What I did yesterday

[Whyperion]

Somehow , maybe deliberately , the forum seems a littlebit back to front to me , with threads for what we are going to do today , which for me is a bit of a problem as I rarely plan and If I do it can start a 6am which gives no time to get to the computer , assuming it is up and working at the time. And reports back on what we ate , again my pizza and strange sandwiches / what was on offer at the supermarkert are going to be quite boring to most people , I tend to look forward to what I am going to eat , when its something a bit special and would post recipe if I can find it.

Anyway , without trying to sound a little bit like the school task of what did we do for our school holidays , maybe a yesterday summary might make sense and worth trying out.

I don't really like trading on a Sunday , but the Saturday car boot ( charity ) was a bit of a dead loss , other than I think the total this week for mum's charity ( some support work in Malawi with the Salvation Army ) has added up to £10 - this comes from many of the bits I find / get given / are left overs from the main charity stall days I do with donated goods. So off to support an Antique / Collectors Fair which had a toy fair as this months theme, I got a bit of a preferential rate for my stall as I did some promotion for it , and had space to run one of my 00 railway 'layouts' , I was hoping to get 5 layouts running but a couple of other people could not make it and we got moved into a different hall from that booked , so only had single power outlets and not the double in the original room. A quick borrow of the schools round dining room tables and an approximate oval of my best ( - well should have cleaned up a couple more straights a bit better ) Tri-Ang Super 4 track and H&M power controller and it takes about an hour to get out all of the potential rolling stock plus another hour for my sales stock to get out on display , access to building started at 08.30 and doors to public opened at 10am , so it was a bit of a rush, as it was there were not too many buyers ( a couple of other stall holders reported Zero takings ) , though my promotions had brought half a dozen or so of my regular buyers ( there was another toy fair 12 miles away where most of the traders were ) .

Anyway time for the photos which are more interesting.

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I took more photos , but the light conditions didnt really suit the camera and I got quite a lot of shake and focus problems ( and kept missing the train as it came into a reasonable view )

I managed to test and run some 10 locomotives and about 5 varieties of rolling stock.

From the photo first. The three Tri-Ang carriages have the later tension hook metal couplings compatible with much of the Hornby rolling stock of today. They are actually BR Cream and Maroon and not as the colouring has come out in the picture, I am told these are the Tri-Ang Southern Railway / Region Coaches in the BR colours and despite the short formation look quite good with the BR Jinty which came from a (repainted) freight set that had Series 3 track , but alas no lid to it. I had hoped to get the series 3 set tracks running but had no time to set it up ( nor any power ). The Jinty despite having the later tension lock couplings still has the solid wheels. It really needs a little bit of lubrication and slight cleaning but managed to run for an hour ( around lunchtime as I munched coffee and oatcake biscuits and took the photos of the other stalls ) on about 80% of 12v and responds well to slow running too , the brass gear on both the motor and the drive axle no doubt helping as I think it dates from around 1964/5 . The A1A ( from memory think this is a Tri-Ang Hornby one , with magnahesion on the motor bogie adhered well to the steel super4 track. I ran this with a mix of period freight stock , mostly the McVities wagon ( which I bought on Tuesday from another dealer ) and a Shell Tanker and a S R Brake van , as the Brake van had no coupling hook this was not as successful with permanent uncoupling ramp releasing it after about 3 circuits, so the Van is on for a repair job this afternoon. Again the loco ran with no need for full power. The McVitites wagon kept de-railing , so I took a look and found it had two differing sized wheels on it , so a rumage through the spares container produced a couple of three hole white wheels as shown , which look go enought , now I have two axle sets that dont match with any other spare wheels I have ! Once the wheel change was done all ran well.

