Our world in miniature, hobbies

I had a cracking Hornby Dublo' train set as a lad. My dad built it all on Christmas Eve so it was there for me on Christmas Day. I think I sold it for about

Not missed by me Philip. I was always envious of a friend's Triang railway with two rails and realistic looking sleepers. The coupling system was a lot more user-friendly as well.

Hi Dutchman, Hornby dublo was tin-plate, & the buck-ie style couplings were a bit unreliable. The centre rail pickup system was very reliable but looked odd. It gave me much pleasure as a child though. .

Only a fortnight ago i gave a 'box of bits' to my brother in law to take to a car boot,the box had a few Hornby Dublo coaches and wagons in it with the images on tin plate,the only loco was a dismantled Stanier tank engine with that middle slipper,there was also a station made out of die-cast most of these bits had Meccano on their base as well,they were all a bit tatty and i kept these four oil tankers as i like them. I noticed the detail was nothing like you get on modern rolling stock but i guess they come from an age or time when materials were still scarce maybe ? Andy

Hornby experimented with super-detailed plastic mouldings in 1950 but the Korean war led to shortage of materials and the development was abandoned. They finally switched to plastic (and two-rail) in the 1960s but it was too late to save the company from bankruptcy. The change probably did more harm than good as the new range was neither one standard nor the other. I knew one Hornby Dublo collector for example who stuck with three-rail till the day he died and refused to even acknowledge the existence of two-rail.

Hi again Dutchman The two rail system was completely alien to the old Hornby Dublo, as all of their rolling stock as well as locos would not run on two rail. Metal wheels on metal axles, which is what was fitted, was simply a no-no, as it was a dead-short across the two rails. Even today, my OO railway is a compromise with scale. The track gauge is too narrow. It should be 18.5mm, instead it is 16.5mm. The models are all 4mm to the foot. The gauge issue was so as to fit the then electric motors inside the uk small boilered locos, as well as reducing the minimum turn round curve to 14.5 ins radius. Some modellers model 4mm & is called EM gauge, but most of the stuff has to be scratch built. So I live with my narrow gauge version of the standard gauge railway.

LOL, you would have thought with all the fiasco between 4' 8?" and 7' track gauge that scale modelling would not have gauge differences. I've never fully understood these garden type gauges, you know the ones like 5" as sometimes it does not apply to the tracks width.

Hi all Model railways, whether garden ride-on miniature, or indoor scenic, often have two standards of scale, the vehicles as one standard & the gauge of track that they run on. The 4" or 5" that you mention refer to the track gauge, whereas the scale of the vehicle could be any practical size of scale. Some of the bigger ride on railways are say one seventh scale which means that they are a seventh of full size, but the track gauge might be 4", 5" & so on. The narrow gauge railways in Wales are different to each other. Some like the Tallylyn & Corris are 2' 3" gauge. Others are 2'. Some continental railways are metre gauge. Australia used to have mixed gauges for there railways, as did Africa & India. Hope that helps. ps. In terms of scale, our HallBrooks railway is an average scale of one to seventy six.

Hi all For most of the time, our railway here at home is a 3D static picture, but occasionally I do go into the railway room & enjoy a slow shunt in the goods yard, as I call it. I neither have the space or talent to be able to copy any specific location around Coventry, but that does not prevent me from acting out train events that I remember from my trainspotting days during the fifties & sixties. Coventry goods yard received three scheduled fruit trains each week from May until October each year. During August & September it was one train a day. Goods traffic generally ran in what were called timed corridors, in between passenger trains, & often ran in round robin routes rather than a straight back & forth. The fruit trains came from Evesham via Broom Junction, eventually arriving in Coventry via the Leamington line. Once the vans were emptied & cleaned, they would return to Evesham via Nuneaton, Washwood Heath, & then the Midland line via Redditch. I will add a couple of pics that I hope you will enjoy. In this pic, 3F waits for the all-clear in order to return empty fruit vans. The same view from higher. This next pic shows Pannier Tank, shunting parcels vans in Bramble Grove, in readiness for Monday morning. The platform & line to the steam wash siding now fully signalled. I do hope that you are able to share in my fun memories, even in our home.

To be honest Philip, i love your pictures and your enthusiasm for what you do and always look at your pics. I am sure everyone else does as well. KEEP SHARING.

Thank you so much for that lovely reply. In one of the pics my plug-in leads can be seen. My pre-computer era brain is not hi-tech enough for me to use computer routing, so I use these multi plug-ins. They enable me to switch any section off or on & to combine sections so as to set up routes with ease. There are over twenty separate electrical sections on our HallBrooks railway. My enjoyment of trainspotting was not just listing loco numbers. I liked railway operation, so much so that I often visited the places where the trains that arrived in Coventry came from. The fruit trains from the Evesham area were a case in point. My mum used to visit businesses in various parts of the country & during school holidays, I would tag myself along if there was a railway place to visit. I can recall very happy days at Broom, where most of the Coventry soft fruit trains started from. That was just one of many places that I was able to trainspot from.

I agree with scrutiny, Philip, just love looking at all of the detail on our railway. Hope you and Pam enjoyed your cuddle on the bench ! What a great hobby you have!

Hi Mayjan It is a good hobby as it keeps what bit of dexterity that I have in good shape. Also, my grandson benefits in the same way. His score at school for craftwork was really good. Regards the cuddle on the park bench, I was so shy of Pam knowing that I had been a trainspotter, that we were two years down the line before she knew about my secret hobby. It was in the summer 1966, when we were on holiday in Scotland that I revealed to her of my terrible past. She had already put two & two together, as all of the guest houses that we stayed at were close to railway lines.

Mine were always next to chip shops, lol.

I guess that may have been a clue then! Shouldn't that have been 4-4-2 Philip?