Golden Fleece 30

Thanks Mike, The trains do run well, like Dublo built to last (usually), but I have noticed the Deltic and this Type 3 ran very well on Tri-ang track but on nickel are not as good. They have the Magnadhesion for steel track but it was not actually thought of at the time, or not mentioned by Tri-ang that only came later in 00. I will have to look at putting a second motor bogie in as the Brush type 4 has. The controllers are plain H and M's no feedback etc but work well with these motors. Unfortunately the fiddle yard track is very poor, nothing like the front, so I am having to renew it all using Peco points. I do need to make a curved trailing crossover for the bend in front of the goods yard as there was no facility for trains to cross from one line to the other meaning a goods train on the inner track had no access to the goods yard, or leave it. I also want to look at adding a turntable in the loco depot. I quite like the track painted so hopefully getting more paint today as all I had left from the earlier layout is now used up. More static grass is on order but I may have to do some work on the "hills" as I like a solid foundation underneath and in places these are "hollow" as if the paper base has not adheared to the base which I think is polystyrene. On the front section a couple of motors are a problem but I cannot see to them until my friend comes down. It is not something our little one or my wife can help with. It means I cannot use the bays yet which is a disappointment. The buildings, roads etc do need a fair bit doing just as the church entrance was done but it is getting there and I am plesed with it. It certainly saved a lot of work starting from scratch. Garry

Short diesel video. Garry

A little diesel action, an early livery Type 3 without yellow warning panels and a DMU. The platform is the new one that has the extended bays with track to be fitted soon. Video later. Garry

Hopefully this will look something like I have in mind for the goods platforms. Possibly putting a shed over the longer platform towards the buffers and removing what is there on the next line. This would free up the other two lines for cattle and coal maybe having a raised platform for the cattle where the goods shed is now and a low wall against the goods line. Garry.

Put some new brick paper on the up line tunnel mouth, along with the opposite ends (these are not fastened in place yet), fitted some fencing and layed some static grass and bushes on one board. Need more paint and static grass (which is on order) to do much more so other little projects to do like a goods platform. So much interesting work to do scenically, you will have noticed the platforms have gone, this is so a new one can be made for 2 reasons 1) the original was too high as it was above the carriage door bottoms, and 2) I am increasing the two bay lines to accommodate an extra coach length. Garry

Hi David, The Wills kit was designed for the Tri-ang A3 chassis with completely wrong valve gear. I did convert a Dublo A4 chassis to fit a Wrenn Spam Can body fitting it with Boxpok wheels from a Barnstaple which no doubt you will be able to spot which of the 2 locos here it was. Garry

She loves it David. Hopefully the interest will stay with her for a long time. I will say I do a lot to help though like putting the glue down in the right place and the fiddly bit like the flower shrubs and not allowed to use my trusty Evo-stick. At least she likes to operate the trains in a realistic manner and not full speed or stop. In fact I recently asked both her and my wife which way a wagon would go through about 3 sets of points, she got it right, my wife wrong. She has been known to get out of bed on a night to go into the shed to see what I am doing. Valve gear in this scale is too fiddly these days for me to worry about the radius rod not being centred :-(. Garry

Hi David, Wrenn's A4 is what was used in their City/Duchess but that was all. The Spam can is a completely new chassis developed by Wrenn. It is I think the same as the Scot though. The chassis only has a hole for the rear axle that holds the gear wheel, the front two are just slotted with the axles held in by a pick-up plate, same as Tri-ang TT. Also there is no provision for 3-rail pick-ups so this needs to be your own design. Garry

