John Tomlinson

There were more Black 5's than there are 66's, in the UK anyway. So maybe even more popular, though I doubt it. Being old enough to remember HST's arriving in the 70's, most folk loathed them for supplanting the Deltics, Westerns and 50's to name but three on the E.R. and W.R. Decades later they were much folllowed on their final duties, and indeed still are in Cornwall. Everything in our hobby has its day. John.

Pretty common all over East Anglia, as far as I can work out from photos, although they did range across the country, there are even pics of them on the Cambrian Coast line! IIRC the idea of them was that trains with sections to different locations could be made up with a greater variety of stock, because many Great Eastern section platforms are quite short. So more coaches for a given length, with firsts, seconds, composites mixed as required. Looking back from 2024 this policy of total non standardisation of all LNER coaching stock looks barmy, with small differences in internal arrangements to suit whatever the traffic requirements of specific lines were thought to be. Look through any book on LNER coaches and the range of diagrams, and you'll see what I mean. Fun for us modellers though! John.

I'm glad this has worked! The Hawksworths and the new Pullmans are all assembled in the same way, and I suspect other modern Hornby coaches are too. John.

I've found the photo I was thinking of, in Blenkinsop's "Big Four Cameraman" album by OPC, plate 83. This shows 62666 & 62667 (both lined at the time) passing Aynho on Sunday 11th September 1955 with what is alleged to be a Farnborough Airshow special. I'd guess it's come down the GC to Woodford, then to Banbury and presumably via Oxford and Reading West to Basingstoke, then maybe something else took it to Farnborough after reversal. I can't prove the locos were serviced at Basingstoke, but seems more than likely. John.

I have a feeling that a pair of D11/1's worked a Farnborough Airshow special sometime in the mid 50's from the north, and were also serviced at Basingstoke. Might be wrong, I'll see if I can find a photo. John.

He's called mcsterl on ebay, being the person I bought my Q4 from. His J21 is here, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/145478583351?itmmeta=01HWN87ZZM9G6DZG4RVVFBV2GS&hash=item21df330437:g:f3oAAOSwxNllR8G1&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA4Jh%2FfNfLp0cDZlB4tOXz10JFdD4aJsUDPgiXaK6fqufiXk5Vm6ms1QeQrLPZuWZ1UY4Ik0Scij%2FQ1cz%2FOr4lBTUExfH%2BjWSqDikpQB7KyZDq1cTG7aCh6enqG%2FwWRpH%2FcQJ59qBmCypUR7ggg1WcfmW0Tn6HPMf2pKQnfnhDo8ZGTJXLaV4d6QQYTjF1KN5RwzCS9o3fzu0v1LdCJKXUgr0%2BaaEMUSuLvOBHYxWJDzQVXYM%2BLY0KprqZYmoUDaF7P36hxAWqk8JDNDibGwFDptK1KBjFu7vVo%2FTiK6ey8vCf|tkp%3ABk9SR_D_ I'm not aware of a separate website. John.

Quite brave of you to have a go with that one, having looked at some of his seconds I wimped out and bought a pristine one! The end result looks excellent, and your various metal embellishments have lifted it to a much higher level. John.

Sadly there aren't any of the Gresley "shorty" 52" 6' vestibuled coaches available in RTR, which would have been around in your time period. So it's kits for these, brass from MJT(?), plastic from Kirk, or 3-D print from Isinglass. Someone has now bought the Kirk range, but these tend to come up on ebay as well. John.

Yes, I do see now you've explained it, many thanks. John.

Thanks, the set of pictures is quite helpful, and there is a shot of 424 in SR days with a Pullman and the cab doors appearing to be open (on the top row). I've basically added everything in the Bachmann bag of goodies, plus the etched plates as I'm quite happy to have "Beachy Head" as my example. For one thing it seems to have been the last in service, and for another we went to Eastbourne on holiday when I was a child, so I've been to the real place! The front wheel guard irons need to be fitted with care, although there is a raised pip in the underside of the running plate to give reference (there's a hole in the top of the irons to match), there's still scope for movement, and they need to be kept forward to avoid hitting the bogie wheels. The rest of the bits seem to fit OK, and with the tender /loco bar on the closest setting it still goes round my 27" radius curves. So I've just the doors to add, and if I ever fathom the headcode discs, those as well. I've been following Basingstoke with interest, and presumably they did get there, on excursions and the like? John. P.S. Looking at the photos again, 32425 in the third row far left approaching Croydon also seems to be moving with the cab doors open, although a bit blurry there is a clear mark where the inside latch is at the top.

