34theletterbetweenB&D

The information that is lacking is whether the replacement chassis needs a screw attached tension lock or an NEM coupler pocket tension lock. Bachmann spares: https://www.Bachmann.co.uk/category/model-railway/branchline/accessories?page=1&sortby=5&numper=50 Screw attached, scroll down to 36-025 / -026; NEM pocket fitting version, scroll down a little further.

This is a late 50's to early 60's production, and if there's one thing I know about models this age, it's that the motor magnet can have lost field strength, and that means feeble power output. This element of the fault description: is a fit for a motor that has a weak magnet. If the magnet was removed from the motor when it was serviced, that's the top cause for magnetic field loss. Remagnetisation services are available.

The Sonic model's mechanism was something of a Bachmann nostalgia trip in this respect, both the split chassis and early Blue Riband steam introductions had this characteristic 'oversprung carrying wheels' tendency. I still remember what a pleasant surprise it was on my first purchase of a 'softly sprung carrying wheels' Bachmann model: the very fine Fairburn 2-6-4T. Ah, no need to dismantle and cut down the spring. Downside of course was no further supply of spare coil spring pieces to place on Hornby loco bogies: their assembly diagrams may have shown a spring, but it would be another decade before Hornby's contractors regularly found the 'springs box' and detailed an assembly operative to install one... Buit while the tooling exists there is always hope. Quite a lot of activity now in the 'tooled by Brand X, now on offer via Brand Y' department

...all the way to rubbish of any sort, London's waste was moved to landfill in pre-group and grouping days in company wagons and then later BR's mineral fleet, including such delights as amputated limbs back in the day (yes, really). And the railway's own rubbish: KX area sheds were weekly dispatching a goodly number filled with ash to worked out brickfield diggings such as Connington tip, and they won't have been unique...

Probably not the answer you want, but I believe it's a case of 'fit what you prefer'. The NER wagon works continuously reused servicable wheelsets with no discrimination, on vehicles of this lading.

Where was the bodyside hatch - that the ice cream was sold from - located? (I think it's the combination of the colour rendering of 'strawberry' in the contemporary frozen lard varieties, with the white roof. Only needs the company name: 'Uncle Whippy' or some such adding, in bold multicoloured signwriting...)

Not a clue, but if you need one I can write you a variation permit.😅 I am in for some tender mixing, the Gresley V2 especially looks so much better with an eight wheel tender.

True, but the MRJ readership will know this, and most will probably be using ample radii on their layouts. I have been steadily moving to body mounted Kadee on the end of Pullman gangway/ knuckle coupler equipped prototype stock, and have to say that the thought of using them throughout with sprung gangway ends to eliminate the Kadee's slack in the train is appealing. Not that I am unhappy with the effect delivered by the close coupling systems on my RTR OO, but the use of a coupler of superior appearance throughout really appeals.

