My new acquisition is a Triang Hornby Battle of Britain Class named Winston Churchill. This has been converted to 3 rail using an HD pick up. Despite it having a plastic body it pulls my rake of Trix coaches with ease but I have not yet tried it on HD coaches.

HD did a model of the rebuilt version of Bulleid’s pacific, Dorchester (3 rail) and Barnstaple (2 rail) but never the original “spam cam” version. This was modelled by Wrenn and I have their Merchant Navy version of it. The Wrenn model has a diecast body and is really heavy. It does run well but has all of its driving wheels flanged which does make it intolerant of any dodgy curves. My version occasionally derails on one curve although no other loco in the fleet has any problem including the Trix/Lilliput Flying Scotsman which also has a flanged middle driving wheel.

This Triang engine is not the best of models seeming to be slightly too narrow and is not very well detailed but given its introduction date of early 70’s is adequate compared to the rest of the fleet.

The first picture is with Flash, the second without – the colour is meant to be SR Malachite Green. On close inspection neither of the pictures are really very good and I will take some more and replace these – soon.

Overall an interesting addition.

Hornby Dublo did not make many BR (SR) Mk1 Green coaches and as a result they are

fairly hard to find and on the expensive side. For a M&B expect to pay around £70 and for a good unboxed up to £40. I have three of them unboxed and paid around £25 each, all bought at train fairs.

I also have a couple of Kitmaster green MK1 but neither were a brake so the short rake was a little odd. I added a Trix Buffet Car version which had been fitted with HD bogies and that was the state of play.

Then I saw on ebay some Trix BR (SR) green coaches, bid for two brake composites and one both of them for £4.99 each + postage. They run without any problems on their Trix bogies so I am unsure why the Buffet Car was fitted with HD ones. The net result is that this carriage rides a little higher that the originals.

So if you are a runner and want some BR (SR) green carriages keep a look out for the Trix ones. They are all plastic, rather than the HD ones with their tinplate sides but look good and run well. They also do the buffet car which was never available from HD. Coopertrains have produced new versions but you would have to pay £140 for the buffet car and £125 for the brake. They are lovely models but for a runner?

Links have been checked and a couple removed that were no longer working.

Over the last 5 days two of my converted locos ground to a halt. Both were Graham Farish conversions. One was the large Praire tank, which I bought only recently and the other was a 0-6-0T with an original motor.

I am not sure that the Praire is the original chassis as it has an upright motor very similar to a HD N2 or 2-6-4T. Any way this had been running sluggishly for sometime and was reluctant to start without a push but last week it gave up the fight completely. I stripped it down and found that one of the springs holding in the brush was twice as long as the other. This is mentioned in one of Ron Dodds videos as a potential problem so I duly cut it in half and put back the brush, In so doing the soldered wire came off so I had to resolder that – nothing to you chaps but big for me as my soldering technique leaves something to be desired. But the wire is still on and the engine is running around the track. Not fast but it is running.

The other one had the motor sprocket spinning on the drive wheel gear. Again a dismantle and I could find no better way of holding down the motor sprocket than was already in place. So in this case I moved to the last resort of the bodger, superglue, and stuck the motor to the chassis. With a lot of time holding in place. as it is still so cold in the workshop that any glue dries slowly, I checked that the gears were meshed and tried a run. Works well. So back on went the body and the engine is back pulling its Grafar Western Region coaches strongly around the small inside track.

Now I’m on a roll is there something else in the box that I can turn my mechanical skills to?

A converted Graham Farish Praire Tank has been added to the loco fleet. This is another diecast model made around the time of Hornby Dublo before Graham Farish began to manufacture in N gauge. It needed a little servicing but is now a reasonable runner if not very fast. The newly built 2 road engine shed can be seen in the background. The New Year has brought some very cold weather and running has been a little sporadic.

Ron Dodds has published a series of videos on utube which relates to many aspects of running Hornby Dublo. They include, servicing, trouble shooting, track, couplings almost anything you want to know about running HD all done simply and extremely well.

