The Wild West Show - the opening scene of the hugely popular Alias Smith and Jones TV show started with them stopping a train and blowing the safe up. The Dr X was clearly for Dr Who-esque fans. These kinds of adventure train sets were massively popular in the USA. TYCO had all kinds of action train sets. The fact that these were HO were aimed at the US market. The painting and illustrations seem quaint now, but when I was 11 that catalog kept me happy for months.
Hi Bill, The Airfix kits were static models. Now of course they are owned and produced by Dapol. There have been attempts to motorize them. Some people scratch built chassis or used propriety chassis like the Triang 2-6-2 3MT for the prairie as when the kits first came out. The engines shown here were not available in ready to run format. The original maker of these kits was not Airfix but Rosebud Kitmaster, who started producing these kits in 1959. Airfix took over Kitmaster in 1962. Kitmaster did introduce a motorized box van that you could use to push the engines round the track if you managed to get the wheels to spin freely enough. I never managed to do it. The range put out by Kitmaster was a lot more extensive originally. Airfix only made out about half the range. If you want a Prairie, I would suggest the Lima small prairie over the Airfix large prairie. I always found the Airfix one to be very noisy. The Class 31 was an excellent engine and as I seem to remember a much better and more accurate looking model compared to the Triang/Hornby one. Airfix as you know went on to produce the 4F which was later incorporated into the Hornby range and a GWR 14xx 0-4-2. Plus some very nice 4-6-0's. A Royal Scot and a Castle. A friend of mine got the Dr X play set for one Christmas. It worked well and was loads of fun till the missile launcher eventually broke through over use. For the Rosebud Kitmaster stuff, here is a link to a site so that you can see all that they produced. www.kitmaster.org.uk/
The Prairie Tank locomotive kit I have doesn't have a motor. Mainly for 'double-heading' and as said below, propelled by a motorised carriage. For padding out an engine shed turn-out or just a nice piece to model and finish well. It's my intention to try and put a motor in but it's no easy task. Good electrical insulation though. Oh to have the little saddle-tanks back again. A very interesting video. I haven't seen that catalogue in decades! Some memories there Bill. Thanks. Keep Well, sir. Cheers!
Dear Sir, Bloody hell! I just bought, second or third hand, a locomotive that has the name "J. W. Bowker" on the cabin and "Jupiter" on the tender. It must be a composite of two different locos. It has not the lantern on the front (but show no signs of something broken off). Under the tender it says "Bachmann - Hong Kong" and under the loco "RivaRossi made in Italy for AHM." Musings. I was just surprised to see the Jupiter tender on the catalogue. Cheers from Brazil!
I had the Airfix western exploding box cart. Unfortunately the springs broke very quickly on the exploding doors. Had the blue Diesel from that catalog and it run quite nicely. Got mine in 1984.
Thanks for showing the Airfix catalogue. I have a Class 31 Intercity boxed set. bought secondhand in the 1990's The loco has been DCC fitted with a Digitrak 126Z decoder. An excellent runner. The Mk2d coaches in the set are in everyday use in a train comprised of 1970's/80's coaches.
Yes 1976 was a big year . As well as Airfix introducing their new range, Mainline arrived at the same time and Lima made the transition from HO to OO . The Airfix kits were listed in the Railways catalogue as opposed to the Construction kit catalogue . I think we all had Signal Box and Level Crossing kits . The best model for me was the Mk2d coach . The first model of a modern air conditioned coach we had . Previously we only had Hornbys Mk2s . The appearance of Airfix and Mainline really made Hornby up their game . Previously they had no competition . Just have a look at Mainlines J72 and Hornbys J83. Both came out in 76 . The difference is stark . I think the US locos in catalogue might actually have been made by Bachmann
Thanks for that Bill - great to see the catalogues. I bought an Airfix Praire in the BR Black livery in the 1970s. It was eventually fitted with a Hornby Zero One chip and was always a good runner. For some reason or another it came to a halt and it abandonded . I was without a layout for several years. A couple of years ago I started a new layout and dug out the locos from the 1970s and stripped down the Prairie and fitted a DCC chip into it. It didn't like running through Peco code 100 points and it took a lot of fiddling with the wheel gauge but it now runs very well. Over the years it has suffered some damage - some of the rather exposed drain cocks at the bottom of the cylinders have broken off as have the rear sanding tubes - no one seems to be selling those but I reckone that there woud be a big market for them since I believe that quite a few of these locos are still running. Later I found a slightly later model for sale on eBay and bought it - unfortunately the motion bracket broke on it and again I coulldn't find a replacement - its a vital part of the loco and the engine won't work without it. After many attempts I managed to repair it using various glues and off cuts of plastic. I bought new numbers for it from Fox tansfers and it, after fiddling with the wheel gauge, now runs well although it is noisy - I think that i need to adjust the position of the worm on the motor shaft. The other thing that I did was to remove the traction tyres - that meant much better running over point and the pulling power of the loco doesn't seem to be affected - they are quite powerful models. So, if you see one for sale, snap it up Bill - you won't be sorry!
