery when it went in it was only possible to see it in blue livery for a little under 7 months in 1971 (835 released 8/4/71 in this livery style had been blue with 4 arrows previously). Sorry it's a bit blurred, must have been the excitement!

Correct me if I'm wrong, as my notebook doesn't confirm, but I believe this is Ninian Park Halt, on the very railway-related date of 4/4/72 😃! The shunter is 3264 and the withdrawn Hymeks visible behind it D7060/64/83/73 (7088 was there somewhere too, I had a soft spot for that one.....) D7060 still in green, one of only five which only ever carried one livery (7004 carried five of the possible six!) But it's the '37' which had me hunting out these Instamatic images - because this is 6607 which became 37307 under TOPS then in the mid-80s was refurbished and ETH-fitted as..........................37403! The same loco, in the same location, nearly 51 years earlier! These were the only two photos I ever look here so - how's that for a coincidence!

I've levered a few Tri-ang bogie rivets off in my time too - the Mark 1s are easiest as the sides come off giving good access. Around the mid '70s I upgraded a Tri-ang 3-car Met-Cam DMU with Anbrico whitemetal engine castings, MTK whitemetal bogies with Jackson wheels, including stretching a pair of sideframes to fit the motor bogie with the Tri-ang sideframes laboriously filed away - this had Millholm turned brass wheels fitted too. I have a photo of it somewhere....... Not so easy getting to the bogie rivets inside the body but certainly doable. More recently - about 20 years ago! - I was unable to resist a 2-car set at a show for £16 and sort of wished I'd left it there as I've done an insane amount of work on it for something which will always be too short - Hornby Class 110 bogie frames (25p each brand new at a show!), motor bogie chassis frame and trailer underfloor section; Lima motor unit, '117' engine detail/end bufferbeams and MTK plastic buffers. Body detailing includes plasticard headcode boxes/destination panels, plastic rod water tank filler pipes and exhaust pipes and bogie steps from a Lima 101 detail kit ( (I bought a quantity when they could be had for £2 a set). In this case I avoided the rivet-levering by cutting through the bogies to leave just the cross-pieces still attached to the bodies - these had their ends filed to fit inside the 110 frames which are fitted with turned brass wheels, manufacturer unknown (similar to but not Lima). This is typical of the kind of 'project' one can get sucked into when one has a box full of old spares and conversion leftovers looking for a purpose - it's happened again in the past couple of years and thankfully the stockpile is now close to exhaustion (like its owner!) - and is why it has a Lima motor, cos I had one of those (a runner cobbled together from two wrecks) but not a Hornby unit which would have been easier to fit to a Hornby bogie frame! And after all that work I still haven't got around to painting it yet - maybe this year then.....🥴!

A nice weathering job for sure - however the body is the wrong way round on the chassis. Or is the chassis the wrong way round under the body........? Well, anyway, the battery box/fuel tank should be towards the No 1 (radiator grille) end! I don't have a Heljan Class 25 but I trust this is a quick fix.

Agreed, but this is Tri-ang we're talking about 'ere! And a 3-car set I believe, so 5 other bogies all rivetted on - not simple to do......

Must add my appreciation for your efforts to all the others' Profes.......sorry, I mean @The Johnster, the detail you can recall really helps 'paint the picture' for those of us interested in railways but never worked on them. Outstanding, and looking forward to more instalments. Just one question - is your modelling at a standstill now, or do your days contain more than the usual number of hours?!😜

Gosh, don't tell me they're 'doing a Hornby' from decades ago and supplying a 'choose your number' transfer sheet. I wouldn't really regard that as progress 🤭!

A shallower flange shouldn't cause the bogie to ride a bit low - only a reduction in the wheel diameter compared to the original can cause that. If it runs OK but looks slightly odd consider raising the ride height of the motor vehicle to get it back into line with its neighbour by inserting a card spacer between the top surface of the pivot (where the screw hole is) and the underside of the mounting point in the body.

Unlike the Peaks with multiple examples, just the one Class 37 AFAIK - 37072. I posted a pair of pics of it in Departmental Grey on the 'Class "37" Photos' thread not long ago (they're not to hand ATM).

3-in-1 oil cracked the boiler of my Tri-ang L1 4-4-0 in line with the worm gear (and the plastic baseplate of the Class 31/37/EM2 motor bogie didn't like it either). I remember writing to the Railway Modeller's letters page about this in 1974 - must have been my first ever letter to a magazine! - because I'd realised what had happened and thought it should be brought to the attention of other modellers who also thought a can of such stuff was a cheap way to buy oil......😕

Which reminds me, why do Hornby insist on fitting so much of their older coaching stock (e.g. Railroad Pullmans, ex-Lima BR CCTs) with freight wagon 3-hole disc wheels when they have more appropriate plain disc wheels readily available? Never understood it. Anyway, the older Tri-ang/Hornby rolling stock - and diesels for that matter - all ran on 12.5mm (ish) wheels so the equivalent smaller disc wheels (R8096) would avoid jacking up the already too high buffer height on these models, even if the 14.1mm disc wheels would be visually better - on the old Mark 1 coaches for example (they can be fitted if the ride height is adjusted to match of course, but removing the bogies is not easy where they have been rivetted on).

Nice find, especially when modelling this particularly machine! Note the blanked-off boiler compartment grille - there is a photo of D7646 brand new with this grille already blanked - it carries the headcode 8M13 which to me indicates that Bachmann referred to this picture for their model of this locomotive, although they fitted it with open grilles! Photos of the Beyer-Peacock-built batch (D7624-59) indicate that many of these had blanked grilles while in green livery and D7646 shows that at least some of them had blanked grilles from new - perhaps all so fitted were from new, although this fitment seems to show the kind of random application displayed by Class 31/1 headcode boxes up to D5562. I photographed D7648 in Gsy at Derby on 4/11/69 with exposed grilles but D7657, the first LMR 25 to be transferred to the WR and the only Gsy example to reach that region, was seen at Exeter on 11/9/71 with blanked grilles.

Just thought of another exhibition bargain - many years ago a trader at Trainwest in Melksham had Bachmann Class 08 D4192 in BR green on sale for £29.99. Turns out he'd discovered an unopened box of six he didn't know he had, so he blew them out. I bought one, which is now 08840 still in green, and since wished I'd bought another at the time - I don't think he was limiting customers to one, he just wanted them gone. However back then Baccy 08s could be had for £50-55 so although it sounds like an absolute steal by current standards it wasn't quite half-price at the time - but still a bargain.

Yes it was a shame D6331 erupted during transit since the last of the local green-liveried 22s were all withdrawn on 22/5/71 so D6331 would probably have been the last green one in service. Actually if the movement took place after that date it must have been - just! Agreed, but it still looked very odd in yer Ian Allan combo to have seven names beginning with 'Z' when (hang on, I'm thinking..............🙄🤔👍) 'B', 'E', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'O', 'U' & 'W' only got one each!!

Indeed, the last two overhauls were 861 released 8/3/71 and 835 released 8/4/71 so no wonder they were still in good nick that summer.......and at withdrawal! It was no surprise that those 43s which survived past the March & May 71 culls were the most recent overhauls. So why didn't this logic apply to the Class 22s? Overhauls of these Type 2s ceased at the end of 1967 and recommenced over 2 years later when 6308/19/26/30/38/48/52/56 were put through works, so when the final rundown started one would have expected these eight to be the last survivors - yet only 6338 of this batch made it into the final four. Perhaps 6319, belatedly released in June 1971 and withdrawn exactly 3 months later, suggested all was not well with these final overhauls. If the Class was known to have a very limited future perhaps engine hours were not reset?