Here is the complete list

Cleaning and Lubricating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hYyIBWWrsBo

Adjustment of carbon brushes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=B87x3AqGGGI

Fault Finding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=EN5nlPIObNc

Use of multimeter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=GMcD26tB014

Type of magnet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=8ATCBgtTRu0

Getting more out of your motors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=kdXQ54RHQuU

3 rail track fault finding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=7mTMn1C3GbY&feature=player_detailpage

Metal couplings and wheels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=UYJQY74ODw4

Cleaning the rolling stock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UUBsdZ5pGeFUfk9kyf8XCDww&v=RZ4SSL_11yA

Loco wheels and their problems

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYHRBdFvvhk&feature=player_detailpage

Great viewing for cold wet winter evenings.

There was an article in the latest edition of the HRCA Collectors magazine on how to convert a HD 8F into a Black5, it was long and detailed and required a great deal of work and skill. The finished article though was very nice ideed.

Thanks to ebay here is a similar conversion but using a Graham Farish Black 5 body. It has a 3 rail Castle chassis with 8F valve gear and an 8F tender with the three rail pick ups. I actually think that it looks slightly better than the conversion using an 8F body as the Farish one has a higher running board.

It runs as well as a inch and a half Castle would which is not amazing power but adequate for 3 or 4 coaches or 10 or so trucks. Better than an 8F which has poor pulling power. Avery nice addition to the loco fleet.

I will copy this to the section on HD based locos.

Richard Fellows did a realy excellent job finding a picture of my shunter and realising that it was a Dinky push along train. As soon as he identified it I found only two more picture on the web so great job. Obviously repainted into black with no numbers or logo. Given that the Horby mech fits it is obviously OO gauge but the scale is way out as the boiler is as tall as that on a 2-6-4T so perhaps its the biggest dock shunter ever. It actually doesn’t look to out of place the head of a short passenger or goods train and it runs well. I will take so some comparative pictures to give an idea of how out of scale it is. The Budgie train is even more difficult to find on the web. This is because mine is not a Budgie train as all I can find that they made was in British Railways livery with nasty stickers so mine must have been a forerunner as the LMS is embossed. I did see one on ebay in green described as Budgie but didn’t book mark it and so can’t find it again. Again this one is to 00 gauge but not too scale with a very tall cab roof.

Good to have something different, even outlandish, to run on the layout. Now running HD, Trix, Graham Farish, Triang, Dinky Toys, Budgie Toys, Maerklin, Playcraft, Airfix and some of the modern Lima, Hornby and Bachmann plus more that I have forgotten. Variety is the spice of life.

I have always maintained that I collect and play with toy trains because that is what they were made for. They are not super detailed and you have to use your imagination to believe that they represent real trains . Nothing wrong with that.

However I believe I may have hit a new High or Low depending where you are coming from with one of my latest acquisitions. There were two die cast locos on ebay for silly money which I bid on and won, 2 locos for under £25.00 including postage.

On receiving them it was obvious that both had mechanisms from modern Hornby converted to three rail and they both ran very well.

Research on the web showed that the 0-6-0T was definitely a very early Budgie die cast push along loco vaguely based on a Jinty but with a cab roof based on a high rise block rather than a steam engine. In fact if you go to Budgie Diecast Toys websites and there are a few the only model they show is a British Railways version in red or green but which is based on a different casting. I did find a green LMS version but it must have been sold and as I forgot to bookmark it I can’t find it again but I think that it was Budgie or a forerunner of this company. Clearly mine has been repainted, not very well in BR Black but with the LMS and the number embossed in the diecast. As already mentioned it is a good runner despite having a strange 3 rail pick up conversion which is 2 parts but traverses points and X crossings with no trouble.

The other one remains a mystery. It is a diecast 0-4-0T, dock shunter type with the Hornby mechanism which has outside cylinders but no clear indication as to whether the original engine had this feature.

I have tried to find it on Google but without any luck so far. This one runs really well and looks good. Again the painting is poor and there are no numbers and it seems to have the mechanism for working an Autotrailer on the side of the boiler. This has the same type of 3 rail pick up as the Jinty.

Anyone out there got any ideas on the manufacturer. Click on the picture to get a bigger version. Comments are always open so if you have any ideas please post.

Go to Andy Miller’s Blog to see conversions of Southern EMUs from Hornby and Bachman and follow his progress on conversion to DCC on 3 rail HD tin track, Great stuff