No.64 8Fs – Heavy goods engines - the old and the new
In this Post on heavy goods engines I make reference to one of my earliest purchases and to one of my most recent purchases.
Hornby Dublo 8F from the 1960s
I have used the image above before in a Post ‘in praise’ of
Hattons. A visit was made to the shop in Smithdown Road in Liverpool and it was
purchased in person in the early 1960s. It was an up to date model of the time
and came with a Late Crest which was exactly right for the period.
When I went off to college my layout was dismantled and the
8F was put away for safe keeping. It would be around 1980 before it was properly
unpacked and had a new layout to run on. Compared to the latest Mainline
products the Dublo 8F looked clumsy. However it was a superb runner - probably
on account of the original and in my opinion only true Ringfield Motor.
During the 1980s I was a regular visitor to Swindon. Prior
to travelling back to Newcastle I would go to Trent’s Toy Shop near the
station. On one visit there was a damaged Mainline Scot ‘For Sale’. I wanted
the old style Mainline chassis as a replacement for a newer poor running model.
What could I do with the broken body shell and tender?
I was not happy with the Dublo tender for the 8F. It did have
lovely rivet detail but the underframe was not set back far enough and the
wheels I thought underscale with the centre pair left unflanged. I decided to
reuse the Mainline tender suitably repainted in black to match the Dublo
engine. Turning to the surplus body shell I gently prised the boiler handrails
from the plastic boiler and repositioned them on the 8F using plastic filler to
key the tiny knobs into the oversize Dublo holes. I added cab windows shaped
from left over Kitmaster windows – what would we do without them? At the same
time the Dublo 8F was given a new coat of satin black paint and some new
numbers, 48474 being a Shrewsbury engine that fitted with my theme of a
mid-Wales layout. As sold by Meccano the buffers had a thick coating of silver
over black paint. Again in my opinion the model can be hugely improved simply
by scraping the paint off the brass buffer heads and replacing with a single
thin coat of black.
The pony truck on my 8F came with what I thought were
seriously undersize nylon wheels. The solution I adopted was to cut up one pair
of the old metal rimmed Mainline bogie wheels and to fit them to the original
Hornby axle. There is a down side to this conversion. The clearance for the
pony truck wheels on the Dublo chassis is tight and since the chassis is ‘live’
to one of the running rails, there can be occasional short circuits. I did
experiment with black plastic insulation tape on the underside of the chassis
but it is not good at sticking to curved surfaces. Currently I am relying on a
thick coating of black paint - aided no doubt by large radius curves and
reasonably level trackwork.
The Dublo 8F is my oldest current engine, what has arrived
recently? Possibly my most recent acquisition has been one of Bachmann’s ex GWR
ROD 2-8-0s.
Bachmann ex GWR ROD Class number 3023
Engine number 3023, with Early Emblem is strictly outside
the period of my layout. However there were still a few sister engines
supposedly left in stock at the end of 1958 which coincides with the beginning
of my modelling period. My 1957 edition Observers Book of Trains has five ROD
in BR stock, numbers 3011, 3015, 3024, 3030 and 3041. However my Ian Allen
‘Combined Volume’ (for winter ‘58/59) has only three left, numbers 3011, 3015
and 3024. The companion ‘Locoshed Book’ doesn’t have any 30xx numbers listed. So it would appear that by the end of 1958 all the ex GWR RODs had finally
disappeared.
Bachmann Robinson O4 / ex GWR ROD (30xx) chassis
For completeness I have included a picture of the Bachmann
mechanism - the O4 and ROD being identical. As with the other recent models of heavy goods engines from both
Bachmann and Hornby, the motor is a tight fit within the boiler which has been
carefully filled with metal. As with the Hornby 28/38xx series engines, the DCC
chip is housed in the tender. This way all available space within the
engine body has been used for ballast.
I like my 30xx, it runs more slowly and sedately than the
Hornby counterparts but that seems to be a design feature of all Bachmann
locomotives. Might that mean the Bachmann motors last longer?
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