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Thanks. I suspect you are right about the engineering difficulty with twin worm drives. That's really why I was asking whether anybody knew the whereabouts or the eventual outcome of the Jack Newton model. You're probably also right that I would do well to acquire a Bachmann 9F for comparison. I'm still interested to see your converted push-along Hornby 9F if there's more you can share about that.

Why? It's an interesting engineering challenge. I have tried the original Hornby tender drive 9F (Fleischmann motor, 6 driven wheels, will pull the house down but looks ugly) and the Chinese-built Railroad version with loco drive (nicer to look at, quite effective, but I doubt its longevity). I haven't tried the re-tooled Hornby version because I'm more interested in running quality than fragile detail. If I could build my own chassis (I have built an 0-6-0, maybe I could do a 2-10-0! Or maybe not) I'd try to do the Jack Newton version. Interesting to hear about your motorising the early push-along chassis; do you have any photos of that? I have wondered whether the Jack Newton model developed any problems over time because of driving two axles with two motors through worm gears so I'd be fascinated to hear from its current owner, if the loco still exists - and I hope it does.

Yes, page 28 is the one, but nobody there has got the shunting lights (red and white above the buffer beam) working on DC. I was trying to find out whether anybody had managed it in the years since page 28 was written. Because I am never going to go DCC, I am willing to re-wire mine. I may have to start experimenting with it.

Hello everyone, Jack Newton was a prolific and talented OO modeller in the 1950s & 60s. One of his best known creations was a 9F powered by two X04 motors which he described in the September 1963 MRN. He reported that it performed very well and he appears not to have had problems with the motors locking up despite both using worm gears. Does anybody know what happened to this model? It was a magnificent machine and I imagine it still exists in somebody's collection, but I have not found any references to it online. I am interested in doing something similar.

Love that layout! Lots of operating potential and not much space left for non-railway scenery. Just the way I like it. My taste is old-fashioned, I want a model railway, not a model landscape. And as for 'trains hanging out of the ass end of platforms' - yup, my 'Minories' has that too. But so does the real railway on many lines round here, so that's fine by me.

I wish I'd thought of that before laying my track. It does look so much better.

Hi everyone, I've just acquired a Dapol 08 and and am getting to know it, whilst I replace window glass that has fallen into the cab, try to avoid breaking off any more fine detail, and so on. Two questions if I may: the centre axle has some vertical movement (good) but appears to be unsprung; is this normal? And does anyone know a way to get the shunting lights working on DC? I am happy to rewire the loco, and to lose the top white lights if I have to. Thanks!

This is very practical advice John, thank you for posting. Regarding your Safety Minor - the reason you never thought of sending a sample for testing may be because no Safety Minor has asbestos-like material in it! (No resistance mat or slider control.)

I ditched my old (low-line) Powermaster likewise. Then I found I missed it so much I had to buy another, secondhand obviously! The replacement is in better condition and the 2.5A variable transformer is very useful for big old motors especially O-gauge. I know of no other 2.5A variable transformer controller. (And before anybody chips in! The low-line Powermaster definitely has no asbestos, and the H&M variable transformer is not a variac or auto-transformer design; the variable voltage is taken from the secondary winding.)

Hi Kevin, I don't disagree with you. In fact I'm close to agreeing fully. I was thinking we might be able to cease going round in circles if someone has a way to test a sample.

Interesting advice, thank you Dave B. I have the newer Powermaster (low line case, half-wave switch instead of variwave slider) and can confirm it does not contain anything that looks like asbestos. Like you, I have removed asbestos-like material and selenium rectifiers from old H&M controllers. Peter Stiles, up-thread, mentioned that it would be good to have modern electronics inside a H&M case. That is what I have done, updating a Clipper, an Executive and a Commander with Roger Amos' circuit designs. (The Powermaster I left as it was. I keep it because the 2.5 amp supply is useful for old O-gauge motors.) I would be pleased if someone with the necessary facilities could test the asbestos-like material on H&M resistance mats to confirm whether it is or isn't asbestos, because trade terms were looser in those days and sometimes material which was not asbestos was described as such because 'asbestos' was more meaningful - before the danger was known. If it really is asbestos then I too am surprised that there is a business in re-winding the mats.

Thanks Stewart, I appreciate the offer. I have ordered a new motor from EKM as Halvarras suggested but if no luck there I will PM you. It is useful to know that these motors can be re-magged - maybe!

Thank you Halvarras, that's very helpful. Despite Googling, I hadn't found that EKM page. I shall have to measure the motor carefully as you say, because I can see that the length over flywheels of the motor in the Bachmann 46 is different to the 25, so the motor that EKM list as 'Various' can't fit both! Anyway I now have a way forward, thank you.

Hello everyone, I recently bought an old Bachmann centre-motor class 46, for spares, in order to re-motor an old Mainline 45 of which I'm irrationally fond. (The centre-motor chassis from the original 46 fits the Mainline 45 body so this is easy.) However the Bachmann has turned out to lack pulling power. It moves itself at modest speed but can barely shift 4 Bachmann Mk1s on the level. I'm familiar with this mechanism, having a few Bachmann 25s which are very similar, so I stripped the 46 down. There was no sign of the usual dried white grease, or dust/fluff/hair in the chassis; in fact it all turned very freely. Once disconnected from the drive shafts the motor spun happily, but the slightest load (any touch on a flywheel) brought the speed right down or stalled it. It's behaving as if the magnet in the motor is weak. This surprises me because my 25s are all strong performers, and they're elderly too. Is this a known problem with older Bachmanns?