I have used a few of the kits recently, either original old stock or new remakes from Dapol and the like. The engine shed kit can be used in various ways to create single or double length and the station building is excellent still. I find that the old stock kits are better due to the wear and tear of the moulds which is apparent on the new ones. Keep up the good work.
Hi Bill when this is my fourth year now as a returnee to this wonderful hobby,i had a bag of bits and bobs given to me,and in the bag was that little green news stand i never realised it was a Airfix.As we have said before 1976 was the best year :)
Seems everybody was in the model railway game back in the day, now there's only a few. Beautiful catalog illustrations back then, reminds me of the Lionel catalogs over here.
Looks like you're loving that Caledonian 812 aren't you Bill? That Wild West Adventure Train Set Ad is so hilarious, the more you look at the more entertaining it gets.
In 1975 I got the prairie rocket by timpo that was to O gauge but westerns were popular then thanks to Clint Eastwood and glen Campbell singing rhinestone cowboy in the charts
I had the doctor X set for my ninth birthday that year cost £20 which was a lot then ,It did work and it had one of the best ever half barrier lever crossings in RTR nothing really since has been as good ,what I noticed with the locomotive mk 2D coach and the wagons was the realism next to my hornby class 37 I had and it’s coaches the airfix looked so much better and that’s what airfix and mainline wanted to bring as they were launched around the same time more or less ,the set came with some great vehicles and accessories my family got it from a model shop near Gunnersbury station on the Chiswick high road next to the London transport bus works that is now an office park and he area is becoming built up great year 1976 hot hot summer no mention of global warming we just was aloud to be kids glad I was there bill ,all the best Mark 👍🏻😊
@@jdenm8 I know mate I have quite a few 😂👍🏻in 2004 hattons were selling packs of 6 for around &30 what a bargain Dapol improved on the painting and detail and hornby did a great job next to latest offerings it can still hold its own
Regarding the Airfix kits other smaller manufacturers, like Branchlines and Kemilway, offered chassis kits which you could slot under the loco kits and you could always rebody old broken Hornby/ Triang Battle of Britains or 9Fs using the kits. Airfix also published their own railway magazine which had articles on how to detail their and other rtr locos. Later rtr models included the N2 and the Royal Scot and much of the range still exists today under new owners and with better motors. For the time Airfix models were very good but their Achilles heal was always the motors. Thanks Bill for a nice trip down memory lane.
I actually scratch built 2 x brass chassis for the Schools class and the BR Mogul and motorized them with some old anchoridge motors and gearboxes I had laying around. I Used Romford (now Markit wheels and bought some etched nickel-silver valve gear. It was for me an experiment but it turned out really well. Both locos are still running on my layout after some 30 years .A bit of weight is necessary (in the boiler )as the kits are very light but they do perform quite admirably for a cheap Airfix model, so yes the old kits can be motorized.
At one time airfix offered a powered van with the idea it could be coupled to a kit loco and power it around. Not unlike tender drive I guess. But I think this all stopped when they went into ready to run (which was all made in Hong-Kong) . The 1977 catalogue is completely different and full of rtr models that eventually went into Mainline, Dapol and Hornby ranges as time progressed. The praire has similar large motor as the 14xx, its loved and hated in equal amounts. Personally I like how they run as they have better gearing and 5 pole armatures, so with a little tlc they can run very smoothly indeed. However like the class 31 mechanism, a controller with any kind of pwm, half wave, or other unsmoothed output will make them rattle and clank.
