Dublo 3 Rail Layout

Discussion in 'Members Personal Layouts' started by Wolseley, Nov 20, 2018.

  1. Andy_Sollis

    Andy_Sollis Staff Member Moderator

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    Can you still get remags?
     
  2. Echidna

    Echidna Full Member

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    Hello All,

    1 / in Australia at least, you can have your Hornby Dublo / Wrenn locomotives re-magnetized by MKN Digital ( Marklin Model Train Repairs ) David Neale,
    ( www.mkn-digital-train-repairs.com ) PO Box 40, Bowral, NSW, 2576.

    David is a HRCAA / Hornby Railway Collectors Association of Australia member, who also happens to own a demagnetiser designed and built by R.C.Wyborn in 1982.

    Ronald Wyborn was the Meccano Chief Electrical Engineer from 1938 - 1964.

    David is also the author and publisher of the " Hornby Dublo Manual " , an amazing book that tells you all you need to know about HD components, and some Wrenn components.

    The MKN Digital webpage has an email contact box.

    ( I have no connection with either David Neale , nor MKN Digital. )


    2 / LMS 6254 City of Stoke on Trent looks magnificent in LMS lined black, and rather an appropriate livery for the immediate post WW2 period.

    Whilst I personally do like BR Blue, Green or Maroon liveries, I think the lined Black really suits the Coronation / Duchess pacifics, whereas some other classes can just look, well dowdy.

    Wolseley has done a really impressive restoration here, well done.

    Regards, Echidna
     
  3. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    David Neale is the only person I can think of in Australia who could do this. I haven't thrown out any of my "dead" magnets for this very reason. I have been in touch by email with him a few times, mainly in connection with getting a copy of his Hornby Dublo Manual. I was intending to send him two or three armatures I have that need to be rewound - Dublo is easy to work on yourself and is pretty bullet-proof into the bargain, but there are a few maintenance jobs I will not tackle, one of which is rewinding armatures. Come to think of it, we have friends in Bowral who we visit regularly, so I might even be able to save on postage......

    One of these days I will have to get around to getting it done.
     
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  4. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Here's my latest impulse purchase: a Wrenn "GWR" 2-6-4T body. Wrenn painted a number of their models in rather fanciful liveries and I already have one of their 2-6-4 tanks in LMS red (a vaguely believable version, even though it is a model of a BR standard class) and the 2-6-4T was also available in GWR green and Southern green. I could be wrong, but I don't think they did an LNER version which, given some of the variations they came up with, is unusual for Wrenn.

    Anyway, a vendor on eBay was selling a Wrenn "GWR" 2-6-4T body which he described as being in fair condition (although it looked pretty good in the photographs) with a starting price of only £15. I put in a bid and, as no-one else did, a few days later it was mine. It arrived today and, when I unwrapped it, I found it to be in near mint condition, which was a pleasant surprise. Here it is perched on a Hornby Dublo chassis (Wrenn did make a few changes to body fixing points on some models, but not on the 2-6-4T, so the Dublo and Wrenn chassis are interchangeable. the chassis is missing a few essential items, including bogie, pony truck and 3 rail pickup for example but, once I have the necessary parts, I will have another addition to my growing collection of tanks.

    P1010099.jpg

    P1010100.jpg
     
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  5. jakesdad13

    jakesdad13 Staff Member Moderator

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    Somewhere I have a body for one of these, I bought it to detail and make a chassis but never got a round tuit :facepalm:.... sorry. I put it in a safe place then lost the place, I will look for something else and will more than likely find it!

    Pete.
     
  6. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I stand corrected - an internet search found this:

    [​IMG]

    Apparently it is an exceedingly rare beast. The Wrenn Specialist currently has one for sale for £599.95 so, if I do end up adding one to my collection, it will be as a repaint of a Dublo tank.......
     
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  7. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    And here's something else that's joined my current projects. It will not be an N2* by the time I'm finished with it.

    P1010102.jpg

    * Actually Meccano Ltd never claimed that it was an N2, although the numbering they gave their LNER and BR versions implied that it was. They just referred to it as a "Tank engine" or an "0-6-2 Tank".
     
