Author Archives: Tim Hall

I’ve been test-running some of my British N-gauge locomotive fleet that had been in storage for a couple of years while I’d been living up in Manchester. The results are not happy; more than half the locomotives tested no longer work! The culprit seems to be the notorious problem with later Graham Farish locos; split gears.

Fortunately replacement wheelsets are available, but it still means I’ll have to spend a lot of time identifying the axles with cracked gears, and dismantling and reassembling the locomotives. And to me, servicing locomotives is not Happy Fun Modelling Time, but Tedious Chore Time.

And we’re talking lots of locos here; like many railway modellers I’ve got a fleet many times in excess the number I’d need to operate any conceivable layout I might build in the forseeable future. I worked out the stock requirements for my never-completed Par-St Blazey line, and it came out at thirteen locomotives (including one DMU and a class 08 shunter as the yard pilot). My total fleet is in three figures!

A few of my more recent British-purchases have been from CJM, with detailed Farish bodyshells on Chris’ own flywheel drive mechanisms; the difference in performance between these and the standard Farish mech is phenomenal! I’m now planning on replacing the Farish mechanisms with these CJM flywheel drives on as many locomotives as I can afford over the next year.

(click for larger image)

This picture of class 37 No 37058 at Crewe was posted on the ModMod mailing list, as a comparison with the poorly-received (by the rivet-counters on the list, at least) new Bachmann model.

It’s a fine detail shot for modellers, showing a lot of bogie and front end detail. But it struck me as a good character shot as well; of a old and battered locomotive nearing the end of it’s working life. Here’s another more conventional three-quarter view, departing with a train for the North Wales Coast line, with the front coach (a Mk1 TSO, no less), filled with bashers.

There are a lot more good photos at www.53a-pix.co.uk.

In the January 2003 edition of Modern Railways (dead-tree only, I’m afraid), George Hudson puts the boot into the Strategic Rail Authority:

In short, the SRA has become a bloated, grotesque quango – perhaps the biggest in the country, and certainly the most expensive. It has an appalling split personality; in terms of delivery it is a Soviet-style bureaucracy which periodically produces prolix consultation documents and ten year plans complete with the railway equivalent of tractor production targets. In terms of style and cost, it reflects some of the less attractive characteristics of modern capitalism, with high salaries, a top-heavy structure, and expensive consultancy as a substitute for coherent thinking – no decisions are made without spending vast amounts on advice, in many cases from people with scant knowledge or understanding of the industry; it is consultant heaven!

Of course, the railway was privofragmentised by those with scant knowledge or understanding of the industry. I wish John Major’s liason with Edwina Currie had been uncovered earlier; perhaps then none of this would have happened.

Good article this month about Virgin’s “Operation Princess” as well.