The first loco I tried out was a new 0-4-0 from one of the BattleZone sets , I had sold the tanks and flat wagons about a year ago and the loco remained. At nil weight this chinese production loco was the first time I had run it , as I expected it went very fast, it is said that the modern motors wont work with older controllers. As ( generally ) 12v dc is much the same I dont have any problem with the toy train set motors at all ( with 5 pole more expensive items I could not comment ). As it was turning the speed down to about 10% produced some lovely slow running. I found a couple of open wagons and left it running while I continued to set the stall up. As I did not want to make the loco wheels too dirty I changed it fairly soon for a Smokey Joe loco that had lost its chimney ( I sell in this condition to OO9 kit bashers , Or claim its a fireless locomotive ) . Again new chinese but did not run as well , a LMS livered Saddle Tank really did not like working - dirty wheels and dirty straights meant it was sticking a little. So back to Jintys , this time an earlier Tri-Ang with the open hook and bar couplings , as this had been dropped at an earlier event I had to straighten the couplings with the pliers , and I had taken from my own small collection tank wagons (BP and UD) a couple of flat wagons and a couple of coal trucks with similar couplings with a Brake Van to complete, some adjustment to a bit of free movement to the couplings was needed. As expected the entire rack performed in a noisy manner - with a lack of anything like axle bearings , just metal axles thought to the outside of the axle boxes, all quite lovely but again not run too much. Thought I would change to a mineral configuration and took one of the new Trewavas Aggregates Locomotives from out of the pile. Well the motor spun but no movement , mentally moaning about 'customers' whom fiddle with the wheels on many of the loose locomotives I decided to try my mums screwdriver ( its a small slotted head one but seems to fit anything , normally lives in the kitchen drawer and gets mainly used for changing plugs at mums place , we know its hers as her name is etched on it and must be around 52 years old finished in that wonderful tortoise shell type plastic handle ) , undoing the cross head screw released the body from the chassis and I realised the spring retaining the motor was not in place but had somehow slipped down , this could well have been a manufacturing fault but as I cannot recall if I bought it new or s/h ( it was boxed ) , possibly it came from someone whom trades in mail order returns . A quick push with thumbs put the spring in place and chassis tested without body got motion as intended. When manuals state re-assembly is reverse of removal they skim over the great fun of trying to get an offset spacer block the correct 1 of 4 ways round , and attempting to get the screw located into the hole which mysteriously never lines up despite both sides being in the only possible place they can fit . The screwdriver finally nipped the screw in place , but as it did not quite fit to tighten to satisfaction remains to be done , but it ran quite nicely. I have a selection of British Trix ( courtaulds wrexham plastic eras ) which are incredibly free running. Fitted with peco/dublo swing knuckle couplings provision is also made with hollow lugs for certain mouldings of the later tri-ang couplings to fit so a bit of a quick swap of ends with one so fitted produced an adaptor truck , a reasonable speed was made with a five truck load .

I un-wrapped a Blue Pullman rake I had bought a couple of months back , somewhat cheap , unfortunately it had been got at , I will return to this as first I had one powered power car which I had run before. This today was running a bit slow , I have found since new the motors in these - despite being used in the Tri-Ang dock shunter and a couple of other locos , needs full power to move at even a reasonable pace , also the overhang and clearance front rear and sides is greater than any other loco other than perhaps a Deltic , so sending it round knocked all the little bits I had set up ( side walls etc ) also its a bit tricky to get the wheels on straight , so there went round with one set of wheels running nicely on the sleepers , this time the uncoupling ramp acted as a re-railer and popped it back on correctly. Back to the three unit set. Firstly the original tri-ang couplings had been removed and kadee ones fitted , these are supposedly superior, but with the limited clearance on tight curves of standard track there is no use to doing this , and anyway despite being mounted in screw plates onto the bodies they were at different heights power car to coach and would have never met up. In order to accommodate the couplings the bottom of the moulded carriage connections had been cut away , some kind of resin weighting had been wedged /glued in between the moulded battery box and underframe detail. The bogies too had been replaced crudely with a selection of lima / hornby bachman I have no idea ones , whilst the tri-ang bogies were not the correct pattern for the real train ones ( you will remember I believe these ran a St Pancras - Manchester Service ) . The bogies were also aligned in height so that the wheels caught the body , in attempting to fix this I broke off one , so I will attempt a repair in a more solid workspace.

The power car was tested though and ran much better across all feed ranges , and although light power car movements did happen it looked silly just running on its own.

[Whyperion]

Just so I don't accidentally delete the first posting on a mis - edit time for second installment.

Having an oval I though I would try running two locos so when the trewavas was running I added opposite one of the many GWR 101s I have. Despite being much the same type of model ( outside cylinder outline with additional connecting rods - trewavas is an inside cylinder outline ), their relative speeds and reaction to the dirty track parts meant that after a while the GWR one caught up to the end , they both ran happliy with one as a banker , not normally recomended as one runs faster either the axles can push the nylon gear drives and strip one of them , or as happened here in the slow sections one was pushed along with skid / wheelspin ! Still good fun.

As the 0-4-0 saddle tanks were not running too well , time to try a couple of 1970s Tri-Ang Hornby GWR pannier tanks instead. When I lasted tested these , on modern Hornby track a distinct waddle was observed , so in previous sales I described them as running just like Duck in the Rev W Awdry Railway series books , those whom know the story or the back story on this will understand the meaning behind it ( I have seen prototype restored full scale versions do much the same kind of movement ). On the super 4 track they were more at home , more so when hauling a load of 4 or 5 trucks. As it was One person was interested in buying one right at the end of the day , but was concerned that the larger wheel flanges compared to todays models would be a problem , I demonstrated on a modern point that clearence through the blades and frogs would not be a problem and they went away happy with the purchase , only now thinking about it I think the measurement between the inside edges of the running rails on super 4 is slightly less than modern track , this could explain the waddle observed.

As 4 O Clock approached , time to pack away , fitting books into boxes ( most stayed but the display copies never quite seem to fit as required to ) and as I had bought in a part collection of what were verbally said to be unboxed corgi toys ( actually most were unboxed Matchbox Superkings - which I prefer ) , at about 2pm and sold 2 of them by 3pm , things didnt quite fit back in the car as easily. Track for repair and update were all tumbled into shoe boxes and finally in less than an hour and a quarter of packing , in quite hot and humid conditions I managed to get lost on the way back to base ( well i roughly knew where I was it was just a lesser efficent way of getting to where I meant to go to ).