Great video as always Bill, yes I had a GWR Prarie brought by a Grandfather...problem is we was all Hornby and the couplings are incompatible - the Airfix are akin to todays NEM couplings. I remember it being a poor runner and because couldn't couple it to anything it never ran much.
I’ve a fair few airfix items the class 31 passenger set was my first train set in 1976 I’ve still got it the locomotive runs superbly even after all these years (serviced of course) It’s got a 5 pole motor in it. I’ve bought the entire set again boxed on eBay for around £50 . The tank engine was good as well though I bought a second one at a swap meet many years back which doesn’t run well at all . The kits now from Dapol are well worth a look they come with good quality wheels as well
Yeah my first 'train set' as a kid was an Airfix GMR set, was it St Pancras to Sheffield circa 1970something they called it? It was the blue 31 with 2D coaches and I well remember the GMR catalogues from the late 70s/early 80s.
Well, quite a few points on this one. To answer your question, the loco kits were for static models, not intended to be motorized. I actually built the Airfix kit of the Rocket back when I was a kid... probably even before that catalogue came out. Now the kits are all still available, from Dapol, who bought the molds. If you can, it's better to get an old Airfix version, as the molds are old now, and the Dapol versions tend to have a lot of flash and other casting problems. I've built lots of them, from both Airfix and Dapol versions... not the rolling stock, just the buildings etc. I have a station on my Bachmann layout that is mainly Airfix stuff, including that booking hall. I've also used their kiosks and platform fittings. And the footbridge. And a travelling crane, that I didn't see in your catalogue - probably it came out later. I have the engine shed kit as well (Airfix, not Dapol). As you say, it's small. But the instructions show how to combine two kits to make a larger shed. So I have a second kit on order (inevitably now, from Dapol), and I'll build the larger shed when the second kit arrives. I also built a shop from one of these kits - didn't see that one in your catalogue. There are videos on my channel for the builds of those kits: ua-cam.com/video/p9hDJ8OFI0Y/v-deo.html The only Airfix loco I have is the LMS 4F, which I didn't see in your catalogue either. That one turns up all the time on eBay, and is a good little model. In fact I think the current Hornby 4F is still to some extent based on that tooling, albeit with a different mechanism.
If you look at the Dapol OO gauge model kits they include a lot of the old Arfix kits from the original moulds. So far as I'm aware the locos were just plastic non-runners.
I have that Airfix A1A-A1A CLASS 31/1 DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE. I converted it into a 3 rail AC locomotive with a Märklin direction relay. The chassis cracked into two many years ago. Haven't done anything about it since. Perhaps time to superglue the two parts together, and see if it can still run.
The original Airfix motorised models were made in Hong Kong by a toy company call Krader, they made all sorts of toys. Krader was the US Bachmann company's parent firm hence the HO scale US locomotives. The plastic kits appeared in the very early Airfix catalogues, 1964 I think or around the time Kitmaster appeared. Kitmaster offered a motorising kit for the Airfix pug 0-4-0 and I think it was GEM that made a chassis kit for the Airfix BR std 4 loco model. When Airfix was sold to the French they only wanted the model military stuff so the railway kits were bought by Dapol and Bachmann bought the railway system.
I recognise the black oil tanker that I had at some point. Don't recall if we built the kit or bought it 2nd hand. Were those kits available welll before 76 though, before the "system"? Cos I would have swspped trains for music & girls by then!
Had the GWR prarire passenger set on the Christmas day that Charlie Chaplin died (77?). I did read that the catalogue had drawings instead of pictures because the models hadn't been produced when it was printed.
I think that is quite common. I'm always amused to see box artwork which differs from the actual toys or models because the photos were taken using pre-production samples.
No the locomotive kits were just stacit display models, I Had the Rocket, and the SR "Spam can" and the littel 0-4-0 saddle tank, and the cattle wagon. As for the working locos, I had the BR Blue class 31, and I think I had the GWR 2-6-2 tank loco. At the time that I had them, the catalogue was portrate style rather than 'landscape' and it was marketed with the logo GMR (Great Model Railways) I might still have the catalogue somewhere! If you don't have a Airfix class 31, the wheels on the powered bogie are plastic, and have the lovely traction tires on them.
I think I have the small engine shed (already assembled) - I bought it a year ago on ebay for around £8. I can't check at the moment as the railway is all packed up for an impending house move.