Then again, I have been getting away with sticking copies of this inside the back cover of TTTE books for over ten years without retribution. Could make a good modelling subject... “Ouch, that stings a bit,” said Thomas. He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but had a real pain in the bunker region. This and the fact that he had been staring at the back of James’ tender for three weeks with not a sign of his driver and fireman had put him in a bit of bad mood. “Nothing to worry about” said a voice from somewhere behind his bunker. “Just a bit of work required here on your buffers”. Thomas thought to himself that if only his crew had made a nice fire up in him, he could give the man fiddling with his buffers a bump to show him his place. ‘Where are Annie and Clarabel?” asked Thomas. “It will soon be time for the summer traffic, and they will be stiff after sleeping all winter. I really should give them a run or two to make sure they are ready to go”. The voice replied, “Didn’t they tell you? They have retired as a holiday bungalow for the thin controller. He’s had them placed in a nice field with a sea view, and a roof over the top, they are really enjoying it very much.” Thomas thought about that and then asked, “Well what will I do then?” The voice replied “Don’t worry, the fat controller has given special instructions for all you most valuable engines”. Thomas felt very pleased, he knew he was a valuable engine, and the fat controller was of the same opinion. “Where are the other engines then?” asked Thomas. “Well”, said the voice “Gordon, Emily and Spencer were so special that they have gone to a special home for really important engines at York. Stepney’s gone off down South to gather bluebells I believe, while Henry was very pleased to be allowed to retire to Bootlitz holiday camp; he is going to get a new coat of paint, and children from all around the country will come to admire him on his plinth. James is here with you, but won’t talk to anyone since his brass fittings were removed for safekeeping, and Skarloey just fell apart the moment I looked at him, and has had a complete melt down”. “I see” said Thomas, who really didn’t understand what was going on. “Then what about the others like Edward, Percy and Duck?” The voice replied, “They were a bit too valuable for me, and went off with Cutter and Smelt. I think most of the rest like Toby, Dugald and Donald and so on went with them as well”. “Does that mean our family has been broken up?” Thomas blurted out. “Afraid so”, said the voice, “They are big operators, and had everyone who went with them broken up inside a month”. Thomas thought a bit more, and said, “But that’s not right, the fat controller was keeping us here together forever as a happy family, what has happened?” The voice sighed and said, “Look even fat controllers have bosses, and the incredibly corpulent controller had different ideas, that’s all”. Thomas would have blown off steam if he could and said, “Can you bring this incredible controller here for me to talk to?”. At which point, fearing he would either go hoarse or insane from the non- stop questions, the man walked round to Thomas’ front and cut his face off with the gas axe to shut him up. It also made it easier to get at the nice heavy fittings in the smokebox that would quickly bring in a good price for scrap. Non-canonical.

To add to the list, the Oxford Rail N7 and J27, TMC/Bachmann G5 are all fitted with coreless motors, the last explicitly stated in the poop sheet. As for the RoS/Sonic A5, which has a regular flat can shape motor casing, my example after performing on test for hours on my old Duette then on DCC fitting overheated and came to a halt after a few minutes running on DCC. Setting the decoder to coreless mode fixed that completely. So I just don't know for sure...

If you have large surface area contact, square centimetre or more, 24 hour Araldite with both surfaces roughed up works well provided there's no applied stress. If it has to carry load, better to look at the products of any of the current manufacturers, nothing lasts forever... I bonded a pair of Lima 40 frames to the internal bogie structure of an early Bach Peak about 30 years ago using Araldite, and still attached as of last year. About four square centimetres of bonding area. Small cosmetic components have to be 'stitched' on with wire to give the Araldite something to bond onto.

If you are determined on this path, then go hunting for a motor like a Mashima 1426 'flat can'. (Buhler may still offer an equivalent.) That would fit inside the N7, either with some significant cutting down of the internal casting the supplied motor sits on, or discarding this part and making a new motor support, and adapting the drive coupler to the gear train to fit the 2mm dia Mashima motor shaft. Bear in mind this is just a proposal, you will have to devise all the 'make it work' adaption. (I remain puzzled by the trouble you are having, 100% reliability on my 4, using Lenz Standard and Zimo MX600, both types of decoder set for coreless operation.)

Maternal grandmother was a Devonian, but brought up her entire family including Ma in London, so what I got from her was the rhyming slang, and some of the mob's parlance, what with Gramps being a regular who neatly served in both wars by joining underage in 1917. 'Fizzog' was common parlance during my schooling in central Hertfordshire, mostly from older beeefy types offering to 'fix it' or 'wipe that grin off' for you.

My younger brother's example went the same way, the plastic wagon moulding was distinctly 'soapy'. A family friend in the watch trade replaced it with a brass cased mechanism which worked even better, sadly the item disappeared in a house move.

It's more a question of what style of door, chimney and safety valves you are after. A typical detail parts supplier list: https://www.247developments.co.uk/loco_detailing.html If you go ahead, I am good for a fiver for Thomas' fizzog.