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  8. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    The two missing bits arrived a few days ago and I also found a spare pair of brushes, and the chassis is now running well in both directions. It took a bit of fiddling about though, as a previous owner appears to have taken the wheels off on one side at some point, as two of them weren't running true and the back to backs were various figures between 13.86mm and 14.68mm. It took a while to sort out. Dublo wheels are best not removed from axles.....
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2021
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  9. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I just went to have a look at a few items I had been watching on eBay and found that I have ended up buying two of them. There were five Dublo 3 rail locos and I put in bids at the starting price only, and it seems that two of them didn't attract any further bids. I now have another Duchess of Montrose (37.00) and another 2-6-4T (£36.00), plus postage of £29 which, given the weight of the two locomotives (they were from the same vendor, and postage was combined) doesn't appear excessive.
     
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  10. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    It seems that I had bought a 2-6-4T some time in the near past on eBay and totally forgotten about it, as one arrived in today's mail. Checking back through my purchase history I found that I bought it a couple of weeks before the one I mentioned in my last post. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one. Perhaps I'll do what Wrenn did and finish it in either LNER or Southern livery.
     
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  11. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    My forgotten purchase, after a clean up and lubrication, turns out to be in perfect working order, although the body is rather playworn. As the chassis I had the "GWR" body sitting on is still missing a few bits, I swapped the two over so that my "GWR" tank is now running around the layout. A coat of black paint on the cylinders and a bit of touching up of the wheels and I can then get back to another project.....
     
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  12. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    Well, I got stuck into painting three of my surplus 2-6-4Ts, one in black (to be unlined, possibly LMS but I haven't decided for sure), one in Southern olive green, and one in LNER green. The black one, predictably, looks very nice, the SR olive green one, in spite of being totally inaccurate, looks good, but the LNER green one looks so wrong that I've decided to forget about the idea and repaint it black. It looks so awful (and, I hasten to add, that's not a reflection on my painting abilities) that I don't want to see it running on my layout until it has been repainted.
     
  13. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    A bit of action:

     
  14. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    And the latest job ticked off the list? Repainting the station buildings, footbridge, platforms and signal box. The buildings were a bit playworn and the platforms although they were still in their original factory finish, were painted in three distinctly different shades of that yellowy brown colour Meccano Ltd used and some had white edges and some didn't. I used Tamiya aerosols: Light Sand (TS-46) which was similar to the Dublo colour but a slightly darker shade, which I think suits the models better, and Orange (TS-12) for the roofs, which was a bit brighter than the Dublo colour, but not too much so.

    P1010140.jpg

    P1010142.jpg

    P1010144.jpg

    P1010143.jpg
     
  15. Andy_Sollis

    Andy_Sollis Staff Member Moderator

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    Lovely work, but it begs the question... Why did Hornby Dublo paint the roofs Orange in the first place ? I've neve seen an orange roof ?

    Andy
     
  16. Andy_Sollis

    Andy_Sollis Staff Member Moderator

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    Is this really photographed on a huge mirror ? love it!
     
  17. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    It's a good question, and one that has been asked before elsewhere, but no-one still living seems to know, as the reason for the choice does not appear to have been documented. They appear to have been VERY loosely based on the 1930s structures built by the LMS for the electrification of the Wirral lines (logical when you think about it, given that Meccano Ltd were located at Liverpool) but they had grey roofs. They also had a brick finish where the Dublo buildings had a representation of render, probably to make them "universal" rather than LMS buildings.
     
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  18. Andy_Sollis

    Andy_Sollis Staff Member Moderator

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    Ah.. wonderful..

    I always thought they were London based for some reason? But what you say makes perfect logic.
    Thanks!
     
  19. Wolseley

    Wolseley Full Member

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    I finally got around to fitting a rear bogie to my Dublo 0-6-4T and it has been running quite happily around the layout (or at least has been running quite happily since I fixed the back-to-back of the leading driving wheels, which was almost 1mm more than it should have been).

    What? A Dublo 0-6-4T, I hear you say? there wasn't such a beast, was there? Well, there is now. I took a Dublo 0-6-2T and replaced the trailing wheels with a bogie from a Dublo 2-6-4T. I couldn't use the bogie as it was, as the arm connecting it to the chassis wasn't long enough. The mounting point on the chassis is very close to the gear wheel on the rear axle too, so anything I could easily make would have fouled it. In the end, I took a spare Dublo A4 trailing truck (I have several in my spares box), which is mounted to its chassis in almost an identical way to the 0-6-2T, cut off the sides and the hook at the rear, and screwed the bogie (minus arm) to it. I still have to touch up the paintwork where I modified it, but here it is:

    P1010151.jpg
     
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  20. Keith M

    Keith M Staff Member Moderator

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    Nothing wrong with creating a "Might-Have-Been" Wolseley, it all adds interest, and it wouldn't be the first to have never got much further than the drawing board.
    Keith.
     
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