Dublorunner.com

I needed a rear pony for a HD 2-6-4T and immediately went to MTrains as they are on my links page and had been recommended by people commenting on the website. I am very pleased to report that I received excellent service and a well packaged pony truck arrived at a very reasonable price. Only possible improvement is if they took PayPal. I know that this would add 3% to their costs but I think that their prices could rise by this amount without a problem and would add business from outside the UK. The pictures of the spares on the website is definitely an added bonus.

I tested all the links on 27th February. The link to Southern Railway Photo Net shows Account Suspended so this is not working. All other links are working fine.

Whilst searching to see if the Southern Photos site had moved to a new domain owner I came across this which is a collection of pictures of the Southern Railway of the USA. Interesting but probably not interesting enough to add to the links page. But then I went to the Home Page typed in UK in the Country box and found 9,190 pictures of railways in the UK. Browsing this website could seriously damage your health. This link has been added.

Chuffers.com, Elaine’s Trains and Shunters Junction selling HD and other makes have been added.

Lickey Incline added with brief histories of HD, Trix etc and other items of interest. Worth a browse

If you know of a link to a useful 3 rail site or supplier etc add it as a comment to this posting.

If, like me, you have some old diecast Dinky and Corgi toys of a similar age to Hornby Dublo then you need to spend time here an excellent website for information and history but also has valuations of many of the items. Fascinating reading but beware you just might lose a lot of hours combing through this site.

At the beginning of the year I bought a couple of Playcraft wagons which were made by Jouef for the UK market. I also gave a link to the Playcraft site. Now thanks to ebay I have added a Playcraft loco but one with a bit of a difference. This one has a HD B0-Bo chassis under the plastic body of a Playcraft D6100 diesel. There is absolutely no modifications to the HD chassis and as a result is an excellent runner with good pulling power and of course HD couplings. The D6100 is a model of a Class 21 diesel whereas the HD Bo Bo is a model of a Class 20 diesel. Clearly my D6100 now has the wrong bogie frames and seems to have been repainted into Brunswick Green with full yellow ends but within the bounds it looks and runs well. As mentioned in my earlier post Playcraft was made to the continental HO scale so how does it fit in? Well in actual fact it is hardly noticeable as the D8000 BoBo was a pretty big engine. The prototype Class 20 is 46 ft 9 ins and the Class 21 was 51ft 6 ins so in real life the difference would certainly have been noticeable but in 00 gauge, 4 mm = 1 ft the difference amounts to 20 mm which is less than an inch so not really a problem. Another one to add to my modified HD locos rather than a Playcraft original.

Strangely as part of the same purchase the seller included an original D6100 in 2rail form. This looks as if it has hardly been used but whenever it was used it must have been dropped as it has a broken buffer beam. It is of little use to me as a 3 rail only runner but an interesting historical piece of kit.

When I updated the links last November I added a new Track Layout programme called SCARM (Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeller) but confessed that I had not used it.

Now I have given it a go. It is very easy to pick up and produce a potential layout.  The

programme has many track systems and you click on the arrow on the left column and there is a dropdown menu, pick Hornby and then you have a choice of 2, 3 rail or the modern track. Click on 3 rail and all of the available three rail track appears in this column. Click the top left hand corner of the scale to change to inches and use the scroll wheel on the main page to change the size of the layout. Use a right click to draw a base board and in this programme it can be an L shape or T shape as well as being rectangular. Draw the size and shape you want instructions are given.

Starting is easy. Click on the red arrow and place it on the board where you want to start. Click on the rail you want and it will appear on the board. The rail on the baseboard now has a grey arrow at one end and a red at the other. Clicking on the next rail adds it to the red end. If you want to change the end click on the grey end and it becomes red and the next rail adds here. Very simple. Curves show left or right, points give 3 choices its all straightforward. When you want to change where you are working click on the grey end of the rail, it turns red and you start again from this position.

It even has a 3D option to help you visualise the layout. The only problem I have encountered is that in the 3D option you can take a photo of the layout as a bitmap or jpg. I have done this, the file size states that there is something there but I cannot see it – not sure why. So I have made do with screen shots to give some idea of the 3D capability.

The programme does have the Travelling Post Office and signals but no buildings as yet.

I think it works very well and if you are exploring layout possibilities it is certainly the programme to use.