Yes Ray, Dapol kept some wagon tooling and the Dublo heritage can be found on a few wagons which you can buy unpainted and still fit them on a Dublo wagon chassis. The new wagons Wrenngalore have can be old stock or they sometimes commission Dapol (or someone else) to do limited runs for them. Jodel (John Bann) I think have also started doing some wagons with older tooling. At one time it was reported that Maurice Gunter was looking at selling the tooling/machines but he did write to say that was not correct and he was keeping them. Until recently, maybe still, they had quite a few 8F, Castle and SpamCan chassis blocks, unfettled, for sale as well as a few of the bodies including the Scots. I did hear they were looking at getting some more bodies diecast but don't know if this happened. These spare bodies are what Tony Cooper is using for his limited editions having Mick Turner finish them, I know as I did some of the drawings for them to get smoke deflectors, coupling rods etc etched. Garry

Here are the early Wrenn sets and these look to have the locos fitted with Dublo style couplings. Both maroon and green suburbans were used. Note the boxes state "With matching Hornby Dublo rolling stock". Garry

I read that the EMU and SD coaches were to be released, and the coaches at least did appear in a Wrenn catalogue in Blood and Custard livery. The tooling for the 6 wheel stove was supposedly kept by Tri-ang as they did think of producing it but never did. Once Wrenn produced those first 3 locos, Castle, 8F and 2-6-4 all were included into boxed sets as well as individual locos. These sets used new ex stock Hornby Dublo suburbans, Pullmans and wagons. The strange thing being the locos now from Wrenns begining used the Tri-ang coupling but all the stock obviously still had the Dublo couplings meaning you could not actually couple the loco to the stock in the same box. A converter wagon was not included with these. The Castle got Pullmans, the 8F got wagons but the 2-6-4 got 2 SR green suburbans and a few wagons. The converter wagons were only produced by Tri-ang (Tri-ang Hornby as they were now) for sale as a separate item and also given away with the Tri-ang Hornby ex Dublo locos Tri-ang had in stock from the takeover as these still had Dublo couplings fitted. There were 5 such locos and the Dublo boxes got a small Tri-ang Hornby label stuck over the Dublo logo. I think the 5 were Barnstaple, 0-6-2, R1, 08 and Co-Bo. I do know that Barnstaple and the Co-Bo were as I have both with the overlayed sticker. Garry

Thats correct Richard, the original Wrenn releases were advertised on a single A4 piece of paper and I remember getting the sheet at the Wakefield show about 66 time give or take a year hoping that soon the A4 would follow. Garry

Maybe so Ray but they are not originals. Garry

The Ebay chap (LHP, Lawrence Hogg productions) that did Dublo Gresley overlays and a lot of other things unfortunately passed away a few months ago so unless anyone else takes it up then you may have to ask people like Ray on here about the possibility. Garry

This nice little loco arrived today, it was sold as a non runner but it did not take long to get running but is a little erratic at the moment. The chap who made has actually made all parts of the valve gear work setting the radius rod below the expansion link centre. Also some flowers have quickly grown in front of the church :-) Garry

I have a few, one of which came the the rarest of rare items, a plain green end. I don't mean the ones with a moulded guide line but unpainted of which there are a few around, this one does not have the moulded ridge and is one of only 200 made which were not supposed to have been sold. This is as the box cover drawing which was done before BR put the yellow panels on but Dublo never changed the box picture just the actual model fronts. I have no idea how many of the 200 were sold but I only know of 2 in existence, Bob Field has the other and thought he was the only one with one until he saw mine. One photo shows the unpainted ones but with the moulded lines for comparison. Another slight rarity is some 3-rail ones had a green trailing end too but most like all 2-rail ones were black. Garry

Our little one starting to put some static grass outside the church walls. Here is what it looks like afterwards but still not finished. Garry

I just go by what looks reasonable Nigel. Just look at the difference between the waiting room and the station building above, both are classed as 00 yet look completely different. Regarding a church and school, 1mm to the foot makes no real difference anyway as church doors are way over 7'6. The one near us is about 15' with a standard one inset. The school I went to only had two floors and you can see from the photo how high the second one is. The end part of the building had 3 floors, the centre floor here was one was one office and a store room only. I don't think we could even see out of the windows in the junior school so ceiling/roof height wise makes the 00 one perfectly acceptable. Garry