Obviously no great thoughts on this one, so I'm probably going to go with doors open. Nice shot here of what I think is an H2 belting along with the doors in that position, you can see the inside latch at the top,

If you do want to take the body off, these are like other modern Hornby coaches. Turn the coach over and place on a soft surface. In each corner of the underframe you'll see a transparent piece of plastic, which needs to be pushed outwards towards the coach side, and this will release the chassis in that area. Repeat on each corner. IIRC there's some body lugs in the centre of the coach side so slide a cocktail stick between chassis and coach side to release these. The securing lugs on the bogies can now be seen clearly above the holder moulding on the inside of the chassis, squeeze these together and the bogies relase. John.

I raised the question here on the H2 thread a while ago, but got no takers! If anyone has come up with some wheeze on the cab doors which I think are the same on both, I'd be grateful. "Yesterday I finally got around to detailing up my "Beachy Head" in BR lined black. What a lovely thing it is! I wonder, has anyone done anything with the cab doors that allows them to be fitted closed, but with the loco still able to go round 30'' curves? I can see it might be possible to design some hinge arrangement akin to that on movable fall plates, but would be interested to know if anyone has actually done this? I don't normally get too excited about this topic, but on the H2's and H1's the arrangement is unusual in that they open and close outside the cab, and so are rather noticeable if left off - not to mention the pair of holes on the front of the tender! There also seem to be pictures of these locos running with the doors open, so maybe that's the best option. Many thanks in advance, John."

Yes, we modellers are a stroppy lot when you think about it! Demand lots of fine detail, but moan when in a journey of thousands of miles across the oceans little bits drop off and are loose in the box. The lights issue is a classic, up to the late 90's when the high intensity headlights appeared in Britain, they were barely discernible. And anyone who'd ever tried to read in a Mk1 coach at night, even with the extra individual lights on, would know it was near impossible and a sure path to eye strain. I do plastic military modelling sometimes, and on modern jet aeroplanes there has become a fashion for highlighting panel lines, so they look as if they've been ploughed. This is totally unrealistic, and I was reliably informed by active RAF engineers that any aircraft with such gaping hollows in its surfaces would never get off the ground. Yet folk do this on their models, and win competitions in the process! Funny old world. John.

I take your point, but on the real thing the actual swivelling of the bogies would be indiscernible as real railway curves are far less sharp than we use on our models. The other thing, and I confess some ignorance here, I'm sure that on some German tenders the apparent bogies weren't bogies at all as we understand them, simply fixed frames. IIRC this was true on the Br52 Kriegsloks for one. I'm happy to be contradicted on this as I don't speak German and have struggled to understand the literature, so may be wrong. John.

Those "no photography" and other signs put me off too! ROF Euxton was plastered with them. A school friend was once arrested for being lineside at Euxton Junction by the WCML, this would be in 1975. The issue wasn't that he was on railway property, but that he was sufficiently close to the ROF to have been spotted by security using a camera doing railway photography. The coppers took him to Chorley police station and rang his Mum, who was allowed to come and pick him up and take him home, with strict instructions never, ever to go there again. I do recall some rolling stock and one or two diesel shunters at Heapey back in 1974, when I first came across the site on a walk - I grew up in Whittle and know just where you were. One of the shunters at least made it to the scrapyard in Chorley by the railway line near Harpers Lane, I went to ask them if they'd sell me the builders plate but the owner said the loco had been resold to Italy - I don't know if that actually happened or not. Happy days indeed! John.