Enjoy producing your next layout, whether you will build it is, of course, another matter.

On my small inner oval I have a train of an Graham Farish (Grafar) 0-6-0T with two Farish GWR coaches. I saw on ebay a boxed set of two Grafar GWR Ventilated vans which would go nicely at the head of the carriages. At £10 they were a good buy and look and run very well. So now we have a complete Grafar train.

One that I bought last year was a Hornby Black 5 converted excellently to 3 rail by Neil. I never could understand why Hornby Dublo did the 8F rather than the Black 5 which was a much more popular and numerous engine and would not have required a completely new chassis. This is a tender drive loco but actually runs very well and has very good pulling power. The draw back of these later Hornby is that they often have traction tyre which with a dirty track pick up oil and can stretch and come off. This problem also applies to an extent to those HD locos which had traction tyres (BoBo, CoBo and CoCo diesels.

Following the last News item I have looked more closely at the Jouef tanker that I bought from the model shop. In fact I bought another wagon from Jouef the last time I visited which when I looked more closely on the underside had Jouef for Playcraft moulded in the plastic. A quick check on the tanker showed the same thing, So Playcraft with Peco type couplings ideal for HD except that they are HO and not OO scale. The history of Playcraft shows it to be very low cost system which did not last for very long but that their are still some enthusiasts with a collection of them . Well worth a look to add to your knowledge of the history of toy trains in the UK.

With the short days and long nights its time to do some additions to the layout so I have ordered some more Metcalfe cardboard building kits which I will make up and add to the town centre. As I went to the local hobby shop rather than buy them off the internet there was also a chance to pick up 2 or3 (or was it 4 or 5) second hand freight wagons with Triang type couplers to go behind the Warship which currently runs with a converter wagon. This has freed up some genuine HD trucks for elsewhere on the layout. At a £1 each they hardly broke the bank. These all plastic trucks are ideal behind the Warship which has lost its traction tyres and so will only pull a light load. In the photo we have a Lima Warship, 2 Hornby 12T Vans, a Triang 12T van, a Triang converter wagon and a Joeff  bogie gas tanker which is HO scale but looks OK – not a HD item in sight but loads elsewhere on dublorunner.com

I have just received a comment from Keith Pilkington and he asked if could link his blog to mine, which I was very happy to do.

So then I went to lo0k at his blog. WOW really good with some very rare Hornby Dublo enough to make me very jealous. However the layouts are really great and there is some very interesting stuff. Its a must visit for any Hornby Dublo Collector or Runner, certainly puts my effort into proper perspective.

Scroll down, passed a complete Terminus station, a Candian Pacific Loco, lots of interesting layouts until you get to Folkestone Harbour in 3 rail – really something.

Looks like the morning will be taken up reading the past posts.

The link is posted in the Links section but use this to go there immediately.

It was with shock and great sadness that I learnt today of the passing of Neil Medhurst well known on ebay as dublobear.

Neil has, through ebay, supplied over many years a good number of the 3 rail conversions that I run on my layout. During the last 2 or 3 years we have corresponded frequently and I have been able to have conversions specially made for me which have greatly enhanced my layout. My last three engines were all supplied by Neil. It seems amazing that my last loco, a Hornby Black 5 Conversion, might be the last that I will receive from Neil.

I will always remember Neil as I run his many trains around my layout, a person I never met but through the internet and ebay was first thought of as an honest and genuine trader and later as an ebay friend.

I will miss him and his conversions, my best to all his relations and friends.

I have checked all the links on the Links page.

Brian Schofield’s Hornby and Hornby Dublo Electric Trains have both seem to have left the web and have been removed from the links. The second one is depressing because this was the first site that I ever found on Hornby Dublo and through their Virtual Swap Shop I made some of my first purchases back in the days when you sent for a list of items for sale and relied on the buyer for an accurate description. Sorry to see that website go.

Paul Bartlett’s British Rail Wagons and the HRA have both changed their web addresses and these have been updated in the links.

I have also added a link to SCARM (Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeller) which is a software programme like Xtrac which enable you do build a theoretical layout of a 3 rail layout. You can also view it in 3D. I have to admit that it looks very clever, I have downloaded it but only used a little. I think that it is worth giving it a try and it has been very well received by the HRCA as they have had a lot of input to the programme so that it covers both Hornby Dublo 2 and 3 rail.