Now we are cooking with gas. (Some fine CD transfers have been available, yet more convenient.) I propose that one hearing of his recordings on a good stereo set up will leave you never wanting to hear the electric mouse squeakings of DCC* sound ever again. (Small children will spontaneously demonstrate just how good a recording engineer he was. As the train fades into the distance, they get up and look behind the column loudspeaker producing the dominant sound.) Play appropriate selected extracts on a stereo sound stage roughly aligned with the layout, and your brain does the rest. Because sound is inherently multipath with delays, while light is direct path and instantaneous, we have been 'trained' from infancy to make the association of moving object with imperfectly matching sound. My late Pa, who early in his career at Phillips spent his weekends with others making use of their recording studios, built his own stereo system once in the UK, and we would play the Handford recordings with the model trains running in the sound stage to great effect. *Bear in mind I am a complete enthusiast for DCC's operational capability: the 'bolt on' of sound is a PITA, because it results in degrading of some RTR models, principally steam tender locos (in OO leastways).

To my mind, the next major test of this schema are the Quad Arts from Ellis Clark. Selection: a design of pre-group origin which remained in service until 1966 and was hauled by a large proportion of the passenger locos working on the ECML over that period, and regularly wandered further afield on day excursion traffic. Accuracy and intelligent tooling: all signals are good.

It does look like it might represent a strum box (water filter) that hung on the the tender frame of BR standards Quite wonderful what extras are sometimes in the packaging. Bachmann were the champions at this, spare screws included with wagons a notable strength back in the day. As for the parts fallen off, an improving situation in RTR I feel; pieces showering off the more detailed RTR up to 2010, easing off after then, near drought now.

For the same reason my passenger locos are getting body mounted Kadee. We so need better couplings and scale height mounting options to be adopted in 4mm, enough of this bodgery with a long obsolescent coupler design and HO derived coupler pocket height.

That's been my policy* since first involvement with a model railway club in my teens. The question then is, how long do those of us intent on this policy constitute a sufficiently large market for RTR OO production to be justifiable? *But not 'hard line', I'll buy anything suitable for some bashing into a decent model of what's required. Scooping up Airfix GMR origin wagon models of neglected really common types a specialty.

If you can provide information on what this 'older Pannier tank' is, that would be helpful. 'Older' suggests it will be a 57xx, and then the question is whether a split chassis mechanism, or what replaced it, an early wiper pick up mechanism which had no decoder socket. The split chassis version, as already remarked on above, takes significant work; first the track supply has to be isolated from the motor terminals, then the mechanism rewired using the decoder leads, typically with the need to cut clearance in the chassis castings requiring full diassembly: at which point you may well discover that many of the essential plastic components are fracturing. These could be up to 30 years old now , and wereof a low cost construction which Bachmann used in their initial probe of the UK market. And then when all done, decoder fitted and running , they may wear out quickly if operated frequently. Best not to go there... The wiper pick up mechanism introduced in Bach's 'Blue Riband' range is way superior, easy to fit with a decoder even if there isn't a decoder socket: provided that you can perform electical soldering and are not shy of partial dismantling. I have used several of these mechanisms - now twenty plus years old - to 'transplant' into much more interesting white metal bodies, all still running as sweetly as ever.

We use Terry Pratchett's invention from well over a decade before they entered service, every time one whips past in sight on the nearby stretches of the ECML. Let's hear it for the Ambiguous Pazuma.

She cannot trademark it, any more than the TTTE franchise tried with 'Stepney, because it is prior art. When Ms Rowling was interviewed years ago she said she knew there was a station where red engines left for Scotland. So it's LMS livery.

Carminiadum Spotlessus.

Long time absence, is this still the right thread for birds in the garden? Whatever, I have definitive evidence that finches have lower IQ than titmice and nuthatches. This began with a plague of green flying tree rats. (Ring necked parakeets.) A massive flock came and raided the seed feeder, with their incessant shrieking as accompaniment, and none of the titmice etc. getting a look in. So I installed some fine wire mesh blocking direct access to the feeder ports, and victory! They gave up after two days of fruitseedless shrieking. My dear wife was most concerned that the birds the seeds are put out for might be discouraged, but her observation quickly established that all the regular titmice and the nuthatches had no problems, found that the indirect approach worked within minutes. Finches, which are less regular visitors, haven't mastered it yet, a month on since the wire mesh was introduced. Now referred to generically as Dimfinches. Let's see if Darwin was right, will they evolve into Brightfinches?