The Train Collectors Society

 ‘Any make, Any gauge, Any age’

TCS Southern Get-together 2007

Saturday 1st December

Brighton Toy & Model Museum, 52-55 Trafalgar Street, Brighton BN1 4EB

TCS Running Day

The theme is "French Connection"
 

Report on TCS Running Day Brighton 1st of December 2007

As usual this is a great fun Running Day, Chris March, George Jones and I ran the 00 gauge although with this years French Connection theme it morphed into HO for the day. Chris Littledale as usual ran the 0 gauge, but with a lot of visiting stock this time.

The H0 ran very well with very few issues. We took it in turns to run our trains, but the mixture was predominately Hornby Acho and Jouef. I managed to get together a rather mixed collection of Acho that has stumbled my way over the years. The only loco I have that I’ve run before was the Acho USA 060T and that was to annoy my scale model railway club colleagues in 1994… All performed faultlessly. The modern interloper being a Jouef made for Hornby HO Eurostar, which was chosen in preference to the current Hornby version which is 00 size and thus out of scale with the other French stock.

The variety spanned most of the Acho range and we managed to keep the changes running throughout the day. George ran mostly Jouef Railcars and bravely a push-pull double deck set from the seventies era.  I even stretched the theme to run the Rheingold.

David Ramsey and John Foreman with Roger Lamb and Pauline Foreman made the excursion from Bedford (was it really only £25 return for a party of four!!). David‘s Etoile Du Nord set took pride of place on the tinplate tracks.

Chris Littledale ran a Chapelon Pacific on the O-Gauge that reputedly hadn’t run since 1939. These locos were known as Chocolat Du Nord and to celebrate we had chocolate cake and a toast in Champagne.

The Museums stock of British outline O Gauge was removed from the layout prior to the opening, all except that is for the P2 Cock of the North which had indeed been run in France under test. French stock was substituted, although the British Outline Pullmans were left on as the Golden Arrow – well it did connect to France via the Ferries!

A large number of people attended and were not put off by the two loonies in Berets and striped t-shirts (Penn and Ramsey)

The Museums shop did record business. I notice ‘bargains’ being snapped up, including a Bassett Lowke TPO, boxed Hornby gauge LMS vans and various rare Dublo wagons including boxed Super Detail Hopper Wagons.

If you visit the Museum on an ordinary day the trains are running only on push button. But on a running day the layouts are in full operation the whole day with many and varied, rare and unusual runners performing. Much better than the stuffed and mounted shelf queens you see at other museums.

Next years running day will be on Saturday the 6^th of December and whilst a theme has yet to be finalised we are thinking of Streamliners and Super Freights.

Report: Tony Penn
Photos courtesy John Forman

Report on TCS Running Day Brighton 25th of November 2006

The Running Day was great fun, Steve Knight and I ran the 00 gauge and Chris Litledale operated the 0 gauge.

The 00 ran pretty well with the usual minor issues (derailments and ucoupling....). One line was dedicated to my Hornby Dublo 2 rail collection getting a rare run. E3002, 2-6-4T, N2, and two A4's performed faultlessly on passenger duties hauling maroon suburban and Super Detail rakes. The EMU provided variety and a Class 20 Bo BO behaved itself hauling some of the museums freight stock. Mind you the Class 20 has an extra pickup on the power bogie which is the modification Hornby should have made to get the 2 rail Bo Bo running reliably.....

Steve's collection proved a little more troublesome, mostly being suitable to a finescale layout meant that there were some issues with the museums less than perfect Peco trackwork... The various EMU's, Bullied diesel 10203, Kirdon 10000 and Steve's son Matthews Early Hornby Black5 gave stirling performances.

On the 0 gauge Chris ran some of his early pre Grouping locos with suitable trains, you dont get to see this unless you come to a running day at the Museum. I spotted a GNR 4-4-0, Caledonian Dunalistair, plus Andrew Woodfields Great Central Director. George Jones got his LBSCR Ace Tank repaired and running in time. David Ramsey and Keith Bone made it and were running trains in the afternoon.

The only spoiler was the Network Rail shutting of the Brighton Line between Preston Park and the terminus to fix I believe problems caused by a derailment the previous week. However dedicated TCS members made it via the rail replacement buses from Haywards Heath, or trains running via Hove and reversing.

Next years running day will be on an LMS theme.

Tony Penn

A personal report from Keith Bone, Treasurer TCS.

Thanks to all at the museum for a great running day. I travelled with David Ramsey and my wife on a special day ticket from Flitwick in Bedfordshire. We had to complete our journey by railway replacement coach from Haywards Heath. Fortunately, the coach being full, we were soon on the A23, unlike a previous return journey when the replacement vehicle was a double decker scraping all the branches in the country lanes and calling all stations to Haywards Heath, a nightmare journey in the dark! Our return journey was much smoother, having been offered a lift to East Croydon, by Tony Penn, to whom we are most grateful. With two minutes to spare there was no time to film the Croydon trams in the dark. I did however come home with some nice film of the museums 00 layout and special thanks in this respect to Stephen Knight's young son. I also had a few shots of the 0 layout as well. I should have included in the first sentence, that we were warmly greeted at the door by Colin of Bowman Steam fame (his surname escapes me at the moment)( I look forward to seeing him again at the Red lion Hatfield next Saturday for the Basett-Lowke meeting), and by Tony and the ladies with a lovely cup of coffee. This annual gathering is very good and it would be lovely to see a few more TCS members there.

‘Any make, Any gauge, Any age’

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