Lima J50 0-6-0 in LMS Red

[Alexander Court]

Hey, I've just bought this: http://www.ebay.ie/itm/281108825241?ssP ... 1497.l2649 And I was wondering how common these LMS versions of the J50 were as I have not seen any and googling it came up with nothing :/

Any ideas?

Thanks, Alex

P.S. I posted here cause it says including lima, but if its meant to be in other manufacturers I am sorry

[Bigmet]

Lima did endless bizarro things in their foray into OO. I had heard of this one, but have never seen one. It is a complete fiction of course: the J50 is a design by Gresley for the GNR, was adopted by the LNER as their standard heavy steam shunter, ran in all over black, LNER then BR, livery. (Not that many built really, the LNER's constituents had all built good and long term serviceable equivalents which generally plodded on in service until replaced by diesel shunters various.) If you want a real gas from Lima, look out for their 'OO' bogie milk tanker (no such thing ever ran in the UK) which still carries the 'Benzina' (petrol) information plate. They must have been dying of laughter in Vicenza when they shipped this kind of unmitigated cr@p...

[Alexander Court]

I've seen many J50s around, would like a decent detailed one in GNR and LNER liveries but alas only the Lima ones are around, but I can't seem to find any information on when they decided to paint one in LMS (with awful awful continental coaches) and in what quantity. I do like strange models and this one is perculiar enough to take my interest, that and its only up the coast from me. I have a magazine with an article about models that almost existed and it talks of how Lima had pictures of king Charles the second in blue in their N gauge catalogue for a while even though it was never released, mainly due to the fact the photo was of a 00 model with a twice sized N gauge coupler on it and if I'm right was it lima who had a catalogue image of a V2 which they actually made as a one off??

[Alexander Court]

Found a picture on the original advert on adverts.ie (they were asking 40 euros on there and I got it for 8 euros pluss 6 for postage)



Alex

[luckymucklebackit]

Is it definately an 00 model and not one of their early HO offerings?

Jim

[Alexander Court]

Not sure, this is a picture they posted of the box:


Alex

[luckymucklebackit]

Did some research here and it is 00 http://limabritishho.zxq.net/LBHO-Locomotives.htm (Quite an interesting site for a read.)

"There were only actually 2 (HO) locomotives made in British outline, the LMS 4F, and the Class 33. The rest are re-liveries of existing continental models. It was planned to produce a Deltic, an LNER J50, and a GWR King in HO, but by the time they emerged the scale had been changed to OO. The OO model of the Deltic, does have HO scale bogies however. These bogies were later re-used under Lima's Class 50."

Jim

[Alexander Court]

So far I have the Lima King Charles II in 00, a Deltic (Ballymoss), two class 33's (one which I repainted into irish colours) and now the J50. I also have a 31. I need to get one of their sets which had a 4f in CIE livery and I think they did an O guage version that would be cool to have, in fact their normal O gauge 4f set would be awesome to have too.

I did have a look at that site but did not see anything about this J50 set, it looks as though the main body is cast in red plastic and basic livery applied. The coaches are the generic continental reliveried offering.

Alex

[Bigmet]

Is it definately an 00 model and not one of their early HO offerings?

This one is genuinely OO and the body is reasonably accurate. Determined folks have been known to detail it to produce a decent body shell, which can then go on a kit or RTR chassis as the owner prefers. The supplied chassis is prodigiously awful: only driven on two axles, the centre wheelset is not connected to the rods for some reason; dire pick up, only collects on one end wheelset and the unpowered centre set, noisy motor in a floppy plastic chassis. The only good component on the chassis is the large lump of real lead as ballast, and that must have been illegal in a toy at the time of production...

[Alexander Court]

When the set turns Up I shall give the loco a test and see if it runs, a nice odd thing to add to my collection, and I will get more pics too, to make sure the other side is of the same condition as the side we can see

Alex

[GWR_fan]

From memory, this locomotive was voted Lima's most unreliable runner. From the item description as regards power pickup then increasing power pickup points may be a start to increasing the running reliability.

I picked up a cheap (but nice) GWR Lima 2-6-2. Out of the box it ran terribly, stalling constantly. I added pickups from a later five pole Hornby tender drive model to the pilot and pony truck wheels and the loco is now unstoppable. It runs down to a boringly slow walking pace.

Tim

[b308]

Jim, that 33 was if I remember rightly not "true" HO scale but a sort of mish-mash... I remember following an article in RM from the 70s to "convert" it into nearer OO scale... I'm not sure about the others, but knowing Lima (the cheapo end of the market like Playcraft) they were probably not exact scale either...

[Lysander]

Tim

A club member worked on an old Lima 2-6-2 and produced a remarkably controllable engine. The main job - apart from a thorough cleaning - involved reducing the pressure on the brushes so that they did their job efficiently without acting simultaneously as a brake. It was, in its day, a good model. Dimensionally however it is somewhat challenged - far too tall a cab for starters. I have one also, it won't run well though - the main problem seems to be locking connecting/piston rods - the rivets stick out too far.

I've always been surprised that Bachmann or Hornby have not produced a J50 - it seems such an obvious choice.........

Tony

[Bigmet]

Along with a J6, which are the two essential ex-GNR classes to fill out the picture of the southern half of the ECML for which we now have most of the larger traction. Then again, most of us with that interest have probably built kits, being practical types and all.

[Alexander Court]

Bachmann I think would want to do a proper detailed one which probably doesn't fit into their current plans at the moment. As for Hornby, seeings as people haven't been able to add anything other than a kit or Bachmann chassis underneath, means they can't use their standard 0-6-0 chassis, which to them means its too expensive to put into the railroad or standard range, and the tooling on the lima one is too poor for putting the effort in for a decent custom chassis, so they'd have to start more or less from scratch anyways.

Alex