Aston On Clun. A forgotten Great Western outpost.

[MrWolf]

21 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Oh no it isn't - those are First Day stamps (on the back of postcards).  postcard albums have six to a page on modern inserts 😇

 

 

You're right, they are indeed first day covers and I'm impressed that you took the time to study the picture so closely....😉

[MrWolf]

All in grey and rust.

 

[Andy WD]

39 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

All in grey and rust.

 

Looks so much better now Sir.
Excellent job

[Winslow Boy]

 

Your getting quite good at this distressing lark arent you Mr Wolf.

[NHY 581]

12 hours ago, MrWolf said:

All in grey and rust.

 

 

 

Top job. Very nicely done indeed.......

 

[longchap]

EIGHT!!!

 

Opps, sorry, thought I was on ebay.

Edited October 29, 2022 by longchap

[Compound2632]

21 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

[MrWolf]

This afternoon I was given an..  er..... train?

I've no idea what it is, to me it looks like the Morecambe branch rattler, the memsahib says that it looks like two buses did something unspeakable...

 

What I do know is that it was made in England by Hornby, has two motors and there's no sign of life.

 

Any ideas?

 

[MrWolf]

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

Thank you, I have ended up with something unusual, it won't irritate me when I look at it and it's one less kit in the Box of Doom.

 

Admittedly, Groby Granite never had any RCH wagons, but then again, there was never a GWR branch from Craven Arms up the Clun Valley either. 

 

I'm not sure which is the greater sin...

[PaulaDoesTrains]

16 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

 

What I do know is that it was made in England by Hornby, has two motors and there's no sign of life.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

 

Maybe a Pacer? 

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=664

 

[NHY 581]

Try this, Rob. 

 

 

[57xx]

56 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

This afternoon I was given an..  er..... train?

I've no idea what it is, to me it looks like the Morecambe branch rattler, the memsahib says that it looks like two buses did something unspeakable...

 

What I do know is that it was made in England by Hornby, has two motors and there's no sign of life.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Paint it chocolate and cream and stick in the carriage siding?

[MrWolf]

23 minutes ago, 57xx said:

 

Paint it chocolate and cream and stick in the carriage siding?

 

I was thinking more along the lines of fix, clean, sell, it doesn't exactly cut it in the style stakes alongside the flying banana.

 

Other than a dusty roof, cosmetically it's in great shape, I think that somebody running late British Rail would like to have it.

 

Thanks to @PaulaDoesTrains and @NHY 581 for the identification and repair video. It is definitely a Hornby R867 Class 142 Pacer, made between 1987-92, although the only number I could find underneath "Built in Britain" was L6360.

 

Original price was apparently £29.45, but to put that into perspective, back in 1988, I could fill the tank of my 1960 Vauxhall Cresta for the same price.

 

 

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, MrWolf said:

Any ideas?

eBay.

[MrWolf]

8 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

eBay.

 

That's covered earlier under fix, clean, sell. 😉

[MrWolf]

The unfortunate result of reading that book on The Cleobury Mortimer & Ditton Priors Light Railway is discovering that brake vans number 1 & 2 survived into the 1930s as GWR numbers 10109 & 10110.

Another one for the future projects file...

 

 

Picture: City of Coventry Boarding School 

[MrWolf]

A quick look inside the class 142 this morning revealed that one motor has been replaced at some point. That one will run under power but not under load. The second motor only make um smoke signals.

 

Given the condition of the rest of the loco / train / DMU / kinky buses? I think that it's worth hunting down a couple of M2209 motors or modern equivalent.

 

Modern motors may be much better and easier to control, but compared to the old Tri-ang monstrosity the engineering is pure Christmas tree chocolate.

[simonmcp]

I thought the original only had a one motor, it could be that someone has either combined two motor ends or has done a home made conversion. 

[PaulaDoesTrains]

I believe at some point they were fitted with two motors. I remember watching OOBill's repair video where he couldn't get decent running because the motors seemed to be running at different speeds so he removed one. I find it interesting that during its service the 142 was castigated (perhaps deservedly so) yet as soon as the final withdrawal happened there was a scramble to save some. There are currently a couple at Chasewater which look well out of place amongst the preserved industrial and shunting engines and the nicely restored coaches.

[MrWolf]

Apparently not, according to the information supplied by @PaulaDoesTrains, they had two motors and the pickups on early ones such as mine (1988 version) bear directly on the tyre faces, rather than the inside. Surely a recipe for arcing? 

 

To paraphrase Snatch:

 

"And we don't like arcing about do we, Errol?

 

No. We don't, John..."

 

Watching the video that @nhy581posted, it's clear that many people have tinkered with these over the years. a quick look on eBay shows that the chisellers are asking more for the motor and axle unit than others are asking for a complete pair of DMUs.

[MrWolf]

12 minutes ago, PaulaDoesTrains said:

I believe at some point they were fitted with two motors. I remember watching OOBill's repair video where he couldn't get decent running because the motors seemed to be running at different speeds so he removed one. I find it interesting that during its service the 142 was castigated (perhaps deservedly so) yet as soon as the final withdrawal happened there was a scramble to save some. There are currently a couple at Chasewater which look well out of place amongst the preserved industrial and shunting engines and the nicely restored coaches.

 

I think that there's one on the East Lancs up at Skipton too. I think that the ones on the Morecambe branch have gone too.

[MrWolf]

I'd just like to point out quite categorically at this point that:

 

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY ON EARTH THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE GOING MODERN IMAGE.

 

It's generally accepted in this house that the world ended somewhere around the middle of the 1960s.

 

Besides, as I've said before, a modern image AoC would mean that everything you see would have been pasted over with a "prestigious development" of fake farmhouses, a true investment for your family and a snip at around £600,000 a chuck.

 

Whilst everyone moans about the gentrification of the countryside, the increased traffic from the new development and the rubbish public transport.

 

Never mind, you can solve all the world's problems by spending forty grand on buying a cross dressing milk float....

 

Oh, and don't forget to keep telling everyone about it until they've been properly bored.

 

Blessed. Living my best life etc...

[John Besley]

Love the thought of a cross dressing milk float... Chelsea Tractor?

[PaulaDoesTrains]

But modern image has many huge advantages. All you need to do is have a row of newish houses along a lane named Old Station Road and you've got it 😀 You save a ton of money on stock 😀 And no fretting over things like DC/DCC or OO/EM/P4 😀

 

Alternately you could have a line but no trains running because you're modelling a particular day when they were on strike 😀

[NHY 581]

Given the large numbers of 4 wheeled railbuse and trailers succesfully running about on various networks in Europe, I do wonder how such a horses arse was made of the Pacers.......

 

Rob