Resurrecting a Duchess...

Discussion in 'Collectors and Vintage Rolling Stock' started by Wolseley, Oct 4, 2018.

  1. York Paul

    York Paul Staff Member Moderator

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    What a lovely job you made resurrecting an old classic by giving it a new lease of life. :tophat:
     
  2. jakesdad13

    jakesdad13 Staff Member Moderator

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    Nice model Wolseley, well done. Its good to see historic models still being used and not stuck unloved in drawers. :tophat::tophat::tophat:

    Pete.
     
  3. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    The Duchess/City population to date.

    Left to right: Duchess of Montrose; City of London (to be converted to three rail but not done yet); un-named City which I picked up cheaply because someone has brush painted it Brunswick green and put a GWR roundel on the cabside (to be finished in BR lined green and named City of Edinburgh); City of Leicester (Dublo with Tr-ang Hornby streamlined tender body); gloss finish Duchess of Montrose (needs a bit of restoration work and cosmetically in a bad way - to be repainted in lined black as City of Lichfield); (on turntable) Duchess of Abercorn; Tri-ang Hornby City of Bristol (to be converted to three rail but not done yet); gloss finish Duchess of Montrose (needs a bit of restoration work and will probably end up renamed as Duchess of Buccleuch); "Canadian Pacific" Duchess; City of Glasgow (three railed Wrenn) and, last but not least; the Duchess of Atholl.

    P1010454.JPG
     
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  4. York Paul

    York Paul Staff Member Moderator

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    Excellent line up you have there Wolseley :tophat::thumbs: and on the topic of LMS Duchess loco's I always thought what a short sighted move Stoke on Trent City Council made in deciding to reject the donation of 46254 when British Railways withdrew that locomotive... if only they had had the same acumen as Birmingham City Council did at the time.
     
  5. Keith M

    Keith M Staff Member Moderator

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    My Brother-in Law's late Father was Lord Mayor of Sheffield at the time when the "City of Sheffield" nameplates were donated to the City. He had one and the other was displayed I understand, in the City Hall. To the chagrin of Bro-in-law, there is no trace of the plate his late Father had.......it'd be worth thousands by now I guess!
    Keith.
     
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  6. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I finished three railing my City of London last night and it was running nicely around the layout, although almost finished might be a better way to put it - I intend to short out the insulated wheels to improve pick-up, but I haven't done that yet. The condition of the locomotive is almost (but not quite) as good as new, so there won't be any further work to do to it other than to uninsulate the wheels.

    I thought I would be reporting that I've finished three railing my City of Bristol (the streamlined one in my collection) but it seems that I didn't pick the best spot to affix the Marklin skate and ended up creating a short circuit. If at first you don't succeed.....
     
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  7. Gary

    Gary Wants more time for modelling.... Staff Member Administrator

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    Another 28 Coronation Class locomotives and you'll own the whole fleet produced ! Nice work on your models. :thumbs:

    Cheers, Gary.
     
  8. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I decided to set aside the City of Bristol for now and concentrate on some of the others. Tonight I worked on the chassis intended for the City of Edinburgh (a City chassis) and the City of Lichfield (a Duchess chassis). Both were very reluctant runners when I bought them, barely able to move themselves under their own power. This time there was hardly any movement at all, with the City of Edinburgh chassis indicating distress by sending out smoke signals from its motor. After cleaning both of them two or three times over, lubricating them and fitting new brushes, both sprang back into life, after a bit of prompting in the case of the City of Edinburgh. The City of Edinburgh is now a very good and fast runner, but Lichfield less so - it runs well but very slowly in both directions. It seems that Lichfield's magnet has passed its use by date. I have ordered three neomagnets tonight (always handy to have spares) and will probably start work on the bodies and tenders tomorrow.
     