I was curious to see your mention of the now closed Chorley to Cherry Tree line, not far at all from where I grew up. The ROF outstation at Heapey could, had the line remained open, easily become a strategic reserve for locos, with the substantial storage facilites for munitions that were excavated into the hillsides there being re-purposed. And I've still to establish the truth (or not) in the rumour that a rail tunnel existed between that site and the main facility at Euxton, now Buckshaw village. The triple units based on 86 bodyshells are splendid, and quite convincing when one thinks of the multi-unit locos in use in parts of the former USSR, and I'm sure other places as well. John.

I'd agree completely with this. The crud has to come from somewhere, and little of it can come from the tyres otherwise they'd vanish quickly to nothing. What I do know from extensive purchases of British "OO" pre-owned, is that a good number of modellers have lamentable housekeeping. Ebay descriptions of "erratic running" are often explained simply by huge quantities of gunge on the wheels, and some too on the pick-ups, which makes you wonder how the previous owners think electricity conducts! I do accept that some of our RTR manufacturers have at times been guilty of excess lubrication at the factory, but is it really that difficult to do some focused cleaning with the likes of Slater's Track and Mechanism Cleaner and some cotton buds? In Britain we seem to have a big "downer" on tender drives, perhaps because the offerings we had decades ago frankly weren't that great, and manufacturing of the locos was sufficiently rough to regularly give the phenomenon of driving wheels stuck and being pushed along. That doesn't seem at all to be the outcome with the likes of Roco and others, which frankly are in a different league. John.

Yesterday I finally got around to detailing up my "Beachy Head" in BR lined black. What a lovely thing it is! I wonder, has anyone done anything with the cab doors that allows them to be fitted closed, but with the loco still able to go round 30'' curves? I can see it might be possible to design some hinge arrangement akin to that on movable fall plates, but would be interested to know if anyone has actually done this? I don't normally get too excited about this topic, but on the H2's and H1's the arrangement is unusual in that they open and close outside the cab, and so are rather noticeable if left off - not to mention the pair of holes on the front of the tender! There also seem to be pictures of these locos running with the doors open, so maybe that's the best option. Many thanks in advance, John.

As would a match to Bachmann 31-995, being the first green livery with orange and black lining. IIRC they did 10000 in this, but to get the pair would be nice. I've looked at trying to modify the raised number however highly likely this would just end up a mess! John.

I don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but in the top photo, where the misalignment is clear, were the cranks in line on the other side? Sometimes there is play in the motion so that the cranks seem out of alignment, but in fact it's just play showing on both sides. John

If you were aiming for something like the rolling hills of the North Downs, then that's exactly what's happened. Looks great! John.

I'm pleased to have found this layout, and enjoyed watching some of the videos. I wish I'd done more in Belgium back in the day. A few of the ADL "Along Different Lines" tours and shed trips, plus a bit of linesiding for photography. The latter focused mainly on Athus - Meuse, and seemed like jolly hard work for not much traffic. This was in the late '90's, and although full freight timetables were available (IIRC in Lok-Report, or maybe Today's Railways), they seemed mainly to be honoured in the breach! Happy days nonetheless, and I shall follow this thread with interest. John. John.

I'm not more knowledgeable, but would suggest the same. IIRC the S69xxx numbers are on other catering vehicles in emu's, the 4-CEP's for one. John.

These two really look the part, and you should be well pleased with the outcome. They prompted me to dig out the old David and Charles book on the Stanier 4-6-0's, written back in the 70's, which despite being a slim single volume tells us much of what we need to know about these and the Jubilees, the kind of super-detail we now get in the Wild Swan and Irwell loco books being far into the future. I've always found the numbering of these rather confusing, a bit like the sub classes of 37's, as they start to go backwards in batches after the first big tranche, and had forgotten that 44687 was in fact the last one built, at Horwich, and into traffic in May 1951. My grandad who I never met worked there until his death in 1950, and I've always liked to think that he might have made bits for some of the others built there in the late 40's and numbered in the 44xxx series. If 44744 reminds us how economical in beauty this batch was, 44687 is quite the other way, with its high running plate that was carried on into the BR Standards. Thanks for posting these pictures of a very interesting time in British railway loco history. John.