Silver Sidelines

The new Hornby O1 seems to have been well received.   With my roots in the north east of England I would have preferred a Q6 or maybe a Q7.   However they are not as yet available so I have invested in an O1 to complement my WD 8F.   My Ian Allan Shed Book confirms that I ‘spotted’ two of the four O1s allocated to Tyne Dock.   I am guessing that I would have seen these engines passing around the outside of Newcastle Central I can imagine heading north on a freight bound for Edinburgh. First impressions of the Hornby O1 were very positive.   Out of the box it looked good and it performed well on the layout.   I have posted a number of short videos on YouTube comparing the performance of the O1 with Bachmann’s O4 and WD 8F.   These are obviously personal views and highly dependent on my particular models.   In summary using the same Controller setting (DC) and same train load, the Bachmann WD is the most sedate.   The Bachmann O4 comes in the middle while the Hornby O1 is quite t

One of the first engines that I purchased on returning to the hobby was a Bachman Austerity 2-8-0. I remember seeing a number of these engines on Teesside in the early 1960s and I was keen to have a model of one on the layout.   From memory the Q6s, J26s and J27s handled the local traffic bringing coal and coke from County Durham whilst the WD 2-8-0s handled more long distance freight south to York and beyond. Whilst the detail on my Bachmann WD was superb, its performance I thought was lacking.   Out of the box the engine could barely manage a dozen wagons up and round the layout and was accompanied by what could only be described as a monotonous grinding noise.   It was soon banished to the sheds.   For the record my Austerity is model number 32-256 (running number 90556), I mention this because I have seen similar models advertised also as being noisy runners.   The solution First a picture showing which screws hold the body on the chassis.

These last few weeks I have been playing with some of my Stanier Jubilees.   My original Mainline Jubilees ‘Orion’ and’ Leander’ with their suspect quartering have long departed.   However ‘Mars’ and ‘Amethyst’ from the second Mainline batch live on with replacement Bachmann chassis. Ex Mainline Amethyst on Bachmann Chassis I was inspired by a ‘ thread ’ on the RMweb site looking for help with lack of tractive effort of the Bachmann model ‘Drake’.   The contributions from ‘ Alan ’ and ’34’ are very useful. Bachmann ‘Armada’ left, Bachmann ‘Drake’ right   I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a look inside Drake and it would appear that on my model the bogie spring is a touch longer and made from slightly heavier gauge wire than that used for Armada. However more telling is a comparison of the weights of the different models.   Bachmann Drake weighs 280gm whilst Mainline Amethyst with replacement Bachmann chassis weighs 310gm.   I should add that our sc