The 2 four wheeled parcels vans are now repainted, just awaiting some modified Tri-ang couplings to fit. Garry

Hi Mike, Here is the Skaledale church which has just been delivered and this is probably slightly smaller than the Bilteezi, certainly very little in it. Also is the comparison of Faller card with the Country Scenes paper, here is his site, https://www.facebook.com/CountryScenes/ On there is also some work by Bob Dawson who I used to work with on the railway many moons ago. I think the Country scenes paper is about 3 times cheaper than Faller card but not 100% certain, plus more for your money anyway. The e-mail for the Country scenes chap is martin.s.wood@gmail.com I also bought a sub station to add to the layout somewhere along the road. Garry

Hi Mike, The signal box etc were glued to the cork that the track was laid on so at the standard height as such but to me all aspects of the building look too small, it was the same for the even smaller one where the stand alone one is now. The pub is reasonable size and will possibly stay but the school has also been replaced with a Skaledale one as can be seen. This was delivered broken into about 5 main pieces (poor packing but with a refund) but I have glued it back and put "moss" on to hide the joins and it looks fine now, I did put a little more "moss" around though. Schools, like churches, can be very big, the one I went to had ceilings nearly as tall as a two storey house so the 00 should be fine. Regarding the station building here it is with a waiting room along side which is supposed to be the same scale from the same manufacturer but is way out of proportion. Regarding the Lichen used the previous owner did that intentionally as he built the layout in the style and with with 50's/60's items. I will be using static grass etc later to improve it all. Your signal box look really well, as does the layout seen. It looks like you have weathered it a little which certainly improves it. I never bought any of the Prototype kits, don't remember why not as I had a go at most things of that era. I will photograph the card sizes later but going out now for some card for new platforms and the roads. Garry

Sorry to say I was there from 10.30 till 4.15 on Saturday and missed it, how I don't know :-(? I guess maybe it was that I spent a lot of time looking at Grantham and talking to some operators and traders. I have been going to the Wakefield show since the 60's (even before it was in Unity house) so hopefully I will see it next year :-) Garry

Here is a comparison of papers and buildings. The paper used on the layout is Superquick which is all getting replaced soon (as is all the scenery). A piece of Faller embossed stone followed by the Country Scenes embossed paper. This is actually Italian embossed wall paper with a brick, stone etc print on one side. The view at an angle shows it better. To me a few Bilteezi kits are a little on the small side and I am replacing a few with Hornby 00 Skaledale items. In one view is the Bilteezi signal box is behind the J39 which has the loco height close to the roof height whereas in another view (to me anyway) the 00 signal box looks more in scale with the loco. The gantry box is a Skaledale platform one I have put on a gantry. The brickwork underneath is Faller which is a close resemblance to the Hornby models base. Again this box looks in a suitable scale for TT. One item that also looks out of place is the Bilteezi station building which looked more like N gauge than TT so this has been replaced with a Hornby 00 one which looks too small for 00 but very good for TT. Across the road is the Skaledale 00 church entrance which will soon have the Church in its grounds. The church will hardly be noticeable scale wise as in real life the doors and windows are always well over normal dwelling ones. None of the above will suit everyone but looks better in my view, and I am not a building maker. Garry

To a degree Mike a lot of layouts these days have a sense of sameness using the Metcalfe card kits. Quite a few still make individual buildings as there are more items like plastic brick walling in various disguises, self adhesive textured sheets, nice roof tiling etc to make use of but Metcalfe do appear a lot. Just look at how many layouts these days use the Townscenes series back scenes, all a lot better than the Peco ones though. At the moment some good ones are the photographic scene sheets which I suspect will become used more frequently. The one Merco sheet I liked was the roll of a retaining wall with arches printed on giving a supposed "3D" look. This was more of an orange brick look but was good for walls and inclines. Garry

They were used for inclines and upper level track. Slots underneath held the pier clips. Garry