Resurrecting a Duchess...

The latest is the City of Nottingham, one of the wartime batch of non-streamlined Duchesses with the curved footplate. It was also one of the few painted in British Railways lined black, before the final livery choices had been decided on. This one is a repainted Dublo Duchess of Montrose:

 

I’ve just been looking to see how many Coronations/Duchesses I have accumulated, and it seems that I have quite a few more than I originally intended. I also seem to have been getting them faster than I can finish them. The streamliners (identified in the list below with "S") are all early Tri-ang/Hornby ones that are being converted to three rail (without the benefits of Magnadhesion they’re pretty gutless things, so I’ll have to do something about that). The remainder are Dublo, with a couple of Wrenn thrown in. Here’s the tally so far:

6220 (S): Coronation (LMS crimson lake to be finished with bell and headlight - not started yet)

6221 (S): Queen Elizabeth (LMS blue - not started yet)

6227 (S): Duchess of Devonshire (shop grey - not started yet)

46230: Duchess of Buccleuch (BR blue with LNWR style lining - not started yet)

6231: Duchess of Atholl (LMS crimson lake - standard Dublo finish)

46232: Duchess of Montrose (BR lined green - standard Dublo finish)

46232: Duchess of Montrose (BR lined green - gloss Dublo finish)

6233: Duchess of Sutherland (LMS crimson lake - partly done)

6234: Duchess of Abercorn (LMS blue-grey - finished)

46236: City of Bradford (LMS lined black with BR number and British Railways on tender - almost finished)

6241 (S): City of Edinburgh (LMS crimson lake - almost finished)

46241: City of Edinburgh (BR lined green - finished)

46242: City of Glasgow (BR blue - three-railed Wrenn - finished)

46243 (S): City of Lancaster (BR black - not started)

6244 (S): King George VI (LMS black - not started)

46245: City of London (BR red - standard Dublo finished - originally two-rail Dublo, three railed)

46251: City of Nottingham (BR lined black - finished)

6252: City of Leicester (LMS wartime black - finished)

6256: Sir William A. Stanier, F.R.S. (LMS lined black - not started - I have a Wrenn City of Glasgow minus a tender that I’ll probably use for this one))

Canadian Pacific Dublo replica (finished)

I think I have another Dublo Duchess of Montrose somewhere in a box, but I can't lay my hands on it at the moment.....

 

Thanks for the heads up. I saw your post in late July (I don't always log in every day) and would have replied earlier were it not for me unexpectedly ending up in Norwest Private Hospital for over a week. I'm home and on the mend now though, so hopefully I can call in at the Thornleigh exhibition.

The Duchess seems to have been sold, but not to me. The Duchess of Montrose, together with the BR 0-6-2T, is probably the commonest of all the Dublo locomotives, so only near mint, boxed examples (of which this appears to have been one) are worth this sort of money. I already have two Duchesses of Montrose in excellent condition (but unboxed - but then I collect locomotives and rolling stock, not boxes) and I am only now seeking out cheap playworn examples for repainting. My latest is a Duchess of Montrose which I am repainting in pre-war LMS red as the Duchess of Sutherland - the only Duchess to run in pre-war livery while fitted with smoke deflectors. It's only partly finished, so no photos yet.....

 

I'm slowing up on my collection of Duchesses now to concentrate on other things but, who knows, maybe in a few years time....

 

Oh dear. After saying that I wasn't likely to be buying any more Duchesses for a while, I have gone and got myself a Wrenn City of Stoke on Trent, in LMS post-war lined black. Next job now is to convert it to three-rail and to fit a proper coupling instead of that tension lock thing......

 

Here she is, together with the City of Bradford (a three railed and repainted City of London) for comparison. Sorry if the photos aren't of the best quality, but they were taken indoors at night time.

Also, as you can see from the bundles of wires and tag strips, construction of my layout is about to enter its next phase.