IIRC several of the goods wagon kits are noted for being very accurate models of the prototype -- the brake van and 16ton mineral in particular. The others look pretty good too. Many of the building kits are really nice, although the window frames are far too chunky, but I always thought that station looked pretty ghastly I've acquired several built examples in job lots, and my feelings have been reinforced! (It's a really boring kit too: four sides and a roof, and then about sixteen windows to glue in, and that's it) The trouble with the Airfix kits, and Superquick (cardboard) too, is that, for a while at least, 'every' layout had them and they became rather cliched -- excellent for kit-bashing, but many people didn't go that far.
airfix kit locos weren't of any real use but for scenery ,, the mouldings are now marketed by dapol ... the american HO were more than likeley a chinese product from the mainline/ bachmann factories but to be fair i think airfixes british locos came from the same source as even in the 70s airfix bought in from many outside manufacturers from around the world
Well when I showed the catalogue to my son who is 23 he thought they were brilliant. Maybe if such things had been around when he was little he might just have got interested in trains. Doubt it though....
@@oobill I Trvaelled up to John o Groats by train and its an epic journey after INverness with the class 37 uncoupling/dividing the train and its separate portions for Wick and Thurso. Noticed my son doing the same with his Hornby trains tho his intereST stidn't last long.. but hey ho I re inherited his stock ad layout. Now my gran daughter loves to see 'grandad's railway... Not sure what would have kept my son's interest up? A Guns n Roses train or an Oais/Blur battle train?
Hey, I've bought a black 5 on eBay but it's not a great runner, I've been told on Facebook a service would do it but I'm not confident in doing such a thing, is there any way I could send it over to you? If so how and what would you charge? Thanks, Logan :)
This brings back memories - I had the catalogue as a child. Couldn't afford the models, so had to make do with the various catalogues and imagination.
The Wild West Show - the opening scene of the hugely popular Alias Smith and Jones TV show started with them stopping a train and blowing the safe up. The Dr X was clearly for Dr Who-esque fans. These kinds of adventure train sets were massively popular in the USA. TYCO had all kinds of action train sets. The fact that these were HO were aimed at the US market. The painting and illustrations seem quaint now, but when I was 11 that catalog kept me happy for months.
Hi Bill, The Airfix kits were static models. Now of course they are owned and produced by Dapol. There have been attempts to motorize them. Some people scratch built chassis or used propriety chassis like the Triang 2-6-2 3MT for the prairie as when the kits first came out. The engines shown here were not available in ready to run format. The original maker of these kits was not Airfix but Rosebud Kitmaster, who started producing these kits in 1959. Airfix took over Kitmaster in 1962. Kitmaster did introduce a motorized box van that you could use to push the engines round the track if you managed to get the wheels to spin freely enough. I never managed to do it. The range put out by Kitmaster was a lot more extensive originally. Airfix only made out about half the range. If you want a Prairie, I would suggest the Lima small prairie over the Airfix large prairie. I always found the Airfix one to be very noisy. The Class 31 was an excellent engine and as I seem to remember a much better and more accurate looking model compared to the Triang/Hornby one. Airfix as you know went on to produce the 4F which was later incorporated into the Hornby range and a GWR 14xx 0-4-2. Plus some very nice 4-6-0's. A Royal Scot and a Castle. A friend of mine got the Dr X play set for one Christmas. It worked well and was loads of fun till the missile launcher eventually broke through over use.
For the Rosebud Kitmaster stuff, here is a link to a site so that you can see all that they produced.
www.kitmaster.org.uk/
The Prairie Tank locomotive kit I have doesn't have a motor. Mainly for 'double-heading' and as said below, propelled by a motorised carriage. For padding out an engine shed turn-out or just a nice piece to model and finish well. It's my intention to try and put a motor in but it's no easy task. Good electrical insulation though. Oh to have the little saddle-tanks back again. A very interesting video. I haven't seen that catalogue in decades! Some memories there Bill. Thanks. Keep Well, sir. Cheers!
Dear Sir,
Bloody hell! I just bought, second or third hand, a locomotive that has the name "J. W. Bowker" on the cabin and "Jupiter" on the tender. It must be a composite of two different locos. It has not the lantern on the front (but show no signs of something broken off). Under the tender it says "Bachmann - Hong Kong" and under the loco "RivaRossi made in Italy for AHM."
Musings. I was just surprised to see the Jupiter tender on the catalogue.
