Model Railway Forum

Nice. Hymeks were extremely powerful locomotives for their size. Was told by an engine driver who worked them that single headed Hymeks could keep to time with a 16 coach Paddington to Swansea express where as in comparisson, a typical class 47 which replaced the diesel hydraulics could only keep to time if it had 10 coaches or less unless it was double headed.
The official tractive effort figures bear little resemblance to how some of these locos performed in real life conditions.
Nice locos the Hymeks. Pity I missed them when young but I do remember seeing a Western when I was around a year old at most. I remembered the shape. Was far too young to take the name as number! (Couldn't read or write back then!)

My latest purchases have included 2 × Hornby tender drive black 5 locos, 1 was purchased as just the loco from ebay as number 5112 which has been repainted and renumbered as 5001 due to already having 5112 in the loco driven Hornby railroad version. My other black 5 is number 44932 ( the full sized loco returned to service recently after 30+ years of restoration work ).

Prior to these, my purchases include 2 × Hornby tender drive A3s ( pictures below, the black 5s will follow in a day or 2 )





All the motors in these 4 locomotives have been converted to cd motors and they go like the wind. In the black 5s the motors to me give a realistic idea of how fast they ran passenger services on the WCML and the A3s at full whack on the ECML.

Another puchase from ebay although a good few months ago was a Bachmann class 66 chassis onto which I have fitted a Hornby EWS body for number 66042 ( not sure of the R number in the Hornby railroad range ), the body required a little bit of modification to allow it to fit over the light clusters which I had to disconnect from the power circuit as they had become non functional and not having much electronics experience with diodes and resistors I have not replaced them for reactivation. This loco runs in top and tail formation with a freightliner class 66 number 66416 ( pictures to follow of these locos ) working with 7 Hornby Mk2A coaches.

I know I said I would post the pictures of the black 5s and class 66s in a day or 2 but I decided to bring posting forward and do them now.








Hope you like them.

Got this latest release sound fitted 35-353SF Bachmann Class 20 yesterday. Amazing sounds and performancee

Pity the class 20 in the background doesn't have working lights. I may have to obtain a lighting kit for it!

Both very nice Brian.

Thanks Howard. The top one is a kit and the bottom one isn’t.

I agree - the baggage van is almost coach-like - very nice.

It is about as large as I can go on the layout. Anything larger would look daft.

Found these at the local Aldi this morning. £15 each.

image by Steve Mumford, on Flickr