 

I have just been going through my collection of Duchesses, checking to see what work needs to be done and, now that I have an ammeter and multimeter, how well (or otherwise) the locos are performing. Now I have so many other things on the go (including a stash of Caledonian and Highland white-metal kits to put together) that I don't think I'll be adding any more Stanier pacifics to my collection for some time, but here's how things stand at the moment:

6220 Coronation Crimson lake streamlined with bell and headlamp
Still to be done

6221 Queen Elizabeth Blue streamlined
Still to be done

6229 Duchess of Hamilton Grey streamlined
Still to be done

6230 Duchess of Buccleuch BR blue
Still to be done

6231 Duchess of Atholl Original Dublo finish
In running order

46232 Duchess of Montrose Original Dublo finish
In running order (have one in gloss and one in matt finish)

6233 Duchess of Sutherland Pre-war crimson lake with smoke deflectors
This one was drawing more than 1 amp on full power, but a change of magnet sorted that out. The mechanism needs to be cleaned and lettering and lining to be done

6234 Duchess of Abercorn LMS experimental blue-grey
Finished

46236 City of Bradford LMS lined black with "British Railways" on tender
Minor touching up of lining to do

6238 City of Carlisle Crimson lake streamlined
Still to be done - this was to have been the City of Edinburgh (I have two sets of nameplates for it) but I've changed my mind.......

46241 City of Edinburgh BR Green with late logo
Finished

46242 City of Glasgow Wrenn blue livery
Finished

6244 King George VI Wartime black streamlined with cut-back tender
Still to be done

46245 City of London Original Dublo (maroon) finish
In running order

6251 City of Nottingham BR black with LNWR lining
In running order

6252 City of Leicester LMS wartime black with streamlined tender
Finished

6254 City of Stoke-on-Trent Wrenn lined LMS black
In running order

6256 Sir William A. Stanier LMS lined black
Still to be done (Comet Models pony truck to be used in conversion)

Canadian Pacific Duchess
Finished.

 

Just to have something well and truly different, I'm going to change the tender on the City of Bradford to an Austerity bogie turret tender, to represent the loco as it ran on the Southern region during the 1948 Locomotive Exchange Trials (no water troughs on the Southern). I have a bid on eBay on a Bachmann tender top which, if I'm successful, will be painted black, lettered LMS and mated to a spare Dublo A4 tender chassis. I'll have to find a new use for its six wheel tender, which is finished in LMS lined black with "BRITISH RAILWAYS" on it. Now, where did I put that spare tenderless Wrenn "City of Glasgow"?

 

I can't say that I've even considered spray cans of auto touch up paint, but I'll bear that in mind.

In the meantime, time to get some of those Duchesses running. The body of my City of Bristol is in excellent condition, so much so that I think I'll leave it as the City of Bristol rather than renaming and renumbering it. The tender it's coupled to at the moment looks rather scruffy, but I do have a better one somewhere in my odds and ends.

The Duchess of Gloucester is a lesson in the need to carefully check photographs on eBay. I picked it up very cheaply but, when it arrived, I saw why no-one else wanted it. A previous owner had removed part of the streamlined fairing from around the cylinders on both sides, in what I imagine to be a hamfisted attempt to make it fit a Dublo chassis (it won't fit because the Dublo motor is a bit too wide) - at least that's what I assume the intention was, as it's the only thing that makes sense to me. As you can see, I am in the process of reconstructing the missing parts in styrene sheet. This is probably the one I will alter to represent "Coronation" as she was when touring the United States.



A few interesting things come from an examination of the bodies. Firstly, the Duchess of Gloucester (a later "Hornby" production) has much finer detail, and more of it than the other two, which are early Tri-ang/Hornby examples. Secondly, she has a single chimney, whereas the other two have double and, thirdly, the treatment of the roofs is different in each one: one is black except for the lower part, one is black only around the cab ventilator, and the other is all red. I did ask some time ago in another forum which was correct and got some very interesting responses (one not so interesting ones being from the forum's resident village idiot, who said that it didn't matter because they all ended up black anyway!). From what can be seen from the little photographic evidence that we have, it appears to me that all three versions may have been used at some time in thses engines' lives while wearing what Sir William Stanier insisted on calling their "carapace". So, except for the ones I am painting black or grey (yes, one of them did run in service for a while in shop grey) I will leave them as they are, and I don't think there's anyone alive who could tell me if I'm right or wrong.