Cheers from Brazil!
I had the Airfix western exploding box cart. Unfortunately the springs broke very quickly on the exploding doors. Had the blue Diesel from that catalog and it run quite nicely. Got mine in 1984.
Thanks for showing the Airfix catalogue. I have a Class 31 Intercity boxed set. bought secondhand in the 1990's The loco has been DCC fitted with a Digitrak 126Z decoder. An excellent runner. The Mk2d coaches in the set are in everyday use in a train comprised of 1970's/80's coaches.
Yes 1976 was a big year . As well as Airfix introducing their new range, Mainline arrived at the same time and Lima made the transition from HO to OO . The Airfix kits were listed in the Railways catalogue as opposed to the Construction kit catalogue . I think we all had Signal Box and Level Crossing kits . The best model for me was the Mk2d coach . The first model of a modern air conditioned coach we had . Previously we only had Hornbys Mk2s . The appearance of Airfix and Mainline really made Hornby up their game . Previously they had no competition . Just have a look at Mainlines J72 and Hornbys J83. Both came out in 76 . The difference is stark . I think the US locos in catalogue might actually have been made by Bachmann
Thanks for that Bill - great to see the catalogues. I bought an Airfix Praire in the BR Black livery in the 1970s. It was eventually fitted with a Hornby Zero One chip and was always a good runner. For some reason or another it came to a halt and it abandonded . I was without a layout for several years. A couple of years ago I started a new layout and dug out the locos from the 1970s and stripped down the Prairie and fitted a DCC chip into it. It didn't like running through Peco code 100 points and it took a lot of fiddling with the wheel gauge but it now runs very well. Over the years it has suffered some damage - some of the rather exposed drain cocks at the bottom of the cylinders have broken off as have the rear sanding tubes - no one seems to be selling those but I reckone that there woud be a big market for them since I believe that quite a few of these locos are still running. Later I found a slightly later model for sale on eBay and bought it - unfortunately the motion bracket broke on it and again I coulldn't find a replacement - its a vital part of the loco and the engine won't work without it. After many attempts I managed to repair it using various glues and off cuts of plastic. I bought new numbers for it from Fox tansfers and it, after fiddling with the wheel gauge, now runs well although it is noisy - I think that i need to adjust the position of the worm on the motor shaft. The other thing that I did was to remove the traction tyres - that meant much better running over point and the pulling power of the loco doesn't seem to be affected - they are quite powerful models. So, if you see one for sale, snap it up Bill - you won't be sorry!
That guy hanging from the gantry reminds me of Lee Majors in 'The Fall Guy' intro. Maybe they got the idea from an Airfix catalogue?
I have used a few of the kits recently, either original old stock or new remakes from Dapol and the like. The engine shed kit can be used in various ways to create single or double length and the station building is excellent still. I find that the old stock kits are better due to the wear and tear of the moulds which is apparent on the new ones. Keep up the good work.
Hi Bill when this is my fourth year now as a returnee to this wonderful hobby,i had a bag of bits and bobs given to me,and in the bag was that little green news stand i never realised it was a Airfix.As we have said before 1976 was the best year :)
Seems everybody was in the model railway game back in the day, now there's only a few. Beautiful catalog illustrations back then, reminds me of the Lionel catalogs over here.
Looks like you're loving that Caledonian 812 aren't you Bill?
That Wild West Adventure Train Set Ad is so hilarious, the more you look at the more entertaining it gets.
In 1975 I got the prairie rocket by timpo that was to O gauge but westerns were popular then thanks to Clint Eastwood and glen Campbell singing rhinestone cowboy in the charts
I had the doctor X set for my ninth birthday that year cost £20 which was a lot then ,It did work and it had one of the best ever half barrier lever crossings in RTR nothing really since has been as good ,what I noticed with the locomotive mk 2D coach and the wagons was the realism next to my hornby class 37 I had and it’s coaches the airfix looked so much better and that’s what airfix and mainline wanted to bring as they were launched around the same time more or less ,the set came with some great vehicles and accessories my family got it from a model shop near Gunnersbury station on the Chiswick high road next to the London transport bus works that is now an office park and he area is becoming built up great year 1976 hot hot summer no mention of global warming we just was aloud to be kids glad I was there bill ,all the best Mark 👍🏻😊
The Airfix Mk2d was so good that it's still made today by Hornby. A model from a 56 year old mould, yours for *only* 45 pounds.