  9. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    As I mentioned elsewhere, I just finished painting the City of Edinburgh in Humbrol BR green. The colour just doesn't look right, especially when I place it next to any of my other green locos. It seems too pale and insipid, more like a GWR green than a BR green. I'll have to strip it back to bare metal and repaint it with something better.
     
  10. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I didn't really need another Duchess, but a City of London, repainted green, came up on eBay at a reasonable price (and in Australia too, so postage was minimal) and I couldn't resist it. It arrived yesterday. It's pretty simple to convert a Dublo or Wrenn 2 rail City to 3 rail (I've already done two) so that's my latest project. It has been painted, lettered and lined by hand and, with the exception of the nameplate, to a particularly high standard. It was renamed City of Lichfield, a rather odd choice, as Lichfield was one on the non-streamlined ones with a curved footplate. It might end up as the City of Edinburgh, but I haven't decided for sure yet.

    Here she is:

    [​IMG]
     
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  11. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I've fitted a three rail pickup and rerouted some of the wiring and had it running around the track for about 30 minutes. I'll have to short out the insulation of the wheels on one side to improve the current collection, but for now it's running quite nicely although it does hesitate at low speed on one point. It did slip badly at first but it turned out to be due to a lack of vertical movement in the pony truck which was causing the rear drivers to occasionally lose contact with the track. I filed off a bit of metal and it cured the problem. I suspect this locomotive might not have run under its own power for a few decades.

    I've just ordered a pair of City of Edinburgh nameplates from Fox Transfers - I also ordered plates for the Duchess of Buccleuch and City of Bradford, but more on those two later....
     
  12. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I haven't done much in the way of modelling lately, mainly due to a deadline for the car club magazine and also having half the windows in our house replaced, the latter of which has necessitated the dismantling of the partially completed layout (it's almost back up now) as it stood alongside one of the windows that was being replaced.

    The nameplates arrived a few days ago and, around the same time, I was digging through my desk drawers and found a pair of City of Edinburgh nameplates I bought a few months ago but had forgotten about. So now I have two sets. To solve this dilemma, and avoid having to waste a pair of nameplates, I have purchased a Tri-ang-Hornby streamlined Coronation, which I will convert to three rail and rename City of Edinburgh. I will therefore end up with two Cities of Edinburgh but as one will be a red streamliner and the other a green BR engine with the later logo, they are not going to be seen together on the layout at the same time.
     
  13. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    A while ago I tried three-railing a Tri-ang Hornby streamlined Coronation - the tender drive version with the ringfield motor (OK, I know the company was called Hornby by then, but to me it's still Tri-ang Hornby). I managed to get it running, but ended up with an intermittent short from the Marklin skate I had fitted. I shelved it to concentrate on other matters and was going to give it another go to get it running properly some time in the future but, in the meantime, I managed to get my hands on an early and rather battered, but working, Tri-ang Hornby version, with an X04 motor and loco drive. I decided to swap over the locomotive and tender bodies and three rail the X04 version instead of persisting with the later one.

    When I started dismantling it, there was a surprise in store - the tenders of these early Tri-ang Hormby Coronations have a Hornby Dublo metal chassis, complete with mounts for a Dublo coupler and for two Dublo "plunger" three rail pickups! As I have three spare sets of these pickups, I abandoned my idea of using a Marklin skate. An hour or two spent fitting the pickups to the tender, rerouting a couple of the wires and putting in a connection between the pickups and the motor, and the bare chassis was quickly doing circuits around my track. I will fit the loco and tender bodies some time over the next day or so (it's almost 11pm now, so it won't be tonight, as there are a couple of minor modifications needed to make the new items fit the old chassis).

    Now, by my calculations, I need three more Tri-ang Hornby streamliners - a blue one, a grey one (the Duchess of Devonshire ran in service in shop grey for a few months at one point) and a plain black one.....
     
  14. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Here it is, soon to become the City of Edinburgh, together with the City of Lichfield, soon also to become the City of Edinburgh.....