Back to the question of what's suited to a 'BR Blue' layout, if 'BR Blue' is taken to mean the presence of blue/grey Mk 1 coaches, those were certainly around in quantity by 1967/68 and there are photos and videos around of blue/grey coaches being hauled by steam. This only happened in the last year or two of steam so it's restricted to those steam loco classes which survived to the end; principally Black 5, standard 5s, 8Fs (on ECS) or 9Fs (occasional summer turns).

You're welcome... here is a track plan exported from AnyRail. This shows the station and the throat. At the right-hand end of the throat, the tracks (from top to bottom) are the up and down main, the branch, then three goods sidings. I tried a fiddle yard beyond here but now I have running lines leading to a reverse loop. Yes, the track is all Streamline code 100, electrofrog points (except the crossing which is code 75), 3' radius on the passenger lines and 2' radius in the goods yard.

Thank you, that's a neat idea. It looks as if it requires the motor to be mounted so that its shaft is directly below the point?

Yes, H&M motor cranks. Motors below as far as possible. I need to think of imaginative ways to disguise the cranks. Getting the track laid, wired and running reliably has come ahead of tidying the appearance!

Almost all of us who are building a Minories choose to include a variation to personalise it, so here's mine under construction. This looks more different to standard than it really is. It is the standard 'with goods facilities' version, so the track closest to the front baseboard edge is a goods headshunt. I have combined the turnouts for platform 3 and the goods line into a three way point to save space, a trick I see others have done. The only change of substance is that I have added a branch line. The notion is that a separate railway company wanted access to Minories station, but could only obtain shared use of platform 3. The branch is the curved line you can see in the station throat, reaching P3 via a crossing over the goods line connection. This gives modellers' licence for a variety of non-local rolling stock if needed. There is a crossover connecting the branch to the goods headshunt too. The track is laid and wired and it is very satisfying to operate.

"Polishing a turd" springs to mind! Seller is pushing the sound fitted but it is class 40, not Deltic... completely different sound, the 40s and Deltics were both distinctive in their own ways.

Apologies for re-opening an old topic. I have just bought a Dublo 8F which has been converted from 3-rail to 2-rail by a previous owner, using Romford & Jacksons wheels and adding brake pipes and screw couplings - a nice job. I had intended to dismantle it for spares but I like it too much for that (this keeps happening with my loco purchases!). It is clear that the loco used to have an electrical connection between loco and tender, which is no longer in use. Was the 3-rail pickup shoe mounted on the tender, or if not, what was this for? I also have a Wrenn 8F which I've owned since new. This had a Ringfield motor and I must have got a poor one because it never had much power. Eventually I abandoned the Ringfield and acquired a Hornby Black 5 tender drive to push it around and renumbered the loco to one with a welded tender so all was good... except that the tender sits a couple of mm too high like most old Hornby products. But my latest purchase has the older 'half inch' HD motor, extraordinarily like an X04, which performs much better that the Wrenn Ringfield and doesn't stick out of the rear of the cab. I wonder why HD switched motor design?

I understand that. The conversion job wasn't urgent for me either. But once I had the idea it became a priority even though it wasn't strictly necessary!

For anyone else interested in retro-look controllers, I can now say that converting an H&M Clipper to a transistor controller works well (see my post above) . I recently acquired an H&M Clipper as part of a job lot of equipment. I didn't really want the Clipper, because I knew it was a variable resistance controller, but I thought it could be useful as a fixed 12V DC or 16V AC power supply. However, after I converted a failed H&M Commander (which is how this thread started) by adding new components to make one of the Roger Amos designs, I became hooked on the idea of converting the Clipper too. I removed the resistance mat and the selenium rectifier from the Clipper and replaced them with a transistor controller and diode rectifier. This has revitalised the Clipper and made a really useful controller with charming retro looks and of course the H&M centre-off control. There is enough space in the Clipper to fit almost any transistor controller circuit, but I like the Roger Amos high gain closed loop controller because it is easy to build and gives excellent control of all locos from my oldest (a Wrenn 2-6-4T) to newest (a Heljan DPU). My late father was at school with Roger Amos, but that's beside the point. For anyone else interested in converting an old centre-off resistance controller to a more modern circuit, the principal challenge is finding a centre-tapped potentiometer to act as the control device in place of the H&M resistance mat. They are hard to find but Bourns still make them and mouser.co.uk supplies them (from the USA, but despite that they arrive quickly). This one is the essential but hard-to-find component to make a centre-off version of most transistor controller circuits https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/Bourns/PTT111-3220A-B503?qs=h2IHEVivlqCTVdtG16U05Q%3D%3D . My 'new Clipper' works so well that I have only one regret. Ten years ago I threw out a working H&M Duette which I had owned since new because I thought I would never again want to use a resistance mat controller. The Duette is in essence two Clippers in one case. I could have converted that into two transistor controllers and it would have been all I need!

I'm coming to this very late too, having seen it only because it was highlighted by RMWEB this evening. I love the evocative shots of your station in twilight and the station buildings in particular, especially the main station built over the tracks. That's what I am trying to build for my Minories type layout where I need the full baseboard length for tracks! May I ask about your station buildings; are they scratch-built or from which kit? Thanks.

I too have a selection of old H&M units and have been following this thread with interest. I have replaced the innards of a failed Commander controller with the Roger Amos high-gain feedback controller design and found that this gives better control than the original H&M Commander circuit. However I have now decided to take this further after realising that the resistance mats in these devices - and in the Electran pictured above - appear to be mounted on asbestos formers. It should be possible to dispose of these mats and replace them with a modern potentiometer whilst keeping the original H&M control knob which cleverly combines on/off, reversing and speed control in the one control. If or when I solve this I'll post again. Only the Powermaster and Safety Minor have no resistance mats inside. With all the others, we need to be careful about asbestos - as well as the selenium rectifiers and the old mains cables. These issues apart, I still enjoy using these old controllers and with more modern circuitry inside they can be much improved.