Garden Railway Forum

Which is the most realistic looking then?

I know that there are several manufacturers - in both working (flexible) and non-working - any recommendations gratefully received...

.jpegs appreciated!

I use brandbright flexible hoses. Not sure why I buy flexible because I never conect them up. Never used any others so not sure what they are like.

I just use these cheap whitemetal ones from Steve at B2B6..

Clean a bit of flash off, trim the mountings to suit, paint & glue on. I do like the flexible type after seeing Mr Huss's  coaches with them though but happy enough with these for now..

That's nice - I hope RAH (I) sees this thread...

TVM for the .jpg

Marquis DeCarabas:56831 wrote:That's nice - I hope RAH (I) sees this thread...

Seen it I have. Photos should follow at some point, but this morning I need to meet our local councillors to discuss a footpath, mowing machines and some trees, and then take the children swimming.

Sometime, someone should explain to the good people of this forum the origins of the RAH(I) designation...

hussra:56834 wrote:Sometime, someone should explain to the good people of this forum the origins of the RAH(I) designation...

..er.. was that a hint?  :D

Many, many moons ago Richard and myself were revising the TR rulebook - as is commonplace with such things there were a lot of memos flying around - trouble is there were two RAH's - Richard Hope and Richard Huss.

Taking inspiration from the Great Northern Railway and the Great Northern Railway (Ireland), - GNR and GNR(I) (as Mr. Huss is from Lisburn) we came up with the designations of RAH for Hope and RAH(I) for Huss.

Is that about it? Y'know it's nearly 20 years ago now, and the memory dims.

hussra:56834 wrote:Seen it I have.

Are you turning into Yoda, Richard?

Are you turning into Yoda, Richard?

Your wit-fu is strong this day!

OK, here are some photos of the Brandbright vac pipes.

Straight (RSA49):


Offset (RSA50):


In situ on IP short VoR-style carriage:


Does it make it harder to couple up your stock? Gosh yes! I use a coupling pole made from an old ballpoint pen and a bent paperclip:


With this, coupling up is tolerably doable. Without it? Really jolly tricky.


Sorry, camera decided to focus on the grass behind:






Haven't yet fitted pipes to any of the locos but that is planned; the Brandbright pipes aren't quite the right sizes to suit a Millie, nor the IP "deluxe" (!) chassis. May end up bending up a bit of brass myself and adding the fittings from a sacrificial pair of Brandbright pipes.

I seem to remember GRS also do a set of connectable vac pipe bits in lost-wax brass, and DJB Engineering ditto. I doubt that they would be interconnectable with the Brandbright ones, though.

Narrow Minded:56837 wrote:

Are you turning into Yoda, Richard?

Your wit-fu is strong this day!

I think I can be blamed for 'sunny Solihull' too....

Thanks for the very useful pictures, Richard.

They will eventually be fitted to:

(end view)



(side view)



(underframe view)



As you can see the stock is fitted with Accucrraft norwegians - I've long felt that mounting the accucraft-style couplers on the outside edge of the headstock just looks far too wide - if I were modelling the Bársi or any of the English railways with the Jones-Calthrop patent couplers then they'd be fine.

I happened to win these coaches on eBay, bought them because they are Garratt-sized (160mm r/l to c/l of roof  :shock:) and was really pleased to see that they were fitted with the couplings inboard of the headstocks, reducing their outward poke to something a bit more realistic like the NWNG or T&D - look at the underframe picture to see what I mean. One of the three carriages was complete but without underframe, so been gathering the bits together - including a new batch of W&L norwegians - these have had the rather 'chunky' hooks removed and I popped down to the local 'beading' shop.

Fascinating places, these bead shops - I found some 0.9mm diameter black coated copper wire - bent this up into small split pins to replace the hooks - you can see the loop underneath the one on the coach and on top of the one on the VR [1] rule book, I'm going to pop back to the bead shop to see what they have in the way of small chain - my other half angelislington has some perfect stuff, but it's gold plated and for her jewellery and I don't really fancy getting into hot water by using it! I think if I can find some small chain that would either fit through the coupler or make up a loop to go on the split pin them robert would be my father's brother.

[1] yes RAH(I), I've not forgotten to search out that PBR .pdf - watch this space elsewhere....