Hornby Dublo N2

[wilsoh]

Hi All,
Has anyone fitted a Mainline N2 body to a Hornby Dublo 3-rail N2 Chassis?
If so How easy was it ?
Howard

[Bigmet]

Certainly haven't, but it wouldn't be overly difficult to adapt. The main problem is that the H-D mechanism dimensions are way off so the resulting combination won't look very good. (I have put the Mainline N2 body on a Bachmann split chassis V1 mechanism, with it's front end lopped off, pretty straightforward and looks decent because of the design relationship. The centre driving wheel is a whole millimetre out of position, essentially an invisible error for all but those with precision vision.)

[Dublo]

Hello all
There are 52 known variations of the Hornby Dublo N2, without those produced by Wrenn. I have seen the Gaiety body on a HD chassis along with a kit built one. I find that there is always another one to add to the collection without adding a more contemporary body to a vintage chassis. There are also a large number of bodies only for sale some of which could easily be candidates for detailing if you wish.

[Bufferstop]

Your mention of Gaiety raised a question I never really solved, were they rip-offs or did they do some tooling work for Meccano? The parts for their footbridge were interchangeable (albeit a poor fit) with the ones for the HD footbridge. I cobbled together their pannier tank body with a Formo (Graham Farish) chassis, it wasn't a great runner but that's what you got from the Formo chassis.
Meccano can't have been unaware of them, there were regular adverts in the magazines, and they weren't slow in asserting their rights. Trix thought they could get away with a mirror image copy of the Peco coupler to which Hornby held the toy trade rights, and ended up having to pay royalties to Meccano until every one switched to the tensionlock.

[Bigmet]

The Gaiety product was from a completely independent specialist die caster in Brum. No infringement on Meccano at all, just another competitor. Good summary here:
http://www.binnsroad.co.uk/railways/gaiety/index.html

I suspect Hamblings may well have been their connection to the model railway trade, see the mention of the wheel press that Hamblings had from them in the article. That was an essential item to get Hamblings loco wheels quartered: I have a very well used example purchased long ago from Hamblings, and a very neat piece of casting work it is.

The Gaiety N2 was easily superior to the H-D, in that the wheels and wheelbase were much closer to scale than H-D's very wayward choices, and their Pannier was much liked too, though I have never had hands on one of those.

[Bufferstop]

It was quite a weighty little beast, the tank sides were particularly thick. I needed to fabricate a bracket to support the body on the Formo chassis, so I could dispense with the GF motor and substitute an X03. "Parafin Parker" the teacher who ran the metalwork club recognised it straight away, and even knew why the tank fillers hadn't been modelled, they clashed with where the mounting screws were intended to go. There weren't many light engineering companies in the midlands where he hadn't had a summer job whilst he was a student.