@@jdenm8 I know mate I have quite a few 😂👍🏻in 2004 hattons were selling packs of 6 for around &30 what a bargain Dapol improved on the painting and detail and hornby did a great job next to latest offerings it can still hold its own
Regarding the Airfix kits other smaller manufacturers, like Branchlines and Kemilway, offered chassis kits which you could slot under the loco kits and you could always rebody old broken Hornby/ Triang Battle of Britains or 9Fs using the kits. Airfix also published their own railway magazine which had articles on how to detail their and other rtr locos. Later rtr models included the N2 and the Royal Scot and much of the range still exists today under new owners and with better motors. For the time Airfix models were very good but their Achilles heal was always the motors. Thanks Bill for a nice trip down memory lane.
ALL the building kits are still available from Dapol .
I actually scratch built 2 x brass chassis for the Schools class and the BR Mogul and motorized them with some old anchoridge motors and gearboxes I had laying around. I Used Romford (now Markit wheels and bought some etched nickel-silver valve gear. It was for me an experiment but it turned out really well. Both locos are still running on my layout after some 30 years .A bit of weight is necessary (in the boiler )as the kits are very light but they do perform quite admirably for a cheap Airfix model, so yes the old kits can be motorized.
At one time airfix offered a powered van with the idea it could be coupled to a kit loco and power it around. Not unlike tender drive I guess. But I think this all stopped when they went into ready to run (which was all made in Hong-Kong) . The 1977 catalogue is completely different and full of rtr models that eventually went into Mainline, Dapol and Hornby ranges as time progressed.
The praire has similar large motor as the 14xx, its loved and hated in equal amounts. Personally I like how they run as they have better gearing and 5 pole armatures, so with a little tlc they can run very smoothly indeed. However like the class 31 mechanism, a controller with any kind of pwm, half wave, or other unsmoothed output will make them rattle and clank.
Great video as always Bill, yes I had a GWR Prarie brought by a Grandfather...problem is we was all Hornby and the couplings are incompatible - the Airfix are akin to todays NEM couplings. I remember it being a poor runner and because couldn't couple it to anything it never ran much.
I’ve a fair few airfix items the class 31 passenger set was my first train set in 1976 I’ve still got it the locomotive runs superbly even after all these years (serviced of course)
It’s got a 5 pole motor in it.
I’ve bought the entire set again boxed on eBay for around £50 .
The tank engine was good as well though I bought a second one at a swap meet many years back which doesn’t run well at all .
The kits now from Dapol are well worth a look they come with good quality wheels as well
Yeah my first 'train set' as a kid was an Airfix GMR set, was it St Pancras to Sheffield circa 1970something they called it? It was the blue 31 with 2D coaches and I well remember the GMR catalogues from the late 70s/early 80s.
Yes, Inter-City St. Pancras - Sheffield 1972.
thanks Bill, great to see you back 👍👍
Well, quite a few points on this one. To answer your question, the loco kits were for static models, not intended to be motorized. I actually built the Airfix kit of the Rocket back when I was a kid... probably even before that catalogue came out. Now the kits are all still available, from Dapol, who bought the molds. If you can, it's better to get an old Airfix version, as the molds are old now, and the Dapol versions tend to have a lot of flash and other casting problems. I've built lots of them, from both Airfix and Dapol versions... not the rolling stock, just the buildings etc. I have a station on my Bachmann layout that is mainly Airfix stuff, including that booking hall. I've also used their kiosks and platform fittings. And the footbridge. And a travelling crane, that I didn't see in your catalogue - probably it came out later. I have the engine shed kit as well (Airfix, not Dapol). As you say, it's small. But the instructions show how to combine two kits to make a larger shed. So I have a second kit on order (inevitably now, from Dapol), and I'll build the larger shed when the second kit arrives. I also built a shop from one of these kits - didn't see that one in your catalogue. There are videos on my channel for the builds of those kits: ua-cam.com/video/p9hDJ8OFI0Y/v-deo.html The only Airfix loco I have is the LMS 4F, which I didn't see in your catalogue either. That one turns up all the time on eBay, and is a good little model. In fact I think the current Hornby 4F is still to some extent based on that tooling, albeit with a different mechanism.
