Rory's Blog

This was another early Diesel addition to the layout at home and was probably the 2nd diesel we got.

It kind of reminds me of an older person as it pulls loads and rarely gives up although its been through some traction tyres with us. These are normally just found on the carpet, but if more than one goes you will notice a lack of speed and acceleration from the loco. It would be nice to get another one of these as they look so nice running together as we’ve run the ST Paddy and this together.

I’ve got a memory that this came from York but cost wise i’m not sure how much it was. Since we have 2 of the other diesels both the BO-BO and  the CO-CO.

Well the St Paddy was probably one of the last Loco’s that got bought. Its from a long time contact within Hornby Dublo Circuit Stephen Middleton. I can remember at the time we had the choice of two locos The Barnstaple and this the 2nd Co-Co that Hornby did.

We’ve had vary bits from Stephen Middleton and he’s even re magnetized a few loco’s that was a big machine he had to do that.

I’m sure this cost around £250 but its in mint condition and really looks the part next to the standard Co-Co.

The St Paddy came with a Ringfield Motor and its pretty rare to come by one, so its nice that we’ve got one in the collection.

Here’s a picture of the model and below that is an actual image of the St Paddy in 1973 at Kings Cross

This has definitely been re magnetized as not long after we got it, it ran fine on our layout and then it got put away again for another year and it was so slow it was un-bearable and it got sent away to be sorted

This is another one of my Locos and it Carry’s the most sentimental value to me. It was bought at an auction with a job lot and it was pretty tatty to say the least, and my dad won’t put any old shit out.

He made a simple spray paint jig out of metal for the body at work, which allowed him to rotate the body easily. Ok its not rocket science to spray a solid black tank and then do the front and rear buffer beams, but getting the paintwork perfect is the hard bit, and to my eye it looks fine. Its even got the official Hornby transfers on.

This is the less common of the LMS tanks as it has the more styled font type on.

This little tank always runs really well and never gives any problems.

This really is the train i love to hate. We have two BO-BO’s and in honesty they are both as bad as each other.  The bonus of having 2 is the fact you can couple them up and they run really well together. If you have a larger layout then we’ve found that putting and other controller to feed power around the 2nd half of the track pays dividends as theres no dip in power around the tack.

The BO-BO’s have a plastic body which makes them prone to jumping the tracks. to make up for this they have rubber tyres on the wheels which helps traction, since they don’t got at such higher speeds like the A4′s they can pull more.

I wanted a diesel engine for ages but dad always shyed away from getting one believing that diesel killed steam off, eventually i think he just gave up and bought 1 to keep me quite.

The BO-Bo’s where always a pain to get out of the boxes after a year in storage, they always ran really slow and you’d often find you need to run them for 10/15 minutes to almost warm them up, un full power they could be pretty slow, but would soon speed up.

Heres D8000 at York National Railway Muesuem

Well the Mallard, this was a train bought for me for a birthday present. Most people will be familiar with Mallard been Blue as that’s its livery in the National Railway Museum at York, but that’s its LNER livery.

We never had any major problems with this loco, it was always first out to make sure all the track was fine after dad had laid it and last to be put away as i wanted to use it.

I can remember it been re magnetised once, this happened when we got it out for a layout and it was awfully slow, unfortunately it just had to be put to one side until we could send it away to be sorted.

Only recently we found out it had the wrong tender, mine would appear to have the tender from Silver King but the matt Version, probably cock up when someone was playing with these trains and put the wrong tender away with my Mallard. So somewhere there is a Silver king with a Mallard Tender.

Below is a picture of a Mallard loco with the right Tender

Mallard was in service until 1963 where it had covered a staggering 1.5 million miles, London to Perth in Western Australia is only 9,000 miles.

Mallard holds the speed reord for a steam powered train at 125.88 MPH, its one of a few A$’s that where built with a double Chimney check out a Silver King Model and double Kylchap blastpipe, which made for better exhaust flow at speed. When mallard Broke the speed record it was only 5 months old, so it was run in nicely but not overly loose like some of the older A4′s.

For some reason Mallard went through 12 boilers in her working career, something that is strange yet rings home to me is boiler number 3 8907 which came from Silver King and was fitted 1 August 1946.

Strangely enough i have seen more A4′s an any other train.

Mallard At Yorks National Train Museum

Sir Nigel Gresely i saw running near Grosmont

And Remembering rightly i’ve seen Union of South Africa.

The good old faithful Duchess of Montrose, the one that always seemed to take a back seat in my memory of Hornby. Mainly because it was always looking so cheap next to the City Of Liverpool. One think that always intrigued me was the fact that the coal in the tender was in smaller chunks compared to those of the A4′s.

The Picture below shows the Duchess of Montrose in a matt finish but ours was gloss, so unless there was a matt version I’m not to sure. I do prefer the matt finish though.

Rearly did the Duchess ever give any problems, if i remember rightly it never liked going over crossing sections of track.

I can remember this been brought home one Saturday afternoon, so in my mind it probably came from york.