The one in the second photo, in that awful finish from Tri-ang/Hornby's gloss period, will end up in plain black (I intend to have two in black, King George VI with streamlined tender, and the City of Lancaster, with BR number (the only one to carry a BR number while still streamlined) and cut back tender.

 

Well, after seeing my three-railed Tri-ang Hornby Coronations struggling to pull anything more than a tender and two coaches, I began to think better of the whole thing and looked for an alternative. Without the benefits of Magnadhesion, these locomotives weren't going to be much use for anything other than running around the layout light engine. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the X04 so, to my mind, the problem is probably just down to weight and its effects on adhesion. Which set me thinking.....

Now a Dublo chassis is considerably heavier than a Tri-ang one, even without a diecast body, so I took a Dublo Duchess chassis and tried it against a Tri-ang body. I tried it with the body from a slightly damaged Tri-ang Streamliner. It was a very tight fit, I would have to file back the cylinder casings for clearance, and I would lose the cab detail as the magnet extends into the cab. Then I tried a Dublo A4 chassis - no need to file back the cylinder casings as they don't have any (the valve gear just sits in a void behind the sides of the bodywork. Now I had never compared the dimensions of the Dublo Duchess and A4 chassis, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that, as the A4 is slightly shorter, there was no need to sacrifice the cab detail. True, the bogie and trailing truck would need to be changed, but I had a few spare Dublo Duchess bogies and the trailing truck from the Tr-ang chassis can, with a bit of filing, be made to fit the Dublo chassis. I would also need to extend the chassis backwards a bit, but it proved quite simple to fabricate a rear mounting plate from styrene sheet.

So the plan was now to use Dublo A4 chassis for the job, and I found three at a reasonable (but not cheap) price on eBay and started work on two of them - the other one will follow later. Here is the red one under way:





And the experiment was a success. I now have two streamlined Coronations, one red and one blue, that are capable of pulling a train without slipping furiously. The red one is the "City of Bristol", the body being unaltered (other than for the chassis mounting points) from the original. I had planned to use a different name, but the body and tender are in mint condition, so I decided to alter them as little as possible. The blue one was originally "Coronation" but will be renumbered and renamed as "Princess Alice", once the nameplates arrive from Fox Transfers. The other red streamliner you see in the photos will end up as "Coronation" as it was for its US trip. I have a Cal-Scale headlight and a bell that I will fit to it to complete the transformation.

 

I just got myself a Duchess of Atholl (yes, yet another one) which was supposedly only suitable for parts or restoration. The paintwork (what was left of it) was in a sorry state on the tender but slightly better, although very much the worse for wear with one front step broken, on the locomotive. I knew it was an early example but, when I took the body off, I could see that it was older than I was expecting. Open spokes on the tender wheels and, on the locomotive chassis, a horseshoe motor with no interference suppressor and a front bogie with a vertical hooked bar like a Dublo A4. It didn't run too well at first but, with a bit of adjustment to the top bearing and all moving parts lubricated, it took off and ran pretty well, consuming only 0.5 amps. The wheels and pickup need a really good clean, so hopefully it will run even better afterwards.

I am thinking I might swap the body and tender with that on my existing Atholl (the paintwork on the loco is very good and the tender is near mint) and repaint this one in some other livery. Somehow it seems more appropriate for a horseshoe chassis to be used under an original LMS Atholl than under a repaint.

 

Well, I cleaned up the wheels and pick-up and, although it looks a lot better, it didn't make much difference. I fitted it with the body and tender from my other Atholl, coupled it to two Trix "scale-length" LMS coaches (fitted with Dublo metal wheels), and it took off just as well as it did when I ran the chassis only, but now it was consuming 0.65 amps, give or take a bit.

Another difference I noticed is that the trailing truck on the early Atholl is hollow at the back, whereas all my other Duchesses have it filled in, presumably to give extra weight to prevent derailing in reverse, which apparently some of the early ones were prone to do..