If you look at the Dapol OO gauge model kits they include a lot of the old Arfix kits from the original moulds. So far as I'm aware the locos were just plastic non-runners.
I have that Airfix A1A-A1A CLASS 31/1 DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE. I converted it into a 3 rail AC locomotive with a Märklin direction relay. The chassis cracked into two many years ago. Haven't done anything about it since. Perhaps time to superglue the two parts together, and see if it can still run.
The original Airfix motorised models were made in Hong Kong by a toy company call Krader, they made all sorts of toys. Krader was the US Bachmann company's parent firm hence the HO scale US locomotives. The plastic kits appeared in the very early Airfix catalogues, 1964 I think or around the time Kitmaster appeared. Kitmaster offered a motorising kit for the Airfix pug 0-4-0 and I think it was GEM that made a chassis kit for the Airfix BR std 4 loco model. When Airfix was sold to the French they only wanted the model military stuff so the railway kits were bought by Dapol and Bachmann bought the railway system.
The company name was Kader
@@modelmania6063 Apologies you are correct
I recognise the black oil tanker that I had at some point. Don't recall if we built the kit or bought it 2nd hand. Were those kits available welll before 76 though, before the "system"? Cos I would have swspped trains for music & girls by then!
Had the GWR prarire passenger set on the Christmas day that Charlie Chaplin died (77?). I did read that the catalogue had drawings instead of pictures because the models hadn't been produced when it was printed.
I think that is quite common. I'm always amused to see box artwork which differs from the actual toys or models because the photos were taken using pre-production samples.
No the locomotive kits were just stacit display models, I Had the Rocket, and the SR "Spam can" and the littel 0-4-0 saddle tank, and the cattle wagon. As for the working locos, I had the BR Blue class 31, and I think I had the GWR 2-6-2 tank loco. At the time that I had them, the catalogue was portrate style rather than 'landscape' and it was marketed with the logo GMR (Great Model Railways) I might still have the catalogue somewhere! If you don't have a Airfix class 31, the wheels on the powered bogie are plastic, and have the lovely traction tires on them.
The company that made the chassis for the plastic loco kits was kemallway not sure how it spelt
I think I have the small engine shed (already assembled) - I bought it a year ago on ebay for around £8. I can't check at the moment as the railway is all packed up for an impending house move.
IIRC several of the goods wagon kits are noted for being very accurate models of the prototype -- the brake van and 16ton mineral in particular. The others look pretty good too. Many of the building kits are really nice, although the window frames are far too chunky, but I always thought that station looked pretty ghastly I've acquired several built examples in job lots, and my feelings have been reinforced! (It's a really boring kit too: four sides and a roof, and then about sixteen windows to glue in, and that's it)
The trouble with the Airfix kits, and Superquick (cardboard) too, is that, for a while at least, 'every' layout had them and they became rather cliched -- excellent for kit-bashing, but many people didn't go that far.
most of those kits are still being produced by Dapol, there was a company that used to make metal chassis for some of them, the name escapes me though
i bet the HO sets were targetted at the US and European market
airfix kit locos weren't of any real use but for scenery ,, the mouldings are now marketed by dapol ... the american HO were more than likeley a chinese product from the mainline/ bachmann factories but to be fair i think airfixes british locos came from the same source as even in the 70s airfix bought in from many outside manufacturers from around the world
All those kits dapol have now.
I think its great. Choo choos should be fun. Definite kid magnet that want to play trains
Well when I showed the catalogue to my son who is 23 he thought they were brilliant. Maybe if such things had been around when he was little he might just have got interested in trains. Doubt it though....
@@oobill I Trvaelled up to John o Groats by train and its an epic journey after INverness with the class 37 uncoupling/dividing the train and its separate portions for Wick and Thurso. Noticed my son doing the same with his Hornby trains tho his intereST stidn't last long.. but hey ho I re inherited his stock ad layout. Now my gran daughter loves to see 'grandad's railway... Not sure what would have kept my son's interest up? A Guns n Roses train or an Oais/Blur battle train?
Hey, I've bought a black 5 on eBay but it's not a great runner, I've been told on Facebook a service would do it but I'm not confident in doing such a thing, is there any way I could send it over to you? If so how and what would you charge?
Thanks, Logan :)
If you can email me some pics of the loco I'll consider it but can't guarantee anything.