    P1010514.jpg

    P1010515 copy.jpg
     
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  15. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I redid the tender initials on the City of Leicester, as they were sitting a bit too low. This one is a bit of a mongrel: the body is a repainted Duchess of Atholl, locomotive and tender chassis are from a Duchess of Montrose, and the tender body is from a Tri-ang/Hornby streamlined Coronation. Here is the result:

    P1010519.JPG

    And here is the one I bought as the City of Lichfield, three-railed, tidied up a bit and renamed/numbered as the City of Edinburgh:

    P1010523.JPG
     
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  16. ianvolvo46

    ianvolvo46 Staff Member Moderator

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    Impressive! :tophat::tophat:

    Ian vt
     
  17. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    And, on the subject of Dublo Duchesses, here's a photo of a model that I posted some time ago, not long after I joined the forum, but it fits better in this thread than where I originally posted it. In the 1950s, Hornby produced a version of the Duchess that they modified at the front end and repainted to (sort of) look like a North American locomotive. It was painted in the colours of the Canadian Pacific railroad. It was not much of a financial success, but it was a way of managing to use up a stockpile of Duchess of Atholl bodies, which Meccano Ltd couldn't use to make their Duchess of Montrose, as the older Atholls did not have provision for fitting smoke deflectors to the body. It looks rather convincing as a North American locomotive, except for the tender. If such a beast ever existed, it would have had something considerably larger than a six wheeled LMS tender attached to it.

    Mine is a replica of a Dublo Canadian Pacific (being rare, the originals attract rather high prices), using a spare Duchess of Montrose (rather than the Atholl) as the base, together with a couple of castings made for the conversion, which I picked up on eBay from a vendor in Canada. Here is my Dublo Canadian Pacific Duchess:

    CPR.jpg
     
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  18. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Here are some photographs of the collection so far. In addition to these twelve, I have another two Duchesses with the curved footplate, one with the utility footplate and three streamliners that still have to be brought back to life that aren't shown in the photos. The curved footplate Duchesses are all Hornby Dublo, three of the utility footplate ones are Hornby Dublo and two Wrenn, and the streamliners are early Tri-ang/Hornby (loco drive chassis, which have the advantage of having Dublo tender chassis, complete with mountings for three rail tender pick-ups, making conversion relatively easy).

    You might notice that I have two Duchesses of Montrose, The one with the matt (or is it semi-matt?) finish was one of my early acquisitions. The other one I bought cheaply with the intention of repainting it, as the photos on eBay showed a loco (there was no tender) in a rather sad state. When I got it, I found that it was, except for one scratch on the boiler, in near mint condition - what looked like wear and damage was just dirt - and it was one of the locos produced during the brief period when Dublo were using a gloss finish. After I cleaned it, it looked so good that I couldn't bring myself to repaint it. I subsequently managed to buy a mint condition gloss finish tender (possibly unused) for I can't remember how much, but it was considerably less than I was expecting. It's rather hard to think of a reason to justify having two Duchesses of Montrose both in BR green with the early lion and wheel emblem but, as I did live in Montrose for a couple of years, maybe that will do....

    They are all posed on my layout which does not, as yet, have proper wiring nor any scenery (not that I'm planning a lot of the latter though). I do have a four road engine shed, but I removed it temporarily before taking the photos.

    P1010524.jpg

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    P1010525.jpg

    P1010528.JPG
     
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  19. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I think I might have enough now, given that my layout is only 8' by 4'. Somehow, though, I have a feeling that there might be a few more eventually.....
     
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  20. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    This one has showed up in the background of one or two photos so far, but here it is in its full glory. Not a Dublo Duchess this time, but a Wrenn one, converted to 3 rail, but otherwise unaltered. In fact it still has its tension lock couplings fitted, which is why it's hauling some Tri-ang Caledonian coaches, although they do look rather good behind a blue locomotive :lol:

    P1